10 ms·

Covid-19 forced Airbnb to rethink its product offerings

63 points by MLEnthusiast 6y ago

mothsonasloth 6y ago
Staying in sub-par accomodation with no standards, or potentially sharing it with an awkward host; who likes to talk about their vegan diet and pet pug, or with wifi spy cameras, is not really a product offering. Sure they have disrupted the property market and inflated rent and property prices already, which are now ironically crashing a little bit. Support good hotels and chains, who hire and invest in great staff.
- lasgsf 6y ago
  Yeah no thanks on staying at hotels where you have hundreds of people going through it and underpaid maids who "clean" tons of rooms a day. Sure that is really safe in this environment.
  - ljm 6y ago
    And your airbnb host will be any better at cleaning? Plenty don't treat it as a business and will prefer to retaliate to negative feedback rather than correct it.
    - yellowapple 6y ago
      The point is that your AirBnB host (if there even is a host, which ain't a given) won't be traveling between dozens or hundreds of rooms and potentially spreading viruses among all those rooms.
      - VWWHFSfQ 6y ago
        they just bring a lot of random people into their own house and spread it there
        yellowapple 6y ago
        By that metric, hotels are substantially worse. With an AirBnB, you're dealing with, at most, a number you can count with your fingers. With a hotel, you're - again - dealing with tens or hundreds at a time. Critically, this means that an AirBnB has a greater chance of being able to disinfect the entire property between groups of guests, at a much lower cost. Now, whether or not AirBnB hosts are doing this is a different question, but it's at least feasible for an AirBnB (as opposed to borderline impossible for a hotel).
  - andy_ppp 6y ago
    Haha, last Airbnb I had was mega cheap and the mattress smelled of dried piss. The hosts were nice but god I hated staying there in an extreme way, felt very unsafe. Hotels (short of the “accommodation” in Chung King Mansions) have never made me feel this way...
    - dewey 6y ago
      > Hotels (short of the “accommodation” in Chung King Mansions) have never made me feel this way... That was probably one of my more memorable stays while traveling, it wasn't all bad though. Just not something comparable to other places I've stayed before.
      - andy_ppp 6y ago
        This was in 2009, I think when I stayed was horrendous. A flying bug had got between the ceiling tiles and was buzzing around for about 2-3 minutes before banging into something just as I was about to fall asleep. Add on the blood on the stairs between the 11th and 12th floors and the crazy amount of prostitution (and I guess stolen electronics) and yes it wasn’t great.
    - standardUser 6y ago
      It's up to you, the renter, to vet your host and rental to the best of your ability. Maybe don't pick a "mega cheap" place next time? I've used AirBnB tons of times and cannot relate even a little with all the complaints in this thread (and other HN threads).
      - vorpalhex 6y ago
        My rule of thumb is I only use AirBnB in areas where there's a good selection of options. AirBnBs in the middle of nowhere tend to be miserable because there's no competition.
      - andy_ppp 6y ago
        I am just saying if I can afford a hotel it's usually better quality in my experience than any Airbnb I've had... depends what you like though. I prefer hotels and I don't like the increases in rental costs that Airbnb is reported to have caused.
  - mschuster91 6y ago
    I agree with the working condition issues, but compared to Airbnb's a licensed hotel/hostel is at least somewhat regularly inspected by government officials to check for hygienic issues, fire/electrical code compliance, accessibility for disabled or otherwise impaired persons, and also for commercial insurance - plus you won't (as a guest) have to deal with police showing up because neighbors are annoyed by noise from an essentially illegal hotel op.
    - dazc 6y ago
      Hotels also can not ruin your chances of staying at another establishment by posting negative reviews about you because you happened to mention the shower didn't work.
      - antsar 6y ago
        Hotels do have a shared blacklist system. Why wouldn't they? I imagine being a repeat complainer is one way to make the list unless you bring enough business to be worth it.
        deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
        mschuster91 6y ago
        Chain hotels do have shared blacklists, yes (as far as the law allows them to, GDPR says hello), but unlike Airbnb in every major city there are independent competitors.
        dazc 6y ago
        I have stayed in chain hotels in the UK, complained sometimes and gotten a full refund. Been welcomed back again with no problems.
        gamblor956 6y ago
        Hotels do not have a shared blacklist. And generally they don't care how much you complain as long as you aren't damaging their facilities since they don't have to try to make you happy unless they want to retain your business.
  - djohnston 6y ago
    vs what, the airbnb host?
- giantDinosaur 6y ago
  Staying in hotels during solo travel is so remarkably effective at depressing me in ways I didn't know were possible (and I mean real, deep, prolonged feelings of existential loneliness and dread that eat at my core), that I just can't advocate staying at them. Obviously there are hostels at the other end of the scale when traveling for pure personal joy, but they aren't for everyone. AirBNB used to fill the midpoint in a way that was fairly difficult to do otherwise. It's a shame it became what it became. I only had good experiences back in ~2016-17.
  - tonyarkles 6y ago
    My very first night in Europe was spent in an AirBNB in Paris (2011, I think?). It was an upstairs suite in a house in one of the suburbs. At about 8am, there was a gentle quiet knock on the door; I open it up, and a 6-year-old girl asks me, in French, “would you like eggs?” I tell her I would, and she runs off and comes back with two eggs on buttered toast. They were delicious. This was the very first night of solo travel for me, and it changed the day from starting out anxious (Where’s the subway? Where am I going to find food? What if I get lost?!) to starting out with a fresh cup of coffee and some delicious breakfast. Could you get a similar experience in a hotel? Sort of. There’s usually a restaurant where you could get breakfast, but I don’t think you’re usually going to get this feeling of “someone actually cares”.
