I have used airbnb before across many countries, but now its more of uncertainties. Cleanliness, having urself to take trash etc etc. High cleaning fees, collecting key from a lockbox etc. Especially when traveling with kids.
booking.com also offers apartments too, and has far better pay upon arrival and pay nothing right now features.
levocardia · 5h ago
Maybe I'm in the minority but I've generally had very good -- or at least, "good as I expected" -- experiences at AirBnbs, even recently. Sometimes I've stayed with rich friends who book nice places, and the experience is, as expected, very nice. Many other times I have stayed at bottom-of-the-barrel places, which were, as expected, bottom of the barrel flophouses. But tolerably so, and true to the advertisement (funny how they all have that exact same fake black leather futon though).
People say hotels are as cheap, but they never have the same amenities, and the location in town is often worse. An AirBnb with a kitchen is essentially $20-30 cheaper per day than a hotel without one. Add to that laundry, more privacy, and other perks and it's not really a fair comparison. It does seem like there are more hotel resellers and leasing companies using it as a stopgap between tenants, which I understand, but hate.
I get why they want to be an "everything app" (rich people have more money to spend on "experiences"), but other commenters are spot-on regarding the dangers of taking their eye off the ball. Seems like a better use of company attention would be to really boost and reward the genuine hosts that put their heart into it, and at least put in a modest amount of friction to slow down the corporate resellers with barebones apartments in half-remodeled buildings.
freddie_mercury · 4h ago
I think the people who say hotels are better than AirBnb aren't traveling with kids.
Having an actual kitchen when you travel with kids is great. Having actual separate bedrooms so we don't have to go to sleep at 8pm when the kids go to sleep is great. Being able to do laundry without tracking down a laundromat or pay exorbitant hotel prices is great. Having a living room or similar area with at least a few square metres of floor space where kids can sprawl is great.
cameldrv · 1h ago
There are plenty of hotels where you can get multiple rooms and a washing machine. When traveling with kids, one big advantage of hotels is predictability.
The last thing I want to do when I'm pulling in after a long flight an hour past the kids' bedtime is to deal with potentially dealbreaking problems with the place. In a hotel, they generally have maintenance on staff and extra rooms to switch into in case of problems. Generally with Airbnb, the staff is 30 minutes away and is annoyed that you've called them. Most of the time, everything is fine, but there can be snafus with locks, plumbing, cleanliness, etc, and kids make these more complicated. This is all not to mention being asked to strip beds, take out trash, etc, after you've paid thousands of dollars, including cleaning fees for the place.
sksksk · 1h ago
In Europe certainly, it’s very expensive to get anything close to what you’re describing in a hotel.
Just having a separate living room and bedroom in your hotel can be hundreds more per night.
Interconnecting rooms are rare, you can request it, and it’ll be subject to availability. So you can’t even guarantee you’ll have one.
hans0l074 · 39m ago
I can't put a finger on it, but I have never used AirBnB, so I probably do not know what I am missing. I have kids now, and when we move around within the EU, I have always found the hotel experience predictable and reliable (and like many say here, perhaps more expensive, though I don't know by how much). Our daily life at home/base camp is filled with chores - laundry, cooking, cleaning etc. So going and staying at a hotel with good amenities and services is a welcome change. Nice breakfast every day, in-room service, laundry on-demand etc. Of course there is a price tag, though our family has found it quite affordable with a regular EU software paycheck. Also, my experience does not extend for stays beyond a week. Anything longer would demand an apartment, for sure.
dijit · 15m ago
I'm very mixed on the subject.
I, like you, prefer the hotel offering. Messing around with hosts and their rules is not on my list of things I want to care about, the fact that there are hidden fees and stuff leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Hotels, I know the rules. Don't destroy or steal, make life easier for the maid: done.
With AirBNB, there's the cleaning fee, there's the self-replacement of items situation, there's the unknown state going in; and there's some faff about checking in.
However, the laundry fee's are definitely killer in hotels. I prefer to travel light and paying €8 for a pair of socks (or.. depending on the hotel manager PER SOCK) to get them washed is just painful. It's not just a high price tag at that point, it's borderline criminal markup.
I have also noticed that amenities such as Irons are less common in hotel rooms these days, which is annoying as I've started wearing shirts in my old age- worse still is the toilet situation. Modern hotels must think we're all voyeurs or something. The majority of hotels I've stayed at in the last 3 years I would not want to be with a child, frosted glass bathrooms, rarely a lock, sometimes it's just slatted wooden cabinet doors... idk, something wild is going on with hotel bathrooms man.
chii · 4h ago
For the same price, airbnb usually provides more than hotels (but with higher variation in quality).
Hotels tend to be pretty consistently good when it is over a certain price point, and at any higher price point, all you get is better views/location (and may be some amenities such as gym or pool) - aka, quality caps out and just becomes expensive.
Airbnb prices are quite correlated to quality. High priced airbnb (for example, a holiday lodge) can be _very_ good for the price. But airbnb is a sort of buyers beware type deal.
freddie_mercury · 2h ago
Hotels also provide tons of variation in quality. Just look up hotels in, say, Bangkok or Ho Chi Minh City where the options are much more than just the typical Western chains. Or compare the many non-chain "motels" in North America.
I think what you mean is "chains" tend to be pretty consistent. Which, yeah, that's always been the main value prop of a chain. You go to McDonald's in Tunisia and you have a pretty good idea what you're going to get.
darkwater · 2h ago
Chains consistency kills half the fun of travelling the world.
taneliv · 1h ago
Yes, yes, yes, and yes. If the kids are not toddlers any more, booking a place where you share the apartment/house with the host (or maybe other travelers) can also be a great experience.
I mean, it's an adventure, and those can also go poorly, but our experiences have been just excellent. And at those bottom-of-the-barrel prices mentioned earlier.
Definitely not something that hotels offer.
analog31 · 4h ago
Indeed, hell is being cooped up in a hotel with kids -- for the kids, the parents, the rest of the occupants, and the staff.
I think this is a huge factor in why my family always camped when I was a kid.
And to be frank, I don't like being cooped up in a hotel either.
black3r · 2h ago
Hotels aren't designed to be cooped up in. Hotels are designed for 2 things: Housing many people at the same place, and giving you a comfortable place to sleep, shower and have a breakfast in. And they're great at those.
SwtCyber · 6m ago
I get the ambition behind the "everything app," but if the core product gets diluted, none of the shiny extras will matter.
csomar · 4h ago
It is really location specific. For some locations, the hotel experience is better/cheaper and hotels (serviced apartments) can have kitchens/privacy.
The problem is not much of the hotel/apartment but rather the platform. AirBnb manipulates search results, prices and UX to squeeze harder. It now wants to up sell "experiences" that it puts in your face every-time you open the app. It is just exhausting as the rest of everything on the internet that is taking the same path.
benjaminwootton · 2h ago
I started out loving AirBNB. Then I had quite a few bad experiences and flipped back to hotels as the price equalised. In the last year or two I’ve gone back to AirBNB as the hosts seem to have professionalised and hotel prices have headed north.
Hotels.com also cancelled a brilliant loyalty programme of buy 9 nights get the 10th free which was another motivation to look elsewhere.
plorkyeran · 4h ago
I don't even really understand the concept of comparing AirBnB prices to hotel prices? Unless you're literally just looking for the cheapest place to safely spend the night with zero considerations beyond that they just aren't the same product. Staying in an apartment or house and staying in a hotel are vastly different experiences.
jterrys · 4h ago
There's also...apartment hotels!
Want hotel quality and safety with apartment perks? Just go to an apartment hotel! It costs more than a hotel/AirBnB but you're also not at the whims of random hit-or-miss listings and shady shit. And they clean your room if you want them to!
jksflkjl3jk3 · 3h ago
> There's also...apartment hotels!
They're not nearly as common as Airbnb apartments in most countries. I also trust Airbnb listings and reviews more than what I find on most booking sites.
distances · 2h ago
I don't trust AirBnb reviews much at all. When I've found the same place on AirBnb and Booking, the difference was always clear: AirBnb has only glowing reviews with nothing wrong at all, while Booking reviews were much more realistic with also some critical but fair observations included.
zo1 · 3h ago
The problem I've seen with those is that all those places have turned to using Airbnb to manage guests and bookings. The whole little industry that spawned is beyond bizarre to me. Like everyone wanting to hyper optimize and the uniqueness disappeared.
xivzgrev · 2h ago
From a utility perspective not really. You need a safe comfortable place to sleep, a clean bathroom, maybe a TV, some space for your stuff and that’s basically it.
The experience is OUT THERE, not where you are staying.
So yea I’m looking for the cheapest place that meets the bar. Sometimes it’s Airbnb but usually it’s a hotel.
megablast · 3h ago
What a ridiculous comment. Along the lines of you can't compare iphone and android phones.
Most people just want somewhere to stay while they visit a city or relatives or an event.
Even if you want a kitchen many hotels offer some basic facilities.
In this way they are perfectly comparable.
dizhn · 1h ago
I am currently on vacation in the Mediterranean and find a hybrid model to be the best of both worlds. We strictly use booking.com (we need to find a hotel at 6pm and check in at 7. Same thing the next day.Airbnb would never work.) Booking.com lists apartments too. I would imagine there's a huge overlap with airbnb properties. This way you're using the better company (they helped me out a bunch of times. And the listers are more inclined to behave on booking.com.) but staying in the same apartments with all the positives you listed. It's all self check in now too. I have yet to see any owner or manager.
jksflkjl3jk3 · 3h ago
I think we're just the silent majority.
I've been a digital nomad for the last 9 years. Airbnb is a huge reason why my experience has been so great. How else can I show up in a city in a new country , spend 5 minutes the day before I arrive, and end up with a nice furnished apartment in a great location for a week's stay?
hansmayer · 1h ago
Oh, how lovely it is so convenient for you, e.g. the "silent majority" while the residents of those cities foot the direct and indirect bill from reduced availability of the real-estate and the ever-increasing costs.
janosett · 58m ago
Anywhere you could build a hotel you could also build more housing, so they pose the same issue. There is necessarily some tension between using space for permanent housing and using it for tourism / short term stays. Tourism often keeps a city's economy healthy, and having short term stays is important for those visiting even for non-tourism reasons (e.g. in town to visit family, for work, etc).
The housing issue is more complex than just Airbnb / short-term housing as well: is there enough housing investment? what is the effect of international or corporate investment? are local regulations supporting or sabotaging the effort to build more housing? is there a large speculation market?
hansmayer · 30m ago
But...why should some direct investment towards "housing" if they can direct them towards the day-rentals ? Its definitely in their economical self-interest. So as long as we allow these platforms (be it AirBnB, Amazon or FB) to amplify a single parameter at the detriment of everything else in the society as a whole, I am afraid all the philosophical discussions about "complex" aspects will not help.
bambax · 2h ago
I used to like Airbnb. It's not better or cheaper than hotels, but when travelling with kids it makes a big difference.
Until I had a bad experience, that turned horrible. I saw a side of the company that made me think "never again".
I rented a place from a "superhost" that looked very nice on paper. It was in fact very bad. Everything in the description was misleading, photos were doctored to look nice, "windows" opened to a wall on the next building two feet away, there was mold everywhere, the shower flowed into the bedroom, etc.
At this point it wasn't the end of the world; I stayed two nights and went home. Then I wrote a bad review. It was simply descriptive and contained no harsh language of any kind.
The review was immediately taken down; I asked why, and received a barrage of emails from Airbnb (some automated, some maybe not) saying that they were very sorry, they understood this wasn't the outcome I expected, but they couldn't publish it.
Turns out, Airbnb will go to extreme lengths to protect their hosts, because they are much more valuable to the company than one random customer.
But if the reviews are fake or filtered, then I can't trust the platform.
I went back to booking.com; they now have properties in addition to hotels, and are much more professional.
graemep · 1h ago
Not as bad as my worst airBNB experience.
Everything from rats to exposed wiring next to a shower!
Yeah, I've had pretty great experiences with Airbnbs. I'm usually traveling with kids, hotel rooms are small, it's really nice to have a kitchen with kids, and a lot of airbnbs have amenities that the kids like.
jajko · 2h ago
Hotels try to milk parents with kids and either force you to take basically another booking, or have few 2-bedroom (or 1 bedroom and living room = parental bedroom) ones, often for almost double the price. Most were designed in another era, and it shows - booked rooms are basically just caves for sleeping.
We only use such if there are no other options in given area or if we want food prepared (this quickly becomes another chore with small kids).
I've never seen a well rated airbnb place with many reviews being bad. They may not be stellar in some aspect, ie small maintenance may be lacking but otherwise having a full kitchen with wash machine is pretty amazing for any type of trip, and one has a wide variety of locations and prices. Also it allows you to experience the place a bit more, compared to hyper sterile and uniform hotel experiences.
Lets not forget airbnbs would never become a thing if they werent cheaper than hotels (or at least provided much better experience at similar price).
jrowen · 4h ago
I think the core value prop of Airbnb is (or should be) to provide a different experience than a hotel. It may have been "cheaper than a hotel" at one point and idk what the numbers are on how people are using it but in my experience it excels for larger groups or for people just looking for a more house-like experience than a hotel. Being able to stay in a nice house with a bunch of friends in any city is an amazing thing they made a lot more accessible.
Doesn't really make a lot of sense to me to just shop on price and then compare the experience to booking a hotel room, it's totally different.
sheepscreek · 4h ago
Chesky is having a Jobs moment, when Apple went from making Computers to smartphones and much much more. It didn’t happen in a day though. More importantly, by that time, Jobs had already built Next from the ground up, and supported and funded the growth of Pixar into an animation powerhouse. He had all the additional experience shaping his perception on what people want and how people will react to something.
I think Airbnb will have a branding issue. By transitioning from rentals to offering a wide range of services, they might dilute their brand before people have the chance to fully embrace and experience the new offerings.
Perhaps they should reinvent themselves as a platform that manages travel and stays, emphasizing that their “airbnb certified experience” includes access to specific facilities and guarantees. This way, users can choose from other service providers in their marketplace with their own standards. That way, expanding to more services over time would seem like an organic expansion.
Essentially, Airbnb could transition from managing services to a marketplace model that also hosts managed services and other providers. However, by maintaining a focus on “stays” or “travels” and slowly adding more ancillary services would prevent dilution before their metamorphosis is complete.
dmurray · 1h ago
There will be a rebranding in the next ten years. Airbnb will get a slightly more blocky or rounded version of the same logo and ads everywhere announcing how "Airbnb is now Air".
I can't tell who owns air.com, but the website it hosts is a tiny landing page from someone who would obviously sell.
The rebranding will be met by a slew of astonished articles asking "they spent how much?" and almost as many apparently-thoughtful midwit counterpoints saying no, it looks obvious in hindsight, but it took real marketing genius to conceive of this in advance.
ramesh31 · 4h ago
They've gotten much much better in the last 5 years. After all the small time would-be "empire builders" who overcharged for shoddy units and abused residential real estate laws got cleaned out of the system, it seems like what's left is a decent middle ground of professional operators running full time rental units, with a few of the original style unique experiences left here and there. The standards have gone way up, and it's generally better than a hotel at the same price point again, which it was absolutely not for most of 2015-2020ish.
fireflash38 · 1h ago
Depending on the location you get a bunch of people basically who own a vacation home they get priority to use and rent out the rest of the time. Which is honestly rather nice for both the guests and the hosts.
That was my preferred experience too - well maintained and lived in just enough to make sense. Some places do cheap out on "perks" that seem there only to boost themselves in rankings/filters, but otherwise been a pleasant experience.
genewitch · 10m ago
We did this in the 80s and 90s so this is not something unique to airbnb, airbnb just did it "on an app". When I say "did this" I mean rented a duplex or house for a couple weeks for a vacation.
hankchinaski · 3m ago
Airbnb is generally fine but I would never probably use it again if I could. They have very high fees and zero support when something goes wrong. I now pretty much prefer hotels, the price is the sane but the service is not comparable. At least for shorter stays
dreamcompiler · 6h ago
Airbnb made the same mistake Google did: They screwed up their core service. I used to be a steady ABB customer but now hotels are almost always cheaper, offer better service, and are more predictable.
Not to mention that hotel websites are typically easier to navigate and contain a lot less React-sludge that makes every click take forever to respond.
cobertos · 5h ago
I had this experience too. Booked on AirBnb with someone who was about the same price as the hotels. Turns out the hosts were just employees of some letting company. They wanted photo ID, a deposit, and sign a second contract in a _separate website_, which I declined. Contacting AirBnb support they said this was fully allowed and I should have read the description harder. I did get a full refund but was told it was only because it was "my first time" and I've never had other issues.
