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Completely disagree with this analogy. Hotels have their place, and in so many ways they can be superior to a home rental. I am the furthest thing from a luddi

Completely disagree with this analogy. Hotels have their place, and in so many ways they can be superior to a home rental. I am the furthest thing from a luddite, but I personally prefer (as I know many others) hotels to Airbnb. There's a consistency to the hotel product that you can't get with Airbnb that I place a premium on, especially for short or last minute stays. I'm also not really sure why Airbnb is considered a "tech" co in the same way FB or Netflix is. There's is no real time component to the app, and it isn't dealing with billions of people using the app at the same time like a FB or Google is. In the few times I've used Airbnb over the years I'm honestly surprised by how little "tech" really permeates my experience (i.e. its just a basic web app that facilitates the listing + payment transfer + messaging...once I've made the reservation and paid Airbnb's job is essentially done).

strychn9ne9 8y ago
I think Airbnb shines with large groups. Me and 10 friends can split a house in the mountains or in some European city for a fraction of getting multiple rooms in a Hotel - with much less hassle. However, if I'm traveling by myself or with my partner, hotels still seem the way to go. Valet parking in a city centre with room service can make a stay much comfortable.
- hrktb 8y ago
  At that size you can rent family hotels (or apart hotels, or vacance homes, whatever they call it). They can be a bit further from big city, meaning you’ll need cars, but for that tradeoff you’ll get decent service for cheaper than standard hotels. That’s what we do with relatives, as it’s much more kid friendly than any other solution.
- rhlsthrm 8y ago
  Room service + daily cleanings + guaranteed TV in front of the bed is the best for vacations with my SO. Big group of friends = rent a huge house and have an awesome time. Your comment is spot on.
  - ghaff 8y ago
    I don’t care about any of those 3 things. IMO it’s more about predictable experience, 24 hour desk, ability to leave luggage at the hotel, etc.
    - jasonjei 8y ago
      Totally agree about leaving luggage with the porter between early check in and checkout. On top of the predictable check-in, check-out, security, and elite membership benefits like 4pm late checkout, free waters/lounge access, keycard recovery.
      - kortilla 8y ago
        Don’t forget late checkin caused by a delayed flight not being a problem.
      - secabeen 8y ago
        Whereas I want none of those things. I want a living room I can hang out in while the kids are asleep, a kitchen where we can make breakfast so we aren't spending $15/head on food the kids don't like, a fridge and a microwave to store/reheat leftovers, and a nearby park or backyard to play in. I agree that predictable check-in is nice, and I will seek out AirBNBs with code-based checkins. YMMV.
        ghaff 8y ago
        Sure mileages vary. Long term stay places like Residence Inn can provide many of those amenities though
        secabeen 8y ago
        Yeah, those are options. They usually aren't very well located, though. The hotel business is largely focused on the business traveler as their primary market. They only really build for pleasure-travel in non-business markets (see all the Condos available on Maui, or the Hyatt House hotels in Anaheim and Orlando, which have bunk-bed rooms for kids, etc.) AirBNB fell into serving this market, and it's served them pretty well, especially since they were priced below hotels to begin with, and pleasure travelers are much more price-sensitive than business travelers.
- rob_austin 8y ago
  Agreed. I have been using Airbnb since 2010. I've had more bad experiences when using Airbnb compared to hotels. Earlier it used to be cheaper to stay in Airbnb, but not anymore. Their fees are outrageous and the quality of the accommodation has been wildly inconsistent. I find it more stressful to stay at an airbnb.. lots of weird rules and policies to keep track of. Airbnb customer service is horrible when things go wrong. The better Airbnb locations are managed by professional companies. Their prices tend to be high. Nowadays, I consider staying in Airbnb only for a long trip with a lot of people when I can justify the time to thoroughly research the places. Otherwise, I prefer the consistent experience offered by Hilton/Hyatt/Marriott. Ironically it is relaxing for me to come back to the cookie cutter furnishings where I won't have to open 5 cabinets to find a coffee mug.
