Airbnb's struggles go beyond people spending less. It's losing some travelers to hotels.
businessinsider.com
- Airbnb stock tumbled 14% in one day after the company predicted slowing demand.
- Some former Airbnb diehards say they now prefer the consistency of hotels.
- Airbnb said it might increase travelers' ability to book hotel rooms through Airbnb.
I stopped doing airbnbs a few years ago. Hidden fees, unreasonable rules and requirements. And now more expensive than most hotels. They just are worse now.
Yeah it turns out that Airbnb hosts behave much more like hivemind landlords than business owners. They all wind eachother up to behave the same in their forums and chatrooms. The advice on how to operate comes from other greedy reactive people and not from like consultants and data mining and people with degrees in their own field like it does with hotels and large businesses.
Airbnb hosts are “school of hard knocks” TikTok and Instagram advice listening get rich quick schemers who put minimal investment into quality.
Both groups are enshittfying their industries. But the downward slope is much steeper in airbnbs than it is in hotels.
I had a bad experience on AirBnB. Had tickets to see a band downtown Asheville. Labor Day Weekend. Found an airbnb in walking distance at a reasonable rate. Booked in April. Day before the stay, got a notice the host cancelled. No explanation. By that point it was $400 a night before taxes and parking for a hotel room downtown. Wound up not going. Ruined my weekend. Never again.
And zero penalty for the host. They only need to claim property damage. I’ve been burned twice by this, and once drove up anyway and the host rented it out on a diff platform for 3x. I played stupid and the guy told me he rented it through vrbo, the day before. I showed him my reservation that now showed canceled as of the day before.
I have a feeling that’s what happened with mine too. It never occurred to me to have plans ruined like that. I’m hotel now all the way.
I'd have gotten that guys data and reported the host to AirBNB!
It was super-effective!
I had a similar experience with VRBO. My family booked way in advance to see the eclipse, and the host ended up cancelling it a couple weeks before the stay. No penalties for them. I suspect they realized they could charge way more than what we were paying.
Sounds great.
Allow Airbnb to return to it's roots:
Small time short term rentals used when the owner is away. And for remote locations where no hotel exists.
Yeah, it was great to stay in a million dollar house on the top of a mountain next to a state park for a weekend, but I choose a hotel when I'm just going to a city for something.
I want to slightly hijack your comment to say how innovative lots of these services were when they showed up and how they all ultimately managed to become a corporate machine crapping on both customers and intermediaries.
I mean that, when they arrived, Uber, AirBnB, Glovo/Deliveroo/Just Eat/DoorDash all brought something new and potentially useful and parallel to existing structures (involving regular people on the ground which, theoretically, can make an extra buck), but then... They all went down the toilet (I suppose since they were all losing money at the beginning to establish themselves, they had to find some way to make money, but they all irreparably chose enshittifcation)
I stopped using air bnb. I use to use them for more obscure places that didn’t have hotels. I don’t like they take homes out of the market. I get for vacation areas this is less of an issue but for places like ny city, San Francisco, etc it’s taking homes out of use.
I hate the cleaning fee. It’s become obscene.
Just everything about the model bothers me now.
Nope, this is the issue for housing in small towns/touristy areas. Most of the housing stock in our town has been scooped up for Airbnb/VRBO/etc, and has 1) limited housing stock for locals, 2) has raised housing purchase prices to unaffordable levels because of "profit potential", and 3) limited availability of long term rentals that has also shot rental rates through the roof. In small towns, housing is already limited by geography, and so it just exacerbates an existing problem and completely screws local who likely don't make a lot to begin with, because generally tourism and tourism-adjacent industries makes up the bulk of the available jobs.
Here's a case study on exactly this if anyone is interested and you don't mind the slightly unusual article format.
As it should.
The original model I liked. You have an adu? Rent it for spare cash. Rent a spare room. Etc. it didn’t impact supply and let a lot of people earn a little cash. It wasn’t a business. It was an accessory. Now it’s a business.
The thing is, it was never the original model. It was what was marketed at us. The model was always dumping to monopolize the market. Perhaps the original software nerds didn't have that in mind but the moment MBAs came along to "help them grow" the program was to win Monopoly in that market. And that was very early on since VCs were involved nearly from the get go in most of those cases. The original idea as you describe it ends at the singing of the VC contract.
PS: Software nerd myself that used to drink the Koolaid, now a very senior, jaded software nerd.
The founder literally started it because he found it difficult to rent out his vacation home. Fuck him and his vacation home.
