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Is It Cheaper to Stay in an Airbnb ‘Entire Home’ Rental or a Hotel?
- cosinetau 11y agoJust being a fussy mathematician, but I didn't see anywhere where in the article where it discussed the time of year where these figures were pulled from. In addition to other chargers other folks are pointing out, it's not hard to see how that can affect the model to portray AirBnB or Hotels one way or the other.
- sniuff 11y agocached: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:HihU1ZK1BgEJ:https://www.travelstatistician.com/2016/02/is-it-cheaper-to-stay-in-an-airbnb-rental-or-hotel/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:HihU1Z... From personal experience it's much cheaper to stay in airbnb with large (6+) group of people instead of getting 2 or 3 hotel rooms.
- fiatjaf 11y agoAirBnb is often more expensive than a real cheap hotel in my town.
- neuigkeiten 11y agoThe problem with AirBnB is that they want you to scan your id card and send it over the internet. Which is illegal here in Germany. I would not use a company that wants me to do illegal things in the first place. Additionally they want access to your Facebook account, which I find offensive as well. I travel a lot in Europe. Since I prefer to stay in apartments over staying in hotel rooms, my approach is to look up local apartment rental sites. Usually I find good deals this way. I only stay in hotels if I absolutely must. Apartments are so much nicer.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- ucaetano 11y agoDon't think it's illegal, Number26 (a german bank startup) does it for ID verification.
- realityking 11y agoIt's illegal to make copies of the ID card unless required by law. Opening a bank account is one of these things were the law requires a copy of the ID card due to money laundering legislation.
- asift 11y agoI find that law even more ridiculous given those requirements. Making it illegal to do X unless they force you to do X undermines almost all arguments for criminalizing X.
- rietta 11y agoNot entirely. The companies that must collect presumably have better security safeguards than those just wanting it just because it's easy or customary. I have a client that must collect and store drivers license copies for 2 years by state law. The system encrypts with GnuPG, such that only an offline private key stored on a crypto smart card can decrypt, and the encrypted image into a cloud storage bucket with an expiration date. Unless they get a spoliation order because the police come knocking no one ever sees the data. After 2 years, the file auto deletes and a record is left indicating that the record was "deleted in the ordinary course of business." The company does not really want to do all of this, but its required by law and good infosec practices. Handling data breach material is expensive.
- ucaetano 11y agoThanks for the clarification!
- neuigkeiten 11y agoWell, some startups might try to fuck with the law. German courts stick to it though: http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Gericht-Personalausweise-duerfen-nicht-eingescannt-und-gespeichert-werden-2057808.html http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Gericht-Personalauswe...
- jp555 11y agoDo faxes in Germany have their own super-secure network? Or is it illegal to fax identifying information as well? Actually I would not be surprised that the old way was legal and any new way that threatens incumbents is illegal. This seems a fundamental dysfunction of Europe in general.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- charlesdm 11y ago"Illegal" is relative in this case. The law isn't a set of divine rules to live by (you're probably breaking a few laws by accident every day), it's more of a correction mechanism for abuse. That, and every country has weird quirky laws on certain matters. Just use common sense. That said, you should be careful with your ID. But, I personally wouldn't mind verifying my ID with Airbnb (last I checked, they used specific verification software)
- eveningcoffee 11y agoAnd this law is very likely in place to avoid situations what Airbnb has created. Namely Airbnb has created a database of (very likely high quality) copies of ID cards that when leaked could be used for identity theft in similar places where digital photographic copies of ID cards over the Internet are accepted as proof of identity. To be more clear - digital photographic copy of a ID card can not be considered as a proof of the identity because it only shows that the person who is providing this information had either access to the copy itself or had limited time to make a copy in real life.
- robk 11y agoHow do you know they save them? What if they just verify and discard?
- eveningcoffee 11y agoI would rather ask that how do I know that they actually do not keep this information and actually properly destroy it.