I'm glad I turned around and booked with a hotel. It was very personable, good value, and better than what I would've gotten for the same price on AirBnb for that city.
octo888 · 1h ago
> They wanted photo ID, a deposit, and sign a second contract in a _separate website_
Yup my average airbnb experience in eg Spain is: dealing with an agent, asked to submit all my personal data to some random third party, all other communication done via WhatsApp, and often my number is given to third parties without my consent who spam me with things like offers of experiences/day trips etc
mykowebhn · 14m ago
Just note that in a lot of countries, like Spain, the rental or hotel establishments are required by law to collect a lot of your information. It feels totally intrusive, but it's the law unfortunately.
bsimpson · 5h ago
There are too many shady middlemen in the vacation rentals space. I refuse to rent any place that has a separate lease, but they're no longer unheard of.
To some degree, I understand the businessification of rentals - it's uncomfortable for both parties if you're trying to get a grandma to meet you to exchange keys after a late flight. But also, that person-to-person charm is a big part of why people chose Airbnbs in the first place. If it's just an IKEA flip of an old apartment, why bother?
I've actually noticed that my taste in interior design has been impacted. The "pastel and sculpted veneer" aesthetic that took over Airbnb, "modern" coffee shops, and supposedly adult furniture brands like West Elm disgusts me now. I suspect it would have appealed to me if it hadn't been badly copied with shitty materials so many times. Now, I associate it with hollow experiences, poor craftsmanship, and attempts to get me to pay more for a "quality" I won't receive.
fuomag9 · 2h ago
Here in Italy the law say that it’s mandatory to meet in person to give you the keys and to do identification, so the grandma should meet you anyway
Of course there are people that still ignore this, but the government has started to crackdown on this a bit, for example some months ago they started removing key boxes on the walls in the street
vishalontheline · 5h ago
What city was this booking for?
atlasunshrugged · 1h ago
Not OP but something similar to me has happened in Berlin, but in my understanding this is more due to local regulation which effectively makes "true" Airbnb's illegal and the places that remain on the platform are basically apartment letting businesses
stavros · 4h ago
Not the OP, but happened to me in London.
cobertos · 4h ago
This was in Manchester, UK
SwtCyber · 4m ago
Between loyalty programs, clearer pricing, and just not having to stress about cleaning rules or weird checkout times, they’ve quietly caught up while Airbnb got distracted
fasthands9 · 5h ago
I disagree. In the long run there was never a way for individual hosts to compete with hotels on price. Hotels have economy of scale so of course they are going to be better bang for the buck in places where both are options.
I think airbnb is still the better option in many situations - such as when you are willing to pay a premium to be in nature or you going on vacation with 6+ people.
I don't really see how better tech would ever prevent this outcome. Perhaps this disappointing in terms of continual growth, but I think it was inevitable and still provides a good path for the company to be uniquely useful.
darkerside · 4h ago
The only way to compete against the economy of scale was the original thesis of AirBnB. People were renting out their primary homes to bring in an extra stream of income. It was never going to be mainstream profitable to buy a normal apartment and rent it out on AirBnB.
OccamsMirror · 2h ago
> It was never going to be mainstream profitable to buy a normal apartment and rent it out on AirBnB.
It was never meant to be. It definitely has been though. Lots of people making much more money renting out AirBnBs rather than using their property for long term leasing. Which has obviously compounded the housing issues most cities are currently experiencing.
lotsofpulp · 5h ago
> there was never a way for individual hosts to compete with hotels on price.
That way was to skirt laws around obtaining hotel permits and zoning and paying all the relevant hotel taxes and business insurance.
xdfgh1112 · 4h ago
Exactly. Airbnb was much cheaper than hotels when it started because of this.
No comments yet
Gigachad · 5h ago
Shouldn’t it expected that a hotel would be able to provide a better service considering they are doing it in bulk and specialise in it. Vs a bunch of individual untrained hosts.
Seems more like Airbnb ran out of money to burn and hotels lifted their game.
riffraff · 2h ago
I think it's mostly the fact that AirBnB stopped being outside the law. Once municipalities started regulating them, hosts started paying taxes etc.. they lost the price edge.
manwe150 · 5h ago
In corporate lingo, I think their “core business” is any vacation rental? Partnering with hotels could perhaps have been a viable path for them to grow that and still fit with their business acumen. But I use other platforms for that service now.
lolinder · 5h ago
What kind of partnership with hotels could they have made that would have set them apart from the dozen options I already have for booking hotels?
gsf_emergency · 4h ago
>same mistake Google did
This made me realize that their original strategy was to extract the promise from the fat long tail of their respective supply ("unique experience" for abnb, "relevant search results" for goog). But then the Septembers are apt to become eternal if you can't keep it at a level manageable by humans, like a dang-or-2
From TFA
>I want to be a luchador!” he tells me, then immediately regrets it.
(dang is probably quite great at minimizing regrets a la Jeff, the insta ones most of all)
>Leave it to the subconscious to highlight what matters.
pembrook · 47m ago
Airbnb is a giant example of what happens when you go too far into thinking you can solve real world issues with software UI.
Or run a hospitality business without doing any real hospitality.
Yes, a marketplace is a dream business from a profitability perspective, but it’s too easy to forget the marketplace is not the actual product that people come to the marketplace for.
It doesn’t matter if you have 5000 overpaid developers building the slickest software, the end product is not the Airbnb software, it’s the actual hospitality experience.
BLenkomo · 38m ago
I don't think anyone at AirBnB wanted to solve a real world issue.
They wanted to disrupt a market, same as uber, and did this by circumventing laws and breaking everything.
There is a reason why we have zoning laws: To protect housing for people. AirBnB broke this. Took my city munich / germany years in curt to get the data from AirBnB.
While Covid, plenty of reports came up how suddenly good flats in good locations became available again for renting to humans.
My mother uses flats for her retirement (she is not employed by a company and therefore doesn't get benefits) and she always tries to keep the rent low. Just that someone tried to AirBnB HER flat for more money than the rent.
Uber, just in case you are not aware of, takes the cake from taxi companies. Taxis who are there even if uber is not available. The only problem with taxis i have: They fight accepting credit cards still today. "Oh credit card? Mh were do you want to go?" yeah fu...
jen729w · 4h ago
> Chesky figured that Airbnb’s experience in attractively displaying homes, vetting hosts, and responding to crises could make it more trustworthy than competitors and therefore the go-to option for virtually anything.
Online reviews are totally broken. I recently spent a week at an Airbnb in the Gold Coast, Australia. The property was rated 5* but was tired and worn. The photos must have been 5 years old before a soul set foot in the place.
I rated it 3*. Shortly after, I got a phone call from the owner. He had my number because I'd had to call him because one of the two toilets in a five-bedroom 14-guest 'villa' was blocked. As in, overflowing with fecal matter blocked.
He essentially tried to bribe me to raise my review. I refused. The house is currently listed as 4.9* with those same photos. A preposterous exaggeration of its quality.
makeavish · 3h ago
I too had similar experience. I booked a 4.9 rated property with 30 reviews. But experience was really poor and I rated 1 stars post checkout. The propery owner reachout to me asking for explanation but I wasn’t in any mood to discuss.
Hours later they filed fake complaint to Airbnb that I rated poorly as I wanted late checkout and asked money to remove review. Airbnb removed my review post that.
I had a flight to catch so I couldn’t checkout late anyway. I shared even flight details with Airbnb but they didn’t reinstate review and added a strike to my account.
I expect host did this previously as well to improve their rating.
OccamsMirror · 2h ago
Had a similar experience where a Sydney AirBnB listed their property as air-conditioned. Had a misting fan. That doesn't quite cut it as "air conditioning" in 45C weather. Had the same outcome as you. Ended up doing a chargeback on my card and got banned from the platform.
Wouldn't go back anyway.
bambax · 2h ago
Yes, I had a similar experience. Reviews on Airbnb can't be trusted because most hosts are experts at having bad reviews removed. But if reviews can't be trusted then the whole thing is worthless.
esaym · 3h ago
Wow rofl
haarolean · 6m ago
They will happily oblige and put your review down if the host asks nicely. Happened to me, happened to my friends. Also they don’t care a bit about fake obvious reviews. Not like “not actively monitoring”, like telling you idk if you care to report it.
azalemeth · 2h ago
At least he was apologetic about the shitty toilet.
The last time I ever directly gave Airbnb money the host accused my female work colleague of blocking the toilet with menstrual products and charged us 400CAD for a plumber to "fix" it. My colleague was incensed -- she angrily stated that the chronology was wrong, demonstrated that no aforesaid items were in her possession, but the host didn't believe it. We ended up with my card being billed before claiming successfully on travel insurance. I can't believe that happened in Toronto -- Canada is one of the nicest places on the planet -- but (US) Airbnb support took the hosts side instantly and wouldn't budge. We had a shitty toilet for a week!
The last time I stayed in one was in a urine soaked crash pad with cardboard covering the broken windows in Montréal. We spent five hours there around the unsafe electrical unit before they did actually sort something else out. The host didn't reply to emails and it later turned out had been arrested, explaining both his silence and the less than salubrious people we'd previously been sharing with.
I deleted my account and refuse to go in airbnbs now. Booking.com is far from brilliant but at least it's scatologically free so far...
keoneflick · 3h ago
You're lucky. I had a real bad experience and the host managed to get Airbnb delete my review, I think the reason was something like host interactions were not relevant to the review? It was completely ridiculous.
elAhmo · 1h ago
This same thing can be said for Google Maps and many other platforms.
I effectively stopped using Airbnb, both due to prices that are approaching or more expensive than hotels, but also because of this shift of hosts to only caring about reviews and focusing on making a steady stream of new people checking in, without really doing any effort of making someone return. As long as the review scores are fine, all is good.
The original idea of Airbnb is long gone, and I experienced more than once someone writing on Airbnb, then another person sending a message with check in instructions. It is a business - nothing wrong with that in general, but it is disguised as people renting their spare rooms, which is rarely the case now.
riffraff · 2h ago
I had a related experience where the host asked me to change my average review, but didn't try to bribe me (Italy, booking.com).
A friend of mine had the same bribe experience (Airbnb, Israel) with a terrible accommodation (moldy, dirty etc).
In hindsight, why wouldn't they? Even if their reviews tank they can just register again with different credentials.
hnbad · 1h ago
This is a general problem. These things worked before those platforms became successful enough to warrant a cottage industry around them. Nowadays there are "reputation management" companies specializing in getting bad reviews deleted by any means and shady businesses will actively bribe or shame customers into giving them perfect scores. For a while everyone knew that 5 star and 1 star ratings are often fake and that you should check the ratings in between to get the real ones but nowadays those often don't exist or are just as fake (often left by shadier "reputation management" companies to score them an easy win if the business hires them).
What services like Airbnb would need would be direct partners actually testing the listings in person. But that costs money and requires hiring staff, which is antithetical to the business model of "gig economy" apps which exist in order to avoid the overhead of running a real company in that industry by instead offloading all the work to "gig workers" as independent contractors.
neya · 1h ago
I never book AirBnB's because they refuse to address the core issues of privacy within the homes - such as owners installing hidden cameras. So many private videos are shared from AirBnB's and yet they do nothing about it - simply because they're just the glorified middlemen here and don't have actual staff who physically vet their locations. This is why hotels rule are preferred. IF I book a room in Hilton, I know full well knowing I will receive a guaranteed comfort level. An AirBnB's host's mood determins if I will enter their property or will be stranded in the middle of the road (been there, done that). And I would much rather talk to someone at a reception than type out an email hoping I get a reply.
mvdwoord · 1h ago
I am also deterred by the never ending shady descriptions and filtering. Too many times, selecting something with two bedrooms, and when you look and read closely, it shows a couch in the living room which is the "second bedroom". This and quality issues, and sometimes even blatant cancellations from the owners.
My GF loves it though and has a bigger preference of staying somewhere more homely as opposed to a hotel. Truth be told she has found a couple of great places...
FirmwareBurner · 1h ago
Also the high cleaning fees and service fees when its obvious the apartments barely see any cleaning.
aurareturn · 1h ago
Potential hidden cameras is the #1 reason I prefer hotels over Airbnb.
I've seen Airbnb slowly get banned in many places I've visited over the last 5-6 years. Hong Kong. Banned and heavily restricted. Singapore. Same. Saigon. Same. All of China. Same. Taipei. Same.
I sold all my Airbnb stocks. I couldn't be wrong and maybe they'll find a way but it seems like the world wants less and less Airbnb and not more.
monster_truck · 5h ago
Have had some insanely bad experiences with AirBNB and swore them off forever.
People listing mcmansions they cant sell in a state of disrepair, lies about amenities and internet. Had to relocate several people repeatedly in the middle of the pandemic lockdown and it took months for the refunds to process.
Had another host try to pressure me into a cash deal and then claim damages to extract fees when I turned it down. After supplying their text messages and proof that the place was fine I had to wait 18 months for a refund and was locked out of renting a safer place.
I can't imagine trusting them for anything else. I now exclusively use craigslist and other sites that allow you to directly deal with property owners and have been really impressed.
bogdan · 2h ago
I’ve had my share of bad Airbnb hosts too, not as bad as yours, but still enough to ruin a holiday and make me hesitant to use them again.
The bit that I should have expected but didn't was how strongly they side with the hosts in case of disputes. In hindsight, of course they do; the hosts are their money makers, while I'm booking them only a few times a year.
I stopped using Airbnb and closed my account. Hotels are fine, and never had any major issues.
hn_throwaway_99 · 2h ago
> I now exclusively use craigslist and other sites that allow you to directly deal with property owners and have been really impressed.
So apparently you have found the ~10% or so of craigslist short term rental listings that aren't outright scams?
tdeck · 4h ago
> I now exclusively use craigslist and other sites that allow you to directly deal with property owners
You rent vacation rentals on Craigslist? That's the first I have heard of this even being a thing.
No comments yet
standardUser · 3h ago
I used to be a big defender of AirBnB due to the many amazing experiences I've had with them over the years. But since then I've had several experiences that matched the negative feedback I had been hearing from other people, especially with US-based rentals, and now I'm a skeptic at best.
The CEO knows exactly what the problem is because he spells it out in the article...
> Chesky explains that historically, people used Airbnb only once or twice a year, so its design had to be exceptionally simple.
It's true! I've probably averaged no more than 1-2 AirBnB stays per year for a lot of years. But the average host is probably handling 50+ guests per year. That means the host is the AirBnB customer, not me. I'm about as important to them as their cleaning service. The hosts and the execs are all just trying to make some money, and my dumb ass is in their way asking for extra towels and late checkout. Hotels are essentially just as hostile, except they are good at it. And since the cost savings have essentially disappeared I'm inclined to go with the pros and only look at AirBnB when the location or context give me some reason to choose the complicated option.
cosbgn · 44m ago
Airbnb is, in my opinion, one of the companies with the biggest negative societal impact.
Airbnb complementary destroyed some great places and rural cities around the world, because of them:
- Food/Restaurant prices go up
- Food/Restaurant quality goes down
- Real estate price goes up
- Dirtiness goes up
- Bugs and other animals thrive
- Quality of shops goes down, everything is disposable
- Quality of building/materials goes down, why install a wooden window if it's for an airbnb?
You could argue that it's not because of Airbnb but because of tourism, but I don't think so, Hotels are heavily regulated, they have strict cleaning rules, max occupancy and are built to host a certain amount of people, mass tourism wouldn't be possible without Airbnb.
whazor · 39m ago
Airbnb is great for smaller places though. I was looking at some smaller Italian cities and there are mostly traditional b&b's, plus a couple of hotels. So the Airbnb's blend in well, and I think it is too small to really destroy the city itself.
BLenkomo · 37m ago
We had already plenty of websites supporting real B&Bs because real B&Bs are registered and can use normal hotel searching websites and portals.
isaacremuant · 37m ago
> mass tourism wouldn't be possible without Airbnb.
Have you not travelled before Airbnb is a thing in a place? There were always similar alternatives?
The blame game with Airbnb is the most ridiculous thing ever.
Completely unfounded to try to blame so many things such as the housing crisis. Oh, that is just Airbnb. Just ignore that you still have problems due to taxes, government policies in places where there's virtually no Airbnb offera.
