- Airbnb stock tumbled 14% in one day after the company predicted slowing demand.
- Some former Airbnb diehards say they now prefer the consistency of hotels.
- Airbnb said it might increase travelers’ ability to book hotel rooms through Airbnb.
I stopped doing airbnbs a few years ago. Hidden fees, unreasonable rules and requirements. And now more expensive than most hotels. They just are worse now.
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I had a bad experience on AirBnB. Had tickets to see a band downtown Asheville. Labor Day Weekend. Found an airbnb in walking distance at a reasonable rate. Booked in April. Day before the stay, got a notice the host cancelled. No explanation. By that point it was $400 a night before taxes and parking for a hotel room downtown. Wound up not going. Ruined my weekend. Never again.
And zero penalty for the host. They only need to claim property damage. I’ve been burned twice by this, and once drove up anyway and the host rented it out on a diff platform for 3x. I played stupid and the guy told me he rented it through vrbo, the day before. I showed him my reservation that now showed canceled as of the day before.
I have a feeling that’s what happened with mine too. It never occurred to me to have plans ruined like that. I’m hotel now all the way.
I’d have gotten that guys data and reported the host to AirBNB!
It was super-effective!
I had a similar experience with VRBO. My family booked way in advance to see the eclipse, and the host ended up cancelling it a couple weeks before the stay. No penalties for them. I suspect they realized they could charge way more than what we were paying.
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.
It was the model for a very long time. It was all about renting excess capacity. It was a brilliant move. It wasn’t till much more recently people turned it into a business by buying properties just to air bnb.
Not sure when do you refer as recently but where I am this has been a common practice since at least 2015.
Don’t get me wrong, if you wanted to make a spare rooms rental system, nonprofit or otherwise, you could. But if you wanted to do that you would put restrictions and hoops to jump in order to limit rental to spare rooms only and maybe you wouldn’t charge 17% in fees.
2013 for me.
The founder literally started it because he found it difficult to rent out his vacation home. Fuck him and his vacation home.
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 mark
So…… it was the original model. And yeah airbnb literally grew because of renting out extra rooms, it didn’t grow from turning entire homes into rentals. It became that much much much later.
I get for vacation areas this is less of an issue but for places like ny city, San Francisco, etc it’s taking homes out of use.
It’s every bit as big of an issue for vacation areas / areas where tourism is the primary driver of the economy.
Take Tahoe or Mammoth Lakes for example: until the early 2010s it was still possible to move there without knowing anyone or having any other inside track, get a job (not your favorite or first choice, usually, but something to work from while you get established) and find your crappy first apartment or half-a-cabin or rundown shack or basement or ADU to rent.
That scenario is almost completely gone now and has been for ten years, plus or minus – depending on where each person sees the line that divides difficult from impossible. People making far less than a living wage now commute to both of those areas from an hour or more away. The sense of how “connected” or privileged one has to be to make it or even just scrape by in areas such as these has relentlessly risen to a level that has had an enormous impact on mental and emotional health and life outcomes in these areas too.
All of these factors were already big in the negative column balancing the very real positives of living so close to nature and preferred sporting activities, before the rise of the short term rental blight. But nowadays those negatives are practically off the meter.
I’m not sure you can blame short term rentals for this happening in desirable vacation spots worldwide. People have become much more mobile, and a decade of very cheap interest rates mean that there is no more “run down cheap cabin in the woods” any more. Even for owners who have owned those properties for many years, insurance costs and taxes have spike along with the housing costs.
I own a home in a very expensive area with extremely limited geography that prevents additional development, but also has in place a practical ban on short term rentals- 28 day minimum. This has not led to more affordable housing, but rather a lot of empty vacation homes owned by very wealthy people and $700/night hotel rooms. Also, locals being pushed out due to spiralling insurance and property tax increases. All without short term rental being a factor.
I’ve stayed at my share of Airbnbs booked by others, but never really enjoyed the feeling of sleeping in some strangers house. Also, disliked the impact of airbnbs on local housing markets. The idea of replacing long term housing with short term housing is completely stupid from a public policy perspective and a great way to ruin a city.
Additionally, I like being a customer, and anonymous. I don’t want to be rated by the host. I don’t want to be judged on whether I put my own towels in the washing machine before I checked out. If I’m paying, that shouldn’t be my damn job.