- charlesdm 11y agoI think, when I verified my ID a couple of years ago, they used a sort of middleware to analyse + verify the ID. If I remember right, they said they didn't actually store the ID (i.e. the underlying image was discarded once verified) Edit: they use Jumio Netverify - http://www.jumio.com/ http://www.jumio.com/
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- maelito 11y agoThe Facebook verification is to me more problematic than the Id...
- zeeZ 11y agoWhen I tried to sign up through Google they wanted access to my Google Drive for verification. You can have lengthy arguments about the sanity of giving Google access to 8 years worth of random files, documents and photos alone, but then give a third party access to all that just for "verification"?
- ciaranm 11y agoThis is super common practice in the UK, at least in some industries (e.g. Gambling). Most online bookmakers & exchanges will require age-verification before they let you place a stake. I've had similar experiences ordering alcohol online (though only from smaller retailers, and usually only for a first purchase).
- yomly 11y agoAs an AirBnB host I'm not all that cool with letting out my apartment for a day to someone who won't share some form of proof of identity. As an engineer I get the privacy concerns so I'm split on which way I sit on this fence but I trust in a large tech company like AirBnB to get security right - so on balance the short term risks of someone abusing my flat outweigh my long term risks of someone getting my passport data.
- atirip 11y agoWhy the identity? Insurance pays.
- mc32 11y agoBecause insurance is a hassle? Who wants to go through the process of being righted after being wronged? Getting wronged to be reimbursed is not the business model most renters are seeking when they put up a property on AB&B.
- atirip 11y agoSo what do you prefer? Hunting them down and beating them up with your own fists? Hire some tough guys? Is that really easier? But i was really referencing AirBnB insurance....
- yomly 11y agoIdentity provides deterrence from things ever reaching that state. Having your passport or ID saved would make you think twice about committing some kind of crime
- mc32 11y agoOk let's say you had a delivery business and have all the insurance necessary. You're saying you're equally likely to use a driver who has a history of careless driving as you would a driver who has a history of driving safely because you're covered by insurance. I'm claiming people are seeking avoidance. People would rather have the deterrent effect, so that they might avoid the hassles of going through claims and then waiting for things to be righted.
- tobias3 11y agoThis could be solved with the eID feature of German identity cards, I guess. Problem is many disable it, do not have a card reader and many smartphones are not compatible.
- thesimon 11y agoCould also be solved by using the passport instead of the identity card. The NFC-feature can't be disabled and most people have NFC smartphones (well, at least the people who are using AirBnB)
- spurgu 11y agoWith Airbnb you usually get a kitchen where you can cook your own food and save lots, compared to staying at a hotel and eating out every day.
- superuser2 11y agoThis is true, but I can't imagine why I'd pay thousands of dollars to travel somewhere and spend the time cooking instead of eating at that place's unique restaurants.
- madcaptenor 11y agoBecause you don't want to go to restaurants for breakfast every day.
- Nimitz14 11y agoI like having breakfast in Cafe's a lot.
- ghaff 11y agoEspecially for longer-term stays, it can be nice to have a refrigerator at least so that you don't need to go out for every light meal (esp. breakfast) or beer. And not everyplace has a great choice in restaurants--e.g. more rural areas. (Don't get me started on hotels with minibar refrigerators that you can't use to store anything in.) But, yeah, other than the fridge or maybe a kettle/microwave to heat water, I can't remember the last time I used a kitchenette to actually cook something. [EDIT: It probably also depends why you're at a place. If you're on vacation I pretty much agree. If you're there for some sort of project or other reason and you're paying for your own food, I can see why one wouldn't want to eat out every meal.]
- mrgordon 11y agoBecause going to the grocery store and cooking local food is a major part of the journey?
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- matwood 11y agoMore than 2 people, usually yes.
