Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight • Hacker News Board

Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

#361

Post by Myrmornis » Fri, Mar 08, 2019, 1:33 PM UTC

dpandya wrote: post #190

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…

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...

I like Airbnb but I am surprised by their reputation as having expertise in front-end web development. The web UI is very slow to load and during on-page interactions, it is confusing to navigate between listing and related pages, and there are other badly designed aspects, such as the way that in order to select a menu item, one has to move the trackpad horizontally and then vertically to avoid dismissing the open menu while en route to the desired menu item.

Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

#362

Post by mattkevan » Fri, Mar 08, 2019, 1:44 PM UTC

AirBnb used to be great, but in recent years their huge platform fees have put me off.

I've had great success finding good places to stay by using AirBnb as a catalogue, then Googling the property and booking through the owner's own website. Last year we stayed in a lovely house in Bruges for less than half the price it would have been if I'd booked through AirBnb.

Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

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Post by pjc50 » Fri, Mar 08, 2019, 2:24 PM UTC

smueller1234 wrote: post #358

pjc50 wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

Good to have an authoritative answer on this! Thanks.

Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

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Post by mancerayder » Fri, Mar 08, 2019, 2:27 PM UTC

shereadsthenews wrote: post #277

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…

It really seems to depend on the city. For about $100/night in Zurich I stayed once in a huge top floor flat and once in a bedroom with private bath in a giant palace with plenty of room to entertain dozens, which I did. My company's negotiated hotel rate was $425/night and I pocketed the balance. In NYC all of the Airbnb inventory is bedbug-ridden hovels. Perhaps this simply reflects the housing stock of the region.

That might be because it's against the law now to rent a full apartment for less than 30 days. It's actually been illegal but they started cracking down moreso lately.

Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

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Post by skinnymuch » Fri, Mar 08, 2019, 2:31 PM UTC

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.

They are close though in market cap? They should be able to get into top 10.

Amazon, Google, Facebook, Tencent, Alibaba would be the huge ones. Then Salesforce, PayPal. Don’t know Alipay and Uber market cap space yet if they are internet companies.

I don’t know if you can include companies like Microsoft, Oracle, Cisco as internet companies. If you include Microsoft, still puts Booking into top 10.

Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

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Post by skinnymuch » Fri, Mar 08, 2019, 2:34 PM UTC

smueller1234 wrote: post #352

traek wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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).

I got them at #9 or so in market cap for all Internet companies (see sibling comment). In yours and mine, they are pretty high up.

Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

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Post by Veen » Fri, Mar 08, 2019, 2:55 PM UTC

random_kris wrote: post #342

zeropnc wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, maybe you’re just complacent.... not to get into a war of anecdotes, but I live out of Air Bnbs and have lived in 100+ around the world. Very rarely is the place not as it seems, if ever.

what do you do to afford living out of air bnbs?

I lived in AirBnBs for a couple of years, travelling around Europe. The way I afforded it was (1) to have a decent remote job (not a developer) and (2) to have given up my home in the UK, so no rent or bills to pay for that, and (3) to take advantage of long-term deals -- if you reserve for a month or more you can get a significant reduction on the daily or weekly rate. For example, I stayed for two months in a beach-side appartment in Crete for about £600 ($780) per month, all bills and a cleaner included, which is considerably less than I'm paying now for rent on a small house in the UK.

Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

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Post by uranusjr » Fri, Mar 08, 2019, 2:56 PM UTC

breatheoften wrote: post #348

hombre_fatal wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!"

I don’t think your review can be seen until after the host has also reviewed you — so they couldn’t respond to a negative review in the counter review. But I do agree that there is still pressure to give positive reviews - both the pressure of not wanting to be a dick and the pressure that comes from knowing that future hosts are incentivized to avoid guests with a history of giving negative reviews. My strategy is t…

I share my apartment on Airbnb. Counter review is not a thing since (as you said) it’s not possible to see the customer’s review until you post your own (or after the 7-day review window expires, at which point you can’t review the guest anymore). I’d also add that there is not an easy way to know how a guest reviews the hosts. The guest info you see only includes past host reviews. I’m sure it’s possible, but Airbnb does make it very difficult.

I encourage anyone to post real honest, negative reviews if the experience is indeed bad. Airbnb seems to do a good job building the system, and I feel guests are protected quite well, from a host’s perspective. Honest reviews help good hosts, and I would think I’m one of them :)

Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

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Post by yeahitslikethat » Fri, Mar 08, 2019, 2:58 PM UTC

bradleyjg wrote: post #339

chii wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

people who can afford a nice place in NYC probably dont want to rent out their place to strangers.

Illegally to boot.

Reading through these comments I'm proud to say I knew airbnb was the kind of thing I'd never want to participate in and I never did and never will.

Like Facebook. Some things are rotten to the core.

Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

#370

Post by yeahitslikethat » Fri, Mar 08, 2019, 3:01 PM UTC

shaklee3 wrote: post #332

secabeen wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should an AirBNB be cheaper? In many ways, you're getting more. More square footage, more amenities, more options. Sure, I can stick a family of 4 in a hotel room with 2 queens, but we will be way more comfortable in an AirBNB with a kitchen, living room, etc. I totally understand why a business traveler would want consistency and simplicity. When traveling with family, I'm happy to pay more for the AirBNB experi…

There's no maids, room service, or any of the usual hotel amenities.

Or insurance. Or licensure. Or security, trained staff, inspections, commercial grade construction.

They should be fined or in jail.