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I stopped doing airbnbs a few years ago. Hidden fees, unreasonable rules and requirements. And now more expensive than most hotels. They just are worse now.
Yeah it turns out that Airbnb hosts behave much more like hivemind landlords than business owners. They all wind eachother up to behave the same in their forums and chatrooms. The advice on how to operate comes from other greedy reactive people and not from like consultants and data mining and people with degrees in their own field like it does with hotels and large businesses.
Airbnb hosts are “school of hard knocks” TikTok and Instagram advice listening get rich quick schemers who put minimal investment into quality.
Both groups are enshittfying their industries. But the downward slope is much steeper in airbnbs than it is in hotels.
I had a bad experience on AirBnB. Had tickets to see a band downtown Asheville. Labor Day Weekend. Found an airbnb in walking distance at a reasonable rate. Booked in April. Day before the stay, got a notice the host cancelled. No explanation. By that point it was $400 a night before taxes and parking for a hotel room downtown. Wound up not going. Ruined my weekend. Never again.
And zero penalty for the host. They only need to claim property damage. I’ve been burned twice by this, and once drove up anyway and the host rented it out on a diff platform for 3x. I played stupid and the guy told me he rented it through vrbo, the day before. I showed him my reservation that now showed canceled as of the day before.
I have a feeling that’s what happened with mine too. It never occurred to me to have plans ruined like that. I’m hotel now all the way.
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 and 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 stopped using air bnb. I use to use them for more obscure places that didn’t have hotels. I don’t like they take homes out of the market. I get for vacation areas this is less of an issue but for places like ny city, San Francisco, etc it’s taking homes out of use.
I hate the cleaning fee. It’s become obscene.
Just everything about the model bothers me now.
I get for vacation areas this is less of an issue
Nope, this is the issue for housing in small towns/touristy areas. Most of the housing stock in our town has been scooped up for Airbnb/VRBO/etc, and has 1) limited housing stock for locals, 2) has raised housing purchase prices to unaffordable levels because of "profit potential", and 3) limited availability of long term rentals that has also shot rental rates through the roof. In small towns, housing is already limited by geography, and so it just exacerbates an existing problem and completely screws local who likely don't make a lot to begin with, because generally tourism and tourism-adjacent industries makes up the bulk of the available jobs.
Here's a case study on exactly this if anyone is interested and you don't mind the slightly unusual article format.
Just everything about the model bothers me now.
As it should.
The original model I liked. You have an adu? Rent it for spare cash. Rent a spare room. Etc. it didn’t impact supply and let a lot of people earn a little cash. It wasn’t a business. It was an accessory. Now it’s a business.
The thing is, it was never the original model. It was what was marketed at us. The model was always dumping to monopolize the market. Perhaps the original software nerds didn't have that in mind but the moment MBAs came along to "help them grow" the program was to win Monopoly in that market. And that was very early on since VCs were involved nearly from the get go in most of those cases. The original idea as you describe it ends at the singing of the VC contract.
PS: Software nerd myself that used to drink the Koolaid, now a very senior, jaded software nerd.
I get for vacation areas this is less of an issue but for places like ny city, San Francisco, etc it’s taking homes out of use.
It's every bit as big of an issue for vacation areas / areas where tourism is the primary driver of the economy.
Take Tahoe or Mammoth Lakes for example: until the early 2010s it was still possible to move there without knowing anyone or having any other inside track, get a job (not your favorite or first choice, usually, but something to work from while you get established) and find your crappy first apartment or half-a-cabin or rundown shack or basement or ADU to rent.
That scenario is almost completely gone now and has been for ten years, plus or minus -- depending on where each person sees the line that divides difficult from impossible. People making far less than a living wage now commute to both of those areas from an hour or more away. The sense of how "connected" or privileged one has to be to make it or even just scrape by in areas such as these has relentlessly risen to a level that has had an enormous impact on mental and emotional health and life outcomes in these areas too.
All of these factors were already big in the negative column balancing the very real positives of living so close to nature and preferred sporting activities, before the rise of the short term rental blight. But nowadays those negatives are practically off the meter.
I’ve stayed at my share of Airbnbs booked by others, but never really enjoyed the feeling of sleeping in some strangers house. Also, disliked the impact of airbnbs on local housing markets. The idea of replacing long term housing with short term housing is completely stupid from a public policy perspective and a great way to ruin a city.
Additionally, I like being a customer, and anonymous. I don’t want to be rated by the host. I don’t want to be judged on whether I put my own towels in the washing machine before I checked out. If I’m paying, that shouldn’t be my damn job.
Also, airbnbs are random. Some are good, some are awful. Some hosts are fine, some are a bit too much. Hotels do vary, but on the whole, the experience is much more consistent.
For me, it's almost always the cheapest/most convenient way to stay somewhere with a kitchen. And it may be an okay kitchen but almost always better than a hotel's. That's the part I find the hardest to replicate outside of Airbnb.
