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The Hotel Industry’s Plan to Combat Airbnb

153 points by uyoakaoma 10y ago

iplaw 10y ago
Because lobbying is almost always 1) more effective and 2) less expensive than developing and implementing business processes which result in actual change. It is easier to pay off a handful of politicians to legislate maintenance of status quo, for the next several decades, than it is to reengineer an entire industry in response to market forces and Capitalism. We are pseudo-Capitalists. We let market forces decide until those market forces decide that status quo isn't working. Then, rather than allowing the market to self-correct and increase efficiency and value, we artificially prop up and, further, mandate, the status quo via legislation. Transportation, Internet Service Providers, Cable Providers, Automotive Dealers, ..., and now Accomodations. This list of industries is growing at an alarming rate.
- emodendroket 10y ago
  Even if we ignore the hotel industry it's not entirely clear that allowing residential housing to be used in lieu of hotels is a win for everybody. And yes, I'd freely admit that I don't actually want to allow the free market to just do whatever it decides without any external political control.
  - patrickaljord 10y ago
    The free market is just you and me deciding what we want to buy or not. What you want is the politicians to decide what we can and cannot do with our money because we are not smart enough to make free choices, which is the argument behind every single dictatorship.
    - dragontamer 10y ago
      Zoning laws are increasingly local however. At some point, its no longer "Politicians over in Washington" and your own darn neighbors who are attending HOA meetings, deciding to ban Airbnb locally. A huge part of neighborhood local politics is the ability to push out "poor" people to certain corners. Single-family home dwellers don't like apartments or townhomes closeby. Not only are they "unsightly", they are filled with "lower class people" and "bring down home values". (often: codewords for browner and otherwise "less white" people) But its important to realize that this phenomenon is NOT top-down, but instead bubbles up from the bottom up. The people who think this are your neighbors down the street.
      - emodendroket 10y ago
        I won't say those motivations are nonexistent, but having a bunch of unknown short-term people coming for a stay in a neighborhood makes it less like an actual neighborhood (who cares if I make a mess and do a half-assed job cleaning up?) and a temptation to turn housing into lucrative rentals squeezes housing stock in places where it's already constrained.
        dragontamer 10y ago
        Fair point. That's also a local concern (and more legitimate). Although I need to remind people that in a democracy, its about the number of people who think a certain thought... not the legitimacy of those thoughts that count.
        xapata 10y ago
        Then regulate what you dislike: making a mess, being loud, etc. Or do you want to ban motorcycles because some riders have too-loud mufflers?
        emodendroket 10y ago
        Which one of these things do you think is easier to enforce? Would you prefer to have to call the police with a noise complaint regularly or not have noise in the first place?
        xapata 10y ago
        I think that the AirBnB host will be careful about what guests are permitted after the first noise complaint, risking being evicted. Perhaps just knowing the rules might avoid the issue. After all, that's how you expect any AirBnB regulation to take effect.
        dragontamer 10y ago
        > I think that the AirBnB host will be careful about what guests are permitted after the first noise complaint, risking being evicted. How about a simple law: don't violate zoning regulations. Its no different than in the "good ol days" when you weren't allowed to run a Bed-and-Breakfast Inn out of your own home (unless you lived in a commercial district, or otherwise lived in a district with more lax Zoning laws)
    - emodendroket 10y ago
      What benefits you or me individually can easily be detrimental if we all start doing it, even if we take as a given your (in my opinion incorrect) assumption that in an unfettered free market there aren't some actors far more powerful than others.
    - electricEmu 10y ago
      Political regulation is just you and me delegating representation of interests. What you want is for corporations to decide what we can and cannot do with our money because we are not smart enough to make free choices, which is the argument behind every single corporation. Companies do not exist for altruistic purposes. They exist to make a handy profit for the fee at the expensive of many sometimes. Regulation extends a more fair playing field in some cases. Sometimes it protects the public interest. It's why there's no Walmart in Seattle.
      - iplaw 10y ago
        The problem is, people still inexplicably think that they are delegating this representation to people who actually care or who are bound by some type of moral code which mandates acting in the person's best interests. How has this basic falsehood persisted for so long and in the face of such damning evidence to the contrary?
        ceejayoz 10y ago
        > How has this basic falsehood persisted for so long and in the face of such damning evidence to the contrary? Probably the fact that there's strong evidence to support it? Compare today versus the 1970s in air quality, car safety, waterway pollution, etc.
      - patrickaljord 10y ago
        > Political regulation is just you and me delegating representation of interests. Is there a way to opt out? Otherwise it sounds more like coercion than delegating. Corporations are not made of martians, they are made of people making free choices. Should they get a special status with limited liability protected by the government? I don't think so but that's something to blame on the government, not corporations. If your neighbor's airbnb ruins your nights you should be able to sue and the owner of the building should be free to ban airbnb. But the government deciding that airbnb should be illegal or regulated centrally is where I draw the line.
        10y ago
    - ceejayoz 10y ago
      > ... we are not smart enough to make free choices... You say that like it's not true, but history has borne that out pretty well. Humans are great at ignoring externalities, impacts on minority groups, etc.
    - zebrafish 10y ago
      Nobody wants politicians to decide what we can and cannot do with our money. What we want is a free market with a check on human greed. For example, do I think all people deserve cheap energy, personal transportation, and inexpensive plastic products? Yes. Do I think they deserve them at the expense of millions of peoples lives/livelihoods? No. Therefore, I believe there should be regulation in the "free market".
      - iplaw 10y ago
        > Nobody wants politicians to decide what we can and cannot do with our money. This seems like an essentially true statement, but a substantial majority of evidence points to the contrary.
      - freeflight 10y ago
        >For example, do I think all people deserve cheap energy, personal transportation, and inexpensive plastic products? Yes. Do I think they deserve them at the expense of millions of people's lives/livelihoods? No. Sorry for being nitpicky, but wouldn't that second group of people also "profit" from cheap energy, ect. because they are also part of "all people"? Then what is so inherently wrong about that situation? If ALL of us can be living a little bit better by SOME of us sacrificing, then isn't that what we should be doing, at least in a somewhat "equal" measure? Guess I'm just channeling my inner Spock a tad bit too much ;)
        emodendroket 10y ago
        Your Inner Spock might determine that it's Highly Illogical to only look at cheap transportation and not consider externalities like pollution.
  - iplaw 10y ago
    External political oversight* is one thing. Control is another. There is a trend of legislature propping up broken industries to the detriment of the people. Take the dealer network argument for example. Dealers argue that the existence of dealers creates inter- and intra-brand competition that drives prices lower and benefits the consumer. In the same breath, however, they say that it is impossible to compete with direct sales from Tesla. It is too competitive. These are two contradictory statements. Dealers act as a middlemen that necessarily increase prices in order to generate profit that is allocated to said dealers. Dealers have historically enjoyed this now-oft-unnecessary place in the chain of automobile conveyance. But dealers view this profit source as a basic right which must be legislatively protected. And, thus far, they have been quite successful at lobbying for mandates which require these market inefficiencies.
    - emodendroket 10y ago
      Without legislating any particular example I agree that regulation can be used as a cudgel to stifle competitors too, but I don't agree that the answer is to throw out the concept.
- geogra4 10y ago
  This is actually existing capitalism though. Capitalism on paper is much different from capitalism in reality.
  - cpursley 10y ago
    Well, no. There's actually a term for it: Crony Capitalism aka "Cronyism" (protectionism). Don't conflate this with actual Capitalism.
    - geogra4 10y ago
      Where has "actual capitalism" ever existed? It's always cronyism.
    - dragonwriter 10y ago
      Cronyism is actual capitalism; “capitalism” was a name first applied by critics to the real world dominant system of the 19th Century industrialized West, and cronyism is a central feature of that system. Heck, the name “capitalism” is a reference to the fact that that system is characterized by active measures (starting with the design ofnthenstructure of property rights) taken to organize society for the benefit of a particular narrow class, the capitalist class. (“Protectionism” is a different, but related, thing, though.)
- CPLX 10y ago
  But some of us like the status quo where drunken vacationing Europeans aren't allowed to rent out units in our residential apartment buildings. Trying to just "disrupt" business without actually addressing and solving the complex issues that define the market is just lazy, and often illegal. I'm pretty glad we have regulated capitalism. If you like the unregulated kind perhaps you should visit unregulated hotspots like northern Iraq or Somalia and see what Capitalism looks like in all its raw glory.
