I hope it's not the Groupon story repeating, where they went from funky-accounting to GAAP and all numbers had to be re-reported, obviously not in the company's favor.
Airbnb’s loss nearly doubles in fourth quarter, before virus
41–50 of 224 posts
Re: Airbnb’s loss nearly doubles in fourth quarter, before virus
#42Airbnb is a shitty company. Last october we traveled to Seoul and couldn't find the location of the apartment we booked. Even the local taxi driver couldn't find it after circling the area for ~30 minutes. We called the host during the entire 30 minutes and didn't get through to them.
After about 1 hour of time, we decided to call it quits and go book a hotel because it was 10pm at night and our kids needed to sleep. We were just hoping for a refund with Airbnb. What's their policy? "it's up to the host to decide if they want to give a refund". What did the host say? "i have great reviews and i haven't heard of anyone not being able to find the place." What about the fact that you didn't answer your calls? WTF
Similar situation when we booked a place in Tokyo. We asked the host whether it would be okay since we have two young children who are known to be playful/wild/loud. He assured it was okay and assured us the place was big enough to handle all four of us. We arrive in tokyo and and the place is tiny. The bathroom is literally a 3x3 box with a shower right on top of the toilet. The entire room is taken up by 2 beds with no place to move around, let alone space for luggage and two kids. On top of that, the host's apartment is in a building where the walls are paper thin and the neighbors are super sensitive to noise. We did the hosts' neighbors a favor and went and got a hotel room. Refund from airbnb? Maybe a partial refund? NOPE.
Seriously, I'm never booking anything on airbnb again.
Re: Airbnb’s loss nearly doubles in fourth quarter, before virus
#43Cant AirBnB just stop marketing and slow their runway burn to almost nothing? They dont provide infrastructure or subsidies it should be okay
Airbnb is a middle-man, they make money from the transactions (bookings) between guest and host. The more bookings, the more money they make.
The number of bookings is decreasing, and they are refunding their cut from bookings made months ago.
Re: Airbnb’s loss nearly doubles in fourth quarter, before virus
#44I wonder if this is just seasonality for their business. A lot of people travel in Nov/Dec, but mostly it's to see family, so they often already have a place to stay when they get where they're going. I suspect summer is their big quarter. I wouldn't be surprised if they made their fiscal year start in March so that they can get that strong quarter at the beginning of the year, like how Apple starts their in Septembe…
Not according to the article: "The world's biggest home-sharing company reported a loss of $276.4 million excluding interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, compared with a loss of $143.7 million a year earlier" The loss increased by almost 100% versus the same time last year--and that's before COVID-19. This really makes me wonder how their planned IPO this year will perform.
Similar losses to SNAP. They'll probably be fine.
Re: Airbnb’s loss nearly doubles in fourth quarter, before virus
#45My experience with AirBnb has been good but often I feel I miss something. If possible I always almost choose a hotel, because it seems cleaner, service oriented, often has breakfast and a place to have a drink or a coffee. There are places that is more suitable for renting a private place, but in where there are tourists there are often better offers at hotels.
In the beginning it was nice, you could actually meet interesting people. Now it mostly feels anonymous and impersonal, often you end up sharing an apartment with two or three other tenants and the landlord doesn’t even show up once. I prefer hotels now, price-wise the difference to AirBnB isn’t very large.
In Austin, TX Airbnb incontrovertibly revealed that hotel room volume was insufficient for demand and was suppressing tourism and its inflow of outside cash.
The common complaint about insufficient & overpriced hotels stopped being theory and was proved out by an elastic federated supply that _at least initially_ put more money in the hands of private parties.
High cost of entry for building hotels in the urban core & decrepit central planning suppressed the cities growth for years. At first hotel companies and their "advocates" complained, but then after they realized it wasn't going to go away, the cranes showed up and started addressing the real problem.
I don't know if Airbnb will be forever, but things like it should at least be cyclically introduced to reveal infrastructure and planning failures, then local private parties can solve the problem and profit while planning commissions try to keep up.
Re: Airbnb’s loss nearly doubles in fourth quarter, before virus
#46At this point I'm rooting for them to go bankrupt and fail, because they continue illegally operating in my city. It is illegal to lease entire units in NYC for <30 day spans, yet AirBnb does absolutely nothing to stop these listings and indeed refuses to cooperate with the city government in shutting them down.
I don't mind non-violent civil disobedience like Airbnb promotes, no matter the issue I think it's a great reaction to bad laws and poor infrastructure planning.
Re: Airbnb’s loss nearly doubles in fourth quarter, before virus
#47I will stay in airbnb if someone else manages everything, otherwise I'm only in hotels now. I hate having to coordinate key pickups, I've shown up at listed places that weren't supposed to be listed by some middleman company.
When I travel, the place I stay needs as few liabilities as possible, and airbnb cannot provide that.
I still use the for the experience listings sometimes, but never for lodging.
Re: Airbnb’s loss nearly doubles in fourth quarter, before virus
#48I'd imagine there's a sizable group of people who think Airbnb is only worth it if the price (and maybe location) is significantly better than a hotel, and that seems to be less true as the company matures.
There's also a significant group of people who thinks AirBnb works very well at the 2x-4x hotel price for a much nicer space. Hotels simply don't have enough of those rooms or if those rooms do exist they are considered to be suites that are billed at ridiculous daily rate.
Edit - Examples pulled from the notes from 2019:
Paris - AirBNB $650 a night, 3rd story walk-up ~1900 sq feet apartment with a balcony. Hotel price for something similar? $12,442.00/night. Hotel for a basic room ( ~300sq feet) ? $220/night.
Barcelona - 2nd floor apartment in El Born. ~1500 sq feet. $590/night. 1500 sq feet room in a hotel? There were two in the entire city. Price? ~8k/night. Basic room in a hotel? $180/night. King room in a hotel ( ~370 sq feet! Amazing! ) $440.
I can go on and on.
At below hotel prices AirBnb competes with cockroach infested motels.
Re: Airbnb’s loss nearly doubles in fourth quarter, before virus
#49I’ve used them four times and only had one good AirBNB experience. Hotels are so competitive in price in the markets I’ve visited that I never bother anymore.
I've gone back to using hotels given the cancellation policy of AirBnB is ridiculous. As we've seen these last days, plans need to be able to change and I don't mind paying a small premium for a cancellation-friendly hotel or serviced apartment.
It does vary. I locked in an AirBnB for a May conference before I had access to a room block--and before the current virus craziness started--because standard room rates were insane. But I was able to cancel things a couple weeks back when the conference was canceled.
That said, I've never actually stayed in a room booked through AirBnB (although I've stayed at B&Bs which also list there).
Re: Airbnb’s loss nearly doubles in fourth quarter, before virus
#50I've had bad experiences with multiple Airbnbs including: - showing up at night with the key not in the agreed location, and not being able to contact the owner until the next day - showing up and someone else was already in the unit - a webcam was plugged in and placed on the bedside table with no warning - conditions in the unit were significantly worse than those shown in the photos All these listings had great re…
And then you give a bad review and those places lose their listing?
Not sure what you want to do? Pay more so that Airbnb reviews them for you? Are you really up for paying old hotel prices again?