6 ms·

How is this different from a hotel? From rentals in general? I guess you know what you're going to get if you're staying at a national chain that you've stayed

by dfxm12 7y ago

How is this different from a hotel? From rentals in general? I guess you know what you're going to get if you're staying at a national chain that you've stayed at before, but there's not always one available or in your budget.

gesman 7y ago
"What you pay is what you get" rule applies. Hotel chains are also experts in misrepresentations and omissions often fueled by fake positive reviews. During my recent stay in Manhattan at $350+/night hotel - the whole building was wrapped in construction fabrics and workers were walking right in front of my window all week. This of course haven't been mentioned during reservation. But at least you deal with host management in person, and not with some shady pimp hiding in a background. And then of course - you can file chargeback with credit card if everything else fails.
- GnarfGnarf 7y ago
  "What you pay is what you get" -- not quite. Tell that to the folks who bought Enron or Worldcom stock. It is more accurate to say "You don't get what you don't pay for".
Jd 7y ago
HotelTonight (sadly recently purchased by AirBnB) has a very robust review system and a very responsive customer support system. If you ever have a bad experience in a hotel room while booking through their app you can always contact them and they will contact hotel management and the problem will almost always very quickly be resolved. Booking.com has way more properties but does not always properly vet them. Its easy to find that you've booked a property but the property owner is miles away and does not speak your language (i.e. English). That said, their customer service often resolves things. In my limited impression Airbnb has gotten better at customer service but has basically pivoted out of their core business model (i.e. providing short term stays) and at the same time provided huge incentives for people to mislead people with respect to the listing. They are consistently the hardest to verify (i.e. that what you are reading or seeing is real) and I would really only use them for very boutique properties that can't be found on other platforms. In some ways it just depends on how much up front time you have to do your own vetting and how much risk you are willing to tolerate for a potentially experience. AirBnb is high in both categories with results that very rarely are worth it to me.
- lotsofpulp 7y ago
  >HotelTonight (sadly recently purchased by AirBnB) has a very robust review system and a very responsive customer support system. How is this different from Hilton/Marriott/IHG/Choice/Wyndham's current options for customer support?
- modelica 7y ago
  HotelTonight always had awful customer support. They sold me a hotel room during February fashion week in NYC. Some sort of mistake happened with either HT or the hotel, and the room was not available upon my 11pm arrival. Rather than fix the mistake, HotelTonight gave me back my $400/night or whatever it was, and left me in a city, in the winter cold, where hotel rooms were almost entirely sold out. Essentially no inventory available on-line, and nearly all of that was not actually bookable. After a few hours searching (I had to actually call hotels to verify that the listed rooms still existed), I ended up spending ~ $1400/night for one of the only rooms left in the entire city. Fuck HotelTonight. A total piece of shit company.
  - goldenkey 7y ago
    Damn, that is brutal... Shoulda stayed at Hotel Penn that price ....
  - AJ007 7y ago
    Had a similar situation and ended up having to book someone a $2000 a night hotel room. It’s no joke being out of a room in a place where hotels are 100% sold out, or non existent. This is one of the reasons I refuse to use Airbnb in most normal situations. It’s a wild card.
  - thw0rted 7y ago
    The good news is that now there's a simple solution: if this happens in the future, you book a $200 Uber helicopter, $100-200 room at the airport, then another helicopter back in the morning, and you save ~$700. Easy! :D
- imroot 7y ago
  I had an issue with HotelTonight last year after the hotel I was staying at ended up charging my "incidentals" credit card for the entire room+tax for the night (vs what I paid HotelTonight for). Between HotelTonight and the actual property (a Kimpton Hotel), it was resolved in under 90 minutes. Look -- I've had issues with Hilton, Marriott, and HotelTonight -- that just comes with the territory when you spend 200+ nights a year in hotel rooms. How they deal with the issue is what brings you back (and honestly, it's why I'm lifetime diamond at Hilton, even though I did a LOT of work for marriot.com a few years ago).
wpietri 7y ago
One important difference is that hotels get much larger review volumes than a single AirBnB, meaning sites like TripAdvisor can give you a good picture of what the place is really like. Another is that it's much harder to run a scam at scale. "Becky and Andrew" can get away with this for an extended period because tomorrow they can be "Melody and Joe" and "Jane and Todd" the day after. Marriott has been Marriott since 1957, and can't change quickly. They know that if they start running scams, they will hear about it. Initially from reporters, eventually from state attorneys general. A third is that AirBnB, especially in their IPO runup, has a strong interest in a) maximizing revenue and profit nubmers, and b) covering up problems. Many billions of dollars are on the line here. As we've seen with Groupon and Uber and WeWork, individuals can get very rich if they can create the appearance of runaway success at IPO time, regardless of long-term prospects.
- kube-system 7y ago
  Not sure I feel the same way in my experience. I find airbnb photos to be accurate for the actual place I’ll be in, even if they might be leaving some details out. I often find hotel reviews are a mix of pre and post-renovation photos and it’s a roll of the dice for what room I’ll get when I show up. Maybe it’s just because there aren’t too many Airbnbs that have 15 year old listings.
lonelappde 7y ago
For one thing, hotels have a robust ecosystem for anonymous reviews and established reputation.
6gvONxR4sf7o 7y ago
With a hotel, if you complain and write a harsh review, you don't get penalized yourself. In OP, people complained and got B.S. made up about them, which impacts their future ability to travel. The author didn't even write a review. The incentives are all there to only write the happy stuff for future travelers. You, as that future travel really can't trust the reviews. At least at a hotel, with its more numerous but possibly fake happy reviews, you can look at what the bad ones say, because they won't be incentivized out of existence.
dragonwriter 7y ago
> How is this different from a hotel? It's a lot easier to get an idea of what to expect from a given hotel (especially chains) because they have more volume than any single AirBnB, and you get more value out of that knowledge about one hotel (or especially chain) because it applies to more than one unit (and for chains, in more than one location) so it's not only applicable to travel in one place when one unit is available.
MrQuincle 7y ago
Note also that if a host cancels on you at the last moment, you can't give a negative review at all. That would never happen with a hotel.
- dotancohen 7y ago
  This does happen with hotels, in fact a few posts up someone does mention this happening to them. That said, in December my ex wife had an Airbnb cancel just before her trip. She had to find another place in a hurry at twice the price.
  - greglindahl 7y ago
    You can usually leave a negative review for a hotel even if you didn't stay at it. AirBnB doesn't allow it. Also, every time a hotel has not had a room when I showed up, they put me in a nearby hotel of similar or better quality. I'm sure that doesn't always happen, but it is the standard for quality hotel chains.
- vinay427 7y ago
  I have seen the automated messages along the lines of "host canceled booking 24h before check-in" on many or even most Airbnb listings. Is this not still a thing? You can't leave a written review, but maybe that's appropriate if you haven't actually stayed at the place.
  - MrQuincle 7y ago
    Yes, that's indeed nowadays happening. In practice if they cancel two days before you arrive and you have fly to another continent to stay somewhere, it still sucks. Add to that for example a fair like CES and no normally priced hotel alternatives, and it's a big issue.