  - eeeeeeeeeeeee 8y ago
    Same here. I used to always go for an Airbnb, now I generally do a hotel unless I'm staying with a large group of people and need a big house. The early Airbnb days were great, because it was mostly people that were renting out their place while they traveled. They cared about their place and they wanted you to care about their place. It reminded me of how eBay was before it became just another marketplace, it was a more personal experience. Every single bad Airbnb experience I've had has been with the people that are taking out second properties to rent on Airbnb as a business, so they are completely disconnected from it.
  - secabeen 8y ago
    Why should an AirBNB be cheaper? In many ways, you're getting more. More square footage, more amenities, more options. Sure, I can stick a family of 4 in a hotel room with 2 queens, but we will be way more comfortable in an AirBNB with a kitchen, living room, etc. I totally understand why a business traveler would want consistency and simplicity. When traveling with family, I'm happy to pay more for the AirBNB experience, even if one of the adults has to sleep on a sofa bed in the living room, while the other is in a king bed with the kids. (Assuming a 1 bdrm rental. 2 bdrms is even better.)
    - shaklee3 8y ago
- dfsegoat 8y ago
  So is VRBO [1] a tech company? I use it all the time for group rentals in the way you describe. 1 - https://www.vrbo.com/ https://www.vrbo.com/
  - vadym909 8y ago
    They could be - if they spend a bit on improving the UI (look and feel) and a enable payment processing and they'd instantly be comparable to Airbnb. I use them 50%, 40% hotels and 10% Airbnb on my vacations.
- Something1234 8y ago
  I really don't get the appeal of valet parking. It's expensive and I don't like other people driving my car. It's nice when a hotel offers a garage (super nice when it's snowing)
onlyrealcuzzo 8y ago
I honestly question who hotels are for. I'm in the top 2% in income, and I actually prefer staying in a hotel, but they'r e just insanely expensive. Do you mostly stay in hotels for business reasons? Or are you just rolling in money?
- throwaway-1283 8y ago
  What is considered "insanely expensive"? Hotel prices widely vary depending on the city and time of year, and within a market there's 1* to 5* hotels. I'm looking at hotels in Manhattan for this weekend and there's 4* hotels for $150/night. Is that expensive? That is equivalent to what some people pay in rent for a 1-bedroom apartment in SF or NY.
  - annodomini2019 8y ago
    Thats 4700 a month. Sure there are some people paying that a month in rent but that definitely qualifies as expensive.
    - throwaway-1283 8y ago
      The fact that on a nightly basis a 4* hotel in the most expensive part of NYC is comparable to the 80th percentile for 1-bedrooms in SF or NYC actually shows that it is very reasonably priced because what you're really paying for is the flexibility and convenience of a short-term stay + the cleaning/security/concierge/other amenities. By the same logic, if you eat at a restaurant and it costs only 50% more than what it'd cost if you made it at home or order a beer at a bar and it only cost 50% more than what it'd cost if you bought it at the grocery store you'd be really happy, though chances are you're paying at least 100% more, if not more. It would be "expensive" if you lived at a hotel in the same way it's "expensive" if for every meal or every beer you drank you had it at a sit down restaurant or bar.
      - owenversteeg 8y ago