  - iplaw 10y ago
    There is a difference between oversight and control. Maintaining market inefficiencies to the detriment of consumers, simply for the sake of maintaining status quo and profit allocation to the establishment, goes beyond mere regulation.
    - pc86 10y ago
      Market regulation is by definition controlling what a market can and cannot do. The intent does not change the definition of the word.
  - NeonVice 10y ago
    Capitalism != Anarchy. Free markets still require laws addressing theft, property ownership, contract law, etc. Protectionism, however, simply rewards first comers. Disruption is the crux of a free market and should be embraced not lobbied against. Services that people dislike the most due to cost or service rendered (airlines, health insurance, telecom providers) are often the most regulated.
    - iplaw 10y ago
      Someone here must work for Comcast or owe hundreds of thousands of dollars on an ill-timed taxi medallion purchase. There are lots of downvotes flying around well-reasoned posts. It's not a disagree button, people.
      - 10y ago
xapata 10y ago
Note that the hotel industry lobbied against collecting business taxes from AirBnB hosts, afraid that paying taxes indicates legitimacy.
- rwc 10y ago
  Which is why airbnb is all too happy to help states fill revenue shortfalls with taxes that come out of their pockets: https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/2017/04/17/196451/airbnb-agreement-with-texas-means-hosts-wont-get-around-paying-tax/ https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/2017/04/17/... "By next month, Airbnb will have similar agreements with 250 jurisdictions in the United States, including 20 states."
ouesp 10y ago
Having used AirBnB for a while, I now prefer to stay in a hotel. Staying in AirBnB I don't feel safe at all and 80% of the AirBnB's I stayed had one problem or the other. There is no importance given for the safety or even a proper door. I dont want to deal with problems when I stay somewhere for pleasure or business. And No, I dont want to read hundreds of reviews before I make my decision. I am back to hotel stays. I hope their lobbying finds success.
- DINKDINK 10y ago
  >I hope their lobbying finds success. Your opinion piece is fine until your last line where you support using the state to ban other people from making the choice that you prefer not to make.
  - ythn 10y ago
    > Your opinion piece is fine until your last line where you support using the state to ban other people from making the choice that you prefer not to make. What's wrong with that? Virtually every regulatory law does this. Unless you are arguing that the state should not be able to regulate anything, I don't see why supporting regulations in one industry or another is a bad thing.
  - 67726e 10y ago
    How about this: I hope the hotels successfully lobby to enforce existing zoning laws. I don't want my neighbors running a business out of their house. If they break the law, punish them. Simple as that.
    - snakeanus 10y ago
      > I don't want my neighbors running a business out of their house Why?
      - WkndTriathlete 10y ago
        Common concerns: * Increased traffic * More noise * Greater odds of criminal activity * Resultant reduction in nearby property values These are not theoretical and are part of the reason why zoning laws exist.
DennisP 10y ago
For two crazy seconds I thought this would involve figuring out how to better compete in the marketplace.
- notum 10y ago
  With innovation and more pricing options that would ultimately result in better overall experience and more viable choices for everyone? You're insane.
- Cshelton 10y ago
  This article reads just like the combustion vehicle/car dealership articles... "It's not fair what Tesla is doing! We need the government to step in and secure our position in the market." The younger generation is not buying it and it is a huge turnoff. I've been using AirBnB for some time and have never had a serious issue. It has allowed me to sacrifice some of the things you get with a hotel for typically a lower costs and the opportunity to stay in many places that are not considered a "tourist" area, which is my favorite part. There are many places a typical hotel chain can innovate and actually offer very similar things to AirBnB. They can identify the target market of AirBnB, which is typically either the younger traveler or people who like to explore the cities in different areas than where hotels are. Hotel chains can build little annexes, maybe similar to a hostel, inside neighborhoods, where they can have 4-5 rooms and use the main hotel as the check in/out, other amenities. And at that level they can compete with AirBnB very well. As far as the hotel tax, I can't say every city requires it, but almost all the AirBnBs' I've stayed at recently has a city hotel tax. So they are doing well working with local governments. So to the hotel chains...good luck fighting that, most cities have already worked it out. At the end of the day, AirBnB is just a market place that connects private citizens with each other. One citizen is letting another use their place for a price. That's it. Same as Uber... how do you ban a person from giving somebody else a ride. It's not the governments jurisdiction. Stay Out.
  - gergles 10y ago
    Oh, don't start with that "it's just a guy helping out another guy" nonsense. Airbnb is a gigantic business, and the 'hosts' are also businesses, and have to accept regulation as such. Of course it is the governments' jurisdiction to regulate the safety, sanitation, and other relevant laws that relate to paid lodging no matter who the person is offering said paid lodging. Airbnb rentals (in the overwhelming majority of cases) aren't me sharing my couch with my best friend while he's in town, this is me letting a stranger come into my house and stay here for money. Acting like those are equivalent situations diminishes your argument.
unixhero 10y ago
Topic aside. Pretty crappy article, it's just a wall of text.
ar15saveslives 10y ago
Do they really need to combat airbnb? I travel a lot (relatively), but I can't get the idea of this service. It's a bit cheaper, but a) I can't cancel it b) I can't book it without interaction with a host c) I can't move in without interaction with a host d) it ends up even more expensive after cleaning/service/whatever fees. I've just checked [1]: NYC, a shitty "private" room with shared bathroom for a weekday is $150, with crazy "strict" cancelation policy, that literally says "Cancel up to 7 days before your trip and get a 50% refund plus service fees back." What's the point and why is airbnb still alive? [1] https://www.airbnb.ca/rooms/14165373?checkin=2017-05-18&checkout=2017-05-19 https://www.airbnb.ca/rooms/14165373?checkin=2017-05-18&chec...
- brookside 10y ago
  Because not everywhere is NYC. I've found the economics and potential extra hassle of booking of airbnb work our best for slightly longer stays. The premium of two weeks of hotel over two weeks of airbnb is often significant.
  - ar15saveslives 10y ago
    > Because not everywhere is NYC. Do I really need to attach links to rooms in all major cities in the world? But I got the idea: airbnb may be better for longer trips.
- reverend_gonzo 10y ago
  > What's the point and why is airbnb still alive? Because sometimes people have an extended trip that they plan out ahead of time. So, communicating with a host and meeting the host is not a huge deal since they'll be staying there for a few days or more. On the other hand, getting input from the host about local favorites would be desirable. If I'm going somewhere for one or two days, I would definitely book a hotel. If I'm going somewhere for a week or so, especially if its somewhere remote, I'd try for an AirBNB. Costs are cheaper, hotels are usually substandard, and host's insights are valued.
  - 10y ago
losteverything 10y ago
So marriott finds many guests order pizza delivery. They create new uniforms, new name, hats and a separate number for pizza delivery. (Could not find article but ~15-20,it's old ) It goes directly into their kitchen where they make the pizza. Why can't hotels do the same. Make it look like an ABB. ???
YCode 10y ago
Before I even opened the article I knew it was going to be a legislative rather than customer-focused approach. God forbid hotels recognize their inherent strengths and AirBnB's weaknesses and cater their services/marketing to that end.
- ape4 10y ago
  Hotels have lots of advantages. Often better location: downtown. A 24-hour desk. You can ask for info. Get deliveries. They can give you extra soap if you run out... without emailing some guy. Ask them to get you a taxi (yes I know about Uber), etc.
  - neuland 10y ago
    But those advantages don't seem to be of interest to some segment of customers. So, there's clearly some issue with competition.
    - SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
      But some portion of that is the cost of compliance with safety, which AirBNB skips. There's no reason we shouldn't require things that are effectively hotel rooms to comply with hotel safety regulations. If AirBNB can only operate by violating the law, why should we support their business model?
      - volkl47 10y ago
        Actually, there is plenty of reason they shouldn't have to abide by the same regulations. We have the rules we have for hotels because they're typically large buildings with many rooms (often smaller than even the minimum dwelling size for private apartments) and that density presents significant safety hazards to many people should anything happen, not just you. You being in a 100sf room on the 11th floor makes it very hard to not have you die if there's a fire, especially when there's hundreds of you to evacuate. There's no reason that someone say...renting out a detached single story house should need anything more than a working smoke/CO detector.
exabrial 10y ago
1) Prosecute and inform local law enforcement. If you have a rental property exclusively used for Airbnb, it's likely illegal. Adam ruins everything: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGLe0Wgfbyk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGLe0Wgfbyk