Hotels being regulated generally means nothing in places where there's a lot of tourism because you still get extremely poor services and experiences at times and Airbnb and other similar BnB services (this is not new, come on, is everyone <30 years old?) have provided much needed competition improving quality, which has otherwise been going downward steadily (cleaning, breakfast, bathrooms, etc).
You seem to dislike supply so youd problably want to ban low cost airlines so that less of the "rubble/mass tourists" would travel, right?
BrenBarn · 5h ago
In addition to stuff people are saying about AirBnB reviews in other comments, as far as I can tell there is no way to leave a review or otherwise provide public feedback in cases where the host cancels the booking before you get there. This seems to grossly incentivize scamming.
I reserved an AirBnB months ahead of time to see the eclipse in Dallas last year, and the host canceled it the day before I was to arrive, with no communication (even when I tried to message them). I got a refund, but that's pretty cold comfort. Without any disincentive to do this, it's pretty easy for hosts to screw people over.
askl · 3h ago
Had this happen a few times with booking.com too. With the difference that booking offered a alternative accommodation and if that one was more expensive, the host who cancelled my booking has to pay for the difference.
I mostly stopped using Airbnb. The same listings often appear in other sites too and those usually have less bad UX for search and booking.
BrenBarn · 2h ago
Yeah, that's my experience with booking and even with hotels in general. Much more customer-friendly.
us0r · 1h ago
it use to say something along the lines of "host canceled reservation less then xx time" in the reviews. did they remove that?
RHSeeger · 5h ago
Its worth noting that hotels do this kind of thing, too; just rarer, for bigger events. Its specifically been known to happen for things like Taylor Swift concerts, etc.
megablast · 2h ago
That is not true. You can rate them on booking.com or on google or tripadvisor.
csomar · 3h ago
They added a penalty a while ago. So it is very unlikely for hosts to do that now.
financypants · 5h ago
I believe there is a penalty for the host
margorczynski · 1h ago
What needs consideration are the people that live near the places that are rented out for Airbnb or Booking. It destroys the social fabric by injecting a rotation of strangers into the community, sometimes those strangers are also very problematic by e.g. throwing loud parties.
On top of that it drives up the prices pushing out normal people out of the better parts of the city.
ProllyInfamous · 11m ago
For about seven years, I lived between two of Chattanooga's top tourist attractions / revenue generators. Although our city has banned new STRs, pre-existing properties are grandfathered (which conveys with deed).
>It destroys the social fabric by injecting a rotation of strangers into the community.
Absolutely this. Literally half on my former neighborhood was AirBNBs, mostly small-time couples (1 or 2 properties) but also mega-owners (dozens).
During my few years on the side of Lookout Mountain (a relatively nice part of the city), we had several small-time police altercations (typically younger folks with drugs/alcohol), but one huge event stands out in particular: a D-list soundcloud rapper concluded a raging party by attempting to intentionally burn the structure down [paid on a stolen credit card]. The only reason his group was caught: they posted TikTok footage of "they new crib," which included them trashing the place — it only didn't become a structure fire because we heard the smoke alarms early!
I'm not sure what concessions AirBNB gave the homeowner, but very quickly the house was sold (and is again for sale).
My brother lives nearby, and literally none [¡ZERO!] of his neighboring houses house neighbors. You get to the point that you just ignore everybody in the neighborhood (this constant stream of changing faces) and mumble bitterly to yourself when mega-AirBNB-owner purchases his tenth home/hotel.
Isn't this why cities initially created zoning?!
----
Fortunately for me, I moved to a less-desirable part of town which houses zero AirBNBs (and lots of wonderful working-class neighbors).
Xenoamorphous · 1h ago
As someone living in a condo in a pretty touristic place: fuck Airbnb; or maybe fuck the local government that allows Airbnb to advertise properties that don't have (because they can't have) a license to operate.
SwtCyber · 10m ago
Turning Airbnb into an "everything app" feels... conflicted. The platform's core strength was always about trusting strangers in a very specific context
borroka · 53m ago
I am baffled that every time the Airbnb issues come up, there is a plethora of "just book hotels" comments. The use cases are, or can be, wildly different.
I am not a particular fan of Airbnb--nobody is a fan of real estate agents, they are intermediaries that provide a service, facilitate discovery, etc.--but I am currently staying in an apartment I booked on Airbnb, and I am spending $2k a month for it. Decent space, a kitchen I can use, space for my clothes, a washing machine, a big fridge. If I had to book a hotel room, I would spend at least $8k a month for it.
“Book a hotel room” sounds like when a former university instructor told a student to "just install Linux" when they had some authorization issues on their Windows computer. The use cases are different.
speedbird · 5h ago
Half the airbnbs I try to book these days turn out to be resellers of un booked hotel rooms. Try to book, get a message from “host” just checking availability… silence for three days then sorry, not free … it’s a deeply flawed experience and Airbnb need to get a lot better at policing their platform
bcoates · 5h ago
A nugget in this that seemed significant:
Quote
“I don’t know if I want to call it a social network, because of the stigma associated with it,” says Ari Balogh, Airbnb’s CTO. So they employ a fuzzier term. “We think of it as a connection platform,” he says. “You’re going to see us build a lot more stuff on top of it, although we’re not an advertising system, thank goodness.” (My own observation is that any for-profit company that can host advertising will, but whatever.)
End quote
Launching a communications tool in 2025 that isn't one of the two overly trod spaces (the advertising-hyperengagement loop of instagram, etc. or the people-you-already-know of whatsapp) is a genuine moonshot in a way that "what if airbnb but for manicures" isn't, and it's something that an incumbent like Airbnb could do that would be impractical for anyone else.
aibrother · 5h ago
"Airbnb for X" startup ideas, now done by Airbnb lol
Spooky23 · 5h ago
Perhaps they can use AI to create bespoke services?
bcoates · 4h ago
Maybe I can rent other people's compute and prompt engineering, a sort of uber-for-openai-for-airbnb-for-x operation
casenmgreen · 14m ago
I'm a digital nomad.
One luggage, no permanent home, been fifteen years.
I used to use AirBnB all the time.
They gradually become more and more, well, "large company".
I used to still look at AirBnB (until very recently, when one of the founders joined DOGE), but I saw that their continually rose over time, and became like 10% or 15%, and there's in many places no meaningful listings (which is due to State bans).
I was in Paris last couple of months. There was nothing viable on AirBnB, unless you wanted to pay several thousand a month. There was one what I concluded was a scam, a very dodgy letting agency, who had lots of apartments, all with no ratings, but very bad reviews on-line. I think they were continually deleting and remaking their lets on AirBnB, to get rid of negative reviews.
AirBnB itself (and here we see "large company") became unreliable as a service, in that I never knew, when I came to us it, if log-in would still work.
I recall the first time log-in failed for no obvious reason, and the and the only option was "email support and we'll contact you in a few days" - and I was looking to move in about two weeks time, and had of course no reason to have confidence in the boilerplate estimate of "few days".
After that, I put up my own HTTPS proxy, which I now use whenever I use AirBnB, to avoid AirBnB when I log in suspending my account, which I then have to have support fix, which of course means the account cannot be used until support get back to me, and assuming they actually do unblock the account, and given how variable support is, this is not a given.
This is not the customer experience you were looking for.
I also recall one episode about ten years ago where I had to phone support. It was a three hour long screaming nightmare of hell and madness.
So - fees are now rather high, support don't bother - anything but support - I had to backdoor my own net traffic to use the service, no viable apartments in most locations.
It was great, but now it's really not.
Then, recently, one of the founders (his role now is only on the board) came out as pro-MAGA and joined DOGE, and that was the end of AirBnB for me.
The one and critical thing AirBnB got right was building into their platform the expectation owners would offer discounts for stays over a week, or over a month.
I don't see this on other platforms, and it makes pricing on other platforms crazy. If I come and stay for three months, I expect a discount for giving full occupancy over that time. If you don't offer that, you're off the menu.
ranguna · 9m ago
What do you use instead?
iambateman · 6h ago
I love ABNB and I hope they can find a long-term business that works. Their original promise was so interesting and exciting…but reality has kind of caught up.
They’re kind of like Uber, in that way. But where Uber has become faceless and quiet, Airbnb wants to be a leader, and I respect that. Certainly there’s lots of cool things that _could_ happen with experiences, and I hope they do.
tonyarkles · 5h ago
Yeah, Uber has pretty much got it dialled in. I remember the early days when “taking an Uber” was a weird mysterious thing. Now it is, for me, the most normal thing in the world. I’ve had one mediocre experience: I had a 60 mile one-way trip from an airport and multiple drivers accepted and then cancelled. I went and talk to one of the taxis at the taxi stand and they were asking double what Uber was… so I waited another 15 minutes or so and found a driver. Otherwise it’s been a completely satisfying experience.
Airbnb has definitely gone the opposite way. My first Airbnb experience involved getting woken up by the daughter of the family that lived downstairs asking me if I wanted breakfast for 5€. I was getting whole apartments for 30€/night. Now it’s just as expensive as regular hotels, half of them expect you to wash all of the linen before you leave, and it’s totally unpredictable what you’re going to get. I just book with Hilton instead. There’s free bottled water and snacks waiting for me when I get there, it’s a pretty consistent experience, and free good breakfast at most of them.
scarface_74 · 5h ago
Uber is a lot better than AirBnb. I use an app and the person picks me up and drops me off. If the driver cancels I automatically get another one scheduled, they don’t check my ratings or care if I have never used an Uber before, don’t have to worry about the Uber not picking me up because of the color of my skin.
The AirBnb may be illegal, there is no consistency with how you get in and you can’t even find out the address until after you reserve. Hidden fees, weird policies, you never know what you are going to get or have any recourse if they cancel on you
callc · 3h ago
I’m curious, what has made Uber feel safe for you in terms of racism?
And also did you have a problem with AirBnB based on skin color?
wodenokoto · 1h ago
To me this transition seems much more obvious for something like Uber:
Manage rides -> manage deliveries -> manage booking with places that are already in network -> expand bookings from restaurants to other services -> expand bookings to hotels -> vacation homes.
But honestly going the other way around isn’t that crazy.
hooch · 1h ago
Uber also had the good sense to not bake a narrow service category into its brand.
futurecat · 6h ago
Reading this article felt like reading an ad.
thinkingemote · 2h ago
It was triggered by press release from them possibly embargoed so they could prepare the article on time. So it's not really an ad but driven by promotion. Without the PR there would be no article.
The PR pack contain actual ad for the company announcing API platform etc. this was submitted to HN at the same time by a few different people.
Most press just replicate whatever is in a press release from a company but some, better, publishers use it to write an article.
digianarchist · 4h ago
There's a critical element there. I'm very skeptical they can pull off being a luxury Groupon.
whynotminot · 4h ago
Really? Because it’s kind of mocking them the whole time
bsimpson · 5h ago
Which was extra weird since it's behind a paywall.
bsimpson · 6h ago
With lodging, they have the risk of people finding a listing off-platform and paying cash, but because lodging is such a key aspect of a trip, people are often willing to pay the premium to have everything vetted/supported by Airbnb.
With personal services, they're risking having that problem at a lot bigger scale: are you willing to pay your barber or masseuse 18% extra to cover Airbnb's commission? I suspect a lot of people would use Airbnb to find a reputable provider, and then make contact off-platform.
darkwizard42 · 6h ago
People said the same thing about Wag. Ultimately if the platform acts as good lead gen and offers other protections and benefits it will work out!
pests · 5h ago
Didn't Homejoy fall victim to this? People would just contract directly with any cleaners cutting them out completely.
Animats · 5h ago
The "Experiences" thing sounds like Groupon. What killed Groupon was that Groupon wanted too big a cut, and the service providers dropped out.
This trick only works if you reach oligopoly levels, so providers have to sign up or go broke.
AirBnB is there in short-stay housing. Doordash/Uber are there in food delivery. Doordash/Lyft are there in gig rides, but might not survive Waymo. Amazon is there in e-commerce, but it took decades.
Can AirBnB find a second niche they can start to take over?
hakfoo · 3h ago
I had always heard what killed Groupon was the bad economics.
The "loss leader" concept is Business 101, and Groupon was presented to customers as a gallery of loss leaders they can shop.
Actually delivering a good loss leader is hard. Design the offer wrong, and people don't attach properly-- they either don't load up their cart with additional, higher-margin items, or they don't return for future full-price services. I suspect Groupon didn't help-- if they provided consulting, it was probably to steer the merchants to give the store away to make Groupon look compelling regardless of bankrupting the merchant.
Over time, a lot of industries pulled away, either because they personally ran the numbers or simply saw their peers trying it and losing their shirt. The offers eventually retreated to what could survive in the cost structure: stuff like classes (near-zero marginal cost per attendee) rather than food or personal services with significant cost of goods or labour.
blitzar · 1h ago
They bringing a large pool of customers who will only ever pay "loss leading" prices. The ultimate problem with Groupon is their customers.
presentation · 3h ago
Also there are already other products like that, like Viator and Klook. I wish companies like Airbnb didn't feel the need to conquer everything all the time. It already is useful as it is.
jenkins6g · 7h ago
I have an airbnb experience and just hired 2 people. Airbnb decided to pause my experience for no reason. Tried hitting up their support but they didn't provide a reason for the pause and a date when it would be resumed. This is why you never rely on one customer channel
alias_neo · 7m ago
I've never really liked AirBnB, and my experience this year has confirmed my feelings.
On two separate occasions this year I've had issues with them.
First, my wife had booked a lodge in the lakes with lots of outdoor space for us to go with the kids and hopefully see the stars, and give them room to roam outdoors; for months our children had been looking forward to it, and a mere 4 days before, the host contacted us saying they'd have to cancel because the power was out; clearly bullshit, no apology, they'd obviously gotten a better price elsewhere because it just happened the weather was looking better than expected that weekend; and I don't see how it would take 4 days to get the power back on; it wasn't remote.
On a separate occasion, 2 friends and I had booked an AirBnB in Wales to attend a wedding together in the area, the host cancelled days later because they'd accidentally double booked; we booked another, they cancelled, no excuse; half a dozen cancellations later, we currently have a booking, and we'll find out in a couple of weeks how that goes.
I don't have the time or the patience for this kind of game-playing bullshit from hosts, and I certainly don't like disappointing my children; I would choose a hotel at a higher cost but they're not always able to provide the experience you're aiming for; it's not always just a room to stay in.
We've used AirBnB in other parts of the world without issues, but we'd usually book those for a few days into a trip, and start with a hotel, so you're not arriving somewhere and immediately have problems when something goes wrong.
One country in particular; my wife and I travelled with two friends who were travelling to arrange their wedding in said (European) country, booked two double rooms, we arrive and we knock at the address we're given, since we've been given no further details; the "host" says to come with him; first tries to put us all up in a box room in some lady's house, with two bunk beds with an adjacent toilet that was flooded and pouring in to the room; when we decline, he takes us to another place where an old man was looking to rent a room, he seemed like a nice man, but my wife was uncomfortable because his living area had a window into the shared shower room, no thanks; the old man was quite upset that we'd declined, he probably needed the money and we felt a little guilty about that; after a couple more examples of this wandering around the town with this guy, it had become apparent, he was taking bookings for rooms that didn't exist and trying to put people up in random peoples homes; I suspect he also wasn't paying them near what he was taking for these bookings.
It was a disgrace, and when we became irritated after so much time wondering around with our cases in the heat we suggested we'll book rooms at the Hilton we had passed while wandering and deal with AirBnB after our break, he managed to find us something suitable; both "almost" to the standard we had booked, and both places he had the keys to in his pocket.
We reported it to AirBnB, but they of course did nothing.
seydor · 2h ago
They should have launched services for hosts instead. Airbnbers interface with cleaning / repairpeople, not masseuses. They could even expand to construction and interior design as so many people are building and converting airbnbs. They could take advantage of their synergies there.
They are bringing more "amateur professionals" along with the hosts by adding all those services. this is a big, unruly crowd of half-assed servicepeople
benjaminwootton · 2h ago
That’s a good idea. I’m just setting up an AirBNB and need all of the above.
twelve40 · 5h ago
maybe they should admit they are not special anymore and expand into other large markets like hotels? I don't even care anymore, I just use Google Maps or Booking, whether it's a "property" on Booking or a hotel, each one has it's pros and cons, I choose whatever feels right at the moment from what seems to be an exhaustive list of both. Properties can be more fun and better for larger groups, hotels are cleaned and don't have annoying "house rules" like washing the dishes etc, or chasing the owner if the lock doesn't work. I don't know how many travelers still stick exclusively to properties anymore.
bsimpson · 5h ago
I'm surprised they're not launching with more coverage. I just spot-checked what was available in NYC - it's a handful of unappealing tours. Some categories, like massage, are totally empty.
