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Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

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Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

#181

Post by kenneth »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #159
throwaway-1283 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely disagree with this analogy. Hotels have their place, and in so many ways they can be superior to a home rental. I am the furthest thing from a luddite, but I personally prefer (as I know many others) hotels to Airbnb. There's a consistency to the hotel product that you can't get with Airbnb that I place a premium on, especially for short or last minute stays. I'm also not really sure why Airbnb is consider…

I honestly question who hotels are for. I'm in the top 2% in income, and I actually prefer staying in a hotel, but they'r e just insanely expensive. Do you mostly stay in hotels for business reasons? Or are you just rolling in money?

I live out of hotels pretty much full time. Really, it's not as expensive and as bad as you make it seem. My average nightly rate averages out to just slightly above my rent, and I have a lot more flexibility. At the end of this month, I'm ditching my place and going full time, and I'll actually be saving money overall, and I can be anywhere in the world without the feeling of my empty apartment burning a hole in my pocket back home.

Not every city is New York or SF with their crazy hotel prices. In expensive cities, I'll use points to save money.

Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

#182

Post by annodomini2019 »

throwaway-1283 wrote: post #163
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly question who hotels are for. I'm in the top 2% in income, and I actually prefer staying in a hotel, but they'r e just insanely expensive. Do you mostly stay in hotels for business reasons? Or are you just rolling in money?

What is considered "insanely expensive"? Hotel prices widely vary depending on the city and time of year, and within a market there's 1* to 5* hotels. I'm looking at hotels in Manhattan for this weekend and there's 4* hotels for $150/night. Is that expensive? That is equivalent to what some people pay in rent for a 1-bedroom apartment in SF or NY.

Thats 4700 a month. Sure there are some people paying that a month in rent but that definitely qualifies as expensive.

Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

#183

Post by aboutruby »

bertil wrote: post #176

It’s interesting that no one here, after 160 comments, is speculating about the impact to Booking.com B. is the 7th largest internet company in the world but because it’s in Amsterdam and not US based, hardly anyone think about them. They have incredible technology, often on-par with the big ones but I’m not anyone here could name one problem where they pionnered a solution. Disclaimer: I used to work for one of thei…

Completely disagree on the technology part, everything being written in Perl doesn't help and the user experience is not as good as Airbnb. The main thing going for them is that they have basically every hotel on their platform. And like others mentioned, that a lot of people prefer hotels to airbnbs.

Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

#184

Post by jonknee »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #86
jonknee wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean sometimes you just want to book a room and not have to file a claim to get a refund.

I'm familiar with the reservations systems the hotel brands use, and I have yet to come across a situation where the same hotel room is being offered for cheaper on a third party website. It's also their official policies, and as I said, it doesn't make sense to me that they would advertise that and then not set a simple technical limitation in their reservation system to prevent anyone from being lower than them. Ye…

In theory you are correct, in practice the hotel will play dumb and say they'll match it but after you file paperwork proving it was cheaper somewhere else. I've literally booked on HT from the front desk because they can't match the rate. It makes no business sense, but yet here we are.

Another example: I just checked HT for San Francisco tonight and the Hyatt Regency is up for $179 after taxes and fees. On Hyatt.com it's $259.

Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

#185

Post by lavezzi »

why-el wrote: post #28
randomacct3847 wrote: post #2

pretty interesting. My hypothesis is that there’s a large cohort of people (myself included) who hesitate to use airbnb because there is still a real issue of inconsistency with back and forth with host, key hand off, etc that people who are attracted to hoteltonight (extremely last minute bookings) would hate and that airbnb is trying to figure out how to appeal to that base.

It wouldn't surprise me if Airbnb moves to the hardware space pretty soon, trusting their long time hosts with say wall-mountable boxes that speak Airbnb APIs and can facilitates key exchange, door locking/unlocking based on timed codes, and so on. Heck, build one and Airbnb will most likely buy it from you. ;)

They already advertise third party products for hosts on their website IIRC. They are fully aware of the market.

Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

#186

Post by hrktb »

strychn9ne9 wrote: post #153
throwaway-1283 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely disagree with this analogy. Hotels have their place, and in so many ways they can be superior to a home rental. I am the furthest thing from a luddite, but I personally prefer (as I know many others) hotels to Airbnb. There's a consistency to the hotel product that you can't get with Airbnb that I place a premium on, especially for short or last minute stays. I'm also not really sure why Airbnb is consider…

I think Airbnb shines with large groups. Me and 10 friends can split a house in the mountains or in some European city for a fraction of getting multiple rooms in a Hotel - with much less hassle. However, if I'm traveling by myself or with my partner, hotels still seem the way to go. Valet parking in a city centre with room service can make a stay much comfortable.