- Shivetya 10y ago
  My question to the HN community is, when does AirBnB cross into the out of favor status that a disruptive service like Uber has? If not any similar. While regulation is nice there are many cases where it serves no purpose other than to prevent competition. With regards to AirBnb a friend who rents home says its not common for contracts to forbid AirBnb and similar services and he does check sites to see if tenants are violating the rule.
  - Apocryphon 10y ago
    The SF ad campaign was Uber-levels of gratuitously insensitive and vindicative: http://www.inc.com/tess-townsend/airbnb-responds-to-backlash-over-ad-campaign.html http://www.inc.com/tess-townsend/airbnb-responds-to-backlash...
  - monkmartinez 10y ago
    By the looks of the comments, I would say ABB is already on its way out of favor. As a Firefighter, I will not stay in an ABB... nope.
    - nommm-nommm 10y ago
      Can you elaborate?
      - exabrial 10y ago
        Minimal maintenance, no inspections on safety equipment, and the owner isn't there to notice strange smells (Ozone (electrical problems), Gas, chemical leakage, mold, etc), no compliance with local code.
cuckcuckspruce 10y ago
Awesome. Move to Somalia where there's no state to prevent you from doing whatever the fuck you want. Break the monopoly on the use of force by needing to supply your own to get anything done!
- erikpukinskis 10y ago
  That's not an accurate characterization of Somalia. There are plenty of simple activities that would draw the attention of the government.
- dang 10y ago
  Your comments have been breaking the HN guidelines. Please post civilly and substantively, or not at all. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14130829 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14130829 and marked it off-topic.
louithethrid 10y ago
This whole economic setup becomes more fascinating by the minute.. a shared, near socialistic economy on personal goods- and a buy/sell full capitalistic economy on virtual goods. Finally some mass producion, where the tailoring of the product is left to private sub-contractors.
Grue3 10y ago
I tried to use AirBnb once, but apparently you can't book a reservation unless you upload your photo. The fuck? And then they wonder why their hosts discriminate by race! I sure don't need to show my photo to a hotel to book a room.
- takingflac 10y ago
  In the US you must provide a valid photo ID when checking in to validate your age.
  - Grue3 10y ago
    It's not about checking in. Obviously I had to provide an ID to every hotel I've checked in (though reportedly Richard Stallman manages to avoid that too). It's about not having to upload a profile photo to be able to use the damn app. It's the only app I've seen (including Facebook itself) that insists on doing that, and it makes zero damn sense.
- pc86 10y ago
  Do you have a source on racial discrimination by ABB hosts?
  - esMazer 10y ago
    there have been a few instances however as far as I know airbnb have handled this instances by banning the Host for life
  - amyjess 10y ago
    http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2017/04/10/airbnb-bans-host-for-alleged-discrimination-against-asian-guest/ http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2017/04/10/airbnb-bans-host-f...
    - pc86 10y ago
      Thank you I had never heard this before (granted I don't follow AirBnB very closely at all). Seems like an appropriate response from AirBnB at least.
makecheck 10y ago
AirBNB seems to be combating itself just as much, frankly. Take this idea that an AirBNB host can set pretty much any service/cleaning fee, which is not factored in to search-by-price and not even displayed until you click a property. This basically makes the entire concept of a “price” meaningless in search results, and I quickly grew tired of having to click into every single property just to figure out the “real” price before returning to the search results page. And price is far from the only way that a property can be misleading. I don’t think the hotel industry has much to worry about.
- jessriedel 10y ago
  That one baffles me. It clearly incentivizes hosts to get you to click with a misleading low price, damaging the AirBnB experience, without giving AirBnB an edge over anyone else. (The results aren't appearing alongside normal hotels.)
  - Shivetya 10y ago
    EBAY had to take action against sellers who were increasing shipping costs to set a minimum value on their items. Originally I don't think any of the shipping cost was factored into the fees paid to EBAY. So I would hope that AirBnb does something similar to include presenting the full cost of rental at all times. There should be no fees other than those AirBnb specifies.
    - code_duck 10y ago
      That's what this situation reminded me of too. eBay sellers will say a $12 item is 1.99 plus a shipping cost inflated by $10, which makes the price look cheap in search, and also avoids fees on eBay and PayPal.
- Cshelton 10y ago
  In my experience, I've found most AirBnB hosts' pricing on other fees has been reasonable. Other services out there though, like HomeAway, are much more deceptive. I've had to actually email the hosts on HomeAway to get the full price, which turned out to be double what the stated cost was.
rdl 10y ago
I would prefer the perfect hotel experience, but airbnb is a better product (at any price) than almost all hotels. If the hotel strategy to fight airbnb rests on pushing regulators to screw consumers, it's unlikely they'll improve their product. (Maybe some new entrant can make something better than airbnb or legacy hotels, though.)
- anindha 10y ago
  Could you expand on why? I normally use Airbnb for areas without many hotels or for longer stays. I generally find hotels more convenient for short stays because it's predictable.
  - iamcasen 10y ago
    From my personal experience, Airbnb's tend to be a minimum of 15-20% cheaper than 3 star hotel prices. Often times those Airbnb's will offer a 5 star experience. I enjoy hotels, and the convenience, but I prefer nice Airbnb's for the following reasons: 1) full kitchen 2) more privacy 3) much cheaper 4) often times helped by host 5) get a taste of actually living in a neighborhood at your destination
  - rdl 10y ago
    I want a hotel with 100/100+ symmetric high-quality Internet, and ideally, set up with a desk, good chair, large monitor on the desk, and keyboard/mouse. 24h checkin, and ideally essentially automated checkin -- if I'm a frequent guest, I should be able to have a key sent to my phone (or have an NFC token I carry added to the door's ACL) for the duration of my stay, ideally without dealing with humans. SPG usually takes me about 2 minutes to check in within the US, or 3-5 internationally; I'd like that to be 0. I'd like convenient-to-transport, including both transit and parking, and carts/flat floors/etc. so I can move stuff in/out of my room easily. Some specific amenities would be really nice -- a standard coffee machine (I'd prefer nespresso, but really anything), fridge, microwave, etc. I'd also love it if all outlets are wonpro universal sockets, and if the layout of sockets in the room is standardized (at the very least, always one or two on each side of the bed, and 2-4 at a desk). What I'd love, but which many people may hate, is an absurd level of standardization of the room itself -- the same mattress, layout, furnishings, etc. available at every property, and actual floorplans shown so I'm booking a specific room and not run of house. (I'd be fine with this just being a subset, like the club floor, of a legacy hotel. Or, it handled as a standalone new build, conversion of legacy hotel, subset of a floor ("Towers" or club floor concept), or potentially, a decentralized hotel with a bunch of apartments in an area, centrally managed and serviced.
robbiemitchell 10y ago
Aside from compliance costs, hotels are sitting on tons of real estate they must fill with sleepers every night. It's expensive. I still think hotels could someday co-opt airbnb's success by franchising "at-home" versions that provide rental properties with branded products and regular inspections. Take a cut of the proceeds. List the properties on the website. - Hilton at Home - Marriott Anywhere
- monkmartinez 10y ago
  This is not a terrible idea, but the overhead of running an actual hotel business and the associated costs would likely make it less attractive than the current wild west approach. I assume, naively, that a lot of ABB'ers skirt taxes and short-term rental codes/taxes. The advantage comes from not recognizing the state/city/town bed codes/taxes.
jupiter90000 10y ago
So, haven't people been doing things like short-term rentals with their condos, spare rooms, etc for quite a while without Airbnb using things like VRBO, craigslist, other websites, newspaper ads, word-of-mouth, etc? Was the hotel industry very upset about people doing those things before Airbnb and lobbying against it because it was concerned these rentals didn't follow exactly the same regulations hotels did? I can't seem to find information about that, although it wouldn't surprise me. What seems to be actually happening though is now there is a successful and popular marketplace for this type of rental that has gained alot of traction (Airbnb), and under the guise of 'safety, standards, etc' the hotel lobby is fighting (to actually try to get their large share of the market back). I don't necessarily think laws and regulations are bad to have in place as it often protects the consumers. But for the hotel industry to pretend this is their motive is inauthentic, just be honest that it's about the money. What disgusts me about all this is the corporate speak that goes under the guise of values and concern for customers (same could be said of Airbnb marketing lingo).
- misterbowfinger 10y ago
  Agreed. I'm not going to argue that Airbnb is above regulations, but the spitefulness on behalf of the hotel lobby is ridiculous. It's exactly the type of lobbying that works against consumer interests for no good reason. How do we stop this?
  - atourgates 10y ago