  - noirbot 6y ago
    I think it does still fill something like that mid-point if you're staying with a host instead of renting your own private space. I haven't generally had social hosts most of the times I was staying with airbnb, but I'm also fairly anti-social myself, but even just this last year, I was up in Buffalo NY for an event and ended up asking my host where to go for dinner, which turned into us hanging out the next day because he was starting his own brewery and wanted to share some of his homebrew. Even without something like that, for me, a lot of the value isn't even in interacting with a host as much as it is the feeling of sharing a lived-in space with someone. Small bits of personal decor, or looking through what random DVDs they have on the shelf provides some warmth that a chain hotel never will. It's a bit trite, but I think you can often tell the hosts that really care about providing a good experience from how they describe the rental, as well as looking at the actual decor and the space you're renting.
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  > is not really a product offering I don't know - I have a lot of colleagues who love meeting a wacky host and their dog, and like the varying accommodation styles. It's not my cup of tea either, but a lot of people genuinely seem to love the vibe and don't want to go back to hotels.
  - alharith 6y ago
    You are really overstating how many people like that are out there. Compare the sheer number of hotel bookings to AirBnB bookings, even factoring out business travel. I just think that those still enamoured by it haven’t been burned yet. There is very little [effective] recourse when your AirBnB takes a turn for the worse. There are enough horror stories out there. I personally think the value to risk ratio is way off for them these days. It isn’t cheap anymore and that makes it way less appealing.
    - noirbot 6y ago
      I think a lot of it is in what your expectations are - I've had plenty of odd experiences with AirBnB, but nothing catastrophic, but I think that's because I've mostly been trying to use it for things that are not a hotel-like experience. Generally, I'm either doing something where I'm renting a whole house in a VRBO style thing where it's likely someone's full-time rental property and has been for a while or I'm essentially looking for something barely above couch surfing where I expect to show up in the evening, go to bed, then wake up and leave for the day. I've had plenty of minor sub-optimal experiences, but usually nothing that wasn't called out in the listing, and I've also had plenty of experiences with hosts that took things seriously and were amazing to work with. Most of the stories I've seen of people getting burned was though listings that at least personally, I would have found a little suspicious in terms of price-to-quality, and level of professionalism. They seem to prey on people who want the experience of a hotel, but don't want to pay for it.
    - api 6y ago
      Being burned by an AirBnB stay generally at least leaves you with an entertaining tale of OMGWTF. A bad hotel experience usually just leaves you grossed out or with bedbug bites. I have one of each: a funny AirBNB caper and a totally disgusting hotel story I wouldn't bother telling. The latter involves stains of the uhh... lonely masculine sort... on towels. Shudder.
- draw_down 6y ago
  It is a product. It’s ok if you don’t like it. And I agree that it often has negative effects on the surrounding community, but I don’t see why that means it’s not a product. I don’t think it makes sense to say that a product is something that never has those sort of negative externalities because that is certainly not the case.
- snowwrestler 6y ago
  I don’t want to stay in a hotel because I usually travel with my family and I want to have a home-like experience with a real kitchen where we can cook and eat meals together. I alternate between AirBnB and VRBO when looking for accommodations. Also, this article is not about whether AirBnB can work in general... it’s a billion-dollar company over a decade old. Whether you like it or not, it’s silly to act like the idea has yet to be proven. The article is about how they pivoted their homepage to add value to their product during a crisis. I would think that topic would be very interesting to the HN audience. They are certainly acting more agile than a hotel chain; I don’t see Marriott offering online “host experiences” to their guests.
- newacct583 6y ago
  > sub-par accomodation with no standards, or potentially sharing it with an awkward host That's not remotely a good characterization of what AirBnB was offering. Like them or not, they were successful for more than a decade because they were objectively providing a better product than traditional hotels. Complain about the externalities of their service, sure. But let's not pretend that they didn't make something people want.
  - goatinaboat 6y ago
    objectively providing a better product than traditional hotels A cheaper, unregulated, tax-free product. I get that there is a demand for this but there are demands for lots of things that are harmful to society as a whole.
    - hi_im_miles 6y ago
      > harmful to society as a whole By what measure? You imply that their product being cheaper or unregulated is harmful to society, but you haven't offered any reason as to why. It's also not a tax-free product.
      - SaxonRobber 6y ago
        Because it lowers the housing stock in urban areas. Wealthy travellers will pay more for accommodations than the local market, so apartments become airbnbs and investors gobble up condos and housing which they turn into short term rentals. The scarcity pushes up the housing prices, but it never balances out because the locals can never make enough to compete with wealthy travellers and are forced farther from the city. The end result is a hollowed out city core.
      - goatinaboat 6y ago
        This is very well known by now https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/feb/20/revealed-the-areas-in-the-uk-with-one-airbnb-for-every-four-homes https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/feb/20/revealed-... I would be willing to be that most AirBnB hosts are not registered businesses and paying the taxes they owe... for running hotels —— From @amiga_500 I'll add my comment here as I mentioned unearned income, which hacker news really don't like, so they gave me the fake "you're posting too fast" even though I've posted nothing for over 20 minutes. Ah so that’s what triggers it! Same thing just happened to me!