It was the model for a very long time. It was all about renting excess capacity. It was a brilliant move. It wasn’t till much more recently people turned it into a business by buying properties just to air bnb.
Not sure when do you refer as recently but where I am this has been a common practice since at least 2015.
Don't get me wrong, if you wanted to make a spare rooms rental system, nonprofit or otherwise, you could. But if you wanted to do that you would put restrictions and hoops to jump in order to limit rental to spare rooms only and maybe you wouldn't charge 17% in fees.
2013 for me.
So….. it was the original model. And yeah airbnb literally grew because of renting out extra rooms, it didn’t grow from turning entire homes into rentals. It became that much much much later.
It's every bit as big of an issue for vacation areas / areas where tourism is the primary driver of the economy.
Take Tahoe or Mammoth Lakes for example: until the early 2010s it was still possible to move there without knowing anyone or having any other inside track, get a job (not your favorite or first choice, usually, but something to work from while you get established) and find your crappy first apartment or half-a-cabin or rundown shack or basement or ADU to rent.
That scenario is almost completely gone now and has been for ten years, plus or minus -- depending on where each person sees the line that divides difficult from impossible. People making far less than a living wage now commute to both of those areas from an hour or more away. The sense of how "connected" or privileged one has to be to make it or even just scrape by in areas such as these has relentlessly risen to a level that has had an enormous impact on mental and emotional health and life outcomes in these areas too.
All of these factors were already big in the negative column balancing the very real positives of living so close to nature and preferred sporting activities, before the rise of the short term rental blight. But nowadays those negatives are practically off the meter.
I'm not sure you can blame short term rentals for this happening in desirable vacation spots worldwide. People have become much more mobile, and a decade of very cheap interest rates mean that there is no more "run down cheap cabin in the woods" any more. Even for owners who have owned those properties for many years, insurance costs and taxes have spike along with the housing costs.
I own a home in a very expensive area with extremely limited geography that prevents additional development, but also has in place a practical ban on short term rentals- 28 day minimum. This has not led to more affordable housing, but rather a lot of empty vacation homes owned by very wealthy people and $700/night hotel rooms. Also, locals being pushed out due to spiralling insurance and property tax increases. All without short term rental being a factor.
I’ve stayed at my share of Airbnbs booked by others, but never really enjoyed the feeling of sleeping in some strangers house. Also, disliked the impact of airbnbs on local housing markets. The idea of replacing long term housing with short term housing is completely stupid from a public policy perspective and a great way to ruin a city.
Additionally, I like being a customer, and anonymous. I don’t want to be rated by the host. I don’t want to be judged on whether I put my own towels in the washing machine before I checked out. If I’m paying, that shouldn’t be my damn job.
Also, airbnbs are random. Some are good, some are awful. Some hosts are fine, some are a bit too much. Hotels do vary, but on the whole, the experience is much more consistent.
Exactly, I lost all taste for Airbnb when we were staying for 2 nights, and every 4 hours the owner was balsting me with text messages telling me I needed to rate them 5 stars because if I didn't they wouldn't rate me 5 stars...but I had to take out my own trash, put all towels and linens in the washer, and make sure to tidy up before I left or else I'd incur their "clean up fee". Fuck that shit, I'm not paying you a shitton of money to clean up after myself. Especially when half the bathrooms have black mold and rotten water damaged wood around the showers, and you have to be extra mindful because this was a time when hidden cameras were common.
Cleaning fees are just overhead on staying now. But if you don't tidy your rating will take a hit.
It's a scam coming and going. But it's often cheaper and with more selection on location. The last two, I think, are really what keeps them around.
Ability to zero in on location is definitely the thing that keeps me on the platform. I can't say its always cheaper, it maybe in some cases but its often equal or higher than a budget hotel in my experience. The fact that I can get a unit with a kitchen and within walking distance of a few of my planned vacation activities is the reason I check it out.
For me, it's almost always the cheapest/most convenient way to stay somewhere with a kitchen. And it may be an okay kitchen but almost always better than a hotel's. That's the part I find the hardest to replicate outside of Airbnb.
Short stay apartments are a thing, but you'll typically only find them in big cities.
To chime in on your anonymous comment, racism is a huge issue for AirBnB too. None of my brown friends are able to book one without the help of a white friend/partner, because of their names and the lack of AirBnB history.
AirBnb is just a pain in the ass that hardly saves you money anymore. It's often the same.
You want nice clean sheets, fresh linens, and nice amenities that go with it? Get a hotel.