    Certainly the hotel industry's lobbying is self-interested, but I wouldn't say it's entirely against consumer interest. Sure, travelers are interested in paying the lowest price for the best accommodation, but the needs of residents are often conflicting with that. There are reasons that zoning laws exist, and that I couldn't just decide to buy a house and turn it into a hotel in many places. But that's essentially what Airbnb allows. There's always an important balance between regulation, and freedom, and I'm certainly not arguing for outlawing Airbnb. But in this case that self-interest of the hotel industry might be aligned closely with the self-interest of residents in the communities where Airbnb operates.
kylehotchkiss 10y ago
"the hotel cartel is intent on short-sheeting the middle class so they can keep price-gouging consumers," Well... maybe. After staying in about 10 airbnbs total, I'd generally prefer a hotel room. * Hotels are generally clean. I still always check them before I get into them, but I've yet to find a hotel with "gross" sheets. I don't worry much about the showers either * Hotels have parking! This is nice for the driver in me * Hotels are safe. The door locks and general consensus that cameras are not good help me sleep better * Hotels are generally somewhat flexible with room changes if they have availability That all said, you're going to have to pay >$100/night to get that level of service from a hotel but that works for me
- pitaj 10y ago
  It's really what you pay for.
wakkaflokka 10y ago
Reading through the comments, I feel like I might be one of the few that prefer AirBnB not for money savings, but because they always feel more authentic to me. I've been to several different countries in the past year, and have stayed at AirBnB's every time. Sure, there were some issues here and there that would not have occurred at a hotel. But I'll be damned if it wasn't nice to stay nestled into the local neighborhoods, and meet (and sometimes drink) with the hosts, who were always gracious and helpful in pointing out the best places to check out that are off-the-beaten-path. For what it's worth, dedicated buildings for AirBnB's really rub me the wrong way, because it often takes away from the charming/local feel of the place/host. I try to avoid booking places like this.
- DennisP 10y ago
  Same here. I just stayed in an AirBnB house on the water in a coastal city. The hosts lived next door and gave us a ride in their boat.
- Shounak 10y ago
  If you're not traveling with a family, I've found hostels to be by far the best experience. They tend to be cheaper than both hotels and AirBNB, and have a very social atmosphere that's great for meeting other travelers and finding interesting off-the-beaten-path places to go.
  - theparanoid 10y ago
    After 30, I really valued my privacy and a personal kitchen.
    - hellofunk 10y ago
      You lasted longer than me. I gave up on hostels after age 17.
      - cmurf 10y ago
        Dagnabbit I remember using outhouses with the whole neighborhood! You spoiled whippersnappers!
clamprecht 10y ago
I wonder how many people participating in this thread are being paid to post by (1) The hotel industry, or (2) AirBnb
- pitaj 10y ago
  Yes everyone is a shill /s
mrfusion 10y ago
Is airbnb the best place to find somewhere to stay for 2-3 months?
bookbinder 10y ago
I feel pretty naive. When I read the headline, I assumed the hotel industry was going to adapt and innovate as opposed to using legal maneuvers and regulations.
bogomipz 10y ago
So the hotel industry's plan revolves solely around more legislation and regulation? How about competing by innovating and providing the consumer with a better or improved experience? Does the industry really believe that theres nothing they can do to improve on the consumer experience? It feels like its changed very little if at all over the years. How about stop charging $15.00 a day for internet. It's 2017 charging for internet like charging for power in the room. How about getting rid of inflexible checkin/checkout times? How about lobbying local governments to reduce the exorbitant double digit taxes and fees consumers pay on hotels stays instead.[1] Example tax rates: 18.27% New York City 17.76% Nashville 17% Houston and Indianapolis 16.75% San Antonio, TX and Columbus, OH [1] http://www.travelandleisure.com/articles/understanding-hotel-taxes http://www.travelandleisure.com/articles/understanding-hotel...
- kilroy123 10y ago
  Agreed. I find it utter insulting when they charge for internet.
  - eps 10y ago
    Is this an US thing? I travel a lot and I can't remember the last time I had a hotel to charge for the Internet access separately.
    - mixedCase 10y ago
      My parents went on a trip to Europe a few years ago and we used Skype on every location they stayed at. The only place where they didn't have to pay separately for Internet access and where the connection wasn't dogcrap was Austria. And I don't remember where it happened, but in one case it was so outrageously expensive they just waited until their following destination to call. But indeed, they later traveled to the US and had to pay as well. Nowhere I have stayed at in our third world country (Uruguay) this is a thing.
      - hellofunk 10y ago
yalogin 10y ago
I am probably in the minority here but Airbnb is a non starter for me. The fact that they rate and review the guests and that it stays online for ever is something I cannot accept. I know there are a bunch of things like living with locals and mingling with them and all of that but I would rather keep that little bit of privacy.
user5994461 10y ago
Airbnb.com : Are we talking about that microscopic company that's barely a percent of hotels.com and booking.com ? P.S. That's just to give a perspective on the industry ;)
malthaus 10y ago
I'd be pretty surprised if Airbnb won't be looked at as a fad in a few years time, independent of the hotel's action plan. Hotels deliver a consistent experience up to certain standards, Airbnb doesnt. The price difference is marginal at best and staying in someones spare bedroom doesn't magically make your trip 'authentic'. There are use cases where it makes sense (e.g. cheap shared accommodation, large flats with kitchens for families) but for most use cases covered by hotels it just doesnt. What will happen is that more bad experiences happen and travel through social media, regulation will increase and it will go back to its niche life where it will do a great job.
filereaper 10y ago
First they ignore you, Then they laugh at you, Then they fight you, Then you win.
ithinkinstereo 10y ago
AirBnBs are fantastic until you have a bad experience. When that happens, you realize how little recourse and options you have; you're basically screwed and need to scramble for solutions. This is not so bad when you're on a vacation and have some flexibility. It is 100% a total nightmare when traveling for work and have other responsibilities to attend to. Hotels have the advantage of: 1) Consistent product quality 2) Established process and channels for addressing complaints 3) Recourse when things go wrong AirBnBs have the advantage of: 1) Cost, cost, cost 2) Uniqueness in accommodation environments 3) Greater flexibility (especially as it relates to cost) in terms of location and specific accommodation needs (kitchen, multiple beds, etc.) Those who rave about AirBnB, I suspect, have never had a really bad experience. I used to AirBnB all the time, but a few bad experiences really turned me off on the whole platform. You get what you pay for, and with hotels, that extra cost provides "insurance" for when things go south. These days I'll occasionally AirBnB when on vacation if the costs are significantly lower than a hotel (and this is only ever the case if you're booking relatively last moment). Never on business trips - only if there are literally no other accommodations (at sane prices), which is only ever the case when booking last minute in specific cities (SF, NYC, Tokyo, etc.).
- Arwill 10y ago
  This is exactly the feeling i've got too. After a couple of weeks in various apartments i stopped using AirBnB and went back to staying in Hotels. This was in 2015, it might have changed since then, but then AirBnB wasn't issuing an invoice. Since i was travelling for work, good documentation of costs is necessary, and i don't wan't to argue with my accountant each time i tried to pass some printed page from AirBnB site as "invoice" or "receipt". Ryanair also does not issue an invoice, and i've only once done the mistake of buying a ticket from them. I have not yet had a hotel so far that refused to issue an invoice for the company when i requested it so. On a side note, both AirBnB and Ryanair had the "company name and address" fields on their web-forms, which made me believe those data will be used for printing an invoice, but those are not used nor displayed ever after being entered. What a deception. This is some kind of misery that Irish companies do. Companies that are based in Ireland operate by Irish law, and it seems that Irish law does not require them to issue an invoice. I don't know how much money AirBnB and Ryanair are saving by not providing a printable PDF invoice on their sites, but they might just be losing customers from other EU countries where the invoice was and is the basic document of business transactions. Then there is the rest of the problems with AirBnB. I absolutely needed an apartment with stable internet connection, to be able to work remotely. I was promised that, but when i got there it wasn't working. I was told to "restart the router", well it didn't help either. So i had to buy a 50EUR data-stick with crappy slow internet to be able to connect. Most hotels are not better in this regard either, but with hotels i can at least avoid the bad ones. With AirBnB each apartment is a new unique situation. Maybe it has bad wifi, maybe its smelly, maybe its without air-conditioning, maybe the neighbors are noisy. Like the previous poster wrote, hotels provide a more consistent service.
mgleason_3 10y ago
Just an observation... These comments seem to be taken over by a pro-Hotel Lobby. Does the average developer really care that much? So many comments? 318 comments and climbing? Why are there so-many down-voted comments? Why are the ones down-voted almost entirely the ones saying they like AirBnB or questioning the Hotel industry?
flour_power 10y ago
this isn't a plan, this is just rent-seeking. https://www.google.com/search?q=rent+seeking&oq=rent+seeking&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.1577j1j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 https://www.google.com/search?q=rent+seeking&oq=rent+seeking...