- imaffett 11y agoI was recently in vegas. You can get hotel rooms cheap, but they have the tax and entertainment fee's that add up quickly. My problem with AirBnB was the $200 cleaning fee for a two night stay. So far, it's been extremely hit or miss for me. I've found VRBO/Homeaway to be better for vacations.
- pc86 11y agoAren't the cleaning fees set by the host?
- ghaff 11y ago$200 is pretty steep but it's not that unusual for vacation-type properties (whether booked through AirBnB or someone else) that don't offer daily maid service to have a nightly fee plus a one-time cleaning fee. I imagine that this is partly to encourage longer-term rentals and partly it just reflects their costs. And, yeah, Vegas is notorious for tacking on mandatory resort fees.
- eveningcoffee 11y agoI use Booking.com (http://www.booking.com/ http://www.booking.com/). They have mostly similar offers (in EU) as airbnb.com and I consider them more trustworthy (as they have offered the service for longer time as airbnb).
- mojuba 11y agoExcept some hosts told me that Booking.com is a rip off, plus it doesn't handle their accounting like Airbnb does. From the user's point of view, Booking.com is a horrible cluttered web site with 1990'ish approaches to design, usability and online marketing. I don't trust them at all.
- atom-morgan 11y agoTheir job postings on HN have always seemed a little sketchy to me as well.
- sid6376 11y agoAs the guy who posts on those threads, I am curious as to why you think so and would appreciate any feedback on the same.
- collyw 11y agoI can confirm this. We booked a hostel in Patagonia in December through booking. We decided to stay in the same place a week later after doing a trek. She charged us 20 or 25% less as she didn't have to pay Booking.com
- pc86 11y agoHow is this any different than working on oDesk (or whatever it's named now) once then working outside of it and splitting the difference in fees? I don't see how that makes Booking a rip-off.
- notahacker 11y ago
- rietta 11y agoSeems that the site has been slashdotted (or is that Hacker Newsed) - "Error establishing a database connection".
- afishisafish 11y agoAirbnb offering / culture differs from city to city. I was just scanning Berlin yesterday and the city has crazy good Airbnb offerings.
- chx 11y agoCheaper is one angle. But did anyone mention the location problem? Simply put, there are way way more places where people live than hotels are. I have visited Tel Hazor and Tel Megiddo both and I challenge you to find a hotel near either (note: I don't drive).
- atwebb 11y agoTrue in a lot of cities as well, many of my AirBnbs stays have been because there isn't a hotel within a reasonable distance of my true destination.
- chx 11y agoYes! Look at the region south of A57 in Manchester, UK (Hulme and the University for example). There are like 1-2 hotels in pretty big regions vs dozens north of A57.
- pnut 11y agoFor me, depends on the length of stay. If you book Airbnb for a month, it's usually around the same price as a 2 week stay, and the nightly rate cannot be touched by hotels, particularly for the size and location.
- Hydraulix989 11y agoError establishing a database connection
- jdhawk 11y agohttps://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:HihU1ZK1BgEJ:https://www.travelstatistician.com/2016/02/is-it-cheaper-to-stay-in-an-airbnb-rental-or-hotel/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:HihU1Z...
- jontas 11y agoI can't see the images/charts since the site is down and I am reading the cache, but this analysis seems a bit suspicious to me. They are comparing AB&B prices without taxes and fees (and website + cleaning fees can be quite expensive) to hotel prices with taxes. The conclusion is that AB&B is more expensive, but I suspect if the additional fees were factored in, the difference would be even greater.