Are they abandoning NYC as a market since rentals are restricted there, or did they just not put enough effort into recruiting before launch?
jrowen · 5h ago
Just seeing the number of different ways people have typed the name in this thread reminds me that "Airbnb" has got to be the ugliest, most confusing, and least riffable name of any startup to achieve unicorn status. I would guess it has cost them something.
spaceman_2020 · 1h ago
I seriously don't understand why anyone would use Airbnbs when serviced apartments exist
Only time it makes sense is if you're traveling with a large group of people
jeffhwang · 2h ago
The article repeatedly cites “2 billion users” of Airbnb. That isn’t true, right? From casual Googling, I’ve seen is 5 million hosts and 1.5b stays—which is nowhere near 2b users (alltime, MAU, or otherwise).
awaythrow999 · 3h ago
Uninstalled my AirBNB because of 2 resolution issues with hosts that were not in my favor despite me providing all documentation and (damning) evidence.
The reason I should have uninstalled it much longer is because it's toxic for rent prices. I now pay more for hotels and sleep well.
I got rid of Uber for the same reason.
legitster · 5h ago
Airbnb host here. A couple months ago we found a bug where Airbnb allowed two different guests to book the same night. Absolute madness ensued.
The worst part is we had their support on the line for hours. And he told that they didn't even have a way to escalate technical issues. His job was to stall on the phone and be yelled at until hosts gave up.
Unfortunately it's just the latest example of awful experiences with the company. As a host you are liable for everything. The only way to get them to hold up their end of the bargain is small claims court. They collect their fees for doing nearly nothing for either party.
You will not find a way to contact any individual at Airbnb. It's an impressively seamless anti-human design. They have built a wall and kicked down the ladder.
digianarchist · 5h ago
I lived next to an AirBnB in Toronto, guests partying until 4am on a Wednesday.
Owner of the unit did nothing and as did AirBnB.
Luckily it was only a few nights a year - there's no mechanism to eject a guest like this. They create new accounts if they are banned from the platform.
spinarrets · 5h ago
The mechanism is calling the cops, and letting the cops know it's an Airbnb. Then contacting Airbnb letting them know you've filed a police report.
Airbnb doesn't give a shit about you (and frankly, neither do the cops), but the cops and Airbnb don't want to tussle with one another.
digianarchist · 5h ago
TPD don't respond to noise complaints.
bigstrat2003 · 2h ago
It sounds like that is the true issue here (which the unit being an Airbnb is exacerbating to be sure). If it was a normal home, and it happened to have owners who were assholes and didn't care about the neighborhood disturbance, you would be in just as bad of a situation (probably worse tbh). The fact that it is being turned over for lots of short term rentals makes it more likely that you'll get asshole tenants there at some point, but ultimately to fix this the people of Toronto would have to pass noise ordinances and make the police enforce them.
hansvm · 4h ago
"suspicion" of underage drinking or whatever then
digianarchist · 4h ago
I don't think I should have to lie to the police in order to have peace on a workday but interesting strategy nonetheless.
sejje · 3h ago
Then why should airbnb?
Quarrelsome · 4h ago
Sorry, but what in gods name is this passage:
> Despite never meeting Jobs, “I feel like I know him deeply, professionally, in a way that few people ever did
As opposed to all the people that did actually met him, or worked for him?
This is such a painfully gushing puff piece and this sentence is peak cringe that just makes the man sound mentally ill.
forgotoldacc · 4h ago
I see this sentiment a lot these days. People who were around a person all day, everyday, for several years can say "this was the worst person I've ever known and they were completely incompetent"/"this person was an absolute saint and I was blessed to spend time alongside them", and some person who never met them will be like "your experiences are wrong and I know them better."
It's always weird and I have no clue why people get that mindset.
benjaminwootton · 2h ago
Reminds me of his “diary of a CEO” interview where he spends half of it reading out his own inspirational emails to the team.
CuriousRose · 7h ago
It amazes me that companies like AirBnB get huge valuations and user bases when the fundamental feature of searching for listings is phenomenally atrocious.
- Paginated results that reset and call an API for new results when the map is moved (even to a subset of the initial call such as in a zoom).
- Inability to change pagination size.
- Inability to hide listings you aren't interested in.
- Map only displaying listings on the current page, which change dramatically per page.
- Page changes (the thing you do more of than comparing options), take way too long.
Maybe it's a real-estate website related issue as the two main property sites in Australia (Domain and RealEstate) as also garbage. I have a feeling it's also designed this way to prevent scraping.
Can someone at AirBnB please sort these basic QoL things out.
nine_k · 7h ago
Did you notice that the search at Amazon is not that precise? It's not because they could not make it more precise. Equally, did you notice how milk and bread are in the opposite end of the grocery store? It's not because they could not put them next to the entrance. I suspect that a similar factor can be in play here.
As of slowness, I suspect they don't have a DC an Australia, so your packets need to travel across Pacific and back.
I also suspect that their web site already brings enough customers, and a serious rework to make it more usable won't bring in many more customers, and any more money. Investing in that is likely a poor business decision. I bet their resources mostly go to protection from fraud, legal battles, and other non-engineering concerns.
CuriousRose · 6h ago
I understand your point, nobody is claiming that separating the bread and milk is a particularly good experience either and while it probably makes more money in a physical store where you want to buy multiple options at once, this doesn't apply to AirBnB with a single item checkout. The search at Amazon almost always gets me what I want on the first page, which is the desired behaviour almost everywhere to reduce friction to checkout. Why would I want to increase user frustration and bounce rate on a single product checkout?
I imagine significantly reducing database calls and blob downloads due to short-sighted pagination behaviour would result in significant cost saving, reduce bounce rate and increase conversions.
jampa · 6h ago
There are even more search issues that sometimes make it unusable:
- Impossible to filter / search by rating, which is a must-have if I am going to travel, no way I am risking staying at a first-time host, a lot of horror stories from forgetting bedsheets to outright scams.
- There is no way to see the precise location, which is understandable for safety in some places (mostly listings in areas with "single-family" similar neighborhoods, like Orlando suburbs, you don't want to advertise your home as "available"). But, in some cities, for example, in Rio, a large radius can make you uncertain if the apartment listing is beachside or in the favela's entrance.
jbaiter · 1h ago
As somebody traveling with small children, what's even more frustrating is that AirBnB seems to have a tag "Well reviewed by families", but refuses to allow you to search for it. Which means using more indirect filters (like "has a baby bed") and clicking through dozens of listings to find one with that tag.
I get why they do it (looking at more listing is great for them), but I feel like they're wasting my time and it sucks, researching holidays is a frustrating timesink as it is, and they make it worse.
ookblah · 3h ago
its about consistency to me. if you have a lot of time to kill on potential issues then sure. stopped using abnb when i traveled once and the AC was broken/leaking b/c the host thought i wouldn't mind it, then asked if i would be fine waiting 1-2 days while a repair guy came to fix it. thankfully the host was apologetic and worked with me and airbnb to get the refund, but i still had to book a hotel elsewhere.
with some chain hotel at least i know what to relatively expect in terms of service and amenities and have someone to complain to to make it right.
spicyusername · 12h ago
reinvention of Airbnb
I cannot for the life of me figure out why these companies don't just stick to their core.
AirBnB provides an amazing service, the ability to painlessly book hotels that feel like houses.
I guarantee you they are not going to be the next Apple or Microsoft, they're instead just going to dilute the value of their core business chasing things that aren't going to work, instead of focusing on their core service, and then in so many years time they will become irrelevant rather than inevitable.
keyle · 7h ago
I cannot for the life of me figure out why these companies don't just stick to their core.
Because those CEO are unhappy. They want more in their life, they want everything; so that maybe then, they'll be fulfilled.
The path to success is made by many failures; and when you get to success, you can't take the success, you can't be 'done', you need more success. It's a long form of chasing the next dopamine rush.
He probably hasn't felt more alive than the week he threw everything in the blender. It's a mix of issues that starts with childhood and leads to a life of addiction for more.
On the cover of a magazine, it's an inspiring story, but deep down it's a sad human trait.
All power to him though, it sure makes for interesting stories.
bsimpson · 6h ago
> “I’m 43 and at a crossroads, where I can either be almost done or just getting started,” he tells me. “There's a scenario where I'm basically done. Airbnb is very profitable. We've kind of, mostly, nailed vacation rentals. But we can do more.”
elteto · 12h ago
Because the writing is sort of on the wall for airbnb's current business model. Local regulations are finally catching up to them, limiting new listings or applying the same taxes and fees applied to regular hotels. And airbnb's are not cheaper anymore, and many times not any more convenient than a hotel, due crappy hosts and their excessive fees and regulations.
Airbnb is still a great option if the location is under served by normal hotels, or if you are traveling with families so you want to have a kitchen/amenities. But otherwise I almost exclusively book hotels now.
onlyrealcuzzo · 7h ago
AirBNB forced hotels to MASSIVELY upgrade.
There used to be very few hotels with kitchenettes, any space really beside just a bed.
There's way more suite and kitchenette options.
Lots of people travel for longer than just a night or two, or to travel beyond just business, where you might want to be able to actually enjoy being in your private space.
Hotels weren't really designed for this.
They wanted you to never be in your room, and instead upselling you at the bar.
Now, you can pretty easily find relatively affordable hotels that have many different types of rooms layouts for all different purposes.
Now, that defeats a lot of the point in having an AirBNB.
As you said, AirBNB is really only good if you're traveling somewhere with lousy hotel options, you're going to be staying somewhere for a long time, or traveling in a huge group, or you want to host a rager party or something...
agluszak · 6h ago
> AirBNB forced hotels to MASSIVELY upgrade.
Any data to back it up, please?
isaacremuant · 33m ago
My experiences in travel has been the same. Airbnb competition has been awesome just like Uber has been awesome for taxis in many places.
The narrative is always that "it's worse and making things worse" and gets blamed for everything such as the housing crisis which is insane but it's been an awesome asset to humanity. Not just Airbnb but other similar search lodging offerings.
dreamcompiler · 6h ago
> AirBNB forced hotels to MASSIVELY upgrade.
And Uber did the same thing for taxis. Now Uber's ridiculously expensive and taxis are often a better option.
isaacremuant · 31m ago
This depends on where you live. Not every country is like this and you sure can't call a taxi or have the same level of drivers (and add other ride share apps).
There's an incentive by many to just trash these competition apps and services but they've been a net good.
xenator · 3h ago
It happens not because of AirBnb. I know some people who run hotel business and they said that covid was that stimulus
nailer · 6h ago
I just wish hotels did a load of laundry for me. I’d pay 30 bucks but not 250.
somethoughts · 6h ago
Interestingly in Asia there are services that drive by hotels and pick up laundry bags and bring them back the next day washed and folded.
Perhaps someone here on HN will read this here, make an app out of it, get funding and set up such a thing in the US.
9283409232 · 6h ago
Maybe I'm just not in the right cities but people say 2 things: Airbnbs are just as expensive as hotels and hotels have upgraded and I never see these two things as true. Airbnbs are typically cheaper than hotels and hotels, at least where I travel are still just a bed and a bath. Extended stay hotels have kitchenettes but extended stay hotels have always had kitchenettes and they were always the most expensive options because they are typically purchased by businessmen who have high budgets.
alabastervlog · 5h ago
Hotels seem cheaper in some cities and if you’re solo or with only people who are ok sleeping in one small room with max 2 beds.
As soon as you go to two rooms, airbnb gets more appealing fast.
It’s also great where there are either no hotels, or the only options are motels, if you want somewhere with a kitchen and such.
Good for destination-type getaways where the point is to mostly hang out at the airbnb. Hotels suck for that. Even the nicer suite-type ones mostly do.
fellowniusmonk · 7h ago
I will always love AirBnB for driving down prices by breaking the hotel cartels in major cities.
Over 10 years ago I rented a folding couch right off of Pearl ST. Boulder, CO.
I stayed in the living room of someones 1 bedroom apartment for $300 a night instead of 1k+ a night for the equivalent at what amounted to a travel lodge motel. The prices there were out of control, no inventory, just awful.
There are "plausible deniability" cartels everywhere, it's and it's always nice to see their grip on a region drop.
infecto · 7h ago
You paid $300 to stay on a fold out couch in a strangers living room. $1000 sounds like market price for a hotel room then.
nine_k · 6h ago
This is fair. But the market of barebones $300/night sleeping spots was underserved by hotels, and likely even hostels.
singleshot_ · 6h ago
Couldn't you stay in a nice $300/night hotel and just close your eyes when you walked by the pool?
lumost · 7h ago
Was there an event? I stayed at the historic Boulderado hotel for 350/night 13 years ago when Airbnb was getting started.
lispisok · 7h ago
What you described is an experience I would expect using couchsurfing.com which was around long before airbnb.
Source: Have hosted couchsurfers very long ago
buerkle · 4h ago
I find this hard to believe unless some major event was occurring while you were staying in Boulder and you purchased at the last minute.
donnachangstein · 7h ago
You could have saved yourself $300 and slept on a bench in the central bus station for approximately the same level of accommodation.
handoflixue · 7h ago
Can you actually? Every major city I've been to in the past five years is pretty harsh on that sort of thing. I'd happily pay $300 to avoid the risks of arrest and having all my stuff stolen.
jazzyjackson · 7h ago
Funny but couches can be pretty comfortable, and in the days of Airbnb being a monetized couchsurf, you'd at least wake up to fresh coffee
Safe place to stash your luggage is another matter, there's a dozen apps that cater to this need now too so if you are sleeping in the bus station at least you can put your baggage behind a locked door
donnachangstein · 6h ago
> there's a dozen apps that cater to this need now
Before someone declared a need for buggy and unreliable locker apps, for decades prior you could deposit something called a "coin" into a slot which would allow you remove an equally archaic object called a "key" from the lock, which you would deposit in your pocket and be on your merry way.
lmm · 6h ago
> Before someone declared a need for buggy and unreliable locker apps, for decades prior you could deposit something called a "coin" into a slot which would allow you remove an equally archaic object called a "key" from the lock, which you would deposit in your pocket and be on your merry way.
Back in the '90s, sure, but then some people flew a plane into a tower block and apparently this meant we need to pay $20 for some minimum wage dude to put our bags on a shelf that's only open 9-5 instead.
jazzyjackson · 3h ago
DC Union station charged me I think 10usd per bag per 24hr , no smaller unit accommodated, but I decided $30 was worth it to enjoy my Amtrak layover for 3 hours and walked to the botanic garden unencumbered
Vienna Austria has a great set of lockers at their central station, I think I paid 3 or 4 euro for 12 hours for a locker. Venice too, but I did not anticipate that Venice has nowhere to lock up a bicycle, so I ended up paying 18 euro to store my "oversize luggage" for the day.
All in all I found European train stations to have better accommodations than American (makes sense because people actually use them everyday, 100+ trains a day in Berlin vs a place like Cincinnati with 2 trains a day)
Bilbao Spain I was glad to find a convenience store that was on the apps but also just accepted 5 euro to take my bags into their store room a few hours. I bet most hotel receptions would make that deal with you too.
Nador, Morocco I could not find anyone to take my luggage, the train station attendant told me to try the bus station, but the bus station attendant refused without my having a bus ticket, "even with cash?" "Even with cash"
satvikpendem · 6h ago
And have someone take your luggage wholesale and later clip the locks? What a steal!
enos_feedler · 11h ago
For travel it’s just an option and always will be. Thats okay because the travel use case only hits most people once or twice a year. The future of Airbnb was and always will be using that option as entry point into your life at home. The app update and launch into these lifestyle categories are the starting point of this.
They chose to stick experiences and services as a root choice in the mobile app, not something that is attached to a booking or stay you already have. While I expect the major use case to be using these new services during a stay, the app design shows they are paving a future where you take some of what you loved about your airbnb stay back home with you.
bigstrat2003 · 2h ago
> The future of Airbnb was and always will be using that option as entry point into your life at home.