        Right, I agree with you that in the case of NYC you're getting a great deal, but in other places you do pay a heavy premium for a hotel. For example, I checked a few places where I know you can get a 1br for $500ish a month, and hotels there are mostly more than $100/night, which is ridiculous. Furthermore, I wouldn't say that the concierge or security are worth mentioning. I know personally I feel about as secure in a hotel as with an Airbnb - or at least I'm always aware of the possibility of theft from hotel rooms. I understand labor costs etc are a big part of the price, but I wish there were more low-cost hotel options. Not hostels, but an actual room to yourself. Why does that have to be expensive? Just cut the room area in half and half the price! Yotel is nice, but they're still not cheap, and don't have many locations. If there were low-cost hotels available, for $30 a night or so, I'd spring for them much more often. But when you can grab a nice-looking Airbnb for $25-30, vs a motel for $50-60, it's hard to justify the motel.
dpandya 8y ago
Whether or not a company is a "tech" company is kind of a muddled question, but taking even a brief glance at https://airbnb.io/ https://airbnb.io/ (their engineering blog) makes it clear that AirBnB does some pretty serious engineering. For example, their post about their work in search ranking is quite interesting [1]. [1]: https://medium.com/airbnb-engineering/machine-learning-powered-search-ranking-of-airbnb-experiences-110b4b1a0789 https://medium.com/airbnb-engineering/machine-learning-power...
- throwaway-1283 8y ago
  I'm not suggesting they don't have engineering challenges, but if you stack ranked the engineering challenges by difficulty across Airbnb, Uber/Lyft, Google, FB, Netflix, Amazon, Dropbox, Pinterest, etc. I don't see how Airbnb would not very easily rank last by a long shot. Airbnb is basically just a prettier craigslist with a payment transfer mechanism and messaging. It isn't to say it isn't a great business, just that the "tech" part of it is not really much more than a web app.
  - wenc 8y ago
    Not sure where the threshold between tech and non-tech would be though... Dropbox is just unison on the cloud, Pinterest is just a photos website etc. Also engineering challenges aren’t always obvious from the consumer facing product. It is true that AirBnB founders have design backgrounds rather than engineering ones, but from what I’ve seen of their engineering and data science work, they would qualify as a tech company in my estimation. They did come up with Apache Airflow which is a well regarded data pipeline management system.
    - throwaway-1283 8y ago
      Well like every tech company the entire purpose of an externally facing engineering blog is to maximize their "tech/employer brand." That's the whole point. I would also guess that some of the projects highlighted are could probably fit into "complexity for complexity sake" e.g. teams of bored or overzealous engineers who are trying to justify their jobs by working on complex things that are probably overkill for the actual problem their trying to solve. That's pretty common. I'm just pointing out that the nature of Airbnb's business means that there's no real-time, no streaming, no billions of concurrent users, etc. The tech boils down to a 1) web app 2) payments mechanism and 3) messaging. Nothing particularly revolutionary on the tech side.
jakebellacera 8y ago
> I'm also not really sure why Airbnb is considered a "tech" co in the same way FB or Netflix is. There's is no real time component to the app, and it isn't dealing with billions of people using the app at the same time like a FB or Google is. Personally I think the term "tech company" is a little more of a blanket statement these days. Virtually every large organization has some "tech" aspect to them.
stephencoyner 8y ago
I couldn't agree with this more. Especially for business travel where the goal is to get in, have your meetings and get out, you can't beat a hotel. Although some Airbnbs may beat a hotel in every way, consistency holds true value in certain situations.
VectorLock 8y ago
>There's a consistency to the hotel product that you can't get with Airbnb that I place a premium on, especially for short or last minute stays. Every time I try to use Airbnb I have to 'request' from the host and I swear 4 out of 5 times they cancel the requested rental because they're staying in the place or some other BS. I know when I get a hotel room its instantly reserved and there is no question about its availability.

