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I'm not surprised to see Airbnb became profitable. They've expanded everywhere. I nomad around and always use Airbnb, I've booked places on several continents.

I'm not surprised to see Airbnb became profitable. They've expanded everywhere. I nomad around and always use Airbnb, I've booked places on several continents. However, I'm definitely feeling the effects of their growing pains. For example, many people have bought places to only rent on Airbnb full-time. Most of these people suck at being an hotelier. It's clear people get lazy and are just trying to make money. Think about how many hotels you've stayed at that were less than stellar? It's hard to have a good hotel with full-time staff. It's much harder when it's just you on the side, renting some place. I've been to many horrible Airbnb's that I had to checkout of early, and go find a new place last minute. Unless, they fix this and get more people to review honestly. I think they're going to run into a lot of problems.

dragonwriter 10y ago
> Unless, they fix this and get more people to review honestly. I think they're going to run into a lot of problems. I don't airBnB, but a friend who does was recently berated by a host after leaving a 4-star review; that host claimed (don't know how true this is) that many hosts will refuse to rent to you again if you leave anything but a 5-star review. That and other things I've seen and heard about airBnB reviews suggest to me that there a structural problems that are likely to make it problematic for them to become honest and useful in general, even on top of the usual problems in numeric/star rated reviews that come from cultural differences in how people rate when given such a scale even when the actual substantive opinion is the same.
- MichaelGG 10y ago
  Isn't that why AirBnB is pushing the Instant Reservation system really hard?
  - supernovae 10y ago
    Nah, that's mostly to reduce the long tail of rentals.. in some cases it takes months to turn a person into a customer and book now/instant reservation helps shorten this cycle and reduce off platform fishers/scammers.
    - andor436 10y ago
      And it helps address the racism issues they've been having trouble with.
- ghaff 10y ago
  I haven't done eBay in ages but rating inflation used to be a big deal there when the relationship between buyers and sellers was more symmetrical (among other differences from today). People took anything other than a positive with an "A+++++++++++++++++++++ seller" as meaning that the seller had shipped you a brick and then burned down your house. People got really pissed off if someone left a neutral because, say, the item was damaged in shipment even if the problem was ultimately resolved.
  - TheGRS 10y ago
    That episode of Black Mirror is coming to mind for me with this discussion. Once the currency of your profile rating points affects your livelihood all sorts of bizarre social ramifications start to rear their heads. The difference between a 4.5 out of 5 and a 5 out of 5 becomes huge.
- Tloewald 10y ago
  The whole system of review curation that infests online markets is a problem waiting to be solved. Right now we basically have to parse reviews on the 4.4-5.0 scale because anything outside that is meaningless. It's amazing to go read a novel rated 3 stars (because it operates outside this loop) and find it transcendently good.
  - ghaff 10y ago
    It's a difficult problem. Survey response scales have probably been a matter of research and discussion before the web even existed. There are particular instances (like in this case) where there are a lot of incentives for just about everyone to give 5 stars, 10 stars, or a positive and call it a day. But, in general, there are issues with self-selection, bias toward the high end of the scale, ratings meaning different things for different types and classes of product, etc.
  - antisthenes 10y ago
    Reviews are a problem, but not for novels. Perception of books and concepts covered within are entirely subjective. However, when it comes to service or product quality, you can be almost entirely objective in its value judgment.
    - dragonwriter 10y ago
      > However, when it comes to service or product quality, you can be almost entirely objective in its value judgment. No, all assessments of value are subjective (and for most services involve subjective weighting of multiple different subjective quality factors.) And the mapping from an internal value judgement to a star rating is something which is a separate subjective evaluation, and one on which research has shown substantial cultural variation along ethnic and other lines.
      - antisthenes 10y ago
        While that may be true for other people, I have no trouble giving a purchased object a rating for its objective value (but I do excessive research on buying options beforehand). Even if the judgment is relative to other products, it can still be objective. The rating may be inaccurate because you can only measure in full stars, but it'll still be objective and the inaccuracy is the fault of the rating system, not me. Objective (adjective): > (of a person or their judgment) not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts.