The future of Airbnb was and always will be a place to book stays in someone's home. These other things they are doing are a bad joke that will at best waste money for no gain, and at worst will cause their actual business to suffer. Trying to be all things to all people is idiocy, stick to what you're good at.
enos_feedler · 1h ago
a bad joke is a little harsh. It's worth trying to do a few new things. Having stayed in many airbnbs, I have wondered why they don't start adding a menu of things I can do once I am there. It feels like a space they could deploy some offerings and have the attention of their customer. There are bad jokes that cost a lot more money. Look at Apple Vision Pro. I think this is relatively cheap vs. their cash flow.
bcoates · 5h ago
I don't get airbnbs because they're cheaper, I get them because I want to rent something other than a hotel room. If best western had in-laws or 1br quadplexes I'd be happy to stay there, but most hotels I've stayed at are bad rooms in bad locations that almost always include at least one negative surprise every trip, and as you move up to more expensive ones they somehow get fancier but worse.
musicale · 6h ago
> Local regulations are finally catching up to them
Dodging regulation and taxes was Airbnb's biggest competitive advantage.
Regulatory entrepreneurship only works long-term if you can continue to dodge, or change, the law (either statutes or case law.)
We will see what happens with all of the AI companies who claim fair use.
firesteelrain · 6h ago
You can get the same experience with VRBO. People list in both usually. AirBNB hasn’t cornered the market. Plus, VRBO or sites like VacationRentals pre dated AirBNB
enos_feedler · 1h ago
They actually don't list on both usually. Go lookup the data before you start making statements like that. In fact just go punch this into Google:
"how much of airbnb inventory is unique?"
bigstrat2003 · 2h ago
Yeah, I spent the whole time reading this article wondering "has this man lost his mind?". Airbnb works great for what it is. But nobody wants it to be an "everything" platform, and all that the CEO is accomplishing is wasting money chasing ventures that have no real chance of success. And that's if those ventures don't cause their actual business to suffer because resources are being spent elsewhere.
spinarrets · 5h ago
> I cannot for the life of me figure out why these companies don't just stick to their core.
Greed. Founders and employees who cannot understand the value of a sustainable business that does one thing well and keeps people employed. We shouldn't seek to grow indefinitely, we should seek to reach comfortable levels of success and then focus our efforts on rewarding the people who are clients and employees maximally.
toomuchtodo · 10h ago
Compression of their enterprise value and share price, governed by TAM. The transition from growth company to boring incumbent.
popularonion · 12h ago
TLDR
> It is also revitalizing an unsuccessful experiment the company began in 2016: offering bespoke local activities, or what it calls “experiences.” The next stage, launch date unspecified, involves making your profile on Airbnb so robust that it’s “almost like a passport,” as Chesky puts it
> After that comes a deep immersion into AI: Inspired by his relationship with Altman, Chesky hopes to build the ultimate agent, a super-concierge who starts off handling customer service and eventually knows you well enough to plan your travel and maybe the rest of your life.
That kind of makes sense to me - Airbnb must have learned to deal with trust/safety/reputation issues better than basically any other consumer app based company (except maybe Uber/Lyft)
Looking at incumbents:
Tour booking - TripAdvisor and Viator, not enough network effect
Home services - Angie's List and Thumbtack, not enough network effect
Events and concerts - Ticketmaster, enough said
Classified ads - Facebook Marketplace, enough said
Gym and fitness - Classpass, which I think is pretty good actually, but definitely going to be acquired or copied by Big Tech
Volunteer event hosting - Meetup, anyone under 40 even remember that?
subpixel · 7h ago
“ Airbnb must have learned to deal with trust/safety/reputation issues better than basically any other consumer app based company”
Not at all. Basically all reviews on Airbnb are positive bc of the threat of retaliation. Your reviews are like your social credit score, not worth threatening to post a negative but honest review.
mr3martinis · 6h ago
How? The reviews aren’t visible until after the window of time to review is closed or the review has already been submitted. AFAIK there’s no way to retaliate.
dayjah · 7h ago
The Airbnb review process is so weird I can only assume it’s actually broken.
Give someone three stars; which is “okay” (airbnbs own language) and you’re forced into specifying why a review (or part of a review) got three stars. The canned reasons are pretty negative (“felt unsafe”, etc). The “write in your own reason” option is limited to 50 characters.
So you’re incentivized to select 4 or 5 stars which allows you to click through the review without any other entry requirements.
I only give truthful reviews and I’ve only had three cases (out of ~70 stays) where the host was an asshat in response.
fallingknife · 7h ago
There is no threat of retaliation for reviews because hosts and guests can't see each other's reviews until the review period is expired or they have already left their own review.
datadrivenangel · 7h ago
Luma is on it's way to being the new meetup
nadermx · 12h ago
I think paypal is probably an example of why this is probably imposible for a publicly traded company.
Paypals revenues have been growing for ever. They basically do just one thing. But since the market in that one thing has a limit. The market can only price in a certain amount so the stock never grows.
So they look for growth else where
technofiend · 6h ago
"Duty to the shareholders": if you aren't the CEO growing revenue quarter over quarter, then your mostly stock compensation is worthless and the board is interviewing replacements.
vips7L · 6h ago
Their core business isn’t profitable long term.
guywithahat · 10h ago
Because when companies stick to their core values, you end up with Yelp
coolcase · 5h ago
Growf
mmmBacon · 6h ago
Basic problem with Airbnb is that you’re dealing with small proprietors and the quality and value can be pretty inconsistent. Airbnb has relied on reviews to enforce this but what I’ve found is that “hosts” usually wait to file a review of me as a guest until I file my review. So there’s a disincentive to leave a mixed review.
Additionally there’s a creep factor in the number of cameras on the property. Hotels have lots of cameras but you don’t get the same sense that you’re being policed. I realize some of this is necessary but it can still be off-putting; usually everyone in the rental comments on the cameras.
Airbnb could normalize the value by enforcing standards and capping certain unreasonable charges in particular cleaning fees. A uniform cancellation policy would also help.
Additionally there are no rewards for booking Airbnb and no perks at all for repeat customers.
I’ve moved from Airbnb to Marriot and I get 4pm late check out, upgrades to suites, free breakfast, priority booking etc… and I don’t have to take the garbage out, bundle up sheets, do the dishes, etc…
bcoates · 6h ago
As someone who doesn't have whatever lead poisoning makes people post reviews on yelp the review system is worse than useless.
I'm not gonna leave a mixed or negative review because snitches get stitches and I can't imagine anyone else reviewing has any less pathological incentives.
bsimpson · 5h ago
There are actually some really interesting problems to solve there:
It's now widely understood that online reviews can have a large impact on the success of a small business.
- What rating do you leave if you have a disappointing service from a really kind proprietor (like if the best humans make you the worst food)?
- Are we entering a world where there will be ramifications for the reviews you give? Will a restaurant be less likely to seat you if you left a middling review? As more places require you to identify with a phone number before you can be seated, will you receive worse service if you left a disappointing review or tip? It feels like reputation is about to flow in both directions.
- How do you avoid rating inflation when people who have bad experiences are reluctant to write about them?
And there are a bunch of little bugs in the current rating ecosystem:
- Culture impacts a rating. Americans are conditioned to start from 5 and deduct stars, which makes it harder to identify truly great places. Contrast this with Japan, where 3.5 stars is a really good rating, because Japanese people start from the median.
- If a place has thousands of reviews and a really high score, they're probably bribing people to rate them.
- How do you protect against spam? That includes reviews being bought from call centers, but also shitposts from people who don't like that something exists, or the way its staff behaves outside work.
- If people who eat fast food like a fast food place, it could have a better rating than an objectively better place that caters to more discerning clientele. How do you communicate that the people leaving reviews are/aren't representative of your tastes?
And as you alluded to, writing reviews (and HN comments) takes time that would often be better spent doing other things. What incentives do people have to take the time to leave a useful review? Can we find a way to make the process less burdensome?
soulofmischief · 5h ago
Some of us genuinely want to make the world a better place, and want to reward good hosts and publicly call out bad ones.
bcoates · 5h ago
Sure, but I'm gonna assume you're outnumbered by the absolutely deranged like 10:1
Source: look at online reviews of literally anything
soulofmischief · 5h ago
Hopefully the person flipping through reviews knows how to filter out illegitimate ones. Maybe my legitimate review tips the scale and they have a good time or avoid a bad time. Anyway, my point is that we don't all harbor such pathological perspectives regarding community contributions.
twelve40 · 5h ago
> snitches get stitches
i think on Google Maps they can't rate you back (maybe on Booking too?), so depends on the service. I don't review much anyway, but about a couple of times a year I run into a pretty amazing place that I can't help but compliment, and once in a blue moon a really crappy place that really upsets me so I feel like sharing that too. I see absolutely nothing pathological about that.
blitzar · 1h ago
> a couple of times a year I run into a pretty amazing place
When I do I shut my mouth, lest it be overrun by influencers, content creators or other undesirables.
nailer · 6h ago
> I’ve found is that “hosts” usually wait to file a review of me as a guest until I file my review.
Oh, I thought they did a double unlock. I.e. waiting for both reviews to be finished before publishing either.
enjo · 5h ago
As an occasional host we always wait until the guest writes a review. Our goal is to basically never have a guest write a review so we don't write them hoping they just forget. If we write one they get an email telling them that we did and really pushing them to review.
Our place is all five star reviews and there is very little benefit for further five star reviews. So it's kind of all risk for us at this point when someone does review.
bambax · 2h ago
Yeah well, the main talent required for being a host on Airbnb isn't to host well, it's to manage reviews well.
Reviews should have an expiration date, because places age and wear out; I'm not interested in learning about the experience of someone from five years ago, I'd like to know how it was last week.
milkshakes · 6h ago
that is exactly what they do
apwell23 · 6h ago
so if i don't review my host, my host's review of me gets stuck in a limbo?
i don't think so. I've seen reviews from hosts that i haven't reviewed.
milkshakes · 6h ago
there's a two week window in which reviews are accepted, after which the reviews are released.
If only this were documented somewhere. Welp, better disbelieve it outright.
mmmBacon · 6h ago
Maybe they do now. I have only left 2 mixed reviews. One when the place they rented was not the one showed in photos. The people weren’t allowed to rent in their building and this was not something that was advertised. This meant none of the building’s amenities were available to us despite being advertised. I ended up getting dinged somehow. I thought maybe they could see the review by a 2nd account or something. Could be wrong.
poisonarena · 6h ago
its always been double unlock
apwell23 · 6h ago
> what I’ve found is that “hosts” usually wait to file a review of me as a guest until I file my review. So there’s a disincentive to leave a mixed review.
yea i usually refrain from bad reviews because i might want to go stay with them in future.
courseofaction · 1h ago
Recently scammed out of $800 in fake maintenance claims by a first time host. Support was beyond useless.
internet_points · 1h ago
Enshittification of Airbnb started long ago. The time seems ripe for more focused alternatives.
Here is how it should work. When people go on vacation they want an Apple like experience where it all just works. That is what AirBnB needs to sell. The only other person who probably understands this is Richard Branson (and Disney)...
call it AirBnB Concierge (or even AirBnB vacations) to blend in the AmEx style angle. It's easy peasy Chesky, make it happen.
afavour · 7h ago
That's exactly where Airbnb's business model collapses. They don't own or run the properties. They'll never be able to offer "it all just works" at any meaningful scale.
theGnuMe · 6h ago
I think they can. It is pretty easy to start simply and experiment: AirBnB San Francisco. AirBnb Paris. AirBnB London. I'll give you an example. My wife is going to France with friends and we can pay money for a good experience but they are going 5-star and we can only afford 3-4 star which is where an AirBnB is also competitive. This sub-luxe market is wide open. If AirBnB isn't interested this is a YC startup for anyone who is.
afavour · 6h ago
You've not really addressed the core problem: they don't own the stuff. They are facilitating a transaction between you and the owner of the listing. It's very difficult to ensure any level of experience, especially without adding a ton of cost.
albedoa · 17m ago
> they don't own the stuff. They are facilitating a transaction between you and the owner of the listing.
Hey, that sounds like AmEx Concierge.
subpixel · 7h ago
People want a hotel like experience where it all just works.
Airbnb had novelty, inventory, and savings as its special sauce.
Nowadays we all know what a sub-par, overpriced Airbnb is like and it’s worse than a hotel because it’s usually far more inconvenient.
So we’re back to a hotel like experienced as the desire: convenience, available, and competitively priced.
efavdb · 6h ago
FWIW I’ve probably stayed in 30+ airbnbs over more than a decade and the experience has been almost universally superior to hotels. Not denying others have had different experience, but always find these threads surprising.
nine_k · 6h ago
AirBnB allows you to find a temporary dwelling in places where hotels are few, or absent.
AirBnB also provides extra capacity when a city or town gets overcrowded due to an event (matches, concerts, convents, etc). Building a proper hotel is much more capital intensive than converting a house or an apartment into an AirBnB place, and back into a normal long-term rent unit, or your own abode, when needed.
s1artibartfast · 5h ago
I would like a pony and a million dollars, but the real world is full of tradeoffs.
Vacation rental fulfil a niche that hotels do not, and I don't understand people who view them as substitutes. The fewer people use them the better. More for me and at better prices.
That said, Im probably not the median consumer. When I vacation, hotels cover almost none of my needs.
Im looking for a private beachfront Jacuzzi, hobbit hut in the forest, or someplace to party with family and kids.
I cant imagine using one as a hotel substitute.
aarondf · 6h ago
I think https://www.wander.com beat them to it! Wander is what I think AirBnB should've become.
FabHK · 6h ago
USA only?
SV_BubbleTime · 4h ago
Reminds me of a phrase that I heard when Uber was going hard on self-driving vehicles for some reason.
Not even Uber wants to be the Uber of Whatever anymore
For an actual thought… I absolutely love that the era of free money is on pause!
blinded · 5h ago
Dude if you want to find a nice spot in the woods on the river, secluded, in the middle of no where Airbnb, hipcamp, or camping are your only options.
luisgvv · 5h ago
Agree, Airbnb blows in crowded areas but it's nice in small towns
dbg31415 · 7h ago
Airbnb started strong, but it has become a minefield for travelers. Scam listings have exploded -- Airbnb admitted in 2023 that it removed nearly 60,000 fake ones, but that's only a fraction of what slips through. Investigations like one by VICE uncovered organized scams exploiting the platform for years, yet Airbnb has been slow to implement meaningful preventative measures. Meanwhile, pricing has grown increasingly deceptive: hosts tack on hefty cleaning and service fees, often doubling the advertised nightly rate. Although Airbnb recently added an option to show total prices up front, it's not the default, and hidden costs remain a major complaint.
Even more troubling are the widespread privacy violations. Thousands of guests have reported hidden cameras in their rentals -- some even found in bedrooms and bathrooms. Airbnb didn't ban indoor cameras until March 2024, after more than a decade of complaints and several high-profile criminal cases. Combined with fake photos, misleading descriptions, and little accountability for bad hosts, it's clear the trust that once defined the platform has eroded. Airbnb didn't just lose its shine -- it actively neglected the safety and transparency that made it appealing in the first place.
Yep. A few bad experiences and never again. The idea is pretty nice, but it always adds a layer of stress with the unreasonable cleaning demands and all. Hotels are more consistent and I know what I'm going to get as long as I stick with one of the main brands. I don't have to clean the entire house either.
digianarchist · 4h ago
These common negative experiences have spawned memes mocking the company.
> added an option to show total prices up front, it's not the default,
Pretty sure the only price you can see now is the total price.
I was looking a couple weeks ago and got annoyed that I couldn't find nightly price or how it breaks down
9283409232 · 6h ago
Airbnb has been trying to push their "experiences" and they are mostly bad. The ones that were recommended to me were either far out of my target city or very nondescript. I hope more cities start to regulate Airbnb out of existence. I was comparing hotels and Airbnbs for a recent trip and found 25 houses that were Airbnbs owned by the same person. Completely absurd.
xyst · 5h ago
Explains why ABB recruiters have been filling my inbox with invites to interview.
Note they have a fucking ridiculous interview process of at least _6 rounds_. Absolutely bonkers.
I was tempted to go for it but fortunately have many other companies in my pipeline with much saner interview processes.
