91–100 of 129 posts
An opening article lie! For our hosts would be much more appropriate. Why does a guest care about how many nights a place is going to sell in the next few months?
This assumes value for guests is how much money the property they stay at makes, when it obviously isn't that.
Man I'm so sick of trying to find something on Airbnb only to discover by the time I order that the price has doubled. Airbnb these last years went from feeling fresh and adventurous to scammy and dubious
Use booking.com, better in every way and customer support that won't stonewall you.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Why Distribution. The reason for this blog post is "recruit engineers". Not every engineer is going to visit blog.airbnb.com, but presumably a lot of them are already on Medium. They even close the article with, > We continue to solve interesting problems around LTV every day (and as more insights come up, we’ll keep sharing them on our blog). Can you see yourself making an impact here? If so, we encourage you to e…
Why would I pay for a paywall to read a job ad?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> A listing could look great online and receive a lot of bookings (so high LTV), but ultimately drive users away from the platform. I am precisely this kind of churned customer. I have personally booked maybe 3 AirBNB stays, and stayed with family in them on other occasions. The units I pick are always well-reviewed. But in the cities I've stayed in (LA, SF, Rome), the price is really no cheaper than a hotel, and the…
> If I were going to disrupt AirBNB, I'd offer hosts a better percentage with the requirement that the experience is standardized and high-quality. I've noticed more and more apartment rentals appearing on booking.com. I haven't used any of them but I wonder what the tradeoffs are. My impression is overall booking.com is more guest-friendly as their userbase has grown from people staying at hotels, who expect stuff l…
I remember one specific incident when a hotel had purposefully put me in a noisy room (I saw a sheet on the reception desk labelling it as ‘ruidosas’ which means noisy in Spanish). I took a video of it against the receptionists will and ensured I got the logo of the hotel in as well. When I reported to booking they essentially told me to jog on.
On the contrary, anytime I’ve had an issue with Airbnb they have sided with me and provided a refund/assisted me with finding better accommodation.
This isn’t a ‘you book more with us thing’, either. I have substantially more bookings on booking due to the prevalence in Asia but they literally could not care less
Earlier quoted context omitted.
An AirBNB host is not a landlord. Without landlords, you have no rental properties and everyone who can't afford to purchase their residence outright would have to find another option whatever that might be. (I have never used AirBNB.)
Without landlords we wouldn’t have a chunk of the housing supply held captive as investment, driving costs out of reach for most of the non-HN-reading audience.
That isn't caused by landlords, it's caused by zoning boards.
Suppose you have a city with a growing population. Then you need someone to pay construction companies to build more housing. When the new residents can afford a down payment, they pay the construction company themselves by taking out a mortgage. When they can't, a landlord does it, or else who? The tenant doesn't have a down payment and needs somewhere to live. The somewhere to live doesn't exist unless someone pays the construction company.
The problem only comes when the zoning board stops the construction company from increasing the housing supply. Then a landlord who wants to invest in property has to buy existing property instead of causing more to be created. This is the actual problem.
It doesn't matter if landlords want to fund the creation of lots of new housing by supplying capital to pay for it. That's even good. It's only when the creation of new housing is inhibited that things go sour.
I feel like this is missing a really important factor: how likely are guests to use airbnb again after staying at a listing? A listing could look great online and receive a lot of bookings (so high LTV), but ultimately drive users away from the platform. A certain ad platform I worked on cared a lot about this - offensive ads could get you to quit the site altogether. You might want to count every ad as positive for…
I hate to sound like the “Do people still watch TV? I haven’t owned a TV in 20 years.” Guy. But why are you seeing ads on the web? Don’t you use an ad blocker?
Man I'm so sick of trying to find something on Airbnb only to discover by the time I order that the price has doubled. Airbnb these last years went from feeling fresh and adventurous to scammy and dubious
I feel like this is missing a really important factor: how likely are guests to use airbnb again after staying at a listing? A listing could look great online and receive a lot of bookings (so high LTV), but ultimately drive users away from the platform. A certain ad platform I worked on cared a lot about this - offensive ads could get you to quit the site altogether. You might want to count every ad as positive for…
> A listing could look great online and receive a lot of bookings (so high LTV), but ultimately drive users away from the platform. I am precisely this kind of churned customer. I have personally booked maybe 3 AirBNB stays, and stayed with family in them on other occasions. The units I pick are always well-reviewed. But in the cities I've stayed in (LA, SF, Rome), the price is really no cheaper than a hotel, and the…
Airbnb “hosts” treat it like their “home” and are emotionally invested in what should be a business transaction.
This isn’t to mention how many hosts are running an illegal AirBnb.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think that's more common in other parts of the world. (i.e. getting places that people actually live in).In Europe most/all of the apartments I've stayed in are basically business apartments (more or less). You don't feel that someone lives there because nobody actually lives there. It's like a long term rental apartment that in best case scenario someone is using as a savings/investment vehicle but on short term.…
> In Europe most/all of the apartments I've stayed in are basically business apartments (more or less). It's like a long term rental apartment that in best case scenario someone is using as a savings/investment vehicle but on short term. If that the only thing AirBNB offered, I would have much less interest. > I'm pretty sure there are people living in less than sanitary conditions all over the world including Wester…
Not that I would ever use a third party booking site like hotels.com either…
I want the place I stay at to be run professionally and it to be I give them money and they give me a clean place to stay without having to worry about my ratings, discrimination, etc.
Especially in another country where I don’t know the language and after taking a long flight. I wouldn’t want to take the chance on an AirBnb.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
An AirBNB host is not a landlord. Without landlords, you have no rental properties and everyone who can't afford to purchase their residence outright would have to find another option whatever that might be. (I have never used AirBNB.)
Without landlords we wouldn’t have a chunk of the housing supply held captive as investment, driving costs out of reach for most of the non-HN-reading audience.