- aquadrop 10y ago
  But AirBnB reviews don't work like that. Even though you leave star rating, nobody sees it (I don't know how it looks like on the host side though, as I only used it as a tenant). Only feedback traceable to you is text you write, but you can be honest with stars. And you see compound rating on the property page, which they only show when there's enough reviews (so again, if you left your review first, they can't see what it was either). I think the system is pretty good.
  - Judgmentality 10y ago
    The review system for AirBnB has gotten more complicated over the years. https://qz.com/410264/you-should-never-trust-an-airbnb-review/ https://qz.com/410264/you-should-never-trust-an-airbnb-revie...
  - morvita 10y ago
    I have been an Airbnb host for a while and if you follow your reviews closely, you can tell when someone leaves you low star ratings. In the host dashboard, you only see aggregate stars, but it will break it down as x 5-stars, y-4 stars, etc for each category, so if you know that before your last guest left a review you had 20 5-stars and 3 4-stars and now you have 4 4-stars it's pretty easy to figure out where that came from.
    - andor436 10y ago
      I'm a host as well, and their new stats section breaks down the reviews in detail. You can see who left what stars. Don't know if this works the same for the traveler.
- oculusthrift 10y ago
  this is why Uber punishes drivers who go under a 4 star average. 5 should be the default.
- zeroer 10y ago
  AirBnB reviews are massively inflated. A 4.5 average means you should carefully read between the lines of what the previous guests wrote. A 4 average means you should probably reconsider staying. Hades itself would probably rank around 3.5.
  - alleycat 10y ago
    I think a better tell would be displaying the ratio of people who actually reviewed vs the ones who didn't. When people don't like a place they'll usually not review it at all.
    - zeroer 10y ago
      That's a great point that I forgot to mention! I will only book a place with sparce reviews (under 5 or so) if the host is very new (listing is less than a month or two old).
    - JimDabell 10y ago
      I recently booked a place in an apartment complex, and when I arrived, there were big signs at all the entrances saying it wasn't a hotel, that it was for residents only, and anybody found to be renting daily/weekly would be arrested as trespassers. I was only staying there for a couple of nights and didn't have time for the hassle of arguing with Airbnb at the time, so I just took the risk. After my stay, I reported it to Airbnb. I didn't want to leave a review because I didn't want to deal with the fallout if Airbnb banned the host and they knew I was responsible. Airbnb ignored the report, the listing is still active, and none of the reviews mention the problem. I wonder how many other guests reported the problem to Airbnb without leaving a review as well.
      - datasage 10y ago
        Best bet is to report it to the condo association or property management company. AirBNB will basically turn a blind eye to those kind of rentals.
        10y ago
- necessity 10y ago
  Well don't go there again then? - AND lower the score and report the user if those are possible.
- 11thEarlOfMar 10y ago
  > cultural differences in how people rate This is an interesting problem, and yes, needs to be accommodated some how. I used to manage a SW product and service offering that had customers around the planet. We sent out quarterly report cards in order to ensure we were meeting customers needs. It was As and Bs exclusively except for one country that was Ds and Fs for the same level of quality and service. Some type of calibration or break down is needed.
  - benatkin 10y ago
    In the Silicon Valley world where Trump is the Silicon Valley candidate except for ideology, that calibration would be manipulating everything to average to 4.5 stars while appearing random.
- jonawesomegreen 10y ago
  I had the same thing. Stayed at a really disgustingly dirty place. No toilet paper, no bed sheets, no curtains on the windows. Gave it a bad review and had the host rip me apart about it. "What the fuck did you expect? I would feed you grapes?".
- foobar1962 10y ago
  >I don't airBnB, but a friend who does was recently berated by a host after leaving a 4-star review; that host claimed (don't know how true this is) that many hosts will refuse to rent to you again if you leave anything but a 5-star review. Airbnb pushes hosts really, really hard to achieve >80% 5-star reviews. If <80% then the listing gets pushed down the rankings and you lose SuperHost status. Some guests never give 5-star reviews for whatever reason. They really, seriously hurt the host. If your average is >4.0 (and it should be over 4.5) then any review less than 5 stars will lower your rating. I worked in a restaurant and was trying hard to get our TripAdvisor ranking higher. One quiet night a guy comes in so we chat and give him some great service, special dishes etc. At the end of the meal he said it was excellent and had left us a 4 star review. I said "Dude, our average is 4.8 stars, you just made us look worse." In the end we got to #2 in our city. The #1 was a cafe that was only open 7 am to 4 pm. All you need for 5 star review in a cafe is a hot coffee, so we settled for #2.