You just absolutely have to have a home or flat vibe? Well be ready to do apartment laundry, sweep and vacuumvand make the beds and clean all the dishes and only enter and exit between these hours because the keypad doesn't recognize you otherwise...
Greedy fucks ruined AirBnB because the company encouraged it and let them do so. And then fucked over the guests too many times. And now I'd rather stay in a reliable location than deal with the absolute hassle of their company or their company's shitty clients.
Good riddance.
Yep, this 100%. I travel a lot for work and have probably stayed in 100 airbnbs over the years, but these days I ask the company not to bother and to book hotels instead. It’s gone from a platform to get a nice home away from home, to a place to get gouged by rude hosts while staying in a barracks with the sparsest of IKEA finishings. They’ve done it to themselves by encouraging shitty host behavior and having zero consequences for bad guest experiences.
It still has one specific usecase where I find it better - when you need more than 2 beds. We use it when on holiday with my friends because usually getting an Airbnb with 3-4 beds is way cheaper than hotel rooms.
But in pretty much all other cases.. yep, would much rather have a hotel. Last time I had a host who took electric meter readings and charged you for the electricity.. luckily it was negligible since the oven was broken.
The couple really great AirBnB stays I've had were for family reunions. So larger than even extended stay hotels are really made for. And they were run by companies, not individual people.
These have always existed though. AirBnB isn't an app listing, but offers nothing to that equation. Cabin and event space rentals have been a thing for decades. You don't see Wedding Venues needing AirBnb you know?
I think we have different definitions of family reunion. I'm talking about 6-10 people.
That's odd. Do people not want to pay hotel prices and a "cleaning fee" and also clean up the place before they leave? Or is it like they want to show up and the room they booked actually exists?
Yes exactly. Hosts got greedy, Airbnb let them, and this is the result.
They could fix it pretty easily but the host would hate it.
-Make the listing page clearly indicate whether or not the guest is required to perform chores. Make the filter aware of certain chores and allow a guest to screen out listings that require those. IE, 'strip bed', 'do laundry', 'take out garbage', 'cleaning tasks', 'other', etc. and have a really easy button at the top 'filter out listings with chores'.
If I'm paying half the price of a hotel then I don't mind having to throw the sheets in the laundry. If I'm paying more than a hotel plus a cleaning fee, I want to be on vacation and act like it.
Why shouldn't taxes be displayed?
Americans are used to mentally adding taxes to the price
They should be displayed.
To add to this, in the U.S. the price on the shelf should be the actual price after tax. It's so weird seeing the price and knowing it's not actually the price.
Taxes are not displayed anywhere else, so if Airbnb starts including taxes in their listing they will be at a competitive disadvantage as their pricing would become apples to oranges versus hotels in the wrong direction.
Almost nowhere in the US includes taxes in the advertised price.
No, people like to find out that there's a fucking rooster farm across the road and that you have to park 3 miles away. It's all part of the adventure.
Goddamn millennials are so unreasonable.
AirBnB is a great idea that turned to shit because of greed.
Someone wants a platform to rent out...
Great. Marvelous, even.
But then people realized that they could make more money from a property by AirBnBing it out rather than renting it out. So people start kicking out tenants and buying up properties to turn housing into AirBnBs, and often in areas that were already experiencing cost-of-living issues for locals.
From there, I'm guessing that AirBnB started trying to take a bigger slice of the pie, and "Hosts" started passing on the costs to "Guests". At the same time, "Hosts" wanted more money with less work, so "Guests" started getting cleaning lists so the "Hosts" wouldn't have to pay cleaners -- just someone to come by and make sure everything was done, and call a cleaner if it wasn't (and charge the "Guest" for it).
Enshittification hit AirBnB hard...and in turn, living within driving distance of anywhere tourists would want to be also got enshittified.
Good.
Good.
Double plus good.
Airbnb was great when it all began, but now it's overrun by corporate vultures that buy up housing and turn it into illicit hotels. Not to even mention, it costs about the same as a hotel these days and I've never stayed in a hotel that gives you a chore list.
Like every other company lol. I remember when Uber and Lyft were so much cheaper, too. It's why I don't want gamepass to take over all gaming, or streaming to take over all physical video media. It always starts out nice, but eventually...
THANK YOU for seeing the writing on the wall. I keep reminding people of this.
Gamepass is unbeatable value. But if you give it market share you better believe after they jack the price a few more times, games willvstop providing a disc at all and just be "Gamepass exclusive" in the sense youvcan only subscribe to it, not buy it.