- xiphias2 6y ago
  I travel using hotels a lot, because they offer food and great flexibility for extending my stays, but right now I would be scared to share my place with other people, and I feel safer cooking for myself. Hotels have a lot of shared space that will be dangerous until we have a cure/vaccine.
- save_ferris 6y ago
  Worked as a housekeeper for a large hotel chain that everyone has heard of back in high school and I can tell you that there is absolutely zero investment into staff at many big hotels. Housekeepers at my hotel has to fight just to make minimum wage since our pay was pegged to the number of rooms we cleaned (about $2.50 per room). Managers would tell us to clock in late and clock out early so we’d “get paid more”, and most went along with it because it was 2009 and jobs were hard to find. I realized instantly that these guys were fleecing the housekeeping staff because my checks were always just a little short of where they should’ve been based on hours worked. I stopped clocking in and clocking out when they told me to, and instead punched my card based on my schedule. My manager caught on and started punching my card for me (which was illegal). I calculated how much they’d shorted me over that summer, went to the hotel manager’s office, put in my resignation and demanded the extra pay they’d shorted me, which they agreed to. I’m not saying every big hotel is this shady, but the idea that minimum wage workers are invested in these days is pretty laughable, because there’s a hundred other people ready to take that job. Those who patronize big hotels tend to get caught up in the marketing, but I assure you that perception in no way aligns with the reality of that work.
  - hobs 6y ago
    You're correct, but AirBNB encourages people to run untaxed unlicensed hotels, so its even worse than an already terrible system.
    - dehrmann 6y ago
      > untaxed Occupancy taxes actually really bother me because they're usually cash grabs targeting visitors who have no clout with the local officials that put it in place. It's taxation without representation, or a slightly different take on the speed trap on a major road through a drive-through small town.
      - vorpalhex 6y ago
        Visitors are using public resources that are normally funded by taxes, and depending on the ratio of visitors to residents this can really turn out to be an unfair deal for residents - see any small coastal town whose population inflates 40% when it's tourist season. An occupation tax is because you're using public resources and don't normally pay taxes to that jurisdiction.
- hombre_fatal 6y ago
  Do we really need a rehash of the belabored "DAE dislike airbnb? XDD" just because the title mentions Airbnb?
  - seattle_spring 6y ago
    Apparently so. It happens in every single thread and the ridiculous and off topic comments get upvoted to the moon.
- dehrmann 6y ago
  > Staying in sub-par accomodation ... > Support good hotels and chains, who hire and invest in great staff. It's a bit less so now (pre-COVID), but this is the Airbnb discount. It was cheaper than hotels for a reason. It's like buying a used item from a third-party seller on Amazon. The product offering is completely valid, but the quality and support are hit-or-miss, so the risk you're taking is baked into the price.
canada_dry 6y ago
Gotta give them some credit though for pretty rapidly releasing their "experiences" [i]. 𝖮̶𝖽̶𝖽̶ ̶𝗍̶𝗁̶𝖺̶𝗍̶ ̶𝗍̶𝗁̶𝗂̶𝗌̶ ̶𝖺̶𝗋̶𝗍̶𝗂̶𝖼̶𝗅̶𝖾̶ ̶𝖽̶𝗈̶𝖾̶𝗌̶𝗇̶'̶𝗍̶ ̶𝖾̶𝗏̶𝖾̶𝗇̶ ̶𝗆̶𝖾̶𝗇̶𝗍̶𝗂̶𝗈̶𝗇̶ ̶𝗂̶𝗍̶.̶ I'm highly unlikely to use the service but I still think it shows they can respond quickly to radical events. [i] https://www.airbnb.ca/s/experiences/online https://www.airbnb.ca/s/experiences/online
- CubsFan1060 6y ago
  Having done a few of them, they are actually great. No idea if I’d say the same thing outside of lockdown though. For now watching a tango concert from Argentina or baking with a Swedish chef has been fun. They haven’t all been great, but so far I’m happy with at least 60-70% of them.
- ejstronge 6y ago
  > Gotta give them some credit though for pretty rapidly releasing their "experiences" [i]. Odd that this article doesn't even mention it. This is discussed in the text of the very first question in the article
  - canada_dry 6y ago
    Ouch. Thanks for the correction.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
Cyclone_ 6y ago
Airbnb has always figured out clever ways to screw the hosts. When I first hosted guests were much more polite and clean. The last few years the ones I've gotten have been pretty messy and more likely to break house rules.
- noirbot 6y ago
  I'm not sure I understand how these are related? It's not as if they're intentionally sending you bad guests to torment you as a "clever way" to screw you...
  - strgcmc 6y ago
    More likely this is a version of the "Eternal September" problem. Early adopters of Airbnb were more likely to be "true believers" of the idealized vision of a kind/generous host matched with adventurous/courteous guests, but this vision gets diluted over time as the userbase grows. Once Airbnb reached true ubiquity, the general user population is just looking for a good deal and isn't nearly as savvy or as committed to the original ideals; this applies to both hosts and guests, of course. It's impossible to scale a platform to 10s/100s/1000s millions without finding an ever-lowering lowest common denominator.
    - noirbot 6y ago
      I think the interesting thing now is that, at least personally, I'm willing to pay hotel-level rates to stay at somewhere run by one of those "true believers". I know one of the things I look for is someone who's got a lot of reviews/a long history, but also seems to be renting just one space (or multiple rooms in the same house). I'm not looking for a deal - if I wanted to be cheap and central and social, I'd stay at a hostel. I'm totally willing to pay a bit more to stay somewhere with a host that cares.
    - Cyclone_ 6y ago
      Yes, this is very true.
  - Cyclone_ 6y ago
yellowapple 6y ago