153 points by uyoakaoma 10y ago

iplaw 10y ago

Because lobbying is almost always 1) more effective and 2) less expensive than developing and implementing business processes which result in actual change. It is easier to pay off a handful of politicians to legislate maintenance of status quo, for the next several decades, than it is to reengineer an entire industry in response to market forces and Capitalism. We are pseudo-Capitalists. We let market forces decide until those market forces decide that status quo isn't working. Then, rather than allowing the market to self-correct and increase efficiency and value, we artificially prop up and, further, mandate, the status quo via legislation. Transportation, Internet Service Providers, Cable Providers, Automotive Dealers, ..., and now Accomodations. This list of industries is growing at an alarming rate.

emodendroket 10y ago
Even if we ignore the hotel industry it's not entirely clear that allowing residential housing to be used in lieu of hotels is a win for everybody. And yes, I'd freely admit that I don't actually want to allow the free market to just do whatever it decides without any external political control.
- patrickaljord 10y ago
  The free market is just you and me deciding what we want to buy or not. What you want is the politicians to decide what we can and cannot do with our money because we are not smart enough to make free choices, which is the argument behind every single dictatorship.
  - dragontamer 10y ago
    Zoning laws are increasingly local however. At some point, its no longer "Politicians over in Washington" and your own darn neighbors who are attending HOA meetings, deciding to ban Airbnb locally. A huge part of neighborhood local politics is the ability to push out "poor" people to certain corners. Single-family home dwellers don't like apartments or townhomes closeby. Not only are they "unsightly", they are filled with "lower class people" and "bring down home values". (often: codewords for browner and otherwise "less white" people) But its important to realize that this phenomenon is NOT top-down, but instead bubbles up from the bottom up. The people who think this are your neighbors down the street.
    - emodendroket 10y ago
      I won't say those motivations are nonexistent, but having a bunch of unknown short-term people coming for a stay in a neighborhood makes it less like an actual neighborhood (who cares if I make a mess and do a half-assed job cleaning up?) and a temptation to turn housing into lucrative rentals squeezes housing stock in places where it's already constrained.
      - dragontamer 10y ago
        Fair point. That's also a local concern (and more legitimate). Although I need to remind people that in a democracy, its about the number of people who think a certain thought... not the legitimacy of those thoughts that count.
      - xapata 10y ago
        Then regulate what you dislike: making a mess, being loud, etc. Or do you want to ban motorcycles because some riders have too-loud mufflers?
        emodendroket 10y ago
        Which one of these things do you think is easier to enforce? Would you prefer to have to call the police with a noise complaint regularly or not have noise in the first place?
        xapata 10y ago
        I think that the AirBnB host will be careful about what guests are permitted after the first noise complaint, risking being evicted. Perhaps just knowing the rules might avoid the issue. After all, that's how you expect any AirBnB regulation to take effect.
        dragontamer 10y ago
        > I think that the AirBnB host will be careful about what guests are permitted after the first noise complaint, risking being evicted. How about a simple law: don't violate zoning regulations. Its no different than in the "good ol days" when you weren't allowed to run a Bed-and-Breakfast Inn out of your own home (unless you lived in a commercial district, or otherwise lived in a district with more lax Zoning laws)
  - emodendroket 10y ago
    What benefits you or me individually can easily be detrimental if we all start doing it, even if we take as a given your (in my opinion incorrect) assumption that in an unfettered free market there aren't some actors far more powerful than others.
  - electricEmu 10y ago
    Political regulation is just you and me delegating representation of interests. What you want is for corporations to decide what we can and cannot do with our money because we are not smart enough to make free choices, which is the argument behind every single corporation. Companies do not exist for altruistic purposes. They exist to make a handy profit for the fee at the expensive of many sometimes. Regulation extends a more fair playing field in some cases. Sometimes it protects the public interest. It's why there's no Walmart in Seattle.
    - iplaw 10y ago
      The problem is, people still inexplicably think that they are delegating this representation to people who actually care or who are bound by some type of moral code which mandates acting in the person's best interests. How has this basic falsehood persisted for so long and in the face of such damning evidence to the contrary?
      - ceejayoz 10y ago
        > How has this basic falsehood persisted for so long and in the face of such damning evidence to the contrary? Probably the fact that there's strong evidence to support it? Compare today versus the 1970s in air quality, car safety, waterway pollution, etc.
    - patrickaljord 10y ago
      > Political regulation is just you and me delegating representation of interests. Is there a way to opt out? Otherwise it sounds more like coercion than delegating. Corporations are not made of martians, they are made of people making free choices. Should they get a special status with limited liability protected by the government? I don't think so but that's something to blame on the government, not corporations. If your neighbor's airbnb ruins your nights you should be able to sue and the owner of the building should be free to ban airbnb. But the government deciding that airbnb should be illegal or regulated centrally is where I draw the line.
      - 10y ago
  - ceejayoz 10y ago
    > ... we are not smart enough to make free choices... You say that like it's not true, but history has borne that out pretty well. Humans are great at ignoring externalities, impacts on minority groups, etc.
  - zebrafish 10y ago
    Nobody wants politicians to decide what we can and cannot do with our money. What we want is a free market with a check on human greed. For example, do I think all people deserve cheap energy, personal transportation, and inexpensive plastic products? Yes. Do I think they deserve them at the expense of millions of peoples lives/livelihoods? No. Therefore, I believe there should be regulation in the "free market".
    - iplaw 10y ago
      > Nobody wants politicians to decide what we can and cannot do with our money. This seems like an essentially true statement, but a substantial majority of evidence points to the contrary.
    - freeflight 10y ago
      >For example, do I think all people deserve cheap energy, personal transportation, and inexpensive plastic products? Yes. Do I think they deserve them at the expense of millions of people's lives/livelihoods? No. Sorry for being nitpicky, but wouldn't that second group of people also "profit" from cheap energy, ect. because they are also part of "all people"? Then what is so inherently wrong about that situation? If ALL of us can be living a little bit better by SOME of us sacrificing, then isn't that what we should be doing, at least in a somewhat "equal" measure? Guess I'm just channeling my inner Spock a tad bit too much ;)
      - emodendroket 10y ago
        Your Inner Spock might determine that it's Highly Illogical to only look at cheap transportation and not consider externalities like pollution.
- iplaw 10y ago
  External political oversight* is one thing. Control is another. There is a trend of legislature propping up broken industries to the detriment of the people. Take the dealer network argument for example. Dealers argue that the existence of dealers creates inter- and intra-brand competition that drives prices lower and benefits the consumer. In the same breath, however, they say that it is impossible to compete with direct sales from Tesla. It is too competitive. These are two contradictory statements. Dealers act as a middlemen that necessarily increase prices in order to generate profit that is allocated to said dealers. Dealers have historically enjoyed this now-oft-unnecessary place in the chain of automobile conveyance. But dealers view this profit source as a basic right which must be legislatively protected. And, thus far, they have been quite successful at lobbying for mandates which require these market inefficiencies.
  - emodendroket 10y ago
    Without legislating any particular example I agree that regulation can be used as a cudgel to stifle competitors too, but I don't agree that the answer is to throw out the concept.
geogra4 10y ago
This is actually existing capitalism though. Capitalism on paper is much different from capitalism in reality.
- cpursley 10y ago
  Well, no. There's actually a term for it: Crony Capitalism aka "Cronyism" (protectionism). Don't conflate this with actual Capitalism.
  - geogra4 10y ago
    Where has "actual capitalism" ever existed? It's always cronyism.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    Cronyism is actual capitalism; “capitalism” was a name first applied by critics to the real world dominant system of the 19th Century industrialized West, and cronyism is a central feature of that system. Heck, the name “capitalism” is a reference to the fact that that system is characterized by active measures (starting with the design ofnthenstructure of property rights) taken to organize society for the benefit of a particular narrow class, the capitalist class. (“Protectionism” is a different, but related, thing, though.)
CPLX 10y ago
But some of us like the status quo where drunken vacationing Europeans aren't allowed to rent out units in our residential apartment buildings. Trying to just "disrupt" business without actually addressing and solving the complex issues that define the market is just lazy, and often illegal. I'm pretty glad we have regulated capitalism. If you like the unregulated kind perhaps you should visit unregulated hotspots like northern Iraq or Somalia and see what Capitalism looks like in all its raw glory.
- iplaw 10y ago
  There is a difference between oversight and control. Maintaining market inefficiencies to the detriment of consumers, simply for the sake of maintaining status quo and profit allocation to the establishment, goes beyond mere regulation.
  - pc86 10y ago
    Market regulation is by definition controlling what a market can and cannot do. The intent does not change the definition of the word.
- NeonVice 10y ago
  Capitalism != Anarchy. Free markets still require laws addressing theft, property ownership, contract law, etc. Protectionism, however, simply rewards first comers. Disruption is the crux of a free market and should be embraced not lobbied against. Services that people dislike the most due to cost or service rendered (airlines, health insurance, telecom providers) are often the most regulated.
  - iplaw 10y ago
    Someone here must work for Comcast or owe hundreds of thousands of dollars on an ill-timed taxi medallion purchase. There are lots of downvotes flying around well-reasoned posts. It's not a disagree button, people.
    - 10y ago

xapata 10y ago

Note that the hotel industry lobbied against collecting business taxes from AirBnB hosts, afraid that paying taxes indicates legitimacy.