Good luck to whoever gets those positions. Seems they pay quite well, but the question is whether ABB push to expand will pay off and become self sustaining.
pyaamb · 6h ago
As bad as they are I'd still want to have them around to keep hotel prices in check
zouhair · 6h ago
No, I don't care about hotels or hotel prices. People need places to live. You can deal with Hotel prices a bit high. There are millions of people in rich countries right now having hard time paying rent or finding any.
satvikpendem · 6h ago
Zoning laws are a way bigger restriction on housing than anything else, Airbnb is a symptom and arguably a scapegoat compared to the dampening of the demand of building new housing supply.
forgotoldacc · 4h ago
Maybe in America. Outside the US, that's really not the problem. It's people buying up loads of houses and apartments in town centers and pushing everyone else out. Then landlords realize they can jack up rent because they can make more money in one weekend with some foreign tourists through Airbnb than they would from a local living there.
You can build new houses. But if locals are pushed miles away from town, the town dies. A new town is formed. And if that new town gets the slightest bit of popularity on social media, Airbnb swoops in to suck the blood out of it.
It's absolutely killing communities with incomes below the US average.
lmm · 6h ago
And those countries have tried literally everything except making it legal to build more housing.
pyaamb · 6h ago
I think the issue is locals who are already property owners and long time local tax payers will have a greater say than newcomers on new developments in that area.
pyaamb · 6h ago
FWIW I'm fully behind you on more housing and an especially aggressive tax on entities owning multiple properties as investments.
darkwizard42 · 6h ago
This is wholesale resolved by building more housing (which Airbnbs or short term rentals do not make a meaningful dent in anyway).
Retric · 6h ago
There’s many places with a lot of Airbnb’s per resident, just look outside of major cities where people still want to visit.
Things have mostly settled down, but suddenly taking a lot of housing off the market meant real supply shocks even if there was plenty of land available for development.
betaby · 6h ago
Even in very popular cities AirBnBs are less than 0.1% of the residential dwellings.
AirBnBs have negligible effect on a rent.
bad_haircut72 · 5h ago
In Sedona AZ 16% of houses are AirBnBs, and thats just the ones who complied & legally registered as short term rentals
Your entire comment is just made up with no evidence.
As a simple example, in Austin TX, Inside AirBnB tracks over 15000 short term rentals, which would be closer to 5% of housing stock.
And the "only a small percentage of housing is AirBNBs" is a poor argument anyway, because home prices are set at the margins, and a relatively small reduction in housing supply in a constrained market can have a significant effect on price. Plus, for people that rent out a room, in can essentially have the effect of increasing the amount they are willing to pay ("I could normally not afford this apartment, but I could if I rent out a room on AirBnB"), which also increases prices.
More importantly, though, people have actually done studies on the effect of AirBnBs on prices, and found they have a positive (i.e. housing gets more expensive) effect on rents and home prices. One example: https://marketing.wharton.upenn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/...
rester324 · 6h ago
I don't think this is true. The proportion of short term rental places in some districts in European cities are as high as 8-10% and it's growing.
IMO it's meaningless to cite this 0.1% non-sense, because nobody will rent an AirBnB on the outskirts of huge cities far from tourist hotspots, so whoever comes up with these numbers, they probably try smearing the data by selecting an unreasonably wide area for comparison
SoftTalker · 6h ago
What percentage are they of available residential rentals? That seems like the more relevant statistic.
s1artibartfast · 6h ago
2/3 of housing is owner occupied, so 0.3%
Retric · 6h ago
The world is more than just cities.
JohnMakin · 6h ago
I am not a chronic traveler but never understood the appeal of airbnb. Most low-mid to midrange chain hotels offer reasonably clean rooms for equivalent (or sometimes cheaper) price than airbnb after fees and I don’t need to play housekeeper either, or worry about weird owners, which seems to me like the whole nice thing about renting a short term place to sleep.
blahyawnblah · 6h ago
I'm not a huge fan of Airbnb but having a spot where 8 people can all hang out together without having to walk across a hotel can be nice.
alasano · 6h ago
I like hotels but I love renting someplace unique and pretending that I live in that city or place for a week or two.
I understand your point if all you're looking for is somewhere to sleep that's clean and comfy.
dayjah · 6h ago
I have a 17 month old and she needs a dedicated space to nap; this is price prohibitive in hotels (suites, etc). So while I typically hate Airbnb, it’s the only solution for us right now.
sndean · 6h ago
Same here, plus if you’re traveling with extended family (like siblings’ families) the total price can become insane in a hotel. And feeding all of those people is cheaper if you have a normal sized kitchen.
I just wish more Airbnbs had really dark rooms with blackout curtains. Hotels normally have that covered
firesteelrain · 6h ago
Might try Embassy Suites. Front room can be closed off
satvikpendem · 6h ago
It has a kitchen, which comes in very handy when you want to save money and cook.
OptionOfT · 6h ago
This is my number 1 reason. Eating out is expensive, and it is very hard to do so healthy.
benjaminwootton · 2h ago
I also don’t feel great after eating out for 3 meals per day. That’s the mean reason we use AirBNB.
satvikpendem · 6h ago
Airbnbs with kitchens are especially useful in the US due to the cost of eating out, with tax and tip etc. In other countries I use them more for getting luxury places at a lower cost, such as in parts of Asia, where eating out is much cheaper.
tayo42 · 3h ago
All these years of airbnb and vacation rentals being popular and hotels still seem to not try to accommodate these needs
firesteelrain · 6h ago
VRBO was around before AirBNB and it’s much better
satvikpendem · 6h ago
Yeah it's pretty good as well, I found it to be more expensive with less selection though.
an0malous · 6h ago
It’s just the standard investor grift where initially Airbnb was cheaper and had higher quality options, then once they established a dominant market position they enshitified
massysett · 6h ago
Hotels have been disgusting for years. They weren’t great before Covid. After Covid hotel owners stopped cleaning during your stay. Trash piles up in my room, with guests leaving trash in the halls. Carpets quickly get nasty. Nobody cleaning up the common hallways.
An Airbnb isn’t cleaned during my stay either, but at least the trash can can hold a day’s worth of trash, and there’s a proper kitchen and more space.
If hotels brought back proper service I would prefer them.
s1artibartfast · 6h ago
I love ABNB, but I dont see it anywhere near the same market as a hotel.
I wouldnt use it on a work trip, but travel with my wife and friends.
Perks of ABNB- Private jacuzzi, functional kitchen for large group meals. Stay with friends and their kids under the same roof.
I can't gut a fish or leave gear on the porch at a hotel.
Beyond that, I value beauty and character, and find hotels devoid of both.
booking.com also offers apartments too, and has far better pay upon arrival and pay nothing right now features.
People say hotels are as cheap, but they never have the same amenities, and the location in town is often worse. An AirBnb with a kitchen is essentially $20-30 cheaper per day than a hotel without one. Add to that laundry, more privacy, and other perks and it's not really a fair comparison. It does seem like there are more hotel resellers and leasing companies using it as a stopgap between tenants, which I understand, but hate.
I get why they want to be an "everything app" (rich people have more money to spend on "experiences"), but other commenters are spot-on regarding the dangers of taking their eye off the ball. Seems like a better use of company attention would be to really boost and reward the genuine hosts that put their heart into it, and at least put in a modest amount of friction to slow down the corporate resellers with barebones apartments in half-remodeled buildings.
Having an actual kitchen when you travel with kids is great. Having actual separate bedrooms so we don't have to go to sleep at 8pm when the kids go to sleep is great. Being able to do laundry without tracking down a laundromat or pay exorbitant hotel prices is great. Having a living room or similar area with at least a few square metres of floor space where kids can sprawl is great.
The last thing I want to do when I'm pulling in after a long flight an hour past the kids' bedtime is to deal with potentially dealbreaking problems with the place. In a hotel, they generally have maintenance on staff and extra rooms to switch into in case of problems. Generally with Airbnb, the staff is 30 minutes away and is annoyed that you've called them. Most of the time, everything is fine, but there can be snafus with locks, plumbing, cleanliness, etc, and kids make these more complicated. This is all not to mention being asked to strip beds, take out trash, etc, after you've paid thousands of dollars, including cleaning fees for the place.
Just having a separate living room and bedroom in your hotel can be hundreds more per night.
Interconnecting rooms are rare, you can request it, and it’ll be subject to availability. So you can’t even guarantee you’ll have one.
I, like you, prefer the hotel offering. Messing around with hosts and their rules is not on my list of things I want to care about, the fact that there are hidden fees and stuff leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Hotels, I know the rules. Don't destroy or steal, make life easier for the maid: done.
With AirBNB, there's the cleaning fee, there's the self-replacement of items situation, there's the unknown state going in; and there's some faff about checking in.
However, the laundry fee's are definitely killer in hotels. I prefer to travel light and paying €8 for a pair of socks (or.. depending on the hotel manager PER SOCK) to get them washed is just painful. It's not just a high price tag at that point, it's borderline criminal markup.
I have also noticed that amenities such as Irons are less common in hotel rooms these days, which is annoying as I've started wearing shirts in my old age- worse still is the toilet situation. Modern hotels must think we're all voyeurs or something. The majority of hotels I've stayed at in the last 3 years I would not want to be with a child, frosted glass bathrooms, rarely a lock, sometimes it's just slatted wooden cabinet doors... idk, something wild is going on with hotel bathrooms man.
Hotels tend to be pretty consistently good when it is over a certain price point, and at any higher price point, all you get is better views/location (and may be some amenities such as gym or pool) - aka, quality caps out and just becomes expensive.
Airbnb prices are quite correlated to quality. High priced airbnb (for example, a holiday lodge) can be _very_ good for the price. But airbnb is a sort of buyers beware type deal.
I think what you mean is "chains" tend to be pretty consistent. Which, yeah, that's always been the main value prop of a chain. You go to McDonald's in Tunisia and you have a pretty good idea what you're going to get.
I mean, it's an adventure, and those can also go poorly, but our experiences have been just excellent. And at those bottom-of-the-barrel prices mentioned earlier.
Definitely not something that hotels offer.
I think this is a huge factor in why my family always camped when I was a kid.
And to be frank, I don't like being cooped up in a hotel either.
The problem is not much of the hotel/apartment but rather the platform. AirBnb manipulates search results, prices and UX to squeeze harder. It now wants to up sell "experiences" that it puts in your face every-time you open the app. It is just exhausting as the rest of everything on the internet that is taking the same path.
Hotels.com also cancelled a brilliant loyalty programme of buy 9 nights get the 10th free which was another motivation to look elsewhere.
Want hotel quality and safety with apartment perks? Just go to an apartment hotel! It costs more than a hotel/AirBnB but you're also not at the whims of random hit-or-miss listings and shady shit. And they clean your room if you want them to!
They're not nearly as common as Airbnb apartments in most countries. I also trust Airbnb listings and reviews more than what I find on most booking sites.
The experience is OUT THERE, not where you are staying.
So yea I’m looking for the cheapest place that meets the bar. Sometimes it’s Airbnb but usually it’s a hotel.
Most people just want somewhere to stay while they visit a city or relatives or an event.
Even if you want a kitchen many hotels offer some basic facilities.
In this way they are perfectly comparable.
I've been a digital nomad for the last 9 years. Airbnb is a huge reason why my experience has been so great. How else can I show up in a city in a new country , spend 5 minutes the day before I arrive, and end up with a nice furnished apartment in a great location for a week's stay?
The housing issue is more complex than just Airbnb / short-term housing as well: is there enough housing investment? what is the effect of international or corporate investment? are local regulations supporting or sabotaging the effort to build more housing? is there a large speculation market?
Until I had a bad experience, that turned horrible. I saw a side of the company that made me think "never again".
I rented a place from a "superhost" that looked very nice on paper. It was in fact very bad. Everything in the description was misleading, photos were doctored to look nice, "windows" opened to a wall on the next building two feet away, there was mold everywhere, the shower flowed into the bedroom, etc.
At this point it wasn't the end of the world; I stayed two nights and went home. Then I wrote a bad review. It was simply descriptive and contained no harsh language of any kind.
The review was immediately taken down; I asked why, and received a barrage of emails from Airbnb (some automated, some maybe not) saying that they were very sorry, they understood this wasn't the outcome I expected, but they couldn't publish it.
Turns out, Airbnb will go to extreme lengths to protect their hosts, because they are much more valuable to the company than one random customer.
But if the reviews are fake or filtered, then I can't trust the platform.
I went back to booking.com; they now have properties in addition to hotels, and are much more professional.
Everything from rats to exposed wiring next to a shower!
Review got removed. Full story here: https://pietersz.co.uk/2017/02/airbnb-block-bad-reviews
https://skift.com/2025/05/09/no-more-hidden-hotel-fees-new-f...
We only use such if there are no other options in given area or if we want food prepared (this quickly becomes another chore with small kids).
I've never seen a well rated airbnb place with many reviews being bad. They may not be stellar in some aspect, ie small maintenance may be lacking but otherwise having a full kitchen with wash machine is pretty amazing for any type of trip, and one has a wide variety of locations and prices. Also it allows you to experience the place a bit more, compared to hyper sterile and uniform hotel experiences.
Lets not forget airbnbs would never become a thing if they werent cheaper than hotels (or at least provided much better experience at similar price).
Doesn't really make a lot of sense to me to just shop on price and then compare the experience to booking a hotel room, it's totally different.
I think Airbnb will have a branding issue. By transitioning from rentals to offering a wide range of services, they might dilute their brand before people have the chance to fully embrace and experience the new offerings.
Perhaps they should reinvent themselves as a platform that manages travel and stays, emphasizing that their “airbnb certified experience” includes access to specific facilities and guarantees. This way, users can choose from other service providers in their marketplace with their own standards. That way, expanding to more services over time would seem like an organic expansion.
Essentially, Airbnb could transition from managing services to a marketplace model that also hosts managed services and other providers. However, by maintaining a focus on “stays” or “travels” and slowly adding more ancillary services would prevent dilution before their metamorphosis is complete.
I can't tell who owns air.com, but the website it hosts is a tiny landing page from someone who would obviously sell.
The rebranding will be met by a slew of astonished articles asking "they spent how much?" and almost as many apparently-thoughtful midwit counterpoints saying no, it looks obvious in hindsight, but it took real marketing genius to conceive of this in advance.
That was my preferred experience too - well maintained and lived in just enough to make sense. Some places do cheap out on "perks" that seem there only to boost themselves in rankings/filters, but otherwise been a pleasant experience.
Not to mention that hotel websites are typically easier to navigate and contain a lot less React-sludge that makes every click take forever to respond.
I'm glad I turned around and booked with a hotel. It was very personable, good value, and better than what I would've gotten for the same price on AirBnb for that city.
Yup my average airbnb experience in eg Spain is: dealing with an agent, asked to submit all my personal data to some random third party, all other communication done via WhatsApp, and often my number is given to third parties without my consent who spam me with things like offers of experiences/day trips etc
To some degree, I understand the businessification of rentals - it's uncomfortable for both parties if you're trying to get a grandma to meet you to exchange keys after a late flight. But also, that person-to-person charm is a big part of why people chose Airbnbs in the first place. If it's just an IKEA flip of an old apartment, why bother?
I've actually noticed that my taste in interior design has been impacted. The "pastel and sculpted veneer" aesthetic that took over Airbnb, "modern" coffee shops, and supposedly adult furniture brands like West Elm disgusts me now. I suspect it would have appealed to me if it hadn't been badly copied with shitty materials so many times. Now, I associate it with hollow experiences, poor craftsmanship, and attempts to get me to pay more for a "quality" I won't receive.
Of course there are people that still ignore this, but the government has started to crackdown on this a bit, for example some months ago they started removing key boxes on the walls in the street
I think airbnb is still the better option in many situations - such as when you are willing to pay a premium to be in nature or you going on vacation with 6+ people.
I don't really see how better tech would ever prevent this outcome. Perhaps this disappointing in terms of continual growth, but I think it was inevitable and still provides a good path for the company to be uniquely useful.
It was never meant to be. It definitely has been though. Lots of people making much more money renting out AirBnBs rather than using their property for long term leasing. Which has obviously compounded the housing issues most cities are currently experiencing.
That way was to skirt laws around obtaining hotel permits and zoning and paying all the relevant hotel taxes and business insurance.
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Seems more like Airbnb ran out of money to burn and hotels lifted their game.
This made me realize that their original strategy was to extract the promise from the fat long tail of their respective supply ("unique experience" for abnb, "relevant search results" for goog). But then the Septembers are apt to become eternal if you can't keep it at a level manageable by humans, like a dang-or-2
From TFA
>I want to be a luchador!” he tells me, then immediately regrets it.
(dang is probably quite great at minimizing regrets a la Jeff, the insta ones most of all)
>Leave it to the subconscious to highlight what matters.
Or run a hospitality business without doing any real hospitality.