Pivoting into these more "essential" reasons for renting, like wanting to isolate from family, seems like a smart move, so long as AirBnB hosts are taking the necessary precautions to make their properties suitable for self-quarantine. Certainly a better option isolation-wise than, say, a hotel (even if you decline room service - and room service actually recognizes that you've declined it - the rooms are in close proximity to one another, often have some degree of shared air, and the lack of a usable kitchen means having to break quarantine if you want to eat anything other than microwaved food). I'd imagine partnering with local/state/national governments to provide housing for people being specifically quarantined would be another good use for AirBnB in a similar vein. Another legit non-tourism-related use case I can see still being relevant is for people needing temporary housing, whether due to moving into an area or because of foreclosure/eviction or some other reason why they don't have permanent housing. I don't know what the process of renting or buying a home looks like with social distancing (thankfully I moved right before the outbreak and didn't have the "fun" time of finding out for myself), but I can't imagine it's particularly easy or quick. And likewise, while you'd hope that banks and landlords would have the slightest bit of human decency and be a bit lenient on late mortgage/rent payments, I strongly suspect there are plenty of assholes out there.
rdslw 6y ago
they're short-term doomed. long-term, (2021+) -> time will tell. what they're planning now to do is to invent completly new business, utilising assets they have at hand (relations with hosts, but this is it). their 'online experiences' is a lesson on 'wishful thinking' or 'painting the grass green'. Quoting article: "we have nearly 100 hosts offering experiences online and thousands more who’ve offered to host experiences". Let me remind them, that they have at least THREE..FOUR ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE bigger hosts number (problem 1), there is no space in youtube/twitch area for that amount of content creators (problem 2), and most hosts can't do it (problem 3).
- shostack 6y ago
  I wonder what knock on effects there will be for this part of the economy. How many towns and cities have a significant chunk of real estate that was purchased exclusively for Airbnb rentals that may eventually get foreclosed as a result of this? What will be the impact to surrounding real estate markets?
  - ForHackernews 6y ago
    Seems like it would only be positive if more housing became available for locals? For myself, I'm hoping Airbnb go bankrupt. In my mind, they're similar to Uber in that their only true innovation is a willingness to disregard local laws.
badpassword 6y ago
hotels rooms in bali are $200 per month now five stars hotel like westin sells a 2days voucher for 1mil rupiah (~70 usd), valid until dec 31, 2021.
- LifeLiverTransp 6y ago
  Valid if, and only if the hotel still exists by then.
- somecoolguy 6y ago
  Is there a way to buy these vouchers online?
hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
There was an article in NYT that was discussed here a couple months ago that talked about early employees losing their equity is AirBnB didn't go public by 2020. Does anyone know more details about that?
yalogin 6y ago
Airbnb must be making ZERO dollars right now. Wonder how long they can survive in this situation. They sure have a lot of funding but they were close to going public and returning money to their investors. If this continues they will need to raise more cash and that round is going to be severely discounted. In general I am not sure how their business will pan out over the next year or so.
- PopeDotNinja 6y ago
  Not zero dollars, but certainly less. I'm in an Airbnb in The Canary Islands, and will be through at least May. When I found out the lockdown was happening, I scrambled to rent Airbnbs thru May because I didn't have a place to return to, and staying in Spain felt safer to me than returning to the USA.
  - standardUser 6y ago
    I was in an AirBnB abroad when the lockdowns started and I'll likely be in one again soon (I have no permanent residence currently and am staying with family). Unfortunately, some cities are putting limitations on rentals so I may have limited options.
  - thulecitizen 6y ago
    > staying in Spain felt safer to me than returning to the USA Because of better adherence to social distancing rules? Are you a SWE working remotely?
    - PopeDotNinja 6y ago
      Yes to both.
- dehrmann 6y ago
  They did raise $2B in the last month. That should help.
- almost_usual 6y ago
  Airbnb missed the IPO window in 2019. They will not IPO for years now if ever.
gregkerzhner 6y ago
My biggest gripe with AirBnb is the search functionality. Sure, you are a premium product, so you can price gouge my millennial bank account all you want. But at least give me the functionality that I need. As a software engineer, I need a place with good wifi. Hosts always claim to have wifi, but no indication of quality. Before I knew how to be a super user, it wasn't uncommon to show up to a listing that claimed to have wifi and only find out that it was coming from the building next door and you could only pick up a signal while standing up in the shower tub. The most reliable way to find out who actually had good wifi was by searching the reviews for the term "wifi". However, AirBnb refuses to implement the ability to filter your results by terms inside review. They claim that it's because it's too technically difficult to implement this. I am no search guru, but I have fired up an Elastic Search instance to make a-one-to many relationship searchable back in my day without too many issues. I guess AirBnb's "scale" is just too awesome to to do this? I mean damn... google indexed the whole internet. You can't index your own reviews? Then, a few months ago, I noticed that AirBnb got rid of even the search functionality on the individual listing page, so now the only way to search a listing's reviews for the word "wifi" is to go to the listing, infinite scroll the list of reviews for a few minutes to load all of them onto the page, and then use the browser's search tool.
- rickyc091 6y ago
  Yep, I've been burned by this a few times. Now, I ask them what their internet speeds are and if there are any dead zones in the apartment.
amiga_500 6y ago
> TC: Are these spaces being offered at no cost? > AS: They are donated or offered at reduced pricing. This decision was made by the market, not by AirBnB, because they can't get anywhere near your former price. > AS: Yes, like “Sangria mixing with Pedro,” which is a cocktail mixing show This isn't going to work. AirBnb's sole "value" proposition was exploiting a regulatory loophole to allow offering accommodation that has: - lower to no safety inspection - zoned in residential spaces often with angry neighbours Does it have another idea like this, that allows them to extract value created by the community? I don't see any.