We are already here, for a decade now, The Crew players can't play their game anymore, and they paid for it.
True. Gamepass just takes that much further I think. Gasoline on the fire so to speak.
That describes my family. We've done Airbnb and VRBO, but now pretty much stick to hotels. You know what you're getting, price is competitive, to bdint have to wash your own bedding, and a lot of hotel workers are unionized. That's all in addition to the awareness that every Airbnb house could be a home for someone who needs it. I won't be sad if the Airbnb model folds and helps the housing market regain a bit of sanity
Hotels are pretty nice. They come to make up your room, they have a nice person at the front desk to help you out with any issues, and they will usually have a breakfast option or at least some free coffee.
Airbnb has a lot of potential downsides: from cleaning and fees to broken stuff and hidden cameras. I've been in a few situations that have been weird to put it mildly.
Sometimes weird can be fun, but if I just want a clean bed and a reliable experience, I go to the hotel these days
Some hotels have hidden cameras too, assuming they havent been found yet
Nature of the business means that's a higher risk activity. Customers can't get access back to the same room, employees work in rotation and owners aren't physical present.
Airbnb's are great when you're bored with life.
I was solely airbnb for years, down to literally nothing now. Won't even search the site anymore. Many reasons articulated by others, but just a pure garbage company and garbage "homeowners" who are mostly just vc conglomerates and bs fronts now - last time I looked, I saw a listing that was overpriced, but I was going to do it out of last minute need...
Host was named Miranda and showed profile pic of a smiling younger women. Listing text was written in her voice. I had a specific question that I sent and received an odd, cold form response, not in her same tone. Then looked and saw that Miranda owned most every property in this beachfront area? She looked pretty young, but okay, good for you. Looked further and found that "Miranda" was actually just the name of a property management group. That wasn't her in the profile picture, she didn't exist. She wasn't going to answer my question, she didn't give a shit, because she was... not.
Fuck you in your stupid greedy faces, hotels will do.
Airbnb has been in a race to bring the worst of the tech industry's profit consuming corporatism (no phone number, horrid customer service, lots of rules that nobody follows, privacy nightmares) to an industry that focused on hospitality - by definition a high-touch service - and we are all worse off because of that.
Not to mention the 'hosts' have been tacking all sorts of fees on top of your stay, and requiring people to do deep cleans, leaving a key in some lockbox a block away, etc.
At this point you just want to get a hotel even if it costs more instead of dealing with some of their shit. In a hotel you walk in, someone actually is there to greet you, there's no expectation that you clean the room, etc.
Airbnb ruined their own product by letting the hosts ruin the experience.
I'm not paying more money to get no-breakfast, and have to do chores, and have a 15% chance of crazy owner, and a non-zero chance of it being a scam, and have AirBNB corporate give me the run around.
I stopped looking at ABnB a few years ago. It stopped making financial and quality of life sense. The costs became nearly equal or greater than that of hotels I cross shopped.
The hassle though is what really killed it. The inconvenience of dealing with a host that was not on-site and often not available to deal with issues plus the long list of chores required and the potential penalties of not following them perfectly just made it not worth doing.
The chores are what killed it for me. I'm supposed to pay a cleaning fee and do the cleaning myself? Fuck that noise.
Airbnb is expensive. It also is often awkward, I always seem to get places where the owner wants to give me a tour of the place when I show up. Checkout time is always a massive stress, trying to figure out where the outside bin is, how to start the dishwasher, and remembering to return all the furniture to it's original position, lest we break a rule and lose our deposit. You don't get mini bars or room service or daily housekeeping, and you have no idea if the host is secretly keeping tabs on you somehow. It's just so much more work to stay at an Airbnb than a hotel, with none of the cost benefits as a trade off.
The other week we stayed at a Hilton and I checked in and out without speaking to a soul (via the app). It's a no brainer at this point.
After having my honeymoon practically ruined by an owner's insane rules (posted EVERYWHERE throughout the place), I've vowed to never use an Airbnb again. Plus the junk fees are fucking insane.
Give me a proper hotel with proper service any day of the week.
Oh yeah, the condescending "please unplug me when done!" signs near the toaster... or trying to use the hot tub and having to read pages of stuff just to get in some warm water. We stayed at one once that made us add conditioning tablets to the hot tub at a certain time each day. Nah, this is your house, you fucking take care of it, I just want to use it.
Airbnb is a fine example of a sort of variation on enshittification.