by dfxm12 7y ago

gesman 7y ago

"What you pay is what you get" rule applies. Hotel chains are also experts in misrepresentations and omissions often fueled by fake positive reviews. During my recent stay in Manhattan at $350+/night hotel - the whole building was wrapped in construction fabrics and workers were walking right in front of my window all week. This of course haven't been mentioned during reservation. But at least you deal with host management in person, and not with some shady pimp hiding in a background. And then of course - you can file chargeback with credit card if everything else fails.

GnarfGnarf 7y ago
"What you pay is what you get" -- not quite. Tell that to the folks who bought Enron or Worldcom stock. It is more accurate to say "You don't get what you don't pay for".

Jd 7y ago

HotelTonight (sadly recently purchased by AirBnB) has a very robust review system and a very responsive customer support system. If you ever have a bad experience in a hotel room while booking through their app you can always contact them and they will contact hotel management and the problem will almost always very quickly be resolved. Booking.com has way more properties but does not always properly vet them. Its easy to find that you've booked a property but the property owner is miles away and does not speak your language (i.e. English). That said, their customer service often resolves things. In my limited impression Airbnb has gotten better at customer service but has basically pivoted out of their core business model (i.e. providing short term stays) and at the same time provided huge incentives for people to mislead people with respect to the listing. They are consistently the hardest to verify (i.e. that what you are reading or seeing is real) and I would really only use them for very boutique properties that can't be found on other platforms. In some ways it just depends on how much up front time you have to do your own vetting and how much risk you are willing to tolerate for a potentially experience. AirBnb is high in both categories with results that very rarely are worth it to me.