63 points by MLEnthusiast 6y ago

Staying in sub-par accomodation with no standards, or potentially sharing it with an awkward host; who likes to talk about their vegan diet and pet pug, or with wifi spy cameras, is not really a product offering. Sure they have disrupted the property market and inflated rent and property prices already, which are now ironically crashing a little bit. Support good hotels and chains, who hire and invest in great staff.

lasgsf 6y ago
Yeah no thanks on staying at hotels where you have hundreds of people going through it and underpaid maids who "clean" tons of rooms a day. Sure that is really safe in this environment.
- ljm 6y ago
  And your airbnb host will be any better at cleaning? Plenty don't treat it as a business and will prefer to retaliate to negative feedback rather than correct it.
  - yellowapple 6y ago
    The point is that your AirBnB host (if there even is a host, which ain't a given) won't be traveling between dozens or hundreds of rooms and potentially spreading viruses among all those rooms.
    - VWWHFSfQ 6y ago
      they just bring a lot of random people into their own house and spread it there
      - yellowapple 6y ago
        By that metric, hotels are substantially worse. With an AirBnB, you're dealing with, at most, a number you can count with your fingers. With a hotel, you're - again - dealing with tens or hundreds at a time. Critically, this means that an AirBnB has a greater chance of being able to disinfect the entire property between groups of guests, at a much lower cost. Now, whether or not AirBnB hosts are doing this is a different question, but it's at least feasible for an AirBnB (as opposed to borderline impossible for a hotel).
- andy_ppp 6y ago
  Haha, last Airbnb I had was mega cheap and the mattress smelled of dried piss. The hosts were nice but god I hated staying there in an extreme way, felt very unsafe. Hotels (short of the “accommodation” in Chung King Mansions) have never made me feel this way...
  - dewey 6y ago
    > Hotels (short of the “accommodation” in Chung King Mansions) have never made me feel this way... That was probably one of my more memorable stays while traveling, it wasn't all bad though. Just not something comparable to other places I've stayed before.
    - andy_ppp 6y ago
      This was in 2009, I think when I stayed was horrendous. A flying bug had got between the ceiling tiles and was buzzing around for about 2-3 minutes before banging into something just as I was about to fall asleep. Add on the blood on the stairs between the 11th and 12th floors and the crazy amount of prostitution (and I guess stolen electronics) and yes it wasn’t great.
  - standardUser 6y ago
    It's up to you, the renter, to vet your host and rental to the best of your ability. Maybe don't pick a "mega cheap" place next time? I've used AirBnB tons of times and cannot relate even a little with all the complaints in this thread (and other HN threads).
    - vorpalhex 6y ago
      My rule of thumb is I only use AirBnB in areas where there's a good selection of options. AirBnBs in the middle of nowhere tend to be miserable because there's no competition.
    - andy_ppp 6y ago
      I am just saying if I can afford a hotel it's usually better quality in my experience than any Airbnb I've had... depends what you like though. I prefer hotels and I don't like the increases in rental costs that Airbnb is reported to have caused.
- mschuster91 6y ago
  I agree with the working condition issues, but compared to Airbnb's a licensed hotel/hostel is at least somewhat regularly inspected by government officials to check for hygienic issues, fire/electrical code compliance, accessibility for disabled or otherwise impaired persons, and also for commercial insurance - plus you won't (as a guest) have to deal with police showing up because neighbors are annoyed by noise from an essentially illegal hotel op.
  - dazc 6y ago
    Hotels also can not ruin your chances of staying at another establishment by posting negative reviews about you because you happened to mention the shower didn't work.
    - antsar 6y ago
      Hotels do have a shared blacklist system. Why wouldn't they? I imagine being a repeat complainer is one way to make the list unless you bring enough business to be worth it.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - mschuster91 6y ago
        Chain hotels do have shared blacklists, yes (as far as the law allows them to, GDPR says hello), but unlike Airbnb in every major city there are independent competitors.
        dazc 6y ago
        I have stayed in chain hotels in the UK, complained sometimes and gotten a full refund. Been welcomed back again with no problems.
      - gamblor956 6y ago
        Hotels do not have a shared blacklist. And generally they don't care how much you complain as long as you aren't damaging their facilities since they don't have to try to make you happy unless they want to retain your business.
- djohnston 6y ago
  vs what, the airbnb host?
giantDinosaur 6y ago
Staying in hotels during solo travel is so remarkably effective at depressing me in ways I didn't know were possible (and I mean real, deep, prolonged feelings of existential loneliness and dread that eat at my core), that I just can't advocate staying at them. Obviously there are hostels at the other end of the scale when traveling for pure personal joy, but they aren't for everyone. AirBNB used to fill the midpoint in a way that was fairly difficult to do otherwise. It's a shame it became what it became. I only had good experiences back in ~2016-17.
- tonyarkles 6y ago
  My very first night in Europe was spent in an AirBNB in Paris (2011, I think?). It was an upstairs suite in a house in one of the suburbs. At about 8am, there was a gentle quiet knock on the door; I open it up, and a 6-year-old girl asks me, in French, “would you like eggs?” I tell her I would, and she runs off and comes back with two eggs on buttered toast. They were delicious. This was the very first night of solo travel for me, and it changed the day from starting out anxious (Where’s the subway? Where am I going to find food? What if I get lost?!) to starting out with a fresh cup of coffee and some delicious breakfast. Could you get a similar experience in a hotel? Sort of. There’s usually a restaurant where you could get breakfast, but I don’t think you’re usually going to get this feeling of “someone actually cares”.
- noirbot 6y ago
  I think it does still fill something like that mid-point if you're staying with a host instead of renting your own private space. I haven't generally had social hosts most of the times I was staying with airbnb, but I'm also fairly anti-social myself, but even just this last year, I was up in Buffalo NY for an event and ended up asking my host where to go for dinner, which turned into us hanging out the next day because he was starting his own brewery and wanted to share some of his homebrew. Even without something like that, for me, a lot of the value isn't even in interacting with a host as much as it is the feeling of sharing a lived-in space with someone. Small bits of personal decor, or looking through what random DVDs they have on the shelf provides some warmth that a chain hotel never will. It's a bit trite, but I think you can often tell the hosts that really care about providing a good experience from how they describe the rental, as well as looking at the actual decor and the space you're renting.
chrisseaton 6y ago
> is not really a product offering I don't know - I have a lot of colleagues who love meeting a wacky host and their dog, and like the varying accommodation styles. It's not my cup of tea either, but a lot of people genuinely seem to love the vibe and don't want to go back to hotels.
- alharith 6y ago
  You are really overstating how many people like that are out there. Compare the sheer number of hotel bookings to AirBnB bookings, even factoring out business travel. I just think that those still enamoured by it haven’t been burned yet. There is very little [effective] recourse when your AirBnB takes a turn for the worse. There are enough horror stories out there. I personally think the value to risk ratio is way off for them these days. It isn’t cheap anymore and that makes it way less appealing.