Also, airbnbs are random. Some are good, some are awful. Some hosts are fine, some are a bit too much. Hotels do vary, but on the whole, the experience is much more consistent.
Exactly, I lost all taste for Airbnb when we were staying for 2 nights, and every 4 hours the owner was balsting me with text messages telling me I needed to rate them 5 stars because if I didn’t they wouldn’t rate me 5 stars…but I had to take out my own trash, put all towels and linens in the washer, and make sure to tidy up before I left or else I’d incur their “clean up fee”. Fuck that shit, I’m not paying you a shitton of money to clean up after myself. Especially when half the bathrooms have black mold and rotten water damaged wood around the showers, and you have to be extra mindful because this was a time when hidden cameras were common.
Cleaning fees are just overhead on staying now. But if you don’t tidy your rating will take a hit.
It’s a scam coming and going. But it’s often cheaper and with more selection on location. The last two, I think, are really what keeps them around.
Ability to zero in on location is definitely the thing that keeps me on the platform. I can’t say its always cheaper, it maybe in some cases but its often equal or higher than a budget hotel in my experience. The fact that I can get a unit with a kitchen and within walking distance of a few of my planned vacation activities is the reason I check it out.
For me, it’s almost always the cheapest/most convenient way to stay somewhere with a kitchen. And it may be an okay kitchen but almost always better than a hotel’s. That’s the part I find the hardest to replicate outside of Airbnb.
Short stay apartments are a thing, but you’ll typically only find them in big cities.
To chime in on your anonymous comment, racism is a huge issue for AirBnB too. None of my brown friends are able to book one without the help of a white friend/partner, because of their names and the lack of AirBnB history.
That’s odd. Do people not want to pay hotel prices and a “cleaning fee” and also clean up the place before they leave? Or is it like they want to show up and the room they booked actually exists?
Yes exactly. Hosts got greedy, Airbnb let them, and this is the result.
They could fix it pretty easily but the host would hate it.
- Make the price that is displayed by default inclusive of all fees and charges, except taxes. So that stupid cleaning fee makes your property go down in the list.
-Make the listing page clearly indicate whether or not the guest is required to perform chores. Make the filter aware of certain chores and allow a guest to screen out listings that require those. IE, ‘strip bed’, ‘do laundry’, ‘take out garbage’, ‘cleaning tasks’, ‘other’, etc. and have a really easy button at the top ‘filter out listings with chores’.
If I’m paying half the price of a hotel then I don’t mind having to throw the sheets in the laundry. If I’m paying more than a hotel plus a cleaning fee, I want to be on vacation and act like it.
Why shouldn’t taxes be displayed?
Taxes are not displayed anywhere else, so if Airbnb starts including taxes in their listing they will be at a competitive disadvantage as their pricing would become apples to oranges versus hotels in the wrong direction.
Almost nowhere in the US includes taxes in the advertised price.
Americans are used to mentally adding taxes to the price
They should be displayed.
To add to this, in the U.S. the price on the shelf should be the actual price after tax. It’s so weird seeing the price and knowing it’s not actually the price.
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No, people like to find out that there’s a fucking rooster farm across the road and that you have to park 3 miles away. It’s all part of the adventure.
Goddamn millennials are so unreasonable.
AirBnb is just a pain in the ass that hardly saves you money anymore. It’s often the same.
You want nice clean sheets, fresh linens, and nice amenities that go with it? Get a hotel.
You just absolutely have to have a home or flat vibe? Well be ready to do apartment laundry, sweep and vacuumvand make the beds and clean all the dishes and only enter and exit between these hours because the keypad doesn’t recognize you otherwise…
Greedy fucks ruined AirBnB because the company encouraged it and let them do so. And then fucked over the guests too many times. And now I’d rather stay in a reliable location than deal with the absolute hassle of their company or their company’s shitty clients.
Good riddance.
Yep, this 100%. I travel a lot for work and have probably stayed in 100 airbnbs over the years, but these days I ask the company not to bother and to book hotels instead. It’s gone from a platform to get a nice home away from home, to a place to get gouged by rude hosts while staying in a barracks with the sparsest of IKEA finishings. They’ve done it to themselves by encouraging shitty host behavior and having zero consequences for bad guest experiences.
It still has one specific usecase where I find it better - when you need more than 2 beds. We use it when on holiday with my friends because usually getting an Airbnb with 3-4 beds is way cheaper than hotel rooms.