amenghra 10y ago
They could fix the review process by weighing the review by the amount paid for the stay (or some similar formula). So your buddy who "pays" $20 and then writes a fake review would have their review dwarfed by real users who pay the full price. An interesting question is: is it better to optimize for more inventory or better quality?
geodel 10y ago
> I'm not surprised to see Airbnb became profitable. They've expanded everywhere. Uber also expanded everywhere and it only increased its loses. It could be that their business model is not based on subsidies borne by investors as in case of Uber.
mdc2161 10y ago
Dealt with similar issues as both a host and a guest. The biggest problem to me is poor expectation setting. There are hosts that run BnB quality services, ones that run a mock-hotel like you described, and ones that just rent out a spare room in their apartment. As a guest, it'd be great to know what I'm walking into. As a host, having guests that understand they are staying in my home and NOT a hotel would be great. My guess is, dividing up the listings into service tiers would lead to legal issues (like you saw last year in NYC), but it would surely help with the guest-host relationship.
- notjustanymike 10y ago
  AirbnbX, Airbnb Black, Airbnb Pool
- baus 10y ago
  You can filter on entire space vs just a room
- BeetleB 10y ago
  >As a guest, it'd be great to know what I'm walking into. As a host, having guests that understand they are staying in my home and NOT a hotel would be great. Usually, the description and previous reviews gives you all you need. When it doesn't, I simply ask the host. It's never been a problem.
eeeeeeeeeeeee 10y ago
Yep, my only bad Airbnb experience was someone who was doing this. They were renting out their place in Eastern Europe and living in London. There was loud construction on the entire building, for my entire trip. Had that person lived there, I'm guessing they would have known about that before allowing someone to book it. Once people make careers out of this, it really ruins the spirit of the service and then it's not much more than someone getting around paying hotel taxes.
ng12 10y ago
I booked a few AirBnB's in Southeast Asia and it's usually a sketchy experience. A lot of the locally owned hotels contract out to sketchy dealers in Australia or China who handle the bookings for them. I think it's technically against the TOS but that doesn't hold much weight around there.
puranjay 10y ago
When they started out here in India, they had professional photos for all properties. I think they don't have that requirement anymore because most properties I see locally have smartphone camera quality pictures with improper lighting. I get that it's cheaper, but after a certain age, I just want to be comfortable on a vacation, not have to think "will it be terrible?" The only exception is if the property offers something hotels don't (like a lodge in the forest or a rooftop apartment overlooking the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem)
deleted 10y ago
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davedx 10y ago
Anecdotes are cool, man. I've also Airbnb'd over several continents. I've had one sub-par experience out of many stays. I think with Airbnb it's also "you get what you pay for"...
- drawnwren 10y ago
  My experience has been that price is a better predictor than reviews, which I think is what kilroy123 (and you) was getting at.
baus 10y ago
It goes both ways. I'm an Airbnb host and renter(1). Mostly I have had good experiences, but I have had more problems on the hosting side lately. I take pride in my property and lived there myself for years. But I've gotten guests who nit pick everything and then ask for a refund. I had one guest ask for a refund because there was snow in Tahoe, and they stayed for the full time anyway. Another guest wanted a refund because my shower curtains were expanding tension rods and not permanently mounted. Generally it still makes sense for me, but running an Airbnb well takes a lot of effort. I have a great support team, and I still struggle at times. (1) https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/12247150 https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/12247150
- ryen 10y ago
  Clearly those are lame asks from the renter. Does Airbnb assist you in those situations? If you forward those requests to Airbnb support will they prevent a bad review from showing?
  - deleted 10y ago
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- Jamsii 10y ago
  Wifi network and password in the Airbnb listing description, is this a normal thing to do?
  - baus 10y ago