  - noirbot 6y ago
    I think a lot of it is in what your expectations are - I've had plenty of odd experiences with AirBnB, but nothing catastrophic, but I think that's because I've mostly been trying to use it for things that are not a hotel-like experience. Generally, I'm either doing something where I'm renting a whole house in a VRBO style thing where it's likely someone's full-time rental property and has been for a while or I'm essentially looking for something barely above couch surfing where I expect to show up in the evening, go to bed, then wake up and leave for the day. I've had plenty of minor sub-optimal experiences, but usually nothing that wasn't called out in the listing, and I've also had plenty of experiences with hosts that took things seriously and were amazing to work with. Most of the stories I've seen of people getting burned was though listings that at least personally, I would have found a little suspicious in terms of price-to-quality, and level of professionalism. They seem to prey on people who want the experience of a hotel, but don't want to pay for it.
  - api 6y ago
    Being burned by an AirBnB stay generally at least leaves you with an entertaining tale of OMGWTF. A bad hotel experience usually just leaves you grossed out or with bedbug bites. I have one of each: a funny AirBNB caper and a totally disgusting hotel story I wouldn't bother telling. The latter involves stains of the uhh... lonely masculine sort... on towels. Shudder.
draw_down 6y ago
It is a product. It’s ok if you don’t like it. And I agree that it often has negative effects on the surrounding community, but I don’t see why that means it’s not a product. I don’t think it makes sense to say that a product is something that never has those sort of negative externalities because that is certainly not the case.
snowwrestler 6y ago
I don’t want to stay in a hotel because I usually travel with my family and I want to have a home-like experience with a real kitchen where we can cook and eat meals together. I alternate between AirBnB and VRBO when looking for accommodations. Also, this article is not about whether AirBnB can work in general... it’s a billion-dollar company over a decade old. Whether you like it or not, it’s silly to act like the idea has yet to be proven. The article is about how they pivoted their homepage to add value to their product during a crisis. I would think that topic would be very interesting to the HN audience. They are certainly acting more agile than a hotel chain; I don’t see Marriott offering online “host experiences” to their guests.
newacct583 6y ago
> sub-par accomodation with no standards, or potentially sharing it with an awkward host That's not remotely a good characterization of what AirBnB was offering. Like them or not, they were successful for more than a decade because they were objectively providing a better product than traditional hotels. Complain about the externalities of their service, sure. But let's not pretend that they didn't make something people want.
- goatinaboat 6y ago
  objectively providing a better product than traditional hotels A cheaper, unregulated, tax-free product. I get that there is a demand for this but there are demands for lots of things that are harmful to society as a whole.
  - hi_im_miles 6y ago
    > harmful to society as a whole By what measure? You imply that their product being cheaper or unregulated is harmful to society, but you haven't offered any reason as to why. It's also not a tax-free product.
    - SaxonRobber 6y ago
      Because it lowers the housing stock in urban areas. Wealthy travellers will pay more for accommodations than the local market, so apartments become airbnbs and investors gobble up condos and housing which they turn into short term rentals. The scarcity pushes up the housing prices, but it never balances out because the locals can never make enough to compete with wealthy travellers and are forced farther from the city. The end result is a hollowed out city core.
    - goatinaboat 6y ago
      This is very well known by now https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/feb/20/revealed-the-areas-in-the-uk-with-one-airbnb-for-every-four-homes https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/feb/20/revealed-... I would be willing to be that most AirBnB hosts are not registered businesses and paying the taxes they owe... for running hotels —— From @amiga_500 I'll add my comment here as I mentioned unearned income, which hacker news really don't like, so they gave me the fake "you're posting too fast" even though I've posted nothing for over 20 minutes. Ah so that’s what triggers it! Same thing just happened to me!
xiphias2 6y ago
I travel using hotels a lot, because they offer food and great flexibility for extending my stays, but right now I would be scared to share my place with other people, and I feel safer cooking for myself. Hotels have a lot of shared space that will be dangerous until we have a cure/vaccine.
save_ferris 6y ago
Worked as a housekeeper for a large hotel chain that everyone has heard of back in high school and I can tell you that there is absolutely zero investment into staff at many big hotels. Housekeepers at my hotel has to fight just to make minimum wage since our pay was pegged to the number of rooms we cleaned (about $2.50 per room). Managers would tell us to clock in late and clock out early so we’d “get paid more”, and most went along with it because it was 2009 and jobs were hard to find. I realized instantly that these guys were fleecing the housekeeping staff because my checks were always just a little short of where they should’ve been based on hours worked. I stopped clocking in and clocking out when they told me to, and instead punched my card based on my schedule. My manager caught on and started punching my card for me (which was illegal). I calculated how much they’d shorted me over that summer, went to the hotel manager’s office, put in my resignation and demanded the extra pay they’d shorted me, which they agreed to. I’m not saying every big hotel is this shady, but the idea that minimum wage workers are invested in these days is pretty laughable, because there’s a hundred other people ready to take that job. Those who patronize big hotels tend to get caught up in the marketing, but I assure you that perception in no way aligns with the reality of that work.
- hobs 6y ago
  You're correct, but AirBNB encourages people to run untaxed unlicensed hotels, so its even worse than an already terrible system.
  - dehrmann 6y ago
    > untaxed Occupancy taxes actually really bother me because they're usually cash grabs targeting visitors who have no clout with the local officials that put it in place. It's taxation without representation, or a slightly different take on the speed trap on a major road through a drive-through small town.
    - vorpalhex 6y ago
      Visitors are using public resources that are normally funded by taxes, and depending on the ratio of visitors to residents this can really turn out to be an unfair deal for residents - see any small coastal town whose population inflates 40% when it's tourist season. An occupation tax is because you're using public resources and don't normally pay taxes to that jurisdiction.
hombre_fatal 6y ago
Do we really need a rehash of the belabored "DAE dislike airbnb? XDD" just because the title mentions Airbnb?
- seattle_spring 6y ago
  Apparently so. It happens in every single thread and the ridiculous and off topic comments get upvoted to the moon.
dehrmann 6y ago
> Staying in sub-par accomodation ... > Support good hotels and chains, who hire and invest in great staff. It's a bit less so now (pre-COVID), but this is the Airbnb discount. It was cheaper than hotels for a reason. It's like buying a used item from a third-party seller on Amazon. The product offering is completely valid, but the quality and support are hit-or-miss, so the risk you're taking is baked into the price.