rwc 10y ago
Which is why airbnb is all too happy to help states fill revenue shortfalls with taxes that come out of their pockets: https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/2017/04/17/196451/airbnb-agreement-with-texas-means-hosts-wont-get-around-paying-tax/ https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/2017/04/17/... "By next month, Airbnb will have similar agreements with 250 jurisdictions in the United States, including 20 states."

ouesp 10y ago

Having used AirBnB for a while, I now prefer to stay in a hotel. Staying in AirBnB I don't feel safe at all and 80% of the AirBnB's I stayed had one problem or the other. There is no importance given for the safety or even a proper door. I dont want to deal with problems when I stay somewhere for pleasure or business. And No, I dont want to read hundreds of reviews before I make my decision. I am back to hotel stays. I hope their lobbying finds success.

DINKDINK 10y ago
>I hope their lobbying finds success. Your opinion piece is fine until your last line where you support using the state to ban other people from making the choice that you prefer not to make.
- ythn 10y ago
  > Your opinion piece is fine until your last line where you support using the state to ban other people from making the choice that you prefer not to make. What's wrong with that? Virtually every regulatory law does this. Unless you are arguing that the state should not be able to regulate anything, I don't see why supporting regulations in one industry or another is a bad thing.
- 67726e 10y ago
  How about this: I hope the hotels successfully lobby to enforce existing zoning laws. I don't want my neighbors running a business out of their house. If they break the law, punish them. Simple as that.
  - snakeanus 10y ago
    > I don't want my neighbors running a business out of their house Why?
    - WkndTriathlete 10y ago
      Common concerns: * Increased traffic * More noise * Greater odds of criminal activity * Resultant reduction in nearby property values These are not theoretical and are part of the reason why zoning laws exist.

DennisP 10y ago

For two crazy seconds I thought this would involve figuring out how to better compete in the marketplace.

notum 10y ago
With innovation and more pricing options that would ultimately result in better overall experience and more viable choices for everyone? You're insane.
Cshelton 10y ago
This article reads just like the combustion vehicle/car dealership articles... "It's not fair what Tesla is doing! We need the government to step in and secure our position in the market." The younger generation is not buying it and it is a huge turnoff. I've been using AirBnB for some time and have never had a serious issue. It has allowed me to sacrifice some of the things you get with a hotel for typically a lower costs and the opportunity to stay in many places that are not considered a "tourist" area, which is my favorite part. There are many places a typical hotel chain can innovate and actually offer very similar things to AirBnB. They can identify the target market of AirBnB, which is typically either the younger traveler or people who like to explore the cities in different areas than where hotels are. Hotel chains can build little annexes, maybe similar to a hostel, inside neighborhoods, where they can have 4-5 rooms and use the main hotel as the check in/out, other amenities. And at that level they can compete with AirBnB very well. As far as the hotel tax, I can't say every city requires it, but almost all the AirBnBs' I've stayed at recently has a city hotel tax. So they are doing well working with local governments. So to the hotel chains...good luck fighting that, most cities have already worked it out. At the end of the day, AirBnB is just a market place that connects private citizens with each other. One citizen is letting another use their place for a price. That's it. Same as Uber... how do you ban a person from giving somebody else a ride. It's not the governments jurisdiction. Stay Out.
- gergles 10y ago
  Oh, don't start with that "it's just a guy helping out another guy" nonsense. Airbnb is a gigantic business, and the 'hosts' are also businesses, and have to accept regulation as such. Of course it is the governments' jurisdiction to regulate the safety, sanitation, and other relevant laws that relate to paid lodging no matter who the person is offering said paid lodging. Airbnb rentals (in the overwhelming majority of cases) aren't me sharing my couch with my best friend while he's in town, this is me letting a stranger come into my house and stay here for money. Acting like those are equivalent situations diminishes your argument.

unixhero 10y ago

Topic aside. Pretty crappy article, it's just a wall of text.

ar15saveslives 10y ago

Do they really need to combat airbnb? I travel a lot (relatively), but I can't get the idea of this service. It's a bit cheaper, but a) I can't cancel it b) I can't book it without interaction with a host c) I can't move in without interaction with a host d) it ends up even more expensive after cleaning/service/whatever fees. I've just checked [1]: NYC, a shitty "private" room with shared bathroom for a weekday is $150, with crazy "strict" cancelation policy, that literally says "Cancel up to 7 days before your trip and get a 50% refund plus service fees back." What's the point and why is airbnb still alive? [1] https://www.airbnb.ca/rooms/14165373?checkin=2017-05-18&checkout=2017-05-19 https://www.airbnb.ca/rooms/14165373?checkin=2017-05-18&chec...

brookside 10y ago
Because not everywhere is NYC. I've found the economics and potential extra hassle of booking of airbnb work our best for slightly longer stays. The premium of two weeks of hotel over two weeks of airbnb is often significant.
- ar15saveslives 10y ago
  > Because not everywhere is NYC. Do I really need to attach links to rooms in all major cities in the world? But I got the idea: airbnb may be better for longer trips.
reverend_gonzo 10y ago
> What's the point and why is airbnb still alive? Because sometimes people have an extended trip that they plan out ahead of time. So, communicating with a host and meeting the host is not a huge deal since they'll be staying there for a few days or more. On the other hand, getting input from the host about local favorites would be desirable. If I'm going somewhere for one or two days, I would definitely book a hotel. If I'm going somewhere for a week or so, especially if its somewhere remote, I'd try for an AirBNB. Costs are cheaper, hotels are usually substandard, and host's insights are valued.
- 10y ago

losteverything 10y ago

So marriott finds many guests order pizza delivery. They create new uniforms, new name, hats and a separate number for pizza delivery. (Could not find article but ~15-20,it's old ) It goes directly into their kitchen where they make the pizza. Why can't hotels do the same. Make it look like an ABB. ???

YCode 10y ago

Before I even opened the article I knew it was going to be a legislative rather than customer-focused approach. God forbid hotels recognize their inherent strengths and AirBnB's weaknesses and cater their services/marketing to that end.

ape4 10y ago
Hotels have lots of advantages. Often better location: downtown. A 24-hour desk. You can ask for info. Get deliveries. They can give you extra soap if you run out... without emailing some guy. Ask them to get you a taxi (yes I know about Uber), etc.
- neuland 10y ago
  But those advantages don't seem to be of interest to some segment of customers. So, there's clearly some issue with competition.
  - SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
    But some portion of that is the cost of compliance with safety, which AirBNB skips. There's no reason we shouldn't require things that are effectively hotel rooms to comply with hotel safety regulations. If AirBNB can only operate by violating the law, why should we support their business model?
    - volkl47 10y ago
      Actually, there is plenty of reason they shouldn't have to abide by the same regulations. We have the rules we have for hotels because they're typically large buildings with many rooms (often smaller than even the minimum dwelling size for private apartments) and that density presents significant safety hazards to many people should anything happen, not just you. You being in a 100sf room on the 11th floor makes it very hard to not have you die if there's a fire, especially when there's hundreds of you to evacuate. There's no reason that someone say...renting out a detached single story house should need anything more than a working smoke/CO detector.

exabrial 10y ago

1) Prosecute and inform local law enforcement. If you have a rental property exclusively used for Airbnb, it's likely illegal. Adam ruins everything: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGLe0Wgfbyk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGLe0Wgfbyk