    I had one renter complain that they couldn't get the wifi network and password (and again ask for a refund), so I just gave in and put it in the listing. Airbnb has a way to enter it securely, but most guests never figure it out. Airbnb should probably text the wifi network and password automatically when a property is booked Update: I'm on phone with AirBNB support about this right now. Frankly their phone support is pretty poor, eventhough I'm a "super host." They can't seem to answer basic questions about how the wifi network and password is provided to guests
    - 10y ago
AndrewKemendo 10y ago
All of my bad AirBnB experiences were ones where there were no actual tenants. The ones where it was an actual non-professional bed and breakfast, as the name implies, were fantastic. I travel so much that consistency is important and that is what hotels offer. I see AirBnB as an inferior option for hotels, not a way to meet new friends. I think the idea that AirBnB is going to kill the hotel industry is way overblown - professional travelers (not the startup crowd largely) like consistency above all else.
- delive 10y ago
  Agreed. For business I always prefer hotels because I know what to expect and it always has the services I need. For vacation (especially with large groups) AirBnB is much better because I'm able to book more custom housing (entire houses, multiple rooms connected with a shared space, etc).
- exclusiv 10y ago
  AirBnB is inferior now because those hosts aren't necessarily designing it for business travelers. They don't have the insight to accommodate that audience. Or maybe the places you are booking don't get a lot of biz travelers. I'm specifically only hosting in destination places because when people are on vacation they are inherently happy. Not saying you are unrealistic or unhappy, but it's a different mindset and you have different needs. So yes I agree with you - it takes a lot more effort for you to have a good, consistent experience as a business traveler because you have to spend time wading through listings. But there's no reason why AirBnB can't solve that by creating a standard for what business travelers want - perhaps a business superhost designation. I don't think it's overblown for them to put a hurting on the hotel industry. All it takes is for them to take a decent chunk out of RevPAR and many will be done. Hotels typically have a 5 year cycle and they've been having record years. So it's definitely overblown as of now. But killing the investments in hotels is more about what happens when you steal share during the bad times. And also - what happens when there's a good AirBnB rewards program to lure business travelers and they can make it easier for them to book and be consistent as you mentioned? The hotel industry will remain, but there will be a lot less inventory and operators may decide they don't need to fly the big brands or can't afford the fees.
edpichler 10y ago
I believe rating take care of rooms like this automatically, it just take a while.
jxramos 10y ago
Oh yah I feel you. I often tell people that AirBNB offerings come from a bunch of amateurs, amateur hoteliers that is.
dalbasal 10y ago
Having a good ecology of ratings and reviews is definitely important. It's probably a hard problem because you're rating people, Sasha or Adam. It's rude to say bad things about them publicly because they didn't had dishes in the sink or whatnot. Civility is important. OTOH, ratings and reviews need to convey information. As a user, Id rather they err on the side of amateurish. Airbnb can't be the whole market. It works best for recreational travel. Even people who buy or rent to Airbnb generally do it on a small scale.
BeetleB 10y ago
>Think about how many hotels you've stayed at that were less than stellar? Very often. I'm counting motels, because I'm comparing the same price points. My experience with AirBnB has been both positive and negative. For the negatives, I never felt I got less than what I paid, and motels would have been more expensive. For the positive, it has always been cheaper than a motel. I got to stay in downtown San Diego, renting a whole apartment, for a really good deal. No hotel would have been that cheap. It was a nice apartment, not a super cheap-o place. And free parking. I will say I don't demand too much. I'm not the type of person who wants fancy service. Just make it clean. And offer basic stuff (tissues, soap, etc).
6t6t6t6 10y ago
> and get more people to review honestly This. Something I hate is when people think that 5 stars have to be given "by default". For me, an uneventful stay in a clean place should mean 3 stars. If the place is specially nice or the owner was really kind, 4 stars. And 5 stars should only be for my _favourite_ places. I stopped doing airbnb when, for several times, I booked 4.5 star places and they turned out to be honestly crappy.
- dorianm 10y ago
  People often rate 5 stars but the comments always describe the place in details. Typically the cheapest places are also the ones where people don't have high expectations so they will rate 5 stars but leave a comment describing the quirks of the place
deleted 10y ago
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dragonwriter 10y ago

