51–59 of 59 posts
I also choose airbnbs for cooking. We almost always choose a place with a grill, since our apartment doesn’t have one, and often a fire pit, too.
I used to use Airbnb all the time but a single experience dealing with their customer service and a bad host was enough for me to never use them again. The lows of using Airbnb are 100x lower than the lows of hotels, and the highs are higher but not nearly enough to justify the risk.
Morbid thought of the evening: If there is a meaningful broader downturn I wonder if they'll benefit from people losing stable housing and turning to ABNB for itinerant shelter.
If I were a betting man, I would bet more people would lose overleveraged mortgages on their Airbnb properties before Airbnb gets a jolt from people in unstable housing situations.
I'll rehash some of the complaints others have mentioned. Unless its a larger group, it really doesn't make sense to use vs. a hotel. Even if price is constant, there's just a bit more friction with AirBnB. Sometimes its easy, but other times you're trying to find the code that you have to enter for the key. Then I have to find the rules for the property to make sure I cleaned it according to their standards (while p…
The big difference for me is that Airbnbs have kitchens. Any trip more than 1-2 days in length is greatly improved when I can buy basic groceries and cook rather than have to eat every single meal at a restaurant. Because of that the overall cost works out to be cheaper as well.
This isn’t a sign that STRs are in trouble, people have been renting their second homes for a hundred years. This is a sign that the platforms are reaping what they sowed.
I used to use Airbnb all the time but a single experience dealing with their customer service and a bad host was enough for me to never use them again. The lows of using Airbnb are 100x lower than the lows of hotels, and the highs are higher but not nearly enough to justify the risk.
The only disadvantage of the customer service is that although you can do everything in Dutch, once customer service is involved you get called from some weird US phone number, but get an Indian outsourced helpdesk on the other side of the line - who don’t always speak good English.
$2.75B revenue, up 11% YoY. $555M net income (20% margin). $1B free cash flow. $75B market cap (after the dip). Yes they may have missed analyst expectations, but AirBnb is still a very solid business. Not on its last legs as everyone here seems to be convinced.