strychn9ne9 8y ago

I think Airbnb shines with large groups. Me and 10 friends can split a house in the mountains or in some European city for a fraction of getting multiple rooms in a Hotel - with much less hassle. However, if I'm traveling by myself or with my partner, hotels still seem the way to go. Valet parking in a city centre with room service can make a stay much comfortable.

hrktb 8y ago
At that size you can rent family hotels (or apart hotels, or vacance homes, whatever they call it). They can be a bit further from big city, meaning you’ll need cars, but for that tradeoff you’ll get decent service for cheaper than standard hotels. That’s what we do with relatives, as it’s much more kid friendly than any other solution.
rhlsthrm 8y ago
Room service + daily cleanings + guaranteed TV in front of the bed is the best for vacations with my SO. Big group of friends = rent a huge house and have an awesome time. Your comment is spot on.
- ghaff 8y ago
  I don’t care about any of those 3 things. IMO it’s more about predictable experience, 24 hour desk, ability to leave luggage at the hotel, etc.
  - jasonjei 8y ago
    Totally agree about leaving luggage with the porter between early check in and checkout. On top of the predictable check-in, check-out, security, and elite membership benefits like 4pm late checkout, free waters/lounge access, keycard recovery.
    - kortilla 8y ago
      Don’t forget late checkin caused by a delayed flight not being a problem.
    - secabeen 8y ago
      Whereas I want none of those things. I want a living room I can hang out in while the kids are asleep, a kitchen where we can make breakfast so we aren't spending $15/head on food the kids don't like, a fridge and a microwave to store/reheat leftovers, and a nearby park or backyard to play in. I agree that predictable check-in is nice, and I will seek out AirBNBs with code-based checkins. YMMV.
      - ghaff 8y ago
        Sure mileages vary. Long term stay places like Residence Inn can provide many of those amenities though
        secabeen 8y ago
        Yeah, those are options. They usually aren't very well located, though. The hotel business is largely focused on the business traveler as their primary market. They only really build for pleasure-travel in non-business markets (see all the Condos available on Maui, or the Hyatt House hotels in Anaheim and Orlando, which have bunk-bed rooms for kids, etc.) AirBNB fell into serving this market, and it's served them pretty well, especially since they were priced below hotels to begin with, and pleasure travelers are much more price-sensitive than business travelers.
rob_austin 8y ago
Agreed. I have been using Airbnb since 2010. I've had more bad experiences when using Airbnb compared to hotels. Earlier it used to be cheaper to stay in Airbnb, but not anymore. Their fees are outrageous and the quality of the accommodation has been wildly inconsistent. I find it more stressful to stay at an airbnb.. lots of weird rules and policies to keep track of. Airbnb customer service is horrible when things go wrong. The better Airbnb locations are managed by professional companies. Their prices tend to be high. Nowadays, I consider staying in Airbnb only for a long trip with a lot of people when I can justify the time to thoroughly research the places. Otherwise, I prefer the consistent experience offered by Hilton/Hyatt/Marriott. Ironically it is relaxing for me to come back to the cookie cutter furnishings where I won't have to open 5 cabinets to find a coffee mug.
- eeeeeeeeeeeee 8y ago
  Same here. I used to always go for an Airbnb, now I generally do a hotel unless I'm staying with a large group of people and need a big house. The early Airbnb days were great, because it was mostly people that were renting out their place while they traveled. They cared about their place and they wanted you to care about their place. It reminded me of how eBay was before it became just another marketplace, it was a more personal experience. Every single bad Airbnb experience I've had has been with the people that are taking out second properties to rent on Airbnb as a business, so they are completely disconnected from it.
- secabeen 8y ago
  Why should an AirBNB be cheaper? In many ways, you're getting more. More square footage, more amenities, more options. Sure, I can stick a family of 4 in a hotel room with 2 queens, but we will be way more comfortable in an AirBNB with a kitchen, living room, etc. I totally understand why a business traveler would want consistency and simplicity. When traveling with family, I'm happy to pay more for the AirBNB experience, even if one of the adults has to sleep on a sofa bed in the living room, while the other is in a king bed with the kids. (Assuming a 1 bdrm rental. 2 bdrms is even better.)
  - shaklee3 8y ago
dfsegoat 8y ago
So is VRBO [1] a tech company? I use it all the time for group rentals in the way you describe. 1 - https://www.vrbo.com/ https://www.vrbo.com/
- vadym909 8y ago
  They could be - if they spend a bit on improving the UI (look and feel) and a enable payment processing and they'd instantly be comparable to Airbnb. I use them 50%, 40% hotels and 10% Airbnb on my vacations.
Something1234 8y ago
I really don't get the appeal of valet parking. It's expensive and I don't like other people driving my car. It's nice when a hotel offers a garage (super nice when it's snowing)

onlyrealcuzzo 8y ago

I honestly question who hotels are for. I'm in the top 2% in income, and I actually prefer staying in a hotel, but they'r e just insanely expensive. Do you mostly stay in hotels for business reasons? Or are you just rolling in money?