> Unless, they fix this and get more people to review honestly. I think they're going to run into a lot of problems. I don't airBnB, but a friend who does was recently berated by a host after leaving a 4-star review; that host claimed (don't know how true this is) that many hosts will refuse to rent to you again if you leave anything but a 5-star review. That and other things I've seen and heard about airBnB reviews suggest to me that there a structural problems that are likely to make it problematic for them to become honest and useful in general, even on top of the usual problems in numeric/star rated reviews that come from cultural differences in how people rate when given such a scale even when the actual substantive opinion is the same.

MichaelGG 10y ago
Isn't that why AirBnB is pushing the Instant Reservation system really hard?
- supernovae 10y ago
  Nah, that's mostly to reduce the long tail of rentals.. in some cases it takes months to turn a person into a customer and book now/instant reservation helps shorten this cycle and reduce off platform fishers/scammers.
  - andor436 10y ago
    And it helps address the racism issues they've been having trouble with.
ghaff 10y ago
I haven't done eBay in ages but rating inflation used to be a big deal there when the relationship between buyers and sellers was more symmetrical (among other differences from today). People took anything other than a positive with an "A+++++++++++++++++++++ seller" as meaning that the seller had shipped you a brick and then burned down your house. People got really pissed off if someone left a neutral because, say, the item was damaged in shipment even if the problem was ultimately resolved.
- TheGRS 10y ago
  That episode of Black Mirror is coming to mind for me with this discussion. Once the currency of your profile rating points affects your livelihood all sorts of bizarre social ramifications start to rear their heads. The difference between a 4.5 out of 5 and a 5 out of 5 becomes huge.
Tloewald 10y ago
The whole system of review curation that infests online markets is a problem waiting to be solved. Right now we basically have to parse reviews on the 4.4-5.0 scale because anything outside that is meaningless. It's amazing to go read a novel rated 3 stars (because it operates outside this loop) and find it transcendently good.
- ghaff 10y ago
  It's a difficult problem. Survey response scales have probably been a matter of research and discussion before the web even existed. There are particular instances (like in this case) where there are a lot of incentives for just about everyone to give 5 stars, 10 stars, or a positive and call it a day. But, in general, there are issues with self-selection, bias toward the high end of the scale, ratings meaning different things for different types and classes of product, etc.
- antisthenes 10y ago
  Reviews are a problem, but not for novels. Perception of books and concepts covered within are entirely subjective. However, when it comes to service or product quality, you can be almost entirely objective in its value judgment.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    > However, when it comes to service or product quality, you can be almost entirely objective in its value judgment. No, all assessments of value are subjective (and for most services involve subjective weighting of multiple different subjective quality factors.) And the mapping from an internal value judgement to a star rating is something which is a separate subjective evaluation, and one on which research has shown substantial cultural variation along ethnic and other lines.
    - antisthenes 10y ago
      While that may be true for other people, I have no trouble giving a purchased object a rating for its objective value (but I do excessive research on buying options beforehand). Even if the judgment is relative to other products, it can still be objective. The rating may be inaccurate because you can only measure in full stars, but it'll still be objective and the inaccuracy is the fault of the rating system, not me. Objective (adjective): > (of a person or their judgment) not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts.
aquadrop 10y ago
But AirBnB reviews don't work like that. Even though you leave star rating, nobody sees it (I don't know how it looks like on the host side though, as I only used it as a tenant). Only feedback traceable to you is text you write, but you can be honest with stars. And you see compound rating on the property page, which they only show when there's enough reviews (so again, if you left your review first, they can't see what it was either). I think the system is pretty good.
- Judgmentality 10y ago