Yes, a marketplace is a dream business from a profitability perspective, but it’s too easy to forget the marketplace is not the actual product that people come to the marketplace for.
It doesn’t matter if you have 5000 overpaid developers building the slickest software, the end product is not the Airbnb software, it’s the actual hospitality experience.
They wanted to disrupt a market, same as uber, and did this by circumventing laws and breaking everything.
There is a reason why we have zoning laws: To protect housing for people. AirBnB broke this. Took my city munich / germany years in curt to get the data from AirBnB.
While Covid, plenty of reports came up how suddenly good flats in good locations became available again for renting to humans.
My mother uses flats for her retirement (she is not employed by a company and therefore doesn't get benefits) and she always tries to keep the rent low. Just that someone tried to AirBnB HER flat for more money than the rent.
Uber, just in case you are not aware of, takes the cake from taxi companies. Taxis who are there even if uber is not available. The only problem with taxis i have: They fight accepting credit cards still today. "Oh credit card? Mh were do you want to go?" yeah fu...
Online reviews are totally broken. I recently spent a week at an Airbnb in the Gold Coast, Australia. The property was rated 5* but was tired and worn. The photos must have been 5 years old before a soul set foot in the place.
I rated it 3*. Shortly after, I got a phone call from the owner. He had my number because I'd had to call him because one of the two toilets in a five-bedroom 14-guest 'villa' was blocked. As in, overflowing with fecal matter blocked.
He essentially tried to bribe me to raise my review. I refused. The house is currently listed as 4.9* with those same photos. A preposterous exaggeration of its quality.
Hours later they filed fake complaint to Airbnb that I rated poorly as I wanted late checkout and asked money to remove review. Airbnb removed my review post that. I had a flight to catch so I couldn’t checkout late anyway. I shared even flight details with Airbnb but they didn’t reinstate review and added a strike to my account. I expect host did this previously as well to improve their rating.
Wouldn't go back anyway.
The last time I ever directly gave Airbnb money the host accused my female work colleague of blocking the toilet with menstrual products and charged us 400CAD for a plumber to "fix" it. My colleague was incensed -- she angrily stated that the chronology was wrong, demonstrated that no aforesaid items were in her possession, but the host didn't believe it. We ended up with my card being billed before claiming successfully on travel insurance. I can't believe that happened in Toronto -- Canada is one of the nicest places on the planet -- but (US) Airbnb support took the hosts side instantly and wouldn't budge. We had a shitty toilet for a week!
The last time I stayed in one was in a urine soaked crash pad with cardboard covering the broken windows in Montréal. We spent five hours there around the unsafe electrical unit before they did actually sort something else out. The host didn't reply to emails and it later turned out had been arrested, explaining both his silence and the less than salubrious people we'd previously been sharing with.
I deleted my account and refuse to go in airbnbs now. Booking.com is far from brilliant but at least it's scatologically free so far...
I effectively stopped using Airbnb, both due to prices that are approaching or more expensive than hotels, but also because of this shift of hosts to only caring about reviews and focusing on making a steady stream of new people checking in, without really doing any effort of making someone return. As long as the review scores are fine, all is good.
The original idea of Airbnb is long gone, and I experienced more than once someone writing on Airbnb, then another person sending a message with check in instructions. It is a business - nothing wrong with that in general, but it is disguised as people renting their spare rooms, which is rarely the case now.
A friend of mine had the same bribe experience (Airbnb, Israel) with a terrible accommodation (moldy, dirty etc).
In hindsight, why wouldn't they? Even if their reviews tank they can just register again with different credentials.
What services like Airbnb would need would be direct partners actually testing the listings in person. But that costs money and requires hiring staff, which is antithetical to the business model of "gig economy" apps which exist in order to avoid the overhead of running a real company in that industry by instead offloading all the work to "gig workers" as independent contractors.
My GF loves it though and has a bigger preference of staying somewhere more homely as opposed to a hotel. Truth be told she has found a couple of great places...
I've seen Airbnb slowly get banned in many places I've visited over the last 5-6 years. Hong Kong. Banned and heavily restricted. Singapore. Same. Saigon. Same. All of China. Same. Taipei. Same.
I sold all my Airbnb stocks. I couldn't be wrong and maybe they'll find a way but it seems like the world wants less and less Airbnb and not more.
People listing mcmansions they cant sell in a state of disrepair, lies about amenities and internet. Had to relocate several people repeatedly in the middle of the pandemic lockdown and it took months for the refunds to process.
Had another host try to pressure me into a cash deal and then claim damages to extract fees when I turned it down. After supplying their text messages and proof that the place was fine I had to wait 18 months for a refund and was locked out of renting a safer place.
I can't imagine trusting them for anything else. I now exclusively use craigslist and other sites that allow you to directly deal with property owners and have been really impressed.
The bit that I should have expected but didn't was how strongly they side with the hosts in case of disputes. In hindsight, of course they do; the hosts are their money makers, while I'm booking them only a few times a year.
I stopped using Airbnb and closed my account. Hotels are fine, and never had any major issues.
So apparently you have found the ~10% or so of craigslist short term rental listings that aren't outright scams?
You rent vacation rentals on Craigslist? That's the first I have heard of this even being a thing.
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The CEO knows exactly what the problem is because he spells it out in the article...
> Chesky explains that historically, people used Airbnb only once or twice a year, so its design had to be exceptionally simple.
It's true! I've probably averaged no more than 1-2 AirBnB stays per year for a lot of years. But the average host is probably handling 50+ guests per year. That means the host is the AirBnB customer, not me. I'm about as important to them as their cleaning service. The hosts and the execs are all just trying to make some money, and my dumb ass is in their way asking for extra towels and late checkout. Hotels are essentially just as hostile, except they are good at it. And since the cost savings have essentially disappeared I'm inclined to go with the pros and only look at AirBnB when the location or context give me some reason to choose the complicated option.
Airbnb complementary destroyed some great places and rural cities around the world, because of them:
- Food/Restaurant prices go up
- Food/Restaurant quality goes down
- Real estate price goes up
- Dirtiness goes up
- Bugs and other animals thrive
- Quality of shops goes down, everything is disposable
- Quality of building/materials goes down, why install a wooden window if it's for an airbnb?
You could argue that it's not because of Airbnb but because of tourism, but I don't think so, Hotels are heavily regulated, they have strict cleaning rules, max occupancy and are built to host a certain amount of people, mass tourism wouldn't be possible without Airbnb.
Have you not travelled before Airbnb is a thing in a place? There were always similar alternatives?
The blame game with Airbnb is the most ridiculous thing ever.
Completely unfounded to try to blame so many things such as the housing crisis. Oh, that is just Airbnb. Just ignore that you still have problems due to taxes, government policies in places where there's virtually no Airbnb offera.
Hotels being regulated generally means nothing in places where there's a lot of tourism because you still get extremely poor services and experiences at times and Airbnb and other similar BnB services (this is not new, come on, is everyone <30 years old?) have provided much needed competition improving quality, which has otherwise been going downward steadily (cleaning, breakfast, bathrooms, etc).
You seem to dislike supply so youd problably want to ban low cost airlines so that less of the "rubble/mass tourists" would travel, right?
I reserved an AirBnB months ahead of time to see the eclipse in Dallas last year, and the host canceled it the day before I was to arrive, with no communication (even when I tried to message them). I got a refund, but that's pretty cold comfort. Without any disincentive to do this, it's pretty easy for hosts to screw people over.
I mostly stopped using Airbnb. The same listings often appear in other sites too and those usually have less bad UX for search and booking.
>It destroys the social fabric by injecting a rotation of strangers into the community.
Absolutely this. Literally half on my former neighborhood was AirBNBs, mostly small-time couples (1 or 2 properties) but also mega-owners (dozens).
During my few years on the side of Lookout Mountain (a relatively nice part of the city), we had several small-time police altercations (typically younger folks with drugs/alcohol), but one huge event stands out in particular: a D-list soundcloud rapper concluded a raging party by attempting to intentionally burn the structure down [paid on a stolen credit card]. The only reason his group was caught: they posted TikTok footage of "they new crib," which included them trashing the place — it only didn't become a structure fire because we heard the smoke alarms early!
I'm not sure what concessions AirBNB gave the homeowner, but very quickly the house was sold (and is again for sale).
My brother lives nearby, and literally none [¡ZERO!] of his neighboring houses house neighbors. You get to the point that you just ignore everybody in the neighborhood (this constant stream of changing faces) and mumble bitterly to yourself when mega-AirBNB-owner purchases his tenth home/hotel.
Isn't this why cities initially created zoning?!
----
Fortunately for me, I moved to a less-desirable part of town which houses zero AirBNBs (and lots of wonderful working-class neighbors).
I am not a particular fan of Airbnb--nobody is a fan of real estate agents, they are intermediaries that provide a service, facilitate discovery, etc.--but I am currently staying in an apartment I booked on Airbnb, and I am spending $2k a month for it. Decent space, a kitchen I can use, space for my clothes, a washing machine, a big fridge. If I had to book a hotel room, I would spend at least $8k a month for it.
“Book a hotel room” sounds like when a former university instructor told a student to "just install Linux" when they had some authorization issues on their Windows computer. The use cases are different.
Quote
“I don’t know if I want to call it a social network, because of the stigma associated with it,” says Ari Balogh, Airbnb’s CTO. So they employ a fuzzier term. “We think of it as a connection platform,” he says. “You’re going to see us build a lot more stuff on top of it, although we’re not an advertising system, thank goodness.” (My own observation is that any for-profit company that can host advertising will, but whatever.)
End quote
Launching a communications tool in 2025 that isn't one of the two overly trod spaces (the advertising-hyperengagement loop of instagram, etc. or the people-you-already-know of whatsapp) is a genuine moonshot in a way that "what if airbnb but for manicures" isn't, and it's something that an incumbent like Airbnb could do that would be impractical for anyone else.
One luggage, no permanent home, been fifteen years.
I used to use AirBnB all the time.
They gradually become more and more, well, "large company".
I used to still look at AirBnB (until very recently, when one of the founders joined DOGE), but I saw that their continually rose over time, and became like 10% or 15%, and there's in many places no meaningful listings (which is due to State bans).
I was in Paris last couple of months. There was nothing viable on AirBnB, unless you wanted to pay several thousand a month. There was one what I concluded was a scam, a very dodgy letting agency, who had lots of apartments, all with no ratings, but very bad reviews on-line. I think they were continually deleting and remaking their lets on AirBnB, to get rid of negative reviews.
AirBnB itself (and here we see "large company") became unreliable as a service, in that I never knew, when I came to us it, if log-in would still work.
I recall the first time log-in failed for no obvious reason, and the and the only option was "email support and we'll contact you in a few days" - and I was looking to move in about two weeks time, and had of course no reason to have confidence in the boilerplate estimate of "few days".
After that, I put up my own HTTPS proxy, which I now use whenever I use AirBnB, to avoid AirBnB when I log in suspending my account, which I then have to have support fix, which of course means the account cannot be used until support get back to me, and assuming they actually do unblock the account, and given how variable support is, this is not a given.
This is not the customer experience you were looking for.
I also recall one episode about ten years ago where I had to phone support. It was a three hour long screaming nightmare of hell and madness.
So - fees are now rather high, support don't bother - anything but support - I had to backdoor my own net traffic to use the service, no viable apartments in most locations.
It was great, but now it's really not.
Then, recently, one of the founders (his role now is only on the board) came out as pro-MAGA and joined DOGE, and that was the end of AirBnB for me.
The one and critical thing AirBnB got right was building into their platform the expectation owners would offer discounts for stays over a week, or over a month.
I don't see this on other platforms, and it makes pricing on other platforms crazy. If I come and stay for three months, I expect a discount for giving full occupancy over that time. If you don't offer that, you're off the menu.
They’re kind of like Uber, in that way. But where Uber has become faceless and quiet, Airbnb wants to be a leader, and I respect that. Certainly there’s lots of cool things that _could_ happen with experiences, and I hope they do.
Airbnb has definitely gone the opposite way. My first Airbnb experience involved getting woken up by the daughter of the family that lived downstairs asking me if I wanted breakfast for 5€. I was getting whole apartments for 30€/night. Now it’s just as expensive as regular hotels, half of them expect you to wash all of the linen before you leave, and it’s totally unpredictable what you’re going to get. I just book with Hilton instead. There’s free bottled water and snacks waiting for me when I get there, it’s a pretty consistent experience, and free good breakfast at most of them.
The AirBnb may be illegal, there is no consistency with how you get in and you can’t even find out the address until after you reserve. Hidden fees, weird policies, you never know what you are going to get or have any recourse if they cancel on you
And also did you have a problem with AirBnB based on skin color?
Manage rides -> manage deliveries -> manage booking with places that are already in network -> expand bookings from restaurants to other services -> expand bookings to hotels -> vacation homes.
But honestly going the other way around isn’t that crazy.
The PR pack contain actual ad for the company announcing API platform etc. this was submitted to HN at the same time by a few different people.
Most press just replicate whatever is in a press release from a company but some, better, publishers use it to write an article.
With personal services, they're risking having that problem at a lot bigger scale: are you willing to pay your barber or masseuse 18% extra to cover Airbnb's commission? I suspect a lot of people would use Airbnb to find a reputable provider, and then make contact off-platform.
Can AirBnB find a second niche they can start to take over?
The "loss leader" concept is Business 101, and Groupon was presented to customers as a gallery of loss leaders they can shop.
Actually delivering a good loss leader is hard. Design the offer wrong, and people don't attach properly-- they either don't load up their cart with additional, higher-margin items, or they don't return for future full-price services. I suspect Groupon didn't help-- if they provided consulting, it was probably to steer the merchants to give the store away to make Groupon look compelling regardless of bankrupting the merchant.
Over time, a lot of industries pulled away, either because they personally ran the numbers or simply saw their peers trying it and losing their shirt. The offers eventually retreated to what could survive in the cost structure: stuff like classes (near-zero marginal cost per attendee) rather than food or personal services with significant cost of goods or labour.
On two separate occasions this year I've had issues with them.
First, my wife had booked a lodge in the lakes with lots of outdoor space for us to go with the kids and hopefully see the stars, and give them room to roam outdoors; for months our children had been looking forward to it, and a mere 4 days before, the host contacted us saying they'd have to cancel because the power was out; clearly bullshit, no apology, they'd obviously gotten a better price elsewhere because it just happened the weather was looking better than expected that weekend; and I don't see how it would take 4 days to get the power back on; it wasn't remote.
On a separate occasion, 2 friends and I had booked an AirBnB in Wales to attend a wedding together in the area, the host cancelled days later because they'd accidentally double booked; we booked another, they cancelled, no excuse; half a dozen cancellations later, we currently have a booking, and we'll find out in a couple of weeks how that goes.
I don't have the time or the patience for this kind of game-playing bullshit from hosts, and I certainly don't like disappointing my children; I would choose a hotel at a higher cost but they're not always able to provide the experience you're aiming for; it's not always just a room to stay in.
We've used AirBnB in other parts of the world without issues, but we'd usually book those for a few days into a trip, and start with a hotel, so you're not arriving somewhere and immediately have problems when something goes wrong.
One country in particular; my wife and I travelled with two friends who were travelling to arrange their wedding in said (European) country, booked two double rooms, we arrive and we knock at the address we're given, since we've been given no further details; the "host" says to come with him; first tries to put us all up in a box room in some lady's house, with two bunk beds with an adjacent toilet that was flooded and pouring in to the room; when we decline, he takes us to another place where an old man was looking to rent a room, he seemed like a nice man, but my wife was uncomfortable because his living area had a window into the shared shower room, no thanks; the old man was quite upset that we'd declined, he probably needed the money and we felt a little guilty about that; after a couple more examples of this wandering around the town with this guy, it had become apparent, he was taking bookings for rooms that didn't exist and trying to put people up in random peoples homes; I suspect he also wasn't paying them near what he was taking for these bookings.
It was a disgrace, and when we became irritated after so much time wondering around with our cases in the heat we suggested we'll book rooms at the Hilton we had passed while wandering and deal with AirBnB after our break, he managed to find us something suitable; both "almost" to the standard we had booked, and both places he had the keys to in his pocket.
We reported it to AirBnB, but they of course did nothing.
They are bringing more "amateur professionals" along with the hosts by adding all those services. this is a big, unruly crowd of half-assed servicepeople
Are they abandoning NYC as a market since rentals are restricted there, or did they just not put enough effort into recruiting before launch?