lotsofpulp 7y ago
>HotelTonight (sadly recently purchased by AirBnB) has a very robust review system and a very responsive customer support system. How is this different from Hilton/Marriott/IHG/Choice/Wyndham's current options for customer support?
modelica 7y ago
HotelTonight always had awful customer support. They sold me a hotel room during February fashion week in NYC. Some sort of mistake happened with either HT or the hotel, and the room was not available upon my 11pm arrival. Rather than fix the mistake, HotelTonight gave me back my $400/night or whatever it was, and left me in a city, in the winter cold, where hotel rooms were almost entirely sold out. Essentially no inventory available on-line, and nearly all of that was not actually bookable. After a few hours searching (I had to actually call hotels to verify that the listed rooms still existed), I ended up spending ~ $1400/night for one of the only rooms left in the entire city. Fuck HotelTonight. A total piece of shit company.
- goldenkey 7y ago
  Damn, that is brutal... Shoulda stayed at Hotel Penn that price ....
- AJ007 7y ago
  Had a similar situation and ended up having to book someone a $2000 a night hotel room. It’s no joke being out of a room in a place where hotels are 100% sold out, or non existent. This is one of the reasons I refuse to use Airbnb in most normal situations. It’s a wild card.
- thw0rted 7y ago
  The good news is that now there's a simple solution: if this happens in the future, you book a $200 Uber helicopter, $100-200 room at the airport, then another helicopter back in the morning, and you save ~$700. Easy! :D
imroot 7y ago
I had an issue with HotelTonight last year after the hotel I was staying at ended up charging my "incidentals" credit card for the entire room+tax for the night (vs what I paid HotelTonight for). Between HotelTonight and the actual property (a Kimpton Hotel), it was resolved in under 90 minutes. Look -- I've had issues with Hilton, Marriott, and HotelTonight -- that just comes with the territory when you spend 200+ nights a year in hotel rooms. How they deal with the issue is what brings you back (and honestly, it's why I'm lifetime diamond at Hilton, even though I did a LOT of work for marriot.com a few years ago).

wpietri 7y ago

One important difference is that hotels get much larger review volumes than a single AirBnB, meaning sites like TripAdvisor can give you a good picture of what the place is really like. Another is that it's much harder to run a scam at scale. "Becky and Andrew" can get away with this for an extended period because tomorrow they can be "Melody and Joe" and "Jane and Todd" the day after. Marriott has been Marriott since 1957, and can't change quickly. They know that if they start running scams, they will hear about it. Initially from reporters, eventually from state attorneys general. A third is that AirBnB, especially in their IPO runup, has a strong interest in a) maximizing revenue and profit nubmers, and b) covering up problems. Many billions of dollars are on the line here. As we've seen with Groupon and Uber and WeWork, individuals can get very rich if they can create the appearance of runaway success at IPO time, regardless of long-term prospects.

kube-system 7y ago
Not sure I feel the same way in my experience. I find airbnb photos to be accurate for the actual place I’ll be in, even if they might be leaving some details out. I often find hotel reviews are a mix of pre and post-renovation photos and it’s a roll of the dice for what room I’ll get when I show up. Maybe it’s just because there aren’t too many Airbnbs that have 15 year old listings.

lonelappde 7y ago

For one thing, hotels have a robust ecosystem for anonymous reviews and established reputation.

6gvONxR4sf7o 7y ago

With a hotel, if you complain and write a harsh review, you don't get penalized yourself. In OP, people complained and got B.S. made up about them, which impacts their future ability to travel. The author didn't even write a review. The incentives are all there to only write the happy stuff for future travelers. You, as that future travel really can't trust the reviews. At least at a hotel, with its more numerous but possibly fake happy reviews, you can look at what the bad ones say, because they won't be incentivized out of existence.

dragonwriter 7y ago

> How is this different from a hotel? It's a lot easier to get an idea of what to expect from a given hotel (especially chains) because they have more volume than any single AirBnB, and you get more value out of that knowledge about one hotel (or especially chain) because it applies to more than one unit (and for chains, in more than one location) so it's not only applicable to travel in one place when one unit is available.

MrQuincle 7y ago

Note also that if a host cancels on you at the last moment, you can't give a negative review at all. That would never happen with a hotel.

dotancohen 7y ago
This does happen with hotels, in fact a few posts up someone does mention this happening to them. That said, in December my ex wife had an Airbnb cancel just before her trip. She had to find another place in a hurry at twice the price.
- greglindahl 7y ago
  You can usually leave a negative review for a hotel even if you didn't stay at it. AirBnB doesn't allow it. Also, every time a hotel has not had a room when I showed up, they put me in a nearby hotel of similar or better quality. I'm sure that doesn't always happen, but it is the standard for quality hotel chains.
vinay427 7y ago
I have seen the automated messages along the lines of "host canceled booking 24h before check-in" on many or even most Airbnb listings. Is this not still a thing? You can't leave a written review, but maybe that's appropriate if you haven't actually stayed at the place.
- MrQuincle 7y ago
  Yes, that's indeed nowadays happening. In practice if they cancel two days before you arrive and you have fly to another continent to stay somewhere, it still sucks. Add to that for example a fair like CES and no normally priced hotel alternatives, and it's a big issue.