canada_dry 6y ago

Gotta give them some credit though for pretty rapidly releasing their "experiences" [i]. 𝖮̶𝖽̶𝖽̶ ̶𝗍̶𝗁̶𝖺̶𝗍̶ ̶𝗍̶𝗁̶𝗂̶𝗌̶ ̶𝖺̶𝗋̶𝗍̶𝗂̶𝖼̶𝗅̶𝖾̶ ̶𝖽̶𝗈̶𝖾̶𝗌̶𝗇̶'̶𝗍̶ ̶𝖾̶𝗏̶𝖾̶𝗇̶ ̶𝗆̶𝖾̶𝗇̶𝗍̶𝗂̶𝗈̶𝗇̶ ̶𝗂̶𝗍̶.̶ I'm highly unlikely to use the service but I still think it shows they can respond quickly to radical events. [i] https://www.airbnb.ca/s/experiences/online https://www.airbnb.ca/s/experiences/online

CubsFan1060 6y ago
Having done a few of them, they are actually great. No idea if I’d say the same thing outside of lockdown though. For now watching a tango concert from Argentina or baking with a Swedish chef has been fun. They haven’t all been great, but so far I’m happy with at least 60-70% of them.
ejstronge 6y ago
> Gotta give them some credit though for pretty rapidly releasing their "experiences" [i]. Odd that this article doesn't even mention it. This is discussed in the text of the very first question in the article
- canada_dry 6y ago
  Ouch. Thanks for the correction.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

Cyclone_ 6y ago

Airbnb has always figured out clever ways to screw the hosts. When I first hosted guests were much more polite and clean. The last few years the ones I've gotten have been pretty messy and more likely to break house rules.

noirbot 6y ago
I'm not sure I understand how these are related? It's not as if they're intentionally sending you bad guests to torment you as a "clever way" to screw you...
- strgcmc 6y ago
  More likely this is a version of the "Eternal September" problem. Early adopters of Airbnb were more likely to be "true believers" of the idealized vision of a kind/generous host matched with adventurous/courteous guests, but this vision gets diluted over time as the userbase grows. Once Airbnb reached true ubiquity, the general user population is just looking for a good deal and isn't nearly as savvy or as committed to the original ideals; this applies to both hosts and guests, of course. It's impossible to scale a platform to 10s/100s/1000s millions without finding an ever-lowering lowest common denominator.
  - noirbot 6y ago
    I think the interesting thing now is that, at least personally, I'm willing to pay hotel-level rates to stay at somewhere run by one of those "true believers". I know one of the things I look for is someone who's got a lot of reviews/a long history, but also seems to be renting just one space (or multiple rooms in the same house). I'm not looking for a deal - if I wanted to be cheap and central and social, I'd stay at a hostel. I'm totally willing to pay a bit more to stay somewhere with a host that cares.
  - Cyclone_ 6y ago
    Yes, this is very true.
- Cyclone_ 6y ago

