- Airbnb stock tumbled 14% in one day after the company predicted slowing demand.
- Some former Airbnb diehards say they now prefer the consistency of hotels.
- Airbnb said it might increase travelers’ ability to book hotel rooms through Airbnb.
Sounds great.
Allow Airbnb to return to it’s roots:
Small time short term rentals used when the owner is away. And for remote locations where no hotel exists.
Yeah, it was great to stay in a million dollar house on the top of a mountain next to a state park for a weekend, but I choose a hotel when I’m just going to a city for something.
I want to slightly hijack your comment to say how innovative lots of these services were when they showed up and how they all ultimately managed to become a corporate machine crapping on both customers and intermediaries.
I mean that, when they arrived, Uber, AirBnB, Glovo/Deliveroo/Just Eat/DoorDash all brought something new and potentially useful and parallel to existing structures (involving regular people on the ground which, theoretically, can make an extra buck), but then… They all went down the toilet (I suppose since they were all losing money at the beginning to establish themselves, they had to find some way to make money, but they all irreparably chose enshittifcation)
I’m not paying more money to get no-breakfast, and have to do chores, and have a 15% chance of crazy owner, and a non-zero chance of it being a scam, and have AirBNB corporate give me the run around.
my best stays have been apartments… my worst stays have been in apartments.
you kinda dont know wtf you are going to get, especially on airbnb where the reviews are bs folksiness “the host is amazing, thank you so much” garbage. reviews on booking.com are much more reliable and brutally honest.
hotels maybe meh, but they are far more reliable and you have a better idea of what you are getting. a “serviced apartment” is ideal, but often $$$.
i very much understand that airbnb’s sterilise communities and drive up rents. taxing the fuck out of them would remove a lot of the slum lord garbage from the market but keep the option there for ppl really want that.
Also generally with hotels, especially chains, you can actually talk to people to get issues sorted or at least get refunds etc a bell of a lot easier than just chatting with someone overseas through an app.
It’s as if people don’t want to pay to be personal maids of hosts.
A decade ago I loved Airbnb. Fly to a major city, get to stay in someone’s condor or home for half the price of a hotel. Left your bowl out on the counter? No problem. Didn’t take out the trash? Why would you, the host does that. Didn’t make your bed and rearrange the pillows on the couch back to how they were before you arrived? That’s cool. Now you are looking at staying in a suburb of Austin for 2x the price of a hotel plus, you need to spend hours when you are trying to leave, cleaning up and you are going to be charged $300 anyway for a “cleaning fee” even though none of the linens smelled fresh when you arrived. The only reason I’ve used Airbnb in the past couple of years is because A) there was literally no other option for where we were vacationing or B) Our dog is traveling with us and we couldn’t find a hotel that will accommodate her.
Airbnb was great when it all began, but now it’s overrun by corporate vultures that buy up housing and turn it into illicit hotels. Not to even mention, it costs about the same as a hotel these days and I’ve never stayed in a hotel that gives you a chore list.
Like every other company lol. I remember when Uber and Lyft were so much cheaper, too. It’s why I don’t want gamepass to take over all gaming, or streaming to take over all physical video media. It always starts out nice, but eventually…
THANK YOU for seeing the writing on the wall. I keep reminding people of this.
Gamepass is unbeatable value. But if you give it market share you better believe after they jack the price a few more times, games willvstop providing a disc at all and just be “Gamepass exclusive” in the sense youvcan only subscribe to it, not buy it.
We are already here, for a decade now, The Crew players can’t play their game anymore, and they paid for it.
True. Gamepass just takes that much further I think. Gasoline on the fire so to speak.
AirBnB is a great idea that turned to shit because of greed.
Someone wants a platform to rent out…
- Their cottage when they’re not using it or lending it to family or friends
- Their home while they’re away on vacation
- A room in their home to run as a Bed-N-Breakfast
Great. Marvelous, even.
But then people realized that they could make more money from a property by AirBnBing it out rather than renting it out. So people start kicking out tenants and buying up properties to turn housing into AirBnBs, and often in areas that were already experiencing cost-of-living issues for locals.
From there, I’m guessing that AirBnB started trying to take a bigger slice of the pie, and “Hosts” started passing on the costs to “Guests”. At the same time, “Hosts” wanted more money with less work, so “Guests” started getting cleaning lists so the “Hosts” wouldn’t have to pay cleaners – just someone to come by and make sure everything was done, and call a cleaner if it wasn’t (and charge the “Guest” for it).
Enshittification hit AirBnB hard…and in turn, living within driving distance of anywhere tourists would want to be also got enshittified.
That describes my family. We’ve done Airbnb and VRBO, but now pretty much stick to hotels. You know what you’re getting, price is competitive, to bdint have to wash your own bedding, and a lot of hotel workers are unionized. That’s all in addition to the awareness that every Airbnb house could be a home for someone who needs it. I won’t be sad if the Airbnb model folds and helps the housing market regain a bit of sanity
The main Airbnb value proposition was trading some of the conveniences you get at a hotel for a significantly cheaper room.
When they are roughly the same price as staying in a hotel, why would you choose it?
The only time I’ve ever used an Airbnb was when I wanted a location that did not have a good hotel option. Which has been cabins in the woods, and beach front property. Outside of that, I would rather have the convenience of a hotel.
TBF, almost all of this applies to VRBO too.
I’ve never used it, but I’ve been told VRBO is just a more expensive AirBnB. Does that hold up in your experience?
My experience is that VRBO is supposed to be more scrutinized than Air B&B and you always get the whole property.
Lately they are demanding a $500 cleaning fee and also demanding that you do the laundry, take out the trash, and do the dishes.
I never did get into Airbnb: there was always too much room for unpredictability that I don’t want to deal with when traveling. Since then, we have the rise of chore lists and they’ve lost the price advantage in many places, so I don’t really see a point. Even worse, AirBnB has been around long enough that we all probably know someone who had a bad experience
I stopped doing airbnbs a few years ago. Hidden fees, unreasonable rules and requirements. And now more expensive than most hotels. They just are worse now.
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I have zero interest in an Airbnb. Too many options for fuckery.
Airbnb has been in a race to bring the worst of the tech industry’s profit consuming corporatism (no phone number, horrid customer service, lots of rules that nobody follows, privacy nightmares) to an industry that focused on hospitality - by definition a high-touch service - and we are all worse off because of that.
Not to mention the ‘hosts’ have been tacking all sorts of fees on top of your stay, and requiring people to do deep cleans, leaving a key in some lockbox a block away, etc.
At this point you just want to get a hotel even if it costs more instead of dealing with some of their shit. In a hotel you walk in, someone actually is there to greet you, there’s no expectation that you clean the room, etc.
Airbnb ruined their own product by letting the hosts ruin the experience.
Airbnb in North America is awful. More expensive than hotels, often dirtier, greedy hosts try to offload their own expenses to tenants. Hotels all the way!
Oddly enough though, when my wife and I went to Japan, it was the opposite. All the Airbnbs we stayed at were much more affordable, way cleaner, and the hosts were incredibly kind and respectful. The hotels we stayed at were average. Not sure what’s keeping the service so nice over there, or if we just lucked out at 3 different places
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