throwaway-1283 8y ago
What is considered "insanely expensive"? Hotel prices widely vary depending on the city and time of year, and within a market there's 1* to 5* hotels. I'm looking at hotels in Manhattan for this weekend and there's 4* hotels for $150/night. Is that expensive? That is equivalent to what some people pay in rent for a 1-bedroom apartment in SF or NY.
- annodomini2019 8y ago
  Thats 4700 a month. Sure there are some people paying that a month in rent but that definitely qualifies as expensive.
  - throwaway-1283 8y ago
    The fact that on a nightly basis a 4* hotel in the most expensive part of NYC is comparable to the 80th percentile for 1-bedrooms in SF or NYC actually shows that it is very reasonably priced because what you're really paying for is the flexibility and convenience of a short-term stay + the cleaning/security/concierge/other amenities. By the same logic, if you eat at a restaurant and it costs only 50% more than what it'd cost if you made it at home or order a beer at a bar and it only cost 50% more than what it'd cost if you bought it at the grocery store you'd be really happy, though chances are you're paying at least 100% more, if not more. It would be "expensive" if you lived at a hotel in the same way it's "expensive" if for every meal or every beer you drank you had it at a sit down restaurant or bar.
    - owenversteeg 8y ago
      Right, I agree with you that in the case of NYC you're getting a great deal, but in other places you do pay a heavy premium for a hotel. For example, I checked a few places where I know you can get a 1br for $500ish a month, and hotels there are mostly more than $100/night, which is ridiculous. Furthermore, I wouldn't say that the concierge or security are worth mentioning. I know personally I feel about as secure in a hotel as with an Airbnb - or at least I'm always aware of the possibility of theft from hotel rooms. I understand labor costs etc are a big part of the price, but I wish there were more low-cost hotel options. Not hostels, but an actual room to yourself. Why does that have to be expensive? Just cut the room area in half and half the price! Yotel is nice, but they're still not cheap, and don't have many locations. If there were low-cost hotels available, for $30 a night or so, I'd spring for them much more often. But when you can grab a nice-looking Airbnb for $25-30, vs a motel for $50-60, it's hard to justify the motel.

dpandya 8y ago

Whether or not a company is a "tech" company is kind of a muddled question, but taking even a brief glance at https://airbnb.io/ https://airbnb.io/ (their engineering blog) makes it clear that AirBnB does some pretty serious engineering. For example, their post about their work in search ranking is quite interesting [1]. [1]: https://medium.com/airbnb-engineering/machine-learning-powered-search-ranking-of-airbnb-experiences-110b4b1a0789 https://medium.com/airbnb-engineering/machine-learning-power...

throwaway-1283 8y ago
I'm not suggesting they don't have engineering challenges, but if you stack ranked the engineering challenges by difficulty across Airbnb, Uber/Lyft, Google, FB, Netflix, Amazon, Dropbox, Pinterest, etc. I don't see how Airbnb would not very easily rank last by a long shot. Airbnb is basically just a prettier craigslist with a payment transfer mechanism and messaging. It isn't to say it isn't a great business, just that the "tech" part of it is not really much more than a web app.
- wenc 8y ago
  Not sure where the threshold between tech and non-tech would be though... Dropbox is just unison on the cloud, Pinterest is just a photos website etc. Also engineering challenges aren’t always obvious from the consumer facing product. It is true that AirBnB founders have design backgrounds rather than engineering ones, but from what I’ve seen of their engineering and data science work, they would qualify as a tech company in my estimation. They did come up with Apache Airflow which is a well regarded data pipeline management system.
  - throwaway-1283 8y ago
    Well like every tech company the entire purpose of an externally facing engineering blog is to maximize their "tech/employer brand." That's the whole point. I would also guess that some of the projects highlighted are could probably fit into "complexity for complexity sake" e.g. teams of bored or overzealous engineers who are trying to justify their jobs by working on complex things that are probably overkill for the actual problem their trying to solve. That's pretty common. I'm just pointing out that the nature of Airbnb's business means that there's no real-time, no streaming, no billions of concurrent users, etc. The tech boils down to a 1) web app 2) payments mechanism and 3) messaging. Nothing particularly revolutionary on the tech side.

jakebellacera 8y ago

> I'm also not really sure why Airbnb is considered a "tech" co in the same way FB or Netflix is. There's is no real time component to the app, and it isn't dealing with billions of people using the app at the same time like a FB or Google is. Personally I think the term "tech company" is a little more of a blanket statement these days. Virtually every large organization has some "tech" aspect to them.

stephencoyner 8y ago

I couldn't agree with this more. Especially for business travel where the goal is to get in, have your meetings and get out, you can't beat a hotel. Although some Airbnbs may beat a hotel in every way, consistency holds true value in certain situations.

VectorLock 8y ago

>There's a consistency to the hotel product that you can't get with Airbnb that I place a premium on, especially for short or last minute stays. Every time I try to use Airbnb I have to 'request' from the host and I swear 4 out of 5 times they cancel the requested rental because they're staying in the place or some other BS. I know when I get a hotel room its instantly reserved and there is no question about its availability.