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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

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.

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.