331–340 of 406 posts
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Airbnb is great if you want to feel at home when you travel. A hotel room is so impersonal.
Or if you want to have a home when you travel. A kitchen, living room, etc... I'd almost always prefer having these things to a hotel room.
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> The problem was that it was peak Summer in Barcelona, we were there for a long period of time, and the only available units were minimum 5x the price. I've never got this at all. Why should you pay 5x price for AirBnb's risk?
Exactly. They take a huge cut, hold cash for months ahead of time (earning considerable float), preach the need to use their in-app messaging and platform for "safety", then just abandon ship when things go wrong. If I showed up to a hotel and they didn't have a room available, they would rebook me at a different hotel. Airbnb just seems to say, "well, that's not our problem". It makes me wish that there was a tenant…
I believe this is rolled up in hotel pricing, and why Airbnb's are still overall cheaper.
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They change the way people travel in a good way. I wouldn't be so hateful towards them.
AirBNB and anything the sharing economy produces is never good for humans. These companies are just proprietary algorithms extracting money on the back of the poor. They should be burned with fire.
Of course, when the hotel rate is within $50-$100 of the AirBNB room, I'll happily pay the additional upcharge for the convenience and consistency of a hotel. And if I'm traveling in particularly unfamiliar terrain, I'll pay even more just so I can talk to the concierge and enjoy the security that the hotel offers.
AirBNB and competitors like Vacasa are a good thing. AirBNB's practice of making it impossible to ask an open-ended question, however, is braindead, and unless they fix those kinds of issues, the business will be deservedly overtaken by better followers.
I've gone from spending months a year in AirBnbs to now planning to never use the service ever again.
Airbnb used to be almost magical but the last three bookings I had have been progressively more horrendous and support is maddening. I'd be happy to share my recent experiences but I don't have any social clout to attempt to get anything out of it :(
I've lived in Airbnbs full-time for about 18 months while traveling, and Airbnb has lost my trust repeatedly in terms of reliability, safety, and user-friendliness. - Host listing quality has gone consistently downhill. Now, it's many slumlords just trying to make a quick buck rather than support the original community idea or provide a great stay. - Airbnb support response times are horribly slow. They hide their ph…
Not sure about recently, but I’ve had the opposite experience living in Airbnb’s three months at a time when I was in between my startup and current job. My two hosts were very friendly, and I got on great with them. My first host would throw weekly dinner parties, cooking fresh organic food with vegetables she grew in her garden. When I was sick she would bring me breakfast in bed. Indeed, this woman was a wonderful…
My biggest gripe is that the cleanliness has gone way down. It used to be, a few years back, AirBnB would make sure everything was immaculate. I remember a host letting me in to her house and being embarrassed that there were garbage bins out front since it was garbage day. Everything was laundered, sheets were bleached and crisp, everything was on-par with a 5-star hotel. For whatever reason, now when I stay in AirB…
Getting a set of clean towels isn't what I would consider "white glove" service. It seems more like "basic level of service".
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I feel like what you described is the main reason for the profitability of most "sharing economy" services. Uber is also advertised as a little side gig you can do when your car is not being used while the real goal is to have a taxi service that isn't subject to the same legislation and unloads more cost on the driver.
Personally what I've come to realize over the years is that 'Use a startup while its young, get rid of it and get on the next startup once it grows beyond just being a simple pre-seed, 1st round startup'. My reasoning comes from the amount of cash investors pour money into startups, and startups having insane amount of deals at the very start in order to attract costumers like uber had and airbnb to an extend. After…
Of course I bought jewelry from the Nazis - it was cheap while it lasted!
When I interviewed at Airbnb, they asked me about one thing I learned in the past that could be useful for Airbnb. I suggested that people who are developing the product should once in a while spend a few hours handling user tickets themselves (perhaps shadowing an actual customer representative), so that developers get to sense (at the gut level) the pain points. The interviewer did not seemed pleased with that sugg…
[1] https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/vox/recode-decode/e/5518597...
I had been having great experiences until I got this place in NYC that when I just got in, the host started sending me messages on I could and couldn't do. He told me to get rid of the shoes because I was hurting the floor, that I shouldn't leave heavy stuff on the sofa because it was brand new (my bag was on it). For a moment I thought that maybe he told this to everyone and then I found the camera. It was a 1 bedro…