- guy_c 11y agoI've travelled extensively for the last 2.5 years using a combination of Airbnb, hotels (booked via Agoda & Rakuten Travel) & apartments arranged via local classifieds (Craigslist, Gumtree etc.). At the beginning airbnb was my main choice, because of the experience it delivered. Not because it was cheaper. I used to stay in houseshares and the vast majority of the time the host was amazing, sociable and generous. But I think as airbnb has gone more into the mainstream and hosts get more experienced, the host cannot maintain that level of service. Now the best hosts are professional, but without the friendliness of the early days. What works best on price depends on many factors: the time of year, the country, the length of stay, big events or festivals, number of guests. I now make my choice based on the price and quality. I've recently found last-minute hotel bookings via Agoda have worked well. Hotels in cities work especially well in off-seasons. They have staff cost and vacant rooms, so have a strong incentive to get any revenue they can. Prices can sometimes be lower than anything that an airbnb host would be willing to accept[1]. Also hotels work well for 1 day stays. Many airbnb hosts want 2 day minimum stays. Also airbnb hosts often add a cleaning fee, which can significantly bump up price for very short stays. Conversely airbnb can work great when your visiting a city/area during an extremely busy period. Hotels are obviously aware these peaks and have adjusted prices accordingly. Experienced airbnb hosts have done the same. But novice airbnb hosts will often have much lower prices. [1] I used to be an airbnb host in a UK city. During the winter months it just wasn't worth competing with the budget hotels (EasyHotel, Premier Inn etc.)
- thecourier 11y agoI don't deny you can get cheaper hotels rooms than airbnb rooms. nonetheless, I have visited Japan, US, Caribbean and in many cases the airbnb proposal is way better for the same money.
- mewfree 11y agoAnother article about the subject: https://www.busbud.com/blog/airbnb-vs-hotel-rates/ https://www.busbud.com/blog/airbnb-vs-hotel-rates/
- nadezhda18 11y agoThe majority of my experience comes from staying in NYC for 3-4 days. I stayed in Manhattan and Brooklyn, and each time I compared prices of AirBnB and hotels. AirBnB always won. Getting a room (with access to kitchen) instead of a whole apartment makes the difference even bigger. Apart from the price, having access to a kitchen is a huge plus to me because I do not want to spend on eating out all the time. Eating out is much more expensive than cooking at home (not only in NYC). This should be taken into account too while doing the price comparison.
- mlrtime 11y agoI would argue that for one person it is cheaper to eat out in NYC if you know where to look. The numbers change once you start cooking in advance (meal planning) or cooking for more than one person.
- jstanley 11y ago> I would argue that for one person it is cheaper to eat out in NYC if you know where to look I find this hard to believe. Is there seriously a place you can eat out (and eat reasonaly well) for $1 a time? Or, how expensive is your home-cooked food?
- ffumarola 11y agoHaving also lived in NYC, that is true if you're OK with the health effects of eating $1 slices every day. Otherwise, I'm not sure how that math could work out.
- betaby 11y agoCan't find that true for any EU city with 500k+ population assuming the same neighborhood. Hotels are even more expensive during high season.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- noahlt 11y agoComparing entire-home AirBnB rentals to hotel room costs seems like an unfair comparison. Renting out an entire home on AirBnB seems much more akin to getting a hotel suite, which is more expensive than a single room.
- dang 11y agoOk, we added 'entire home' to the title.
- madcaptenor 11y agoThis is actually a problem I ran into last weekend. My wife and I were going to a friend's wedding in the suburbs of Nashville and essentially all the rentals available on AirBnB were whole homes, 3 bedrooms or so. The prices were quite reasonable for such homes (and if we'd thought ahead of time we probably could have coordinated with other friends of ours who were going to the wedding) but we don't need all that space for the two of us, so in the end we just got a hotel room. But last time we went to Nashville we were staying in the city and AirBnB was significantly cheaper for a one-bedroom apartment than a hotel room would have been.
- atwebb 11y agoNashville's weird at the moment, hotel rooms are sky-high some weekends. You're less likely to have living circumstances that allow a single room to be rented out in the burbs as well. In town, it's a lot more common for a loft or extra room to be available. Could be all the AirBnb Hoteliers around as well. Hope you had a good weekend.
