151–160 of 174 posts
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AirBnB Simplicity, AirBnB, and AirBnB Plus? I don’t think so. I’d give that a D+ on execution.
Really? What about JW Marriott/Marriott/Courtyard by Marriott. Edit: Marriott, across all of its brands, had nearly $23B in revenue last year. They're clearly doing something right by segmenting their brand.
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I felt the same way about eBay back in the day. I quickly came to the conclusion that there were very few items I wanted to get rid of that were worth the hassle. The last time I had some camera equipment to get rid of I just sold it to Amazon. I'm sure I could have gotten more $$ through other channels but it was so hassle-free that it was worth it to me.
I actually have bad reasonably good experiences selling random stuff around the house on eBay. I also thought it had been overtaken by professional sellers, especially when bidding is basically no longer a thing on eBay anymore, but I set up 7 day auctions for a dozen items I wanted to get rid of (books, computer accessories, old games, etc) and all but one sold without much hassle.
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I think the worry is retaliatory reviews. I've been in a situation where if I left my host an honest review, I expected to get a nasty review in return. It's honestly a problem with all of these bi-directional rating systems. As long as they make it at all possible for the ratings to leak before both parties have rated, there's a strong disincentive for any party to leave an honest rating.
Airbnb switched to a "double blind" review system several years go, so you only see the other person's review after you've written your own. If you don't leave a review within two weeks, the other review becomes public and you no longer have the option to leave a review. I did a search to see if there was any press about this, couldn't find much but there's a bit about it here: https://medium.com/airbnb-engineering/b…
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Does a host (where you've stayed) get to see your review of their place before they post their review of you? If so, I think the fear would be a traveler leaving a negative review, the host seeing it, and then leaving a negative review of the traveler in retaliation.
Airbnb employee here: both parties have to leave a review before you can both see the review posted to prevent retaliatory reviews. Also, you can leave public feedback, private feedback, and feedback to Airbnb if you have specific issues with the guest/host that you want us to address.
> My reason for not writing a negative review is because before staying at their place we exchanged phone numbers and other things, and now I don't feel comfortable writing a negative review and possibly having a confrontation. YMMV but I avoid writing negative reviews despite the 'double blind' review system.
Despite the double blind system, AirBnb's review system still requires you to have a certain personality. It is still quite adversarial.
Take for instance we stayed at a place recently, where we were quite upset at the ameneties of the place (and we were very certain to give them negative reviews), but during the last day, the host made a huge favor to us by keeping our luggage with them. This meant a lot for us, so we can't really leave negative reviews, however, this does not fix the problem with Host's place.
I would suggest some sort of constructive feedback system, based on different metrics, separate from the textual comment system.
Like something which allows me to say:
Amenities: 3/5 What can be improved: Stack up the toilet paper, fix the broken shower handle (Uber style feedback from multiple choice) Cleanliness: 2/5 What can be improved: Toilet wasn't clean enough Hostmanship: 4/5 What can be improved: Communication
Etc.
Maybe, AirBnb should just become a platform on which a branded/franchised networks should appear that stick to certain standards. Verified by "Philton". Quality controlled by "Karriott".
Otherwise, AirBnb is always a lottery.
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Future hosts will see your reviews and refuse to host. Since the reservation has to be confirmed by host, it can be a pain to go through a few hosts.
My biggest issue is hating all the weird host rules. I don't want to tip toe around and abide by your curfew when I'm on vacation. I also don't want to pay an outrageous $250 cleaning fee. At least with a hotel I know what I am getting and don't get any surprises.
But it reflects poorly on Airbnb when an apt is $200 with a $200 cleaning fee.
It’s like back when EBay let you charge $1 with $20 shipping.
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My biggest issue is hating all the weird host rules. I don't want to tip toe around and abide by your curfew when I'm on vacation. I also don't want to pay an outrageous $250 cleaning fee. At least with a hotel I know what I am getting and don't get any surprises.
They really need to fix the cleaning fee. It’s outrageous. At least they let you compare prices including fees. But it reflects poorly on Airbnb when an apt is $200 with a $200 cleaning fee. It’s like back when EBay let you charge $1 with $20 shipping.
I actually prefer this to bundling a cleaning fee into the nightly price. I don’t want the place cleaned every day and it would make Airbnbs unaffordable for longer stays to do so.
On EBay they would just lie and call it all shipping so they didn’t have to pay fees on the “shipping”. With Airbnb, hosts should actually prefer higher nightly prices as they’ll get those prices for every night of the reservation and not just once like on eBay. The comparison to eBay would be paying separate shipping costs when buying several of the same item when they could all fit in one envelope.
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AirBnB Simplicity, AirBnB, and AirBnB Plus? I don’t think so. I’d give that a D+ on execution.
Really? What about JW Marriott/Marriott/Courtyard by Marriott. Edit: Marriott, across all of its brands, had nearly $23B in revenue last year. They're clearly doing something right by segmenting their brand.
I use Airbnb a lot. When the location is bad the reviews are often bullshit. People are afraid to leave a negative review. I would be willing to pay more to know the history of complaints that Airbnb receives directly through their support line. In the past I've discovered that Airbnb knew that there was a problem with a location but gave the owner another chance and did not follow up.
The main part I like about this is Airbnb actually verifying things in properties. It's always annoying when a listing has tiny lies in it about wifi and other small things. I really want that Airbnb rewards program though