Only time it makes sense is if you're traveling with a large group of people
The reason I should have uninstalled it much longer is because it's toxic for rent prices. I now pay more for hotels and sleep well.
I got rid of Uber for the same reason.
The worst part is we had their support on the line for hours. And he told that they didn't even have a way to escalate technical issues. His job was to stall on the phone and be yelled at until hosts gave up.
Unfortunately it's just the latest example of awful experiences with the company. As a host you are liable for everything. The only way to get them to hold up their end of the bargain is small claims court. They collect their fees for doing nearly nothing for either party.
You will not find a way to contact any individual at Airbnb. It's an impressively seamless anti-human design. They have built a wall and kicked down the ladder.
Owner of the unit did nothing and as did AirBnB.
Luckily it was only a few nights a year - there's no mechanism to eject a guest like this. They create new accounts if they are banned from the platform.
Airbnb doesn't give a shit about you (and frankly, neither do the cops), but the cops and Airbnb don't want to tussle with one another.
> Despite never meeting Jobs, “I feel like I know him deeply, professionally, in a way that few people ever did
As opposed to all the people that did actually met him, or worked for him?
This is such a painfully gushing puff piece and this sentence is peak cringe that just makes the man sound mentally ill.
It's always weird and I have no clue why people get that mindset.
- Paginated results that reset and call an API for new results when the map is moved (even to a subset of the initial call such as in a zoom).
- Inability to change pagination size.
- Inability to hide listings you aren't interested in.
- Map only displaying listings on the current page, which change dramatically per page.
- Page changes (the thing you do more of than comparing options), take way too long.
Maybe it's a real-estate website related issue as the two main property sites in Australia (Domain and RealEstate) as also garbage. I have a feeling it's also designed this way to prevent scraping.
Can someone at AirBnB please sort these basic QoL things out.
As of slowness, I suspect they don't have a DC an Australia, so your packets need to travel across Pacific and back.
I also suspect that their web site already brings enough customers, and a serious rework to make it more usable won't bring in many more customers, and any more money. Investing in that is likely a poor business decision. I bet their resources mostly go to protection from fraud, legal battles, and other non-engineering concerns.
I imagine significantly reducing database calls and blob downloads due to short-sighted pagination behaviour would result in significant cost saving, reduce bounce rate and increase conversions.
- Impossible to filter / search by rating, which is a must-have if I am going to travel, no way I am risking staying at a first-time host, a lot of horror stories from forgetting bedsheets to outright scams.
- There is no way to see the precise location, which is understandable for safety in some places (mostly listings in areas with "single-family" similar neighborhoods, like Orlando suburbs, you don't want to advertise your home as "available"). But, in some cities, for example, in Rio, a large radius can make you uncertain if the apartment listing is beachside or in the favela's entrance.
with some chain hotel at least i know what to relatively expect in terms of service and amenities and have someone to complain to to make it right.
AirBnB provides an amazing service, the ability to painlessly book hotels that feel like houses.
I guarantee you they are not going to be the next Apple or Microsoft, they're instead just going to dilute the value of their core business chasing things that aren't going to work, instead of focusing on their core service, and then in so many years time they will become irrelevant rather than inevitable.
The path to success is made by many failures; and when you get to success, you can't take the success, you can't be 'done', you need more success. It's a long form of chasing the next dopamine rush.
He probably hasn't felt more alive than the week he threw everything in the blender. It's a mix of issues that starts with childhood and leads to a life of addiction for more.
On the cover of a magazine, it's an inspiring story, but deep down it's a sad human trait.
All power to him though, it sure makes for interesting stories.
Airbnb is still a great option if the location is under served by normal hotels, or if you are traveling with families so you want to have a kitchen/amenities. But otherwise I almost exclusively book hotels now.
There used to be very few hotels with kitchenettes, any space really beside just a bed.
There's way more suite and kitchenette options.
Lots of people travel for longer than just a night or two, or to travel beyond just business, where you might want to be able to actually enjoy being in your private space.
Hotels weren't really designed for this.
They wanted you to never be in your room, and instead upselling you at the bar.
Now, you can pretty easily find relatively affordable hotels that have many different types of rooms layouts for all different purposes.
Now, that defeats a lot of the point in having an AirBNB.
As you said, AirBNB is really only good if you're traveling somewhere with lousy hotel options, you're going to be staying somewhere for a long time, or traveling in a huge group, or you want to host a rager party or something...
Any data to back it up, please?
The narrative is always that "it's worse and making things worse" and gets blamed for everything such as the housing crisis which is insane but it's been an awesome asset to humanity. Not just Airbnb but other similar search lodging offerings.
And Uber did the same thing for taxis. Now Uber's ridiculously expensive and taxis are often a better option.
There's an incentive by many to just trash these competition apps and services but they've been a net good.
Perhaps someone here on HN will read this here, make an app out of it, get funding and set up such a thing in the US.
As soon as you go to two rooms, airbnb gets more appealing fast.
It’s also great where there are either no hotels, or the only options are motels, if you want somewhere with a kitchen and such.
Good for destination-type getaways where the point is to mostly hang out at the airbnb. Hotels suck for that. Even the nicer suite-type ones mostly do.
Over 10 years ago I rented a folding couch right off of Pearl ST. Boulder, CO.
I stayed in the living room of someones 1 bedroom apartment for $300 a night instead of 1k+ a night for the equivalent at what amounted to a travel lodge motel. The prices there were out of control, no inventory, just awful.
There are "plausible deniability" cartels everywhere, it's and it's always nice to see their grip on a region drop.
Source: Have hosted couchsurfers very long ago
Safe place to stash your luggage is another matter, there's a dozen apps that cater to this need now too so if you are sleeping in the bus station at least you can put your baggage behind a locked door
Before someone declared a need for buggy and unreliable locker apps, for decades prior you could deposit something called a "coin" into a slot which would allow you remove an equally archaic object called a "key" from the lock, which you would deposit in your pocket and be on your merry way.
Back in the '90s, sure, but then some people flew a plane into a tower block and apparently this meant we need to pay $20 for some minimum wage dude to put our bags on a shelf that's only open 9-5 instead.
Vienna Austria has a great set of lockers at their central station, I think I paid 3 or 4 euro for 12 hours for a locker. Venice too, but I did not anticipate that Venice has nowhere to lock up a bicycle, so I ended up paying 18 euro to store my "oversize luggage" for the day.
All in all I found European train stations to have better accommodations than American (makes sense because people actually use them everyday, 100+ trains a day in Berlin vs a place like Cincinnati with 2 trains a day)
Bilbao Spain I was glad to find a convenience store that was on the apps but also just accepted 5 euro to take my bags into their store room a few hours. I bet most hotel receptions would make that deal with you too.
Nador, Morocco I could not find anyone to take my luggage, the train station attendant told me to try the bus station, but the bus station attendant refused without my having a bus ticket, "even with cash?" "Even with cash"
They chose to stick experiences and services as a root choice in the mobile app, not something that is attached to a booking or stay you already have. While I expect the major use case to be using these new services during a stay, the app design shows they are paving a future where you take some of what you loved about your airbnb stay back home with you.
The future of Airbnb was and always will be a place to book stays in someone's home. These other things they are doing are a bad joke that will at best waste money for no gain, and at worst will cause their actual business to suffer. Trying to be all things to all people is idiocy, stick to what you're good at.
Dodging regulation and taxes was Airbnb's biggest competitive advantage.
Regulatory entrepreneurship only works long-term if you can continue to dodge, or change, the law (either statutes or case law.)
We will see what happens with all of the AI companies who claim fair use.
Greed. Founders and employees who cannot understand the value of a sustainable business that does one thing well and keeps people employed. We shouldn't seek to grow indefinitely, we should seek to reach comfortable levels of success and then focus our efforts on rewarding the people who are clients and employees maximally.
> It is also revitalizing an unsuccessful experiment the company began in 2016: offering bespoke local activities, or what it calls “experiences.” The next stage, launch date unspecified, involves making your profile on Airbnb so robust that it’s “almost like a passport,” as Chesky puts it
> After that comes a deep immersion into AI: Inspired by his relationship with Altman, Chesky hopes to build the ultimate agent, a super-concierge who starts off handling customer service and eventually knows you well enough to plan your travel and maybe the rest of your life.
That kind of makes sense to me - Airbnb must have learned to deal with trust/safety/reputation issues better than basically any other consumer app based company (except maybe Uber/Lyft)
Looking at incumbents:
Tour booking - TripAdvisor and Viator, not enough network effect
Home services - Angie's List and Thumbtack, not enough network effect
Events and concerts - Ticketmaster, enough said
Classified ads - Facebook Marketplace, enough said
Gym and fitness - Classpass, which I think is pretty good actually, but definitely going to be acquired or copied by Big Tech
Volunteer event hosting - Meetup, anyone under 40 even remember that?
Not at all. Basically all reviews on Airbnb are positive bc of the threat of retaliation. Your reviews are like your social credit score, not worth threatening to post a negative but honest review.
Give someone three stars; which is “okay” (airbnbs own language) and you’re forced into specifying why a review (or part of a review) got three stars. The canned reasons are pretty negative (“felt unsafe”, etc). The “write in your own reason” option is limited to 50 characters.
So you’re incentivized to select 4 or 5 stars which allows you to click through the review without any other entry requirements.
I only give truthful reviews and I’ve only had three cases (out of ~70 stays) where the host was an asshat in response.
Paypals revenues have been growing for ever. They basically do just one thing. But since the market in that one thing has a limit. The market can only price in a certain amount so the stock never grows.
So they look for growth else where
Additionally there’s a creep factor in the number of cameras on the property. Hotels have lots of cameras but you don’t get the same sense that you’re being policed. I realize some of this is necessary but it can still be off-putting; usually everyone in the rental comments on the cameras.
Airbnb could normalize the value by enforcing standards and capping certain unreasonable charges in particular cleaning fees. A uniform cancellation policy would also help.
Additionally there are no rewards for booking Airbnb and no perks at all for repeat customers.
I’ve moved from Airbnb to Marriot and I get 4pm late check out, upgrades to suites, free breakfast, priority booking etc… and I don’t have to take the garbage out, bundle up sheets, do the dishes, etc…
I'm not gonna leave a mixed or negative review because snitches get stitches and I can't imagine anyone else reviewing has any less pathological incentives.
It's now widely understood that online reviews can have a large impact on the success of a small business.
- What rating do you leave if you have a disappointing service from a really kind proprietor (like if the best humans make you the worst food)?
- Are we entering a world where there will be ramifications for the reviews you give? Will a restaurant be less likely to seat you if you left a middling review? As more places require you to identify with a phone number before you can be seated, will you receive worse service if you left a disappointing review or tip? It feels like reputation is about to flow in both directions.
- How do you avoid rating inflation when people who have bad experiences are reluctant to write about them?
And there are a bunch of little bugs in the current rating ecosystem:
- Culture impacts a rating. Americans are conditioned to start from 5 and deduct stars, which makes it harder to identify truly great places. Contrast this with Japan, where 3.5 stars is a really good rating, because Japanese people start from the median.
- If a place has thousands of reviews and a really high score, they're probably bribing people to rate them.
- How do you protect against spam? That includes reviews being bought from call centers, but also shitposts from people who don't like that something exists, or the way its staff behaves outside work.
- If people who eat fast food like a fast food place, it could have a better rating than an objectively better place that caters to more discerning clientele. How do you communicate that the people leaving reviews are/aren't representative of your tastes?
And as you alluded to, writing reviews (and HN comments) takes time that would often be better spent doing other things. What incentives do people have to take the time to leave a useful review? Can we find a way to make the process less burdensome?
Source: look at online reviews of literally anything
i think on Google Maps they can't rate you back (maybe on Booking too?), so depends on the service. I don't review much anyway, but about a couple of times a year I run into a pretty amazing place that I can't help but compliment, and once in a blue moon a really crappy place that really upsets me so I feel like sharing that too. I see absolutely nothing pathological about that.
When I do I shut my mouth, lest it be overrun by influencers, content creators or other undesirables.
Oh, I thought they did a double unlock. I.e. waiting for both reviews to be finished before publishing either.
Our place is all five star reviews and there is very little benefit for further five star reviews. So it's kind of all risk for us at this point when someone does review.
Reviews should have an expiration date, because places age and wear out; I'm not interested in learning about the experience of someone from five years ago, I'd like to know how it was last week.
i don't think so. I've seen reviews from hosts that i haven't reviewed.
https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/13
yea i usually refrain from bad reviews because i might want to go stay with them in future.
Hey, that sounds like AmEx Concierge.
Airbnb had novelty, inventory, and savings as its special sauce.
Nowadays we all know what a sub-par, overpriced Airbnb is like and it’s worse than a hotel because it’s usually far more inconvenient.
So we’re back to a hotel like experienced as the desire: convenience, available, and competitively priced.
AirBnB also provides extra capacity when a city or town gets overcrowded due to an event (matches, concerts, convents, etc). Building a proper hotel is much more capital intensive than converting a house or an apartment into an AirBnB place, and back into a normal long-term rent unit, or your own abode, when needed.
Vacation rental fulfil a niche that hotels do not, and I don't understand people who view them as substitutes. The fewer people use them the better. More for me and at better prices.
That said, Im probably not the median consumer. When I vacation, hotels cover almost none of my needs.
Im looking for a private beachfront Jacuzzi, hobbit hut in the forest, or someplace to party with family and kids.
I cant imagine using one as a hotel substitute.
Not even Uber wants to be the Uber of Whatever anymore
For an actual thought… I absolutely love that the era of free money is on pause!
Even more troubling are the widespread privacy violations. Thousands of guests have reported hidden cameras in their rentals -- some even found in bedrooms and bathrooms. Airbnb didn't ban indoor cameras until March 2024, after more than a decade of complaints and several high-profile criminal cases. Combined with fake photos, misleading descriptions, and little accountability for bad hosts, it's clear the trust that once defined the platform has eroded. Airbnb didn't just lose its shine -- it actively neglected the safety and transparency that made it appealing in the first place.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/nationwide-fake-host-scam-on...
https://img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/BB1n...
Pretty sure the only price you can see now is the total price.
I was looking a couple weeks ago and got annoyed that I couldn't find nightly price or how it breaks down
Note they have a fucking ridiculous interview process of at least _6 rounds_. Absolutely bonkers.
I was tempted to go for it but fortunately have many other companies in my pipeline with much saner interview processes.
Good luck to whoever gets those positions. Seems they pay quite well, but the question is whether ABB push to expand will pay off and become self sustaining.
You can build new houses. But if locals are pushed miles away from town, the town dies. A new town is formed. And if that new town gets the slightest bit of popularity on social media, Airbnb swoops in to suck the blood out of it.
It's absolutely killing communities with incomes below the US average.
Things have mostly settled down, but suddenly taking a lot of housing off the market meant real supply shocks even if there was plenty of land available for development.
https://www.redrocknews.com/2025/02/28/interactive-map-of-se...
As a simple example, in Austin TX, Inside AirBnB tracks over 15000 short term rentals, which would be closer to 5% of housing stock.
And the "only a small percentage of housing is AirBNBs" is a poor argument anyway, because home prices are set at the margins, and a relatively small reduction in housing supply in a constrained market can have a significant effect on price. Plus, for people that rent out a room, in can essentially have the effect of increasing the amount they are willing to pay ("I could normally not afford this apartment, but I could if I rent out a room on AirBnB"), which also increases prices.
More importantly, though, people have actually done studies on the effect of AirBnBs on prices, and found they have a positive (i.e. housing gets more expensive) effect on rents and home prices. One example: https://marketing.wharton.upenn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/...
IMO it's meaningless to cite this 0.1% non-sense, because nobody will rent an AirBnB on the outskirts of huge cities far from tourist hotspots, so whoever comes up with these numbers, they probably try smearing the data by selecting an unreasonably wide area for comparison
I understand your point if all you're looking for is somewhere to sleep that's clean and comfy.
I just wish more Airbnbs had really dark rooms with blackout curtains. Hotels normally have that covered
An Airbnb isn’t cleaned during my stay either, but at least the trash can can hold a day’s worth of trash, and there’s a proper kitchen and more space.
If hotels brought back proper service I would prefer them.
Perks of ABNB- Private jacuzzi, functional kitchen for large group meals. Stay with friends and their kids under the same roof.
I can't gut a fish or leave gear on the porch at a hotel.
Beyond that, I value beauty and character, and find hotels devoid of both.