yellowapple 6y ago

Pivoting into these more "essential" reasons for renting, like wanting to isolate from family, seems like a smart move, so long as AirBnB hosts are taking the necessary precautions to make their properties suitable for self-quarantine. Certainly a better option isolation-wise than, say, a hotel (even if you decline room service - and room service actually recognizes that you've declined it - the rooms are in close proximity to one another, often have some degree of shared air, and the lack of a usable kitchen means having to break quarantine if you want to eat anything other than microwaved food). I'd imagine partnering with local/state/national governments to provide housing for people being specifically quarantined would be another good use for AirBnB in a similar vein. Another legit non-tourism-related use case I can see still being relevant is for people needing temporary housing, whether due to moving into an area or because of foreclosure/eviction or some other reason why they don't have permanent housing. I don't know what the process of renting or buying a home looks like with social distancing (thankfully I moved right before the outbreak and didn't have the "fun" time of finding out for myself), but I can't imagine it's particularly easy or quick. And likewise, while you'd hope that banks and landlords would have the slightest bit of human decency and be a bit lenient on late mortgage/rent payments, I strongly suspect there are plenty of assholes out there.

rdslw 6y ago

they're short-term doomed. long-term, (2021+) -> time will tell. what they're planning now to do is to invent completly new business, utilising assets they have at hand (relations with hosts, but this is it). their 'online experiences' is a lesson on 'wishful thinking' or 'painting the grass green'. Quoting article: "we have nearly 100 hosts offering experiences online and thousands more who’ve offered to host experiences". Let me remind them, that they have at least THREE..FOUR ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE bigger hosts number (problem 1), there is no space in youtube/twitch area for that amount of content creators (problem 2), and most hosts can't do it (problem 3).

shostack 6y ago
I wonder what knock on effects there will be for this part of the economy. How many towns and cities have a significant chunk of real estate that was purchased exclusively for Airbnb rentals that may eventually get foreclosed as a result of this? What will be the impact to surrounding real estate markets?
- ForHackernews 6y ago
  Seems like it would only be positive if more housing became available for locals? For myself, I'm hoping Airbnb go bankrupt. In my mind, they're similar to Uber in that their only true innovation is a willingness to disregard local laws.

badpassword 6y ago

hotels rooms in bali are $200 per month now five stars hotel like westin sells a 2days voucher for 1mil rupiah (~70 usd), valid until dec 31, 2021.

LifeLiverTransp 6y ago
Valid if, and only if the hotel still exists by then.
somecoolguy 6y ago
Is there a way to buy these vouchers online?

hn_throwaway_99 6y ago

There was an article in NYT that was discussed here a couple months ago that talked about early employees losing their equity is AirBnB didn't go public by 2020. Does anyone know more details about that?

yalogin 6y ago

Airbnb must be making ZERO dollars right now. Wonder how long they can survive in this situation. They sure have a lot of funding but they were close to going public and returning money to their investors. If this continues they will need to raise more cash and that round is going to be severely discounted. In general I am not sure how their business will pan out over the next year or so.

PopeDotNinja 6y ago
Not zero dollars, but certainly less. I'm in an Airbnb in The Canary Islands, and will be through at least May. When I found out the lockdown was happening, I scrambled to rent Airbnbs thru May because I didn't have a place to return to, and staying in Spain felt safer to me than returning to the USA.
- standardUser 6y ago
  I was in an AirBnB abroad when the lockdowns started and I'll likely be in one again soon (I have no permanent residence currently and am staying with family). Unfortunately, some cities are putting limitations on rentals so I may have limited options.
- thulecitizen 6y ago
  > staying in Spain felt safer to me than returning to the USA Because of better adherence to social distancing rules? Are you a SWE working remotely?
  - PopeDotNinja 6y ago
    Yes to both.
dehrmann 6y ago
They did raise $2B in the last month. That should help.
almost_usual 6y ago
Airbnb missed the IPO window in 2019. They will not IPO for years now if ever.

gregkerzhner 6y ago

My biggest gripe with AirBnb is the search functionality. Sure, you are a premium product, so you can price gouge my millennial bank account all you want. But at least give me the functionality that I need. As a software engineer, I need a place with good wifi. Hosts always claim to have wifi, but no indication of quality. Before I knew how to be a super user, it wasn't uncommon to show up to a listing that claimed to have wifi and only find out that it was coming from the building next door and you could only pick up a signal while standing up in the shower tub. The most reliable way to find out who actually had good wifi was by searching the reviews for the term "wifi". However, AirBnb refuses to implement the ability to filter your results by terms inside review. They claim that it's because it's too technically difficult to implement this. I am no search guru, but I have fired up an Elastic Search instance to make a-one-to many relationship searchable back in my day without too many issues. I guess AirBnb's "scale" is just too awesome to to do this? I mean damn... google indexed the whole internet. You can't index your own reviews? Then, a few months ago, I noticed that AirBnb got rid of even the search functionality on the individual listing page, so now the only way to search a listing's reviews for the word "wifi" is to go to the listing, infinite scroll the list of reviews for a few minutes to load all of them onto the page, and then use the browser's search tool.

rickyc091 6y ago
Yep, I've been burned by this a few times. Now, I ask them what their internet speeds are and if there are any dead zones in the apartment.

amiga_500 6y ago

> TC: Are these spaces being offered at no cost? > AS: They are donated or offered at reduced pricing. This decision was made by the market, not by AirBnB, because they can't get anywhere near your former price. > AS: Yes, like “Sangria mixing with Pedro,” which is a cocktail mixing show This isn't going to work. AirBnb's sole "value" proposition was exploiting a regulatory loophole to allow offering accommodation that has: - lower to no safety inspection - zoned in residential spaces often with angry neighbours Does it have another idea like this, that allows them to extract value created by the community? I don't see any.