Shivetya 10y ago
My question to the HN community is, when does AirBnB cross into the out of favor status that a disruptive service like Uber has? If not any similar. While regulation is nice there are many cases where it serves no purpose other than to prevent competition. With regards to AirBnb a friend who rents home says its not common for contracts to forbid AirBnb and similar services and he does check sites to see if tenants are violating the rule.
- Apocryphon 10y ago
  The SF ad campaign was Uber-levels of gratuitously insensitive and vindicative: http://www.inc.com/tess-townsend/airbnb-responds-to-backlash-over-ad-campaign.html http://www.inc.com/tess-townsend/airbnb-responds-to-backlash...
- monkmartinez 10y ago
  By the looks of the comments, I would say ABB is already on its way out of favor. As a Firefighter, I will not stay in an ABB... nope.
  - nommm-nommm 10y ago
    Can you elaborate?
    - exabrial 10y ago
      Minimal maintenance, no inspections on safety equipment, and the owner isn't there to notice strange smells (Ozone (electrical problems), Gas, chemical leakage, mold, etc), no compliance with local code.

cuckcuckspruce 10y ago

Awesome. Move to Somalia where there's no state to prevent you from doing whatever the fuck you want. Break the monopoly on the use of force by needing to supply your own to get anything done!

erikpukinskis 10y ago
That's not an accurate characterization of Somalia. There are plenty of simple activities that would draw the attention of the government.
dang 10y ago
Your comments have been breaking the HN guidelines. Please post civilly and substantively, or not at all. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14130829 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14130829 and marked it off-topic.

louithethrid 10y ago

This whole economic setup becomes more fascinating by the minute.. a shared, near socialistic economy on personal goods- and a buy/sell full capitalistic economy on virtual goods. Finally some mass producion, where the tailoring of the product is left to private sub-contractors.

Grue3 10y ago

I tried to use AirBnb once, but apparently you can't book a reservation unless you upload your photo. The fuck? And then they wonder why their hosts discriminate by race! I sure don't need to show my photo to a hotel to book a room.

takingflac 10y ago
In the US you must provide a valid photo ID when checking in to validate your age.
- Grue3 10y ago
  It's not about checking in. Obviously I had to provide an ID to every hotel I've checked in (though reportedly Richard Stallman manages to avoid that too). It's about not having to upload a profile photo to be able to use the damn app. It's the only app I've seen (including Facebook itself) that insists on doing that, and it makes zero damn sense.
pc86 10y ago
Do you have a source on racial discrimination by ABB hosts?
- esMazer 10y ago
  there have been a few instances however as far as I know airbnb have handled this instances by banning the Host for life
- amyjess 10y ago
  http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2017/04/10/airbnb-bans-host-for-alleged-discrimination-against-asian-guest/ http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2017/04/10/airbnb-bans-host-f...
  - pc86 10y ago
    Thank you I had never heard this before (granted I don't follow AirBnB very closely at all). Seems like an appropriate response from AirBnB at least.

makecheck 10y ago

AirBNB seems to be combating itself just as much, frankly. Take this idea that an AirBNB host can set pretty much any service/cleaning fee, which is not factored in to search-by-price and not even displayed until you click a property. This basically makes the entire concept of a “price” meaningless in search results, and I quickly grew tired of having to click into every single property just to figure out the “real” price before returning to the search results page. And price is far from the only way that a property can be misleading. I don’t think the hotel industry has much to worry about.

jessriedel 10y ago
That one baffles me. It clearly incentivizes hosts to get you to click with a misleading low price, damaging the AirBnB experience, without giving AirBnB an edge over anyone else. (The results aren't appearing alongside normal hotels.)
- Shivetya 10y ago
  EBAY had to take action against sellers who were increasing shipping costs to set a minimum value on their items. Originally I don't think any of the shipping cost was factored into the fees paid to EBAY. So I would hope that AirBnb does something similar to include presenting the full cost of rental at all times. There should be no fees other than those AirBnb specifies.
  - code_duck 10y ago
    That's what this situation reminded me of too. eBay sellers will say a $12 item is 1.99 plus a shipping cost inflated by $10, which makes the price look cheap in search, and also avoids fees on eBay and PayPal.
Cshelton 10y ago
In my experience, I've found most AirBnB hosts' pricing on other fees has been reasonable. Other services out there though, like HomeAway, are much more deceptive. I've had to actually email the hosts on HomeAway to get the full price, which turned out to be double what the stated cost was.

rdl 10y ago

I would prefer the perfect hotel experience, but airbnb is a better product (at any price) than almost all hotels. If the hotel strategy to fight airbnb rests on pushing regulators to screw consumers, it's unlikely they'll improve their product. (Maybe some new entrant can make something better than airbnb or legacy hotels, though.)

anindha 10y ago
Could you expand on why? I normally use Airbnb for areas without many hotels or for longer stays. I generally find hotels more convenient for short stays because it's predictable.
- iamcasen 10y ago
  From my personal experience, Airbnb's tend to be a minimum of 15-20% cheaper than 3 star hotel prices. Often times those Airbnb's will offer a 5 star experience. I enjoy hotels, and the convenience, but I prefer nice Airbnb's for the following reasons: 1) full kitchen 2) more privacy 3) much cheaper 4) often times helped by host 5) get a taste of actually living in a neighborhood at your destination
- rdl 10y ago
  I want a hotel with 100/100+ symmetric high-quality Internet, and ideally, set up with a desk, good chair, large monitor on the desk, and keyboard/mouse. 24h checkin, and ideally essentially automated checkin -- if I'm a frequent guest, I should be able to have a key sent to my phone (or have an NFC token I carry added to the door's ACL) for the duration of my stay, ideally without dealing with humans. SPG usually takes me about 2 minutes to check in within the US, or 3-5 internationally; I'd like that to be 0. I'd like convenient-to-transport, including both transit and parking, and carts/flat floors/etc. so I can move stuff in/out of my room easily. Some specific amenities would be really nice -- a standard coffee machine (I'd prefer nespresso, but really anything), fridge, microwave, etc. I'd also love it if all outlets are wonpro universal sockets, and if the layout of sockets in the room is standardized (at the very least, always one or two on each side of the bed, and 2-4 at a desk). What I'd love, but which many people may hate, is an absurd level of standardization of the room itself -- the same mattress, layout, furnishings, etc. available at every property, and actual floorplans shown so I'm booking a specific room and not run of house. (I'd be fine with this just being a subset, like the club floor, of a legacy hotel. Or, it handled as a standalone new build, conversion of legacy hotel, subset of a floor ("Towers" or club floor concept), or potentially, a decentralized hotel with a bunch of apartments in an area, centrally managed and serviced.

robbiemitchell 10y ago

Aside from compliance costs, hotels are sitting on tons of real estate they must fill with sleepers every night. It's expensive. I still think hotels could someday co-opt airbnb's success by franchising "at-home" versions that provide rental properties with branded products and regular inspections. Take a cut of the proceeds. List the properties on the website. - Hilton at Home - Marriott Anywhere

monkmartinez 10y ago
This is not a terrible idea, but the overhead of running an actual hotel business and the associated costs would likely make it less attractive than the current wild west approach. I assume, naively, that a lot of ABB'ers skirt taxes and short-term rental codes/taxes. The advantage comes from not recognizing the state/city/town bed codes/taxes.

jupiter90000 10y ago

So, haven't people been doing things like short-term rentals with their condos, spare rooms, etc for quite a while without Airbnb using things like VRBO, craigslist, other websites, newspaper ads, word-of-mouth, etc? Was the hotel industry very upset about people doing those things before Airbnb and lobbying against it because it was concerned these rentals didn't follow exactly the same regulations hotels did? I can't seem to find information about that, although it wouldn't surprise me. What seems to be actually happening though is now there is a successful and popular marketplace for this type of rental that has gained alot of traction (Airbnb), and under the guise of 'safety, standards, etc' the hotel lobby is fighting (to actually try to get their large share of the market back). I don't necessarily think laws and regulations are bad to have in place as it often protects the consumers. But for the hotel industry to pretend this is their motive is inauthentic, just be honest that it's about the money. What disgusts me about all this is the corporate speak that goes under the guise of values and concern for customers (same could be said of Airbnb marketing lingo).

misterbowfinger 10y ago
Agreed. I'm not going to argue that Airbnb is above regulations, but the spitefulness on behalf of the hotel lobby is ridiculous. It's exactly the type of lobbying that works against consumer interests for no good reason. How do we stop this?
- atourgates 10y ago
  Certainly the hotel industry's lobbying is self-interested, but I wouldn't say it's entirely against consumer interest. Sure, travelers are interested in paying the lowest price for the best accommodation, but the needs of residents are often conflicting with that. There are reasons that zoning laws exist, and that I couldn't just decide to buy a house and turn it into a hotel in many places. But that's essentially what Airbnb allows. There's always an important balance between regulation, and freedom, and I'm certainly not arguing for outlawing Airbnb. But in this case that self-interest of the hotel industry might be aligned closely with the self-interest of residents in the communities where Airbnb operates.