The way it works is a new company with a new and notably cost-effective way of doing things comes along and is unsurprisingly wildly successful. And then, inevitably, that leads to them hiring a whole raft of executive parasites who all have to be paid obscene salaries for doing nothing of any real value, which means the company needs to raise prices and cut back on services in order to generate more profit to pay those salaries. And meanwhile, the new executives, with nothing of any note that they actually need to or even can do, but with a need to create some illusion that they're necessary, have pointless meetings in which they propose and wrangle about and eventually approve and implement new policies and new plans that are generally awful.
And pretty quickly and not coincidentally the new company ends up at least as bloated, mismanaged, overpriced and under-performing as the companies they so recently replaced.
See also: Uber, DoorDash and the entire streaming industry.
While you got the effects correct, you got the process wrong and that's important.
The business model isn't based on cost effectiveness. Most of these companies work at a loss for a long time, providing artificially low prices in order to gain market share and push existing players out. This is isn't new. It's called dumping. Irs just been a bit obscured by buzzwords like "new technology" and "disruption."
These executives aren't hired to do nothing and collect high salaries. Their salaries aren't what drives the price increases. The major shareholders who spent their money to sustain the company so far want to get return on that money. They install executives with this one goal - maximize profit - so they can get this return. This is what drives the hiring of sociopaths who drive prices up in order to increase profits at all costs. This is what drives hiring such people in all public corporations. You got the effects right but the reasons aren't to do with shit execs and their salaries. It's all to do with major shareholders search for growing profits. Everything else follows from there. This is important to understand in order to point the finger in the right direction. Misdirecting people's substantiated anger with the system has been a perennial tool used to maintain profit maximization for as long as possible.
The thing about Airbnb and Uber is that their model is renting out other people's stuff. A hotel has to do the capital investment to actually build a hotel, a taxi company has to invest in cars and a taxi medallion. They just had to build and maintain a website and use other people's capital. The only reason they spend billions is in executive compensation and short term subsidising of prices to gain market share.
I'd also like to point out that the underlying model may well be unsustainable in the way that it is offered at the start. Who benefits when a for-profit company operates at a loss? We, the customers, do. We get low prices and customer-friendly practices that are genuinely enjoyable. That business can't operate in that way indefinitely, as the early investors are not funding it as an act of charity.
Eventually, the bill comes due. The shareholders have funded the company on the premise that, after losing lots of money on customer acquisition, it can restructure and monetize those customers and recoup their investment, hopefully with a lucrative return when they decide to capitalize their holdings and find a new company with which to repeat the process.
There is absolutely no reason not to enjoy the perks of the early stage of the customer acquisition process; the shareholders are subsidizing your product at no cost to you. But we shouldn't be surprised when the shareholders stop subsidizing and start squeezing their formerly pampered customers in the hopes of getting their money back (and more, of course).
This doesn't excuse unethical or abusive practices, but it does mean that, even without them, the experience of those early days probably wasn't going to last forever.
At the individual level, sure. Even for things like streaming services it isn't a net negative to take advantage of those 'introductory' prices.
But a lot of these businesses that operate at an obvious loss are undercutting currently existing business practices that are probably more cost efficient than these new businesses. Like restaurants that used to take care of their own delivery were undercut by malicious pricing from door dash and uber eats only to wind up in a situation where they would have to start from scratch again or pay the outrageous extortion fees to DD and UE.
I avoided both DD and UE because I knew it would not be sustainably long term. It was obvious they were maliciously undercutting competition. Same with uber and lyft and all the other ride share businesses, although at least they got some reform going on the taxi side.
I can think of one reason. Depriving the existing industry from revenue leading to its demise which ensures the new entrant can raise their prices higher than the preexisting status quo. This is the other part of the equation that makes dumping work. Of course we can't expect most people to choose to pay more but if people were able to resist that, the strategy wouldn't work.
they should be paying hotel taxes.
I was only ever interested in these company's services as a way to save money. They are no longer cheaper than a hotel, so I would rather stay at a hotel.
my best stays have been apartments... my worst stays have been in apartments.
you kinda dont know wtf you are going to get, especially on airbnb where the reviews are bs folksiness "the host is amazing, thank you so much" garbage. reviews on booking.com are much more reliable and brutally honest.
hotels maybe meh, but they are far more reliable and you have a better idea of what you are getting. a "serviced apartment" is ideal, but often $$$.
i very much understand that airbnb's sterilise communities and drive up rents. taxing the fuck out of them would remove a lot of the slum lord garbage from the market but keep the option there for ppl really want that.