- ape4 11y agoI agree. But when I get an AirBnb I only go for entire-home (usually an apartment) since I want my own key, privacy. I don't want a bedroom in somebody's house (which is much worse than a hotel). I don't need a hotel suite. So its comparing the two minimum offerings for me: AirBnb entire-home vs standard hotel.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- prostoalex 11y ago"This analysis does not take into account Airbnb’s additional fees charged per rental (Service Fee) and any charges optionally imposed by the host (Cleaning Fee)" This is pretty significant as some hosts encourage long-term stays (or deliberately game AirBnB results) by lowering the per-day price while raising the cleaning fee. Cleaning fee amortized over short stays tends to add significant markup, and at this point many hotels do come cheaper, as daily cleaning in their case is already taken into account and is cost-efficient. Edge case for AirBnB is family travel. Booking anything 1-bedroom and larger somehow seems to signal to the hotel industry that you've finally made it to the Forbes list and therefore no expense will be spared. I'd venture to say that any decent 2-bedroom (and up) apartment/house on AirBnB would be [significantly] cheaper than a 2-bedroom (and up) suite at the hotel.
- ghaff 11y ago>Booking anything 1-bedroom and larger somehow seems to signal to the hotel industry that you've finally made it to the Forbes list and therefore no expense will be spared. It depends. Absolutely for a typical downtown hotel, their relative handful of suites tend to be oriented toward being used as business meeting rooms or by people who are really price insensitive. You can sometimes get deals on weekends and the like but, yeah, it's a bit like business and first-class pricing on planes. It's far less true of the residence style hotels though (e.g. Marriott's Residence Inn). In suburban/sprawl locations I often favor these because it's nice to stretch out on a sofa. Some locales, such as Vegas, also have suites as a pretty standard offering.
- TourisiMist 11y agoThe damage you do is different. Think about the worth of an apartment. It's net worth is calculated: rental revenues during a year multiplicated with 100 and divided by the interest rate of the bond market = $$$$... example: rent $1000/month =$12,000/year multiplicated with 100 = $12 Million divided bey 5 = $2,4 Million --- now remember the gentrification in big city's and it's influence on prices. Sure, if you calculate your apartment worth using daily earnings your, rental revenues fur upper calculation maybe higher than with a monthly or weekly earnings, but the price of the estate...
- alistairSH 11y agoAn odd analysis, given most hotel rooms don't have kitchens. Or space for more than 2 people. I recently booked a trip to Florence, Italy. While hotel rooms and single-room apartments were on par price-wise, Airbnb offered larger apartments, many with nice balconies and view, that were not available in the hotels. And the apartments were generally less expensive than hotel suites (with kitchen).
- ChrisDutrow 11y agoAirBnb seemed to not have good prices for off-season beach rentals. I was checking there a few weeks ago and found way better prices for off-season beach rentals on traditional rental sites... sometimes for exactly the same property. I assumed that individual property owners tended to forget about off-season pricing or just didn't want to rent their properties at off-season value. Perhaps I was doing something wrong in the search though?
- abannin 11y agoAs a host, I typically rent out an entire house at 50-70% the price of 2 rooms at the Hilton. The SF numbers are way off. First, you need to consider size/number of beds. One home may be equal to 2 or 3 hotel rooms. Second, there is no consideration for quality. The only way those SF hotel numbers are that low is by including the rather unsavory single room hotels. Third, there is no consideration for amenities. AirBnB's will often give away a lot of amenities, where as hotels charge for everything. It's common to charge $30/night/room for Wifi in SF, those fees must be considered as well.
- lnrdgmz 11y agoThe first graph shows that hotels are cheaper in New York: the difference between hotels and AirBnb is -29.5. However, the graphs further down the page show that AirBnb is cheaper: the difference on these charts is 66. The fourth graph on the page is mislabeled, which adds to the confusion. Is the New York data a simple mistake, or is all the data on this page suspect? Or have I just read something incorrectly?
- goldbrick 11y agoI noticed that too, there is definitely a shortage of attention to detail here.