Exactly, I lost all taste for Airbnb when we were staying for 2 nights, and every 4 hours the owner was balsting me with text messages telling me I needed to rate them 5 stars because if I didn't they wouldn't rate me 5 stars...but I had to take out my own trash, put all towels and linens in the washer, and make sure to tidy up before I left or else I'd incur their "clean up fee". Fuck that shit, I'm not paying you a shitton of money to clean up after myself. Especially when half the bathrooms have black mold and rotten water damaged wood around the showers, and you have to be extra mindful because this was a time when hidden cameras were common.
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
AirBnb is just a pain in the ass that hardly saves you money anymore. It's often the same.
You want nice clean sheets, fresh linens, and nice amenities that go with it? Get a hotel.
You just absolutely have to have a home or flat vibe? Well be ready to do apartment laundry, sweep and vacuumvand make the beds and clean all the dishes and only enter and exit between these hours because the keypad doesn't recognize you otherwise...
Greedy fucks ruined AirBnB because the company encouraged it and let them do so. And then fucked over the guests too many times. And now I'd rather stay in a reliable location than deal with the absolute hassle of their company or their company's shitty clients.
Good riddance.
It still has one specific usecase where I find it better - when you need more than 2 beds. We use it when on holiday with my friends because usually getting an Airbnb with 3-4 beds is way cheaper than hotel rooms.
But in pretty much all other cases.. yep, would much rather have a hotel. Last time I had a host who took electric meter readings and charged you for the electricity.. luckily it was negligible since the oven was broken.
Yep, this 100%. I travel a lot for work and have probably stayed in 100 airbnbs over the years, but these days I ask the company not to bother and to book hotels instead. It’s gone from a platform to get a nice home away from home, to a place to get gouged by rude hosts while staying in a barracks with the sparsest of IKEA finishings. They’ve done it to themselves by encouraging shitty host behavior and having zero consequences for bad guest experiences.
I stopped looking at ABnB a few years ago. It stopped making financial and quality of life sense. The costs became nearly equal or greater than that of hotels I cross shopped.
The hassle though is what really killed it. The inconvenience of dealing with a host that was not on-site and often not available to deal with issues plus the long list of chores required and the potential penalties of not following them perfectly just made it not worth doing.
The chores are what killed it for me. I'm supposed to pay a cleaning fee and do the cleaning myself? Fuck that noise.
Airbnb is expensive. It also is often awkward, I always seem to get places where the owner wants to give me a tour of the place when I show up. Checkout time is always a massive stress, trying to figure out where the outside bin is, how to start the dishwasher, and remembering to return all the furniture to it's original position, lest we break a rule and lose our deposit. You don't get mini bars or room service or daily housekeeping, and you have no idea if the host is secretly keeping tabs on you somehow. It's just so much more work to stay at an Airbnb than a hotel, with none of the cost benefits as a trade off.
The other week we stayed at a Hilton and I checked in and out without speaking to a soul (via the app). It's a no brainer at this point.
After having my honeymoon practically ruined by an owner's insane rules (posted EVERYWHERE throughout the place), I've vowed to never use an Airbnb again. Plus the junk fees are fucking insane.
Give me a proper hotel with proper service any day of the week.
Oh yeah, the condescending "please unplug me when done!" signs near the toaster... or trying to use the hot tub and having to read pages of stuff just to get in some warm water. We stayed at one once that made us add conditioning tablets to the hot tub at a certain time each day. Nah, this is your house, you fucking take care of it, I just want to use it.
AirBnB is a great idea that turned to shit because of greed.
Someone wants a platform to rent out...
Great. Marvelous, even.
But then people realized that they could make more money from a property by AirBnBing it out rather than renting it out. So people start kicking out tenants and buying up properties to turn housing into AirBnBs, and often in areas that were already experiencing cost-of-living issues for locals.
From there, I'm guessing that AirBnB started trying to take a bigger slice of the pie, and "Hosts" started passing on the costs to "Guests". At the same time, "Hosts" wanted more money with less work, so "Guests" started getting cleaning lists so the "Hosts" wouldn't have to pay cleaners -- just someone to come by and make sure everything was done, and call a cleaner if it wasn't (and charge the "Guest" for it).
Enshittification hit AirBnB hard...and in turn, living within driving distance of anywhere tourists would want to be also got enshittified.
I'm not paying more money to get no-breakfast, and have to do chores, and have a 15% chance of crazy owner, and a non-zero chance of it being a scam, and have AirBNB corporate give me the run around.
I was only ever interested in these company's services as a way to save money. They are no longer cheaper than a hotel, so I would rather stay at a hotel.
Airbnb is a fine example of a sort of variation on enshittification.
The way it works is a new company with a new and notably cost-effective way of doing things comes along and is unsurprisingly wildly successful. And then, inevitably, that leads to them hiring a whole raft of executive parasites who all have to be paid obscene salaries for doing nothing of any real value, which means the company needs to raise prices and cut back on services in order to generate more profit to pay those salaries. And meanwhile, the new executives, with nothing of any note that they actually need to or even can do, but with a need to create some illusion that they're necessary, have pointless meetings in which they propose and wrangle about and eventually approve and implement new policies and new plans that are generally awful.