Also generally with hotels, especially chains, you can actually talk to people to get issues sorted or at least get refunds etc a bell of a lot easier than just chatting with someone overseas through an app.
I have zero interest in an Airbnb. Too many options for fuckery.
I don't see the problem honestly.
Sometimes we stay in hotels, sometimes short stay rentals - it depends on whether we want a kitchen really.
I've never encountered a chore list - not one time. I'm sure they exist but they're not the norm here.
I've used AirBNB once and got a chore list. That alone was enough to turn me off to the experience, but there were several other issues including a carbon monoxide alarm that kept going off until we got them to replace it at 11 at night
Edit: luckily there wasn't an actual carbon monoxide issue
I got lectured for having bottled water in a mountain town notorious for having utterly undrinkable water. It was a total creepshow.
Did the listing explain that there was a chore list? If so, you could've chosen somewhere without one. If not, don't do it.
I don't really see the problem with the monoxide alarm. They did have an alarm, presumably for your safety. It obviously didn't go off all the time for all guests, because it would've already been fixed. Sometimes things happen in hotels too. This doesn't really seem like a "greedy short stay landlord" type issue.
They didnt say greedy landlord, they said they had a bad experience with their visit. I'm not sure why you are jumping to make excuses for an imaginary landlord in the first place. The only information you have to go on so far is negative and you have no reason not to trust it.
What does a greedy short stay landlord look like to you? Some would say charging a cleaning fee and also requiring the person to clean the place themselves would be double dipping or, dare I say, greed?
What about when there are no longer new families moving into your neighborhood because there just aren't enough houses to rent out these days and profits have to keep going up?
If a landlord is focused on profits above all else, they are greedy. If they hold the quality of their service for their tenants above all else, good chance they aren't motivated by greed.
A chore list is only part of the issue. The costs are rapidly inflating. Hotels are now far cheaper, even on a per room basis. With fees (including pricey cleaning fees and AirBNB/VRBO service fees that are on top of the percentage they take from hosts) rates will double or triple what they quote initially.
Then there are what they have done to neighborhoods. Property speculators have bought up housing and inflated prices for residents, all while damaging local hotels.
It was fine when it was people renting out a room or vacation homes at a reasonable price. I used to rent a tiny 3 season camp cabin in Maine on a lake for $750 a week. It was a guest cabin by an owner occupied 4 seasons home. It’s (and the main house) have since been bought by a wealthy private jet salesman that rents both spots, the cabin now going for over $1,600 a week with fees. They made zero changes down to the furniture, dishes, and towels. This year we are staying a a hotel rental that goes for under $1,000 for the week with no chores and regular maid service.
The price jump happened when people started buying properties exclusively to use as STRs. People with a second home or a guest suite they already owned for personal reasons could rent out for some extra spending money without having to turn a "profit" on it.
But when they started taking out loans and buying properties exclusively for renting, the costs of rentals had to exceed the cost of owning the property. And when profits matter, hotels can afford to be WAY more cost-competitive than houses because they can cram thousands of people into a single acre of land.
I don't really understand the pricing complaint.
Like most markets vendors are charging the best price they can get away with. If a given option like short stay isnt good value then find an maybe a hotel is a better fit, and that's fine. If your preference is for hotels for this reason then that doesn't mean short stay providers are evil, it just means that their product isn't the best fit for your needs.
For me, with weird dietary habits and a young family, having a full kitchen saves us a heap of money and a lot of drama. A week long holiday without a kitchen gets obscenely expensive in a hotel + restaurant format.
In Australia we just don't have that problem with hidden add on fees. Legislatively, the listed price must be the final price. As an aside, and I'm not offering this to entice you to use AirBnB, but I've heard that if you access Australian sites like airbnb.com.au you can see the full / final fee in your own currency.
I also don't really buy the harm to neighbourhoods thing, as a general proposition. Yes there are some suburbs where it makes sense for the city to prohibit houses or apartments being used for short stay accommodation. Generally though, I don't think it has much of an impact on the availability of housing for locals - it's certainly not the primary reason for the scarcity of accommodation.
I'm not sure about your country but here we have hotels that offer family style rooms with full kitchens in them. The ones ive stayed in weren't much more than a non-kitchen room either.
I think the assumption is youll cook for yourself in those types of hotels. Most of them have laundry on site too.