But in pretty much all other cases… yep, would much rather have a hotel. Last time I had a host who took electric meter readings and charged you for the electricity… luckily it was negligible since the oven was broken.
The couple really great AirBnB stays I’ve had were for family reunions. So larger than even extended stay hotels are really made for. And they were run by companies, not individual people.
These have always existed though. AirBnB isn’t an app listing, but offers nothing to that equation. Cabin and event space rentals have been a thing for decades. You don’t see Wedding Venues needing AirBnb you know?
I think we have different definitions of family reunion. I’m talking about 6-10 people.
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.
Good.
Good.
Double plus good.
Double plus good.
Airbnb was great when it all began, but now it’s overrun by corporate vultures that buy up housing and turn it into illicit hotels. Not to even mention, it costs about the same as a hotel these days and I’ve never stayed in a hotel that gives you a chore list.
Like every other company lol. I remember when Uber and Lyft were so much cheaper, too. It’s why I don’t want gamepass to take over all gaming, or streaming to take over all physical video media. It always starts out nice, but eventually…
THANK YOU for seeing the writing on the wall. I keep reminding people of this.
Gamepass is unbeatable value. But if you give it market share you better believe after they jack the price a few more times, games willvstop providing a disc at all and just be “Gamepass exclusive” in the sense youvcan only subscribe to it, not buy it.
We are already here, for a decade now, The Crew players can’t play their game anymore, and they paid for it.
True. Gamepass just takes that much further I think. Gasoline on the fire so to speak.
Hotels are pretty nice. They come to make up your room, they have a nice person at the front desk to help you out with any issues, and they will usually have a breakfast option or at least some free coffee.
Airbnb has a lot of potential downsides: from cleaning and fees to broken stuff and hidden cameras. I’ve been in a few situations that have been weird to put it mildly.
Sometimes weird can be fun, but if I just want a clean bed and a reliable experience, I go to the hotel these days
Some hotels have hidden cameras too, assuming they havent been found yet
Nature of the business means that’s a higher risk activity. Customers can’t get access back to the same room, employees work in rotation and owners aren’t physical present.
Airbnb’s are great when you’re bored with life.
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
I was solely airbnb for years, down to literally nothing now. Won’t even search the site anymore. Many reasons articulated by others, but just a pure garbage company and garbage “homeowners” who are mostly just vc conglomerates and bs fronts now - last time I looked, I saw a listing that was overpriced, but I was going to do it out of last minute need…
Host was named Miranda and showed profile pic of a smiling younger women. Listing text was written in her voice. I had a specific question that I sent and received an odd, cold form response, not in her same tone. Then looked and saw that Miranda owned most every property in this beachfront area? She looked pretty young, but okay, good for you. Looked further and found that “Miranda” was actually just the name of a property management group. That wasn’t her in the profile picture, she didn’t exist. She wasn’t going to answer my question, she didn’t give a shit, because she was… not.
Fuck you in your stupid greedy faces, hotels will do.
Airbnb has been in a race to bring the worst of the tech industry’s profit consuming corporatism (no phone number, horrid customer service, lots of rules that nobody follows, privacy nightmares) to an industry that focused on hospitality - by definition a high-touch service - and we are all worse off because of that.
Not to mention the ‘hosts’ have been tacking all sorts of fees on top of your stay, and requiring people to do deep cleans, leaving a key in some lockbox a block away, etc.
At this point you just want to get a hotel even if it costs more instead of dealing with some of their shit. In a hotel you walk in, someone actually is there to greet you, there’s no expectation that you clean the room, etc.
Airbnb ruined their own product by letting the hosts ruin the experience.
I stopped looking at ABnB a few years ago. It stopped making financial and quality of life sense. The costs became nearly equal or greater than that of hotels I cross shopped.
The hassle though is what really killed it. The inconvenience of dealing with a host that was not on-site and often not available to deal with issues plus the long list of chores required and the potential penalties of not following them perfectly just made it not worth doing.
The chores are what killed it for me. I’m supposed to pay a cleaning fee and do the cleaning myself? Fuck that noise.
I’m not paying more money to get no-breakfast, and have to do chores, and have a 15% chance of crazy owner, and a non-zero chance of it being a scam, and have AirBNB corporate give me the run around.