  The review system for AirBnB has gotten more complicated over the years. https://qz.com/410264/you-should-never-trust-an-airbnb-review/ https://qz.com/410264/you-should-never-trust-an-airbnb-revie...
- morvita 10y ago
  I have been an Airbnb host for a while and if you follow your reviews closely, you can tell when someone leaves you low star ratings. In the host dashboard, you only see aggregate stars, but it will break it down as x 5-stars, y-4 stars, etc for each category, so if you know that before your last guest left a review you had 20 5-stars and 3 4-stars and now you have 4 4-stars it's pretty easy to figure out where that came from.
  - andor436 10y ago
    I'm a host as well, and their new stats section breaks down the reviews in detail. You can see who left what stars. Don't know if this works the same for the traveler.
oculusthrift 10y ago
this is why Uber punishes drivers who go under a 4 star average. 5 should be the default.
zeroer 10y ago
AirBnB reviews are massively inflated. A 4.5 average means you should carefully read between the lines of what the previous guests wrote. A 4 average means you should probably reconsider staying. Hades itself would probably rank around 3.5.
- alleycat 10y ago
  I think a better tell would be displaying the ratio of people who actually reviewed vs the ones who didn't. When people don't like a place they'll usually not review it at all.
  - zeroer 10y ago
    That's a great point that I forgot to mention! I will only book a place with sparce reviews (under 5 or so) if the host is very new (listing is less than a month or two old).
  - JimDabell 10y ago
    I recently booked a place in an apartment complex, and when I arrived, there were big signs at all the entrances saying it wasn't a hotel, that it was for residents only, and anybody found to be renting daily/weekly would be arrested as trespassers. I was only staying there for a couple of nights and didn't have time for the hassle of arguing with Airbnb at the time, so I just took the risk. After my stay, I reported it to Airbnb. I didn't want to leave a review because I didn't want to deal with the fallout if Airbnb banned the host and they knew I was responsible. Airbnb ignored the report, the listing is still active, and none of the reviews mention the problem. I wonder how many other guests reported the problem to Airbnb without leaving a review as well.
    - datasage 10y ago
      Best bet is to report it to the condo association or property management company. AirBNB will basically turn a blind eye to those kind of rentals.
      - 10y ago
necessity 10y ago
Well don't go there again then? - AND lower the score and report the user if those are possible.
11thEarlOfMar 10y ago
> cultural differences in how people rate This is an interesting problem, and yes, needs to be accommodated some how. I used to manage a SW product and service offering that had customers around the planet. We sent out quarterly report cards in order to ensure we were meeting customers needs. It was As and Bs exclusively except for one country that was Ds and Fs for the same level of quality and service. Some type of calibration or break down is needed.
- benatkin 10y ago
  In the Silicon Valley world where Trump is the Silicon Valley candidate except for ideology, that calibration would be manipulating everything to average to 4.5 stars while appearing random.
jonawesomegreen 10y ago
I had the same thing. Stayed at a really disgustingly dirty place. No toilet paper, no bed sheets, no curtains on the windows. Gave it a bad review and had the host rip me apart about it. "What the fuck did you expect? I would feed you grapes?".
foobar1962 10y ago
>I don't airBnB, but a friend who does was recently berated by a host after leaving a 4-star review; that host claimed (don't know how true this is) that many hosts will refuse to rent to you again if you leave anything but a 5-star review. Airbnb pushes hosts really, really hard to achieve >80% 5-star reviews. If <80% then the listing gets pushed down the rankings and you lose SuperHost status. Some guests never give 5-star reviews for whatever reason. They really, seriously hurt the host. If your average is >4.0 (and it should be over 4.5) then any review less than 5 stars will lower your rating. I worked in a restaurant and was trying hard to get our TripAdvisor ranking higher. One quiet night a guy comes in so we chat and give him some great service, special dishes etc. At the end of the meal he said it was excellent and had left us a 4 star review. I said "Dude, our average is 4.8 stars, you just made us look worse." In the end we got to #2 in our city. The #1 was a cafe that was only open 7 am to 4 pm. All you need for 5 star review in a cafe is a hot coffee, so we settled for #2.