Here in the US, I expect a normal motel/hotel room to have a coffee machine, mini fridge and maybe a microwave, but that’s it. However some also include a kitchenette and I expect it at a “Suite” or longer stay hotel. And of course in many tourist spots you can rent a fully furnished house
Note: a “Suites” Hotel is not the same as some normal hotels offering a suite that’s usually 1.5 bedrooms
I also used to think that, since I haven’t heard it being a problem near me. However a week or so ago, I saw a statistic that 20% of single family home purchases in the US are now by corporations. That’s not just short term rentals but a couple of large companies have gotten into real estate hedging and flipping in a big way.
So, yes, if that statistic is true, there are a huge number of neighborhoods transitioning from owner permanent residences to corporate owned and short term stay. I can see that corporate role increasing prices and definitely short term stay people will affect the neighborhood or aren’t as likely to care for the property
Corporate ownership is an entirely different problem.
Yeah, I wish we had such a law in my US state. But we don’t. But if they want to play those games, I’m not playing along or trying the Australian site. But around here, we do have hotel options with kitchens.
The complaint is showing why the things in the article are happening. People are choosing hotels because they are priced out of short term rentals.
And it depends on where you are. A standard working city, sure. A common vacation destination, it is absolutely an issue.
That's pretty much everything I said, just more pouty.
Your reply “I’m happy to overpay for a kitchen” and “we don’t have that problem in Australia” wasn’t pouty?
Your strawman is pouty LOL.
The problem is that public companies MUST grow EVERY 3 months. Otherwise they are a failure, even if they are famous and everyone is already their customer.
You're correct, and honestly everyone would be better off if AirBnB just died and was replaced by a dozen other platforms. That's not really what people are complaining about in this thread though - most people are complaining about greedy property owners and chore lists et cetera.
Extended stays and many hotels have in-room kitchenettes which is more than enough for me, but to each their own.
If a kitchenette is all you need then great. My point is, the average hotel room is not comparable to the average short stay apartment.
I can even get by with just a mini fridge, especially if there are otherwise food options in the hotel/nearby.
I was pleasantly surprised to find a kitchenette in this hotel where I stayed in Hawaii.
Hotels with kitchenettes still seem to be rare in general whenever I look though. I hope it catches on.
In america: Nearly every Airbnb I've stayed in the last five years had chore lists. My wife still defaults the Airbnbs as Hotels often don't have kitchenettes.
Chores can be as small as ensuring trash is brought to a outdoor trash area and dirty dishes in the dishwasher. Nothing too insane. Nothing I wouldn't do for a hotel.
One involved me putting away everything I used. That made sense. They had board games, and lots of kitchen appliances. Again nothing I wouldn't have done by default.
The most outrageous one wanted us to wash the bedding we slept on, get new bedding from the closet and reset it for the next guests, as well as mop the floor. This one pisses me off and I complained to Airbnb because I was paying an extortion of a cleaning fee already. Airbnb refunded me that cleaning fee but I'm already furious at the greed of it all.
The whole point of AirBnB was that they were cheaper than hotels, but you had to clean yourself.
Now it’s just as much as hotels with shittier service.
It's as if people don't want to pay to be personal maids of hosts.
A decade ago I loved Airbnb. Fly to a major city, get to stay in someone’s condor or home for half the price of a hotel. Left your bowl out on the counter? No problem. Didn’t take out the trash? Why would you, the host does that. Didn’t make your bed and rearrange the pillows on the couch back to how they were before you arrived? That’s cool. Now you are looking at staying in a suburb of Austin for 2x the price of a hotel plus, you need to spend hours when you are trying to leave, cleaning up and you are going to be charged $300 anyway for a “cleaning fee” even though none of the linens smelled fresh when you arrived. The only reason I’ve used Airbnb in the past couple of years is because A) there was literally no other option for where we were vacationing or B) Our dog is traveling with us and we couldn’t find a hotel that will accommodate her.
I won't use them again. It's morally questionable to support that business model during a global housing crisis.
The main Airbnb value proposition was trading some of the conveniences you get at a hotel for a significantly cheaper room.
When they are roughly the same price as staying in a hotel, why would you choose it?
The only time I’ve ever used an Airbnb was when I wanted a location that did not have a good hotel option. Which has been cabins in the woods, and beach front property. Outside of that, I would rather have the convenience of a hotel.
An extended stay hotel is predictable and more than good enough. AirBnB has a consistency problem. To include pricing and hidden fees.
It's funny - I'm often in charge of booking the stay for large family get togethers and trips, and I exclusively used AirBnb. However, after using their service for 6+ years, they ended up canceling a reservation I had had for months THE NIGHT BEFORE OUR TRIP. I didn't even realize they had canceled on me til our plane had landed.