And pretty quickly and not coincidentally the new company ends up at least as bloated, mismanaged, overpriced and under-performing as the companies they so recently replaced.
See also: Uber, DoorDash and the entire streaming industry.
While you got the effects correct, you got the process wrong and that's important.
The way it works is a new company with a new and notably cost-effective way of doing things comes along and is unsurprisingly wildly successful.
The business model isn't based on cost effectiveness. Most of these companies work at a loss for a long time, providing artificially low prices in order to gain market share and push existing players out. This is isn't new. It's called dumping. Irs just been a bit obscured by buzzwords like "new technology" and "disruption."
And then, inevitably, that leads to them hiring a whole raft of executive parasites who all have to be paid obscene salaries for doing nothing of any real value, which means the company needs to raise prices and cut back on services in order to generate more profit to pay those salaries.
These executives aren't hired to do nothing and collect high salaries. Their salaries aren't what drives the price increases. The major shareholders who spent their money to sustain the company so far want to get return on that money. They install executives with this one goal - maximize profit - so they can get this return. This is what drives the hiring of sociopaths who drive prices up in order to increase profits at all costs. This is what drives hiring such people in all public corporations. You got the effects right but the reasons aren't to do with shit execs and their salaries. It's all to do with major shareholders search for growing profits. Everything else follows from there. This is important to understand in order to point the finger in the right direction. Misdirecting people's substantiated anger with the system has been a perennial tool used to maintain profit maximization for as long as possible.
Airbnb has been in a race to bring the worst of the tech industry's profit consuming corporatism (no phone number, horrid customer service, lots of rules that nobody follows, privacy nightmares) to an industry that focused on hospitality - by definition a high-touch service - and we are all worse off because of that.
Not to mention the 'hosts' have been tacking all sorts of fees on top of your stay, and requiring people to do deep cleans, leaving a key in some lockbox a block away, etc.
At this point you just want to get a hotel even if it costs more instead of dealing with some of their shit. In a hotel you walk in, someone actually is there to greet you, there's no expectation that you clean the room, etc.
Airbnb ruined their own product by letting the hosts ruin the experience.
I was solely airbnb for years, down to literally nothing now. Won't even search the site anymore. Many reasons articulated by others, but just a pure garbage company and garbage "homeowners" who are mostly just vc conglomerates and bs fronts now - last time I looked, I saw a listing that was overpriced, but I was going to do it out of last minute need...
Host was named Miranda and showed profile pic of a smiling younger women. Listing text was written in her voice. I had a specific question that I sent and received an odd, cold form response, not in her same tone. Then looked and saw that Miranda owned most every property in this beachfront area? She looked pretty young, but okay, good for you. Looked further and found that "Miranda" was actually just the name of a property management group. That wasn't her in the profile picture, she didn't exist. She wasn't going to answer my question, she didn't give a shit, because she was... not.
Fuck you in your stupid greedy faces, hotels will do.
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.
The whole point of AirBnB was that they were cheaper than hotels, but you had to clean yourself.
Now it’s just as much as hotels with shittier service.
Hotels are pretty nice. They come to make up your room, they have a nice person at the front desk to help you out with any issues, and they will usually have a breakfast option or at least some free coffee.
Airbnb has a lot of potential downsides: from cleaning and fees to broken stuff and hidden cameras. I've been in a few situations that have been weird to put it mildly.
Sometimes weird can be fun, but if I just want a clean bed and a reliable experience, I go to the hotel these days
they should be paying hotel taxes.
That's odd. Do people not want to pay hotel prices and a "cleaning fee" and also clean up the place before they leave? Or is it like they want to show up and the room they booked actually exists?
I won't use them again. It's morally questionable to support that business model during a global housing crisis.
The main Airbnb value proposition was trading some of the conveniences you get at a hotel for a significantly cheaper room.
When they are roughly the same price as staying in a hotel, why would you choose it?
An extended stay hotel is predictable and more than good enough. AirBnB has a consistency problem. To include pricing and hidden fees.
It's funny - I'm often in charge of booking the stay for large family get togethers and trips, and I exclusively used AirBnb. However, after using their service for 6+ years, they ended up canceling a reservation I had had for months THE NIGHT BEFORE OUR TRIP. I didn't even realize they had canceled on me til our plane had landed.
Turns out, they suddenly had a problem with a misdemeanor I had been charged with 8 years prior when I was 20 (minor possession of marijuana). They disabled my account and said I couldn't rent through them anymore because of my criminal history. I reached out to them and offered an explanation, as well as reminding them that this was an old conviction of a minor drug possession. I don't have a criminal record beyond that, and had been an avid customer of theirs for many years with raving reviews. They still denied me, and I'm still banned to this day. So yeah, they can go fuck themselves.
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.