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Unbundling Airbnb

peterfabor.com

51–60 of 148 posts

Re: Unbundling Airbnb

#51
post #3

or you can up-bundle airbnb. I would like to be able to pick "2 years in " as a package that includes everything from home to food/gym/car etc

I tested this concept with smarthubs.club (digital nomads living and traveling around the world with everything included). We started in Spain, and used 4 stars hotels to standarize the experience. Although it worked during the pandemic, hotels are now reluctant to change their business models, and they will not accept the required conditions to make the business model viable and expand the concept to other hotels/ci…

What were the conditions hotels didn't want to accept?

Re: Unbundling Airbnb

#52
post #11
post #3

or you can up-bundle airbnb. I would like to be able to pick "2 years in " as a package that includes everything from home to food/gym/car etc

I tried this via Airbnb in Spain and ended up moving from place to place instead. I never actually found a location where I could work properly, to the extent that I rented a separate office some of the time. Patchy internet almost always, cheap furniture, base level electricity that would trip out if you had two appliances running at the same time, and #1 problem NOISE all of the time. I'm not sure that Airbnb is th…

I've never had a good Airbnb experience. There is simply no incentive for hosts to provide good accomodations. On the flip side, hotels that cost as much as typical Airbnbs provide a drastically better experience. After paying a fortune for yet another lousy Airbnb a couple weeks ago my wife and I agreed we'd never use Airbnb again.

Re: Unbundling Airbnb

#53
post #18

Every time I travel, I spend insane amounts of time browsing AirBnB to find a suitable place. For example, I miss a "good table" option on AirBnB. I have to manually discard over 90% of the listings after looking at the images because there is no table suitable for work. That is so time-consuming. It's not that I want to work at home all the time, but still I need a proper table to put my laptop on. A proper chair an…

Hotels have solved this problem. Each brand more or less offers the same quality across the US. You only need to see a few photos to know what options you have. Most of the rooms are the same design, same furniture. And its common for them to have desks and computer chairs. Consistency.

Why are you still using airbnb?

Re: Unbundling Airbnb

#54
post #18

Every time I travel, I spend insane amounts of time browsing AirBnB to find a suitable place. For example, I miss a "good table" option on AirBnB. I have to manually discard over 90% of the listings after looking at the images because there is no table suitable for work. That is so time-consuming. It's not that I want to work at home all the time, but still I need a proper table to put my laptop on. A proper chair an…

Hosts can remove bad reviews? Never worked in my years of hosting.

One way I witnessed is that a host deleted their premise after a bad review and then relisted it.

Re: Unbundling Airbnb

#55
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, not true. Travel agencies controlled the access to the booking systems. That was their only role in the value chain. So basically, they would put in your dates, look for options and then make a booking with your detailed info. Help, guidance, recommendations, curation were MOSTLY off the table. They are and were of course exceptions. But in the end, quality selection IS a new proposition.

I don't think this is the case at all. Curation was the entire purpose of a travel agency.

yup. curation is the whole reason I still use travel agents

Re: Unbundling Airbnb

#56
post #53
post #18

Every time I travel, I spend insane amounts of time browsing AirBnB to find a suitable place. For example, I miss a "good table" option on AirBnB. I have to manually discard over 90% of the listings after looking at the images because there is no table suitable for work. That is so time-consuming. It's not that I want to work at home all the time, but still I need a proper table to put my laptop on. A proper chair an…

Hotels have solved this problem. Each brand more or less offers the same quality across the US. You only need to see a few photos to know what options you have. Most of the rooms are the same design, same furniture. And its common for them to have desks and computer chairs. Consistency. Why are you still using airbnb?

Can you link to an example?

The type of standardized hotel room you describe sounds like the small rooms that are made to sleep during the night and leave during the day. Not for "living" in a foreign city.

Re: Unbundling Airbnb

#57
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hosts can remove bad reviews? Never worked in my years of hosting.

One way I witnessed is that a host deleted their premise after a bad review and then relisted it.

I sometimes wonder, who are the brave and adventurous people that choose to stay at an airbnb with 0 reviews (in a foreign country).

Re: Unbundling Airbnb

#58
post #18

Every time I travel, I spend insane amounts of time browsing AirBnB to find a suitable place. For example, I miss a "good table" option on AirBnB. I have to manually discard over 90% of the listings after looking at the images because there is no table suitable for work. That is so time-consuming. It's not that I want to work at home all the time, but still I need a proper table to put my laptop on. A proper chair an…

> Every time I travel, I spend insane amounts of time browsing AirBnB to find a suitable place.

I absolutely dread having to go through the airbnb search. Just a better (lag-free) interface would already go a long way. The map is just awful. A neater way to search through listings would be nice.

Maybe something like nitter (for twitter), but for airbnb.

Re: Unbundling Airbnb

#59
post #53
post #18

Every time I travel, I spend insane amounts of time browsing AirBnB to find a suitable place. For example, I miss a "good table" option on AirBnB. I have to manually discard over 90% of the listings after looking at the images because there is no table suitable for work. That is so time-consuming. It's not that I want to work at home all the time, but still I need a proper table to put my laptop on. A proper chair an…

Hotels have solved this problem. Each brand more or less offers the same quality across the US. You only need to see a few photos to know what options you have. Most of the rooms are the same design, same furniture. And its common for them to have desks and computer chairs. Consistency. Why are you still using airbnb?

Because for the same quality, hotels are easily 3x the price. Consistently.

Re: Unbundling Airbnb

#60
Just point out one example of this that I think has been very successful, and that's MisterBnB for gay travelers.

I think a lot of straight folks don't understand the mental calculus that goes through a gay person's mind when they travel. I'm at the stage of my life where when I go on vacation, I want to relax and feel at ease. Why would I spend money to go someplace where I may feel unwelcome, or worse, unsafe? For example, there are a few Caribbean nations that are beautiful, but notoriously unwelcoming to gays. Jamaica can have someone else's money.

In an Airbnb, I don't think I've ever felt unsafe, but I'd also rather not feel unwelcome. I don't want to have to worry about some last minute thing coming up making the place unavailable if I mention my partner. With MisterBnB I know I never have to worry about that, and I know my sexuality won't rise to the level of anyone even caring. Even if that's true 80 percent of the time on Airbnb, I just don't want to have to deal with that 20 percent chance of having a bad experience.

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