amenghra 10y ago

They could fix the review process by weighing the review by the amount paid for the stay (or some similar formula). So your buddy who "pays" $20 and then writes a fake review would have their review dwarfed by real users who pay the full price. An interesting question is: is it better to optimize for more inventory or better quality?

geodel 10y ago

> I'm not surprised to see Airbnb became profitable. They've expanded everywhere. Uber also expanded everywhere and it only increased its loses. It could be that their business model is not based on subsidies borne by investors as in case of Uber.

mdc2161 10y ago

Dealt with similar issues as both a host and a guest. The biggest problem to me is poor expectation setting. There are hosts that run BnB quality services, ones that run a mock-hotel like you described, and ones that just rent out a spare room in their apartment. As a guest, it'd be great to know what I'm walking into. As a host, having guests that understand they are staying in my home and NOT a hotel would be great. My guess is, dividing up the listings into service tiers would lead to legal issues (like you saw last year in NYC), but it would surely help with the guest-host relationship.

notjustanymike 10y ago
AirbnbX, Airbnb Black, Airbnb Pool
baus 10y ago
You can filter on entire space vs just a room
BeetleB 10y ago
>As a guest, it'd be great to know what I'm walking into. As a host, having guests that understand they are staying in my home and NOT a hotel would be great. Usually, the description and previous reviews gives you all you need. When it doesn't, I simply ask the host. It's never been a problem.

eeeeeeeeeeeee 10y ago

Yep, my only bad Airbnb experience was someone who was doing this. They were renting out their place in Eastern Europe and living in London. There was loud construction on the entire building, for my entire trip. Had that person lived there, I'm guessing they would have known about that before allowing someone to book it. Once people make careers out of this, it really ruins the spirit of the service and then it's not much more than someone getting around paying hotel taxes.

ng12 10y ago

I booked a few AirBnB's in Southeast Asia and it's usually a sketchy experience. A lot of the locally owned hotels contract out to sketchy dealers in Australia or China who handle the bookings for them. I think it's technically against the TOS but that doesn't hold much weight around there.

puranjay 10y ago

When they started out here in India, they had professional photos for all properties. I think they don't have that requirement anymore because most properties I see locally have smartphone camera quality pictures with improper lighting. I get that it's cheaper, but after a certain age, I just want to be comfortable on a vacation, not have to think "will it be terrible?" The only exception is if the property offers something hotels don't (like a lodge in the forest or a rooftop apartment overlooking the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem)

deleted 10y ago

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davedx 10y ago

Anecdotes are cool, man. I've also Airbnb'd over several continents. I've had one sub-par experience out of many stays. I think with Airbnb it's also "you get what you pay for"...

drawnwren 10y ago
My experience has been that price is a better predictor than reviews, which I think is what kilroy123 (and you) was getting at.

baus 10y ago

It goes both ways. I'm an Airbnb host and renter(1). Mostly I have had good experiences, but I have had more problems on the hosting side lately. I take pride in my property and lived there myself for years. But I've gotten guests who nit pick everything and then ask for a refund. I had one guest ask for a refund because there was snow in Tahoe, and they stayed for the full time anyway. Another guest wanted a refund because my shower curtains were expanding tension rods and not permanently mounted. Generally it still makes sense for me, but running an Airbnb well takes a lot of effort. I have a great support team, and I still struggle at times. (1) https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/12247150 https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/12247150

ryen 10y ago
Clearly those are lame asks from the renter. Does Airbnb assist you in those situations? If you forward those requests to Airbnb support will they prevent a bad review from showing?
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Jamsii 10y ago
Wifi network and password in the Airbnb listing description, is this a normal thing to do?
- baus 10y ago
  I had one renter complain that they couldn't get the wifi network and password (and again ask for a refund), so I just gave in and put it in the listing. Airbnb has a way to enter it securely, but most guests never figure it out. Airbnb should probably text the wifi network and password automatically when a property is booked Update: I'm on phone with AirBNB support about this right now. Frankly their phone support is pretty poor, eventhough I'm a "super host." They can't seem to answer basic questions about how the wifi network and password is provided to guests
  - 10y ago