Turns out, they suddenly had a problem with a misdemeanor I had been charged with 8 years prior when I was 20 (minor possession of marijuana). They disabled my account and said I couldn't rent through them anymore because of my criminal history. I reached out to them and offered an explanation, as well as reminding them that this was an old conviction of a minor drug possession. I don't have a criminal record beyond that, and had been an avid customer of theirs for many years with raving reviews. They still denied me, and I'm still banned to this day. So yeah, they can go fuck themselves.
How is AirBnB able to access your criminal history?
It was apparently in the ToS that they hold the right to run background checks on hosts and renters alike, when they choose to. Granted, it's not an in-depth check, but any criminal records that are accessible to the public are accessible to them.
it costs more and offers less than hotels, landlord motherfuckers are asking me to do their chores for them plus pay for electricity and tip them for cleaning their own house i am paying for, to share with four other people?
take out your own fucking trash.
and the service fee for paying airbnb directly is almost up to 15%.
no goddam way.
this message brought to you because of the assholes who sent me "so you know" messages about trash days and cleaning products.
I usually travel by car and with my dogs out of necessity.
Airbnb is the most cost-effective when you need a room that allows dogs.
I just stayed at a 4 star resort in Quebec City. That value could not be delivered with Airbnb. Ain't no way.
The new requirements to be verified, even with over a decade of perfect review is astonishingly dump. I just stopped using it.
The first sentence still makes sense with the typo in place.
Airbnb in North America is awful. More expensive than hotels, often dirtier, greedy hosts try to offload their own expenses to tenants. Hotels all the way!
Oddly enough though, when my wife and I went to Japan, it was the opposite. All the Airbnbs we stayed at were much more affordable, way cleaner, and the hosts were incredibly kind and respectful. The hotels we stayed at were average. Not sure what’s keeping the service so nice over there, or if we just lucked out at 3 different places
TBF, almost all of this applies to VRBO too.
I've never used it, but I've been told VRBO is just a more expensive AirBnB. Does that hold up in your experience?
My experience is that VRBO is supposed to be more scrutinized than Air B&B and you always get the whole property.
Lately they are demanding a $500 cleaning fee and also demanding that you do the laundry, take out the trash, and do the dishes.
Never stayed in one and I never plan to.
AirBnB is great for large groups, when all the hidden fees and cleaning duties can be split up between a dozen people. It actually works out to cheaper than a hotel, and it's much more intimate to be together in one place with big private common areas. Plus, those big 6+ bedroom AirBnBs aren't exactly hurting homebuyers by being off-market.
But for just a few people? Hotels all the way.
AirBNBs are not hotels. I guess that should be obvious, but my sister booked one for her family and me to attend a wedding. They technically did have an iron as claimed, but it was broken and the steam setting didn't work. Oh, and there was no ironing board, which it turns out is pretty key to the process. Every single hotel in the country has this basic amenity... Spent twice as long trying to iron on the top of the dryer, burned my slacks (ruining them), and I look bad in photos.
Airbnb doesn't protect the tenant enough.
I've been charged for a locksmith because the instructions state "leave the key on the table" but the dumbass landlord doesn't have a spare key.
I only find it helpful for renting homes during group trips. Otherwise I'll always go to a hotel.
Similarly, I will always use cabs in NYC, never an Uber.
I never did get into Airbnb: there was always too much room for unpredictability that I don’t want to deal with when traveling. Since then, we have the rise of chore lists and they’ve lost the price advantage in many places, so I don’t really see a point. Even worse, AirBnB has been around long enough that we all probably know someone who had a bad experience
I dunno. For my family, vrbo/Airbnb offers something I can't get elsewhere. Human living conditions for a family. We need three bedrooms. That is pretty much unheard of. And hotels always go low on bathroom. Sleeps 6, one bathroom. I have ibs, 9ne bathroom just isn't going to cut it. And even if I didn't, jockeying for bathroom time isn't my idea of a vacation. And when we brought the in-laws we needed another. The cost of that in rooms was more than double. And the vrbo had a private pool and a huge living room/kitchen. Now I do wish hotels had family living spaces, but most only do adjoining rooms, which they never guarantee. Hotels being greedy created the short term rental market. Hosts and Airbnb being greedy ruined it. We just can't have nice things.
A lot of hotels are now offering that. I went on vacation in Sydney recently and hotels have been buying up apartment buildings and turning them into hotels. To stay in a 3 bedroom apartment it was 40% cheaper than Airbnb and had all the amenities of a hotel with staff.
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