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Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

press.airbnb.com

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Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

#351

Post by nielsole »

darioush wrote: post #217
strange_quark wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically the first time I used HotelTonight was when my Airbnb turned out to be a scam leaving me with nowhere to stay well past midnight. Airbnb's customer service was horrid. It was really difficult to find a phone number -- they clearly don't want you calling them -- and once I did find a number, I was on hold for upwards of 30 minutes until I finally got a person who told me that I would have to wait over an ho…

Lots of these companies create the fake assurance that you can be connected to customer support within minutes, but then go out of their way to hide it behind as many menus as possible and don't have a phone number to call. There needs to be a site indexing and monitoring this.

I was once very positively surprised by booking.com. I perceived them as super scammy because the website is one giant big dark pattern. But when shit hit the fan while in China, they proactively reached out and gave me a 20$ voucher (mind you, the hotel was very cheap, so that was actually a good amount of money) without me having any receipts to show for.

Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

#352

Post by smueller1234 »

traek wrote: post #276
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…

> B. is the 7th largest internet company in the world By what measure? Just checked and it's not market cap, not revenue, not number of employees, and not earnings.

I think it's easier to make this kind of statement about how they measure up in terms of public e-commerce companies and market cap. Amazon's bigger. Alibaba's bigger. Who am I missing? I think that would put them at #3 in that particular segment.

Fun fact from some years ago: It used to be a head-to-head race for 2nd between Booking and Ebay (when ebay was at their peak and included PayPal).

Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

#353

Post by pjc50 »

pastor_elm wrote: post #198
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…

my favorite part about Booking is that it will tell me how many other people are currently looking at the last available room i'm looking it. Let's me know if i have to swoop it up quickly!

I'd always assumed that was a lie. To me, the most useful feature of Booking is the refundability of most of their reservations, so I don't have to book hotel and flights simultaneously.

Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

#354

Post by wiredfool »

amha wrote: post #282
dragonwriter wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a thermite infested apartment in Sicily Thermite can't really infest things. You probably mean “Thermian”. (Ok, more likely: “termite”.)

A thermite infested apartment would be pretty awesome, though.

It's all fun and games till someone lights the magnesium strip.

Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

#355

Post by wbronitsky »

thecatspaw wrote: post #340
wbronitsky wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fail to see how calling out that Nazis are unequivocally evil is not positively contributing when someone is trying to gain sympathy for being discriminated against for being a Nazi. I bet you would also say that it’s “not the time” to have these sorts of discussions. Too bad, I’m not going to be quiet about this. It’s deeply sad to me that this community is willing to quickly rally around Nazis and shame people wh…

It is because you're ignoring what the comment is actually about. Airbnb declines hosting of people they deem unworthy, because they have the wrong political ideology or spoke out about the wrong thing. Who is to say that they dont expand this? Can I still go to demonstrations and airbnb or will that be banned as well? Can I still criticize the president and airbnb? What about beeing anti-war or pro-war?

I’m sorry, this is a dumb argument. I will not interface with people who think Nazis are a slippery slope. That’s bullshit and you know it. This is a bad faith argument

Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

#356

Post by tushar-r »

stef25 wrote: post #229

What's amazing at Airbnb is their ability to make places look so much nicer in the pictures than what they look like in reality. After staying in a crack house in Barcelona, a dirty dark hole in Manhattan, a "private" villa in France where the owner was screwing an endless stream of boyfriends behind the flimsy kitchen door at 10AM, a thermite infested apartment in Sicily with horrid beds, I still feel like a total a…

>Thermite infested

I hope you meant termite [0] and not thermite [1]

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Termite

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermite

Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

#357

Post by mFixman »

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…

I avoid booking.com because I loathe the asshole design patterns in their platform. I like booking my hotels without "get this room now without thinking or you'll miss it!" flashing everywhere.

Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

#358

Post by smueller1234 »

pjc50 wrote: post #353
pastor_elm wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

my favorite part about Booking is that it will tell me how many other people are currently looking at the last available room i'm looking it. Let's me know if i have to swoop it up quickly!

I'd always assumed that was a lie. To me, the most useful feature of Booking is the refundability of most of their reservations, so I don't have to book hotel and flights simultaneously.

It's not a lie.

Booking has received tremendous regulatory/legal scrutiny on that group of features and they wouldn't be caught red handed doing something indefensible in that space. That being said, there are clearly some decisions to be made about what "currently looking at" means: As engineers, we all know that nothing is tracking user eyeballs (thankfully), so in reality these things are necessarily implemented as a rolling sum of non-bot page views within X minutes.

Whether or not the information is correct, of course, doesn't mean anybody has to like the feature. I personally really don't like it, but acknowledge that it was a feature with shockingly significant business impact when first released.

Source: Used to work there. Read the respective code at the time (~2015/2016 or so).

Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

#359

Post by homakov »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #285
stef25 wrote: post #229

What's amazing at Airbnb is their ability to make places look so much nicer in the pictures than what they look like in reality. After staying in a crack house in Barcelona, a dirty dark hole in Manhattan, a "private" villa in France where the owner was screwing an endless stream of boyfriends behind the flimsy kitchen door at 10AM, a thermite infested apartment in Sicily with horrid beds, I still feel like a total a…

I can't stand the review inflation. You're totally disincentivized from leaving an honest review because of the counter review or because you somehow feel like the dick, and I'm sure AirBnB loves it. A place that turns out to be right on the noisy highway won't have a single review that points this out. Only "great for early risers!"

+++ that, stayed in airbnb 70+ times, a light sleeper myself... how many times I hated apartments for being noisy and reviewers for hiding this fact.

Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

#360

Post by Myrmornis »

atomical wrote: post #301
Jd wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried leaving a negative review once. It was a disaster. I stopped using Airbnb. I started using HotelTonight. Soon it looks like I might have to consider something else.

I left a review that pointed out the host had lied in their listing. They had been warned twice before by Airbnb and had their superhost status removed. The hosts review of me said that I was okay but a little picky. The customer service agent refused to remove the review.

The host and guest reviews are withheld from the opposite party until both have been submitted. Therefore the review of you by the host was not influenced by your negative review of them.
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