AndrewKemendo 10y ago

All of my bad AirBnB experiences were ones where there were no actual tenants. The ones where it was an actual non-professional bed and breakfast, as the name implies, were fantastic. I travel so much that consistency is important and that is what hotels offer. I see AirBnB as an inferior option for hotels, not a way to meet new friends. I think the idea that AirBnB is going to kill the hotel industry is way overblown - professional travelers (not the startup crowd largely) like consistency above all else.

delive 10y ago
Agreed. For business I always prefer hotels because I know what to expect and it always has the services I need. For vacation (especially with large groups) AirBnB is much better because I'm able to book more custom housing (entire houses, multiple rooms connected with a shared space, etc).
exclusiv 10y ago
AirBnB is inferior now because those hosts aren't necessarily designing it for business travelers. They don't have the insight to accommodate that audience. Or maybe the places you are booking don't get a lot of biz travelers. I'm specifically only hosting in destination places because when people are on vacation they are inherently happy. Not saying you are unrealistic or unhappy, but it's a different mindset and you have different needs. So yes I agree with you - it takes a lot more effort for you to have a good, consistent experience as a business traveler because you have to spend time wading through listings. But there's no reason why AirBnB can't solve that by creating a standard for what business travelers want - perhaps a business superhost designation. I don't think it's overblown for them to put a hurting on the hotel industry. All it takes is for them to take a decent chunk out of RevPAR and many will be done. Hotels typically have a 5 year cycle and they've been having record years. So it's definitely overblown as of now. But killing the investments in hotels is more about what happens when you steal share during the bad times. And also - what happens when there's a good AirBnB rewards program to lure business travelers and they can make it easier for them to book and be consistent as you mentioned? The hotel industry will remain, but there will be a lot less inventory and operators may decide they don't need to fly the big brands or can't afford the fees.

edpichler 10y ago

I believe rating take care of rooms like this automatically, it just take a while.

jxramos 10y ago

Oh yah I feel you. I often tell people that AirBNB offerings come from a bunch of amateurs, amateur hoteliers that is.

dalbasal 10y ago

Having a good ecology of ratings and reviews is definitely important. It's probably a hard problem because you're rating people, Sasha or Adam. It's rude to say bad things about them publicly because they didn't had dishes in the sink or whatnot. Civility is important. OTOH, ratings and reviews need to convey information. As a user, Id rather they err on the side of amateurish. Airbnb can't be the whole market. It works best for recreational travel. Even people who buy or rent to Airbnb generally do it on a small scale.

BeetleB 10y ago

>Think about how many hotels you've stayed at that were less than stellar? Very often. I'm counting motels, because I'm comparing the same price points. My experience with AirBnB has been both positive and negative. For the negatives, I never felt I got less than what I paid, and motels would have been more expensive. For the positive, it has always been cheaper than a motel. I got to stay in downtown San Diego, renting a whole apartment, for a really good deal. No hotel would have been that cheap. It was a nice apartment, not a super cheap-o place. And free parking. I will say I don't demand too much. I'm not the type of person who wants fancy service. Just make it clean. And offer basic stuff (tissues, soap, etc).

6t6t6t6 10y ago

> and get more people to review honestly This. Something I hate is when people think that 5 stars have to be given "by default". For me, an uneventful stay in a clean place should mean 3 stars. If the place is specially nice or the owner was really kind, 4 stars. And 5 stars should only be for my _favourite_ places. I stopped doing airbnb when, for several times, I booked 4.5 star places and they turned out to be honestly crappy.

dorianm 10y ago
People often rate 5 stars but the comments always describe the place in details. Typically the cheapest places are also the ones where people don't have high expectations so they will rate 5 stars but leave a comment describing the quirks of the place

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