kylehotchkiss 10y ago

"the hotel cartel is intent on short-sheeting the middle class so they can keep price-gouging consumers," Well... maybe. After staying in about 10 airbnbs total, I'd generally prefer a hotel room. * Hotels are generally clean. I still always check them before I get into them, but I've yet to find a hotel with "gross" sheets. I don't worry much about the showers either * Hotels have parking! This is nice for the driver in me * Hotels are safe. The door locks and general consensus that cameras are not good help me sleep better * Hotels are generally somewhat flexible with room changes if they have availability That all said, you're going to have to pay >$100/night to get that level of service from a hotel but that works for me

pitaj 10y ago
It's really what you pay for.

wakkaflokka 10y ago

Reading through the comments, I feel like I might be one of the few that prefer AirBnB not for money savings, but because they always feel more authentic to me. I've been to several different countries in the past year, and have stayed at AirBnB's every time. Sure, there were some issues here and there that would not have occurred at a hotel. But I'll be damned if it wasn't nice to stay nestled into the local neighborhoods, and meet (and sometimes drink) with the hosts, who were always gracious and helpful in pointing out the best places to check out that are off-the-beaten-path. For what it's worth, dedicated buildings for AirBnB's really rub me the wrong way, because it often takes away from the charming/local feel of the place/host. I try to avoid booking places like this.

DennisP 10y ago
Same here. I just stayed in an AirBnB house on the water in a coastal city. The hosts lived next door and gave us a ride in their boat.
Shounak 10y ago
If you're not traveling with a family, I've found hostels to be by far the best experience. They tend to be cheaper than both hotels and AirBNB, and have a very social atmosphere that's great for meeting other travelers and finding interesting off-the-beaten-path places to go.
- theparanoid 10y ago
  After 30, I really valued my privacy and a personal kitchen.
  - hellofunk 10y ago
    You lasted longer than me. I gave up on hostels after age 17.
    - cmurf 10y ago
      Dagnabbit I remember using outhouses with the whole neighborhood! You spoiled whippersnappers!

clamprecht 10y ago

I wonder how many people participating in this thread are being paid to post by (1) The hotel industry, or (2) AirBnb

pitaj 10y ago
Yes everyone is a shill /s

mrfusion 10y ago

Is airbnb the best place to find somewhere to stay for 2-3 months?

bookbinder 10y ago

I feel pretty naive. When I read the headline, I assumed the hotel industry was going to adapt and innovate as opposed to using legal maneuvers and regulations.

bogomipz 10y ago

So the hotel industry's plan revolves solely around more legislation and regulation? How about competing by innovating and providing the consumer with a better or improved experience? Does the industry really believe that theres nothing they can do to improve on the consumer experience? It feels like its changed very little if at all over the years. How about stop charging $15.00 a day for internet. It's 2017 charging for internet like charging for power in the room. How about getting rid of inflexible checkin/checkout times? How about lobbying local governments to reduce the exorbitant double digit taxes and fees consumers pay on hotels stays instead.[1] Example tax rates: 18.27% New York City 17.76% Nashville 17% Houston and Indianapolis 16.75% San Antonio, TX and Columbus, OH [1] http://www.travelandleisure.com/articles/understanding-hotel-taxes http://www.travelandleisure.com/articles/understanding-hotel...

kilroy123 10y ago
Agreed. I find it utter insulting when they charge for internet.
- eps 10y ago
  Is this an US thing? I travel a lot and I can't remember the last time I had a hotel to charge for the Internet access separately.
  - mixedCase 10y ago
    My parents went on a trip to Europe a few years ago and we used Skype on every location they stayed at. The only place where they didn't have to pay separately for Internet access and where the connection wasn't dogcrap was Austria. And I don't remember where it happened, but in one case it was so outrageously expensive they just waited until their following destination to call. But indeed, they later traveled to the US and had to pay as well. Nowhere I have stayed at in our third world country (Uruguay) this is a thing.
    - hellofunk 10y ago

yalogin 10y ago

I am probably in the minority here but Airbnb is a non starter for me. The fact that they rate and review the guests and that it stays online for ever is something I cannot accept. I know there are a bunch of things like living with locals and mingling with them and all of that but I would rather keep that little bit of privacy.

user5994461 10y ago

Airbnb.com : Are we talking about that microscopic company that's barely a percent of hotels.com and booking.com ? P.S. That's just to give a perspective on the industry ;)

malthaus 10y ago

I'd be pretty surprised if Airbnb won't be looked at as a fad in a few years time, independent of the hotel's action plan. Hotels deliver a consistent experience up to certain standards, Airbnb doesnt. The price difference is marginal at best and staying in someones spare bedroom doesn't magically make your trip 'authentic'. There are use cases where it makes sense (e.g. cheap shared accommodation, large flats with kitchens for families) but for most use cases covered by hotels it just doesnt. What will happen is that more bad experiences happen and travel through social media, regulation will increase and it will go back to its niche life where it will do a great job.

filereaper 10y ago

First they ignore you, Then they laugh at you, Then they fight you, Then you win.

ithinkinstereo 10y ago

AirBnBs are fantastic until you have a bad experience. When that happens, you realize how little recourse and options you have; you're basically screwed and need to scramble for solutions. This is not so bad when you're on a vacation and have some flexibility. It is 100% a total nightmare when traveling for work and have other responsibilities to attend to. Hotels have the advantage of: 1) Consistent product quality 2) Established process and channels for addressing complaints 3) Recourse when things go wrong AirBnBs have the advantage of: 1) Cost, cost, cost 2) Uniqueness in accommodation environments 3) Greater flexibility (especially as it relates to cost) in terms of location and specific accommodation needs (kitchen, multiple beds, etc.) Those who rave about AirBnB, I suspect, have never had a really bad experience. I used to AirBnB all the time, but a few bad experiences really turned me off on the whole platform. You get what you pay for, and with hotels, that extra cost provides "insurance" for when things go south. These days I'll occasionally AirBnB when on vacation if the costs are significantly lower than a hotel (and this is only ever the case if you're booking relatively last moment). Never on business trips - only if there are literally no other accommodations (at sane prices), which is only ever the case when booking last minute in specific cities (SF, NYC, Tokyo, etc.).

Arwill 10y ago
This is exactly the feeling i've got too. After a couple of weeks in various apartments i stopped using AirBnB and went back to staying in Hotels. This was in 2015, it might have changed since then, but then AirBnB wasn't issuing an invoice. Since i was travelling for work, good documentation of costs is necessary, and i don't wan't to argue with my accountant each time i tried to pass some printed page from AirBnB site as "invoice" or "receipt". Ryanair also does not issue an invoice, and i've only once done the mistake of buying a ticket from them. I have not yet had a hotel so far that refused to issue an invoice for the company when i requested it so. On a side note, both AirBnB and Ryanair had the "company name and address" fields on their web-forms, which made me believe those data will be used for printing an invoice, but those are not used nor displayed ever after being entered. What a deception. This is some kind of misery that Irish companies do. Companies that are based in Ireland operate by Irish law, and it seems that Irish law does not require them to issue an invoice. I don't know how much money AirBnB and Ryanair are saving by not providing a printable PDF invoice on their sites, but they might just be losing customers from other EU countries where the invoice was and is the basic document of business transactions. Then there is the rest of the problems with AirBnB. I absolutely needed an apartment with stable internet connection, to be able to work remotely. I was promised that, but when i got there it wasn't working. I was told to "restart the router", well it didn't help either. So i had to buy a 50EUR data-stick with crappy slow internet to be able to connect. Most hotels are not better in this regard either, but with hotels i can at least avoid the bad ones. With AirBnB each apartment is a new unique situation. Maybe it has bad wifi, maybe its smelly, maybe its without air-conditioning, maybe the neighbors are noisy. Like the previous poster wrote, hotels provide a more consistent service.

mgleason_3 10y ago

Just an observation... These comments seem to be taken over by a pro-Hotel Lobby. Does the average developer really care that much? So many comments? 318 comments and climbing? Why are there so-many down-voted comments? Why are the ones down-voted almost entirely the ones saying they like AirBnB or questioning the Hotel industry?

flour_power 10y ago

this isn't a plan, this is just rent-seeking. https://www.google.com/search?q=rent+seeking&oq=rent+seeking&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.1577j1j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 https://www.google.com/search?q=rent+seeking&oq=rent+seeking...