- 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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
I get for vacation areas this is less of an issue
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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
Airbnb’s are great when you’re bored with life.
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.
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 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 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.
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.
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
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.