At that size you can rent family hotels (or apart hotels, or vacance homes, whatever they call it). They can be a bit further from big city, meaning you’ll need cars, but for that tradeoff you’ll get decent service for cheaper than standard hotels.

That’s what we do with relatives, as it’s much more kid friendly than any other solution.

Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

#187

Post by throwaway-1283 »

annodomini2019 wrote: post #182
throwaway-1283 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is considered "insanely expensive"? Hotel prices widely vary depending on the city and time of year, and within a market there's 1* to 5* hotels. I'm looking at hotels in Manhattan for this weekend and there's 4* hotels for $150/night. Is that expensive? That is equivalent to what some people pay in rent for a 1-bedroom apartment in SF or NY.

Thats 4700 a month. Sure there are some people paying that a month in rent but that definitely qualifies as expensive.

The fact that on a nightly basis a 4* hotel in the most expensive part of NYC is comparable to the 80th percentile for 1-bedrooms in SF or NYC actually shows that it is very reasonably priced because what you're really paying for is the flexibility and convenience of a short-term stay + the cleaning/security/concierge/other amenities.

By the same logic, if you eat at a restaurant and it costs only 50% more than what it'd cost if you made it at home or order a beer at a bar and it only cost 50% more than what it'd cost if you bought it at the grocery store you'd be really happy, though chances are you're paying at least 100% more, if not more.

It would be "expensive" if you lived at a hotel in the same way it's "expensive" if for every meal or every beer you drank you had it at a sit down restaurant or bar.

Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

#188

Post by rhlsthrm »

strychn9ne9 wrote: post #153
throwaway-1283 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely disagree with this analogy. Hotels have their place, and in so many ways they can be superior to a home rental. I am the furthest thing from a luddite, but I personally prefer (as I know many others) hotels to Airbnb. There's a consistency to the hotel product that you can't get with Airbnb that I place a premium on, especially for short or last minute stays. I'm also not really sure why Airbnb is consider…

I think Airbnb shines with large groups. Me and 10 friends can split a house in the mountains or in some European city for a fraction of getting multiple rooms in a Hotel - with much less hassle. However, if I'm traveling by myself or with my partner, hotels still seem the way to go. Valet parking in a city centre with room service can make a stay much comfortable.

Room service + daily cleanings + guaranteed TV in front of the bed is the best for vacations with my SO. Big group of friends = rent a huge house and have an awesome time. Your comment is spot on.

Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

#189

Post by irq11 »

annodomini2019 wrote: post #182
throwaway-1283 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is considered "insanely expensive"? Hotel prices widely vary depending on the city and time of year, and within a market there's 1* to 5* hotels. I'm looking at hotels in Manhattan for this weekend and there's 4* hotels for $150/night. Is that expensive? That is equivalent to what some people pay in rent for a 1-bedroom apartment in SF or NY.

Thats 4700 a month. Sure there are some people paying that a month in rent but that definitely qualifies as expensive.

Median 1 bedroom rent in Manhattan is $3300. $4700 a month for a short term lease isn’t bad at all.

Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

#190

Post by dpandya »

throwaway-1283 wrote: post #147
crushcrashcrush wrote: post #97

Fantastic product, super concerned about AirBnB acquisition - not because of what they'll do to the product, but I guarantee their partnerships with hotels and hotel groups will evaporate when contracts expire. A hotel working with Airbnb is like BlockBuster working with Netflix to share customer data. The hotels groups aren't as fucking stupid as Blockbuster was, though.

Completely disagree with this analogy. Hotels have their place, and in so many ways they can be superior to a home rental. I am the furthest thing from a luddite, but I personally prefer (as I know many others) hotels to Airbnb. There's a consistency to the hotel product that you can't get with Airbnb that I place a premium on, especially for short or last minute stays. I'm also not really sure why Airbnb is consider…

Whether or not a company is a "tech" company is kind of a muddled question, but taking even a brief glance at https://airbnb.io/ (their engineering blog) makes it clear that AirBnB does some pretty serious engineering.

For example, their post about their work in search ranking is quite interesting [1].

[1]: https://medium.com/airbnb-engineering/machine-learning-power...

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