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Is anybody else kind of over AirBnb? I loved it for a while, but now prices have gone way up, the "cleaning fees" are exorbitant and make navigating/browsing a
by Mizza 5y ago
Is anybody else kind of over AirBnb? I loved it for a while, but now prices have gone way up, the "cleaning fees" are exorbitant and make navigating/browsing a minefield, and I've had a few sketchy incidents (which were, admittedly, a side effect of choosing the cheapest place I could find), including one where the apartment manager came in, went through our clothes and _stole the bed_.
I've found myself just using hotels now, there's less hassle - but probably less good stories to tell.
- ok_coo 5y agoI don't know if there's a special tax in place in Chicago, but AirBnbs have been almost double the price of hotels recently. Uber/Lyft have been super expensive as well. I wonder if we're seeing that these company's original pricing model was unsustainable, or if something else is going on.
- Mizza 5y agoMy guess it's that the VC subsidies have come to an end and it's time to pay the piper.
- ghaff 5y agoI don't use Uber much and haven't used them at all for probably a couple of years now. But I've been hearing a lot of anecdotal stories about pricing shooting through the roof. Business travelers mostly won't care. However, anyone who was depending on the subsidized prices for day to day usage may have to make significant adjustments.
- uberdru 5y agoYes, also the market is saturated and they are desperate to show revenue growth. I think many companies of AirB&B's generation are in the same bind.
- halfmatthalfcat 5y agoAs a Chi resident, Uber/Lyft is super expensive because lack of drivers due to COVID and carjackings. A couple months ago people would call Uber/Lyft just to jack the car and it scared a lot of drivers away.
- mediaman 5y agoWouldn't that leave a fairly obvious trail? You have to enter your credit card details to call an Uber...
- sleepybrett 5y agosteal phone at gunpoint (get code), leverage uber on phone to steal a car.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- mead5432 5y agoWell, that's obviously a one star rating for the rider.
- treis 5y agoIf it's just you or a couple then hotels are generally better. AirBnBs are great for groups or families where it becomes cheaper per room and you get a common space. Also for things like remote cabins. We've taken to using AirBnB as a search and then booking directly with the provider. AirBnB's fees are exorbitant and they cost per night is marked up as well. I think we saved $600 or so with the last stay and got more favorable terms.
- Mizza 5y agoFor the group situations, I've had great success with VRBO, always seemed professional.
- voisin 5y agoAre you sure the daily night rate is marked up? I haven’t heard that anywhere else. How do you book directly? We find that anytime we’ve tried AirBNB strips out all portions of conversations that would allow the two parties to get in contact (email addresses, phone numbers, websites, addresses)
- treis 5y ago>Are you sure the daily night rate is marked up? Yep: https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/48602487?check_in=2021-07-16&check_out=2021-07-23&translate_ugc=false&federated_search_id=e27dc826-5315-4699-a190-7716793f69ef&source_impression_id=p3_1623894060_IFxf0%2BdJJ%2FWCMOv%2B&guests=1&adults=1 https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/48602487?check_in=2021-07-16&ch... https://www.brett-robinson.com/search-results/?startDate=2021-07-16&endDate=2021-07-23&node=161&unit=1386 https://www.brett-robinson.com/search-results/?startDate=202... >How do you book directly? You can usually find out the building and then look to see if they have their own site.
- maxwellito 5y agoI have the same experience. It's fun for a holiday week with friends, and that's it. The prices are no longer attractive and it's way less convenient than a hotel. Arranging the key exchange on arrival and departure has always been a hassle for me.
- rhino369 5y agoHotels are usually easier and cheaper EXCEPT if you actually want a whole house. Traveling with kids and a babysitter requires like 3 rooms and having a kitchen is a huge plus. So for that, its really good.
- msh 5y agoTravel with a baby sitter?!?!? How big can that market be?
- staticautomatic 5y agoProbably bigger than you’d think. My family occasionally traveled with a babysitter when I was a kid and at the time we were thoroughly middle class.
- Judgmentality 5y agoWhat is your definition of middle class?
- bellyfullofbac 5y agoProbably not American middle class ;-) . In Asia it is (was?) common to have a driver, servant and yes even a dedicated babysitter for the kids. To respond to the people who are going to say that's just exploitation of the poor, well, your Uber driver and your food delivery person would like to talk you, as well as the people who were poorly paid to mine the rare minerals found on your fancy phone.
- aaomidi 5y agoSurprise! You were not middle class.
- lupire 5y agoEh, an au pair from overseas provides childcare in exchange for rent and food, and comes on vacations. If you aren't a stay at home parent, you can use some of the money you earn at your job to pay for child care.
- bena 5y agoWouldn't they be the owners of the bed in the first place? Or were they managing it for the owners? That's so weird.
- Mizza 5y agoI am baffled to this day.
- drdec 5y agoComplete speculation - they operate multiple properties and were short a bed in another house. They may have had someone checking in and balking because there was no bed. Since you had already checked in, it would be much more difficult for you to claw back your money. So the incentives are to short you in favor of the new money.
- WhompingWindows 5y agoHotels are more reliable and organized, but I prefer AirBnB in general. I like feeling a part of the neighborhood or city, I like the home-y vibe of most AirBnBs. Hotels in contrast are a bit sterile and cookie-cutter, for obvious reasons, and some may prefer this vibe. Different strokes for different folks.
- ghaff 5y ago>Hotels are more reliable and organized I'll often stay in B&Bs in less urban areas, but especially for urban business travel, the hotel is not really a big part of my experience and I just want to keep things simple, maybe have a place to leave my luggage after I check out, a usually 24 hour desk, etc.
- antihero 5y ago> I like feeling a part of the neighborhood or city, As long as you know that you're getting those cute feelings at the expense of contributing to screwing everyone that actually lives there (who isn't a landlord) by contributing to a market that creates a situation ever more hostile and unaffordable to renters.
- anchpop 5y agoConverting hotels to apartment buildings would also lower costs for renters. Staying in a hotel has exactly the same effect (the hotel would not exist and might be an apartment building if there was no demand for hotels, just like airbnbs might be rented traditionally if there was no demand for airbnb)
- dorchadas 5y agoExcept hotels don't drain the existing supply like AirBnB does. Hotels are built to be hotels, not to be rented to locals. AirBnBs were built to be homes for residences of the area...and instead are being rented to locals, thus draining the existing supply that's already there, which hotels don't do.
- rytor718 5y ago
- ww520 5y agoYep. I found hotels have consistent standard with transparent pricing and quality. The prices for hotels are comparable if not better.
- ed25519FUUU 5y agoIn many ways we can thank competition from Airbnb for making the hotel experience better. Nothing gets industries to clean up their act like an existential threat.
- edmundsauto 5y agoNot sure why you got downvotes, but this is spot on. It also happened with Uber and taxicabs!
- ghaff 5y agoUber and taxicabs I see. Hotels apps and websites have probably gotten better but I'm not sure how much of that is AirBnB vs. a general trend in the industry.
- jjeaff 5y agoYa, hotels have always had to be highly competitive. But i suppose in areas where the number of available rooms had been somewhat fixed for a long time due to the difficulty of building any new hotels, you would see a difference as the hotels start to see their vacancy rates go up.
- edmundsauto 5y agoOne way to think about it the pre-Airbnb rates of improvement. Alas, I’m not qualified to comment, except anecdotally that I feel hotels have gotten much better with technology recently. 15 years ago, Expedia was faxing reservations to hotels.
- taude 5y agoYeup, I went to book, and got a $600 for a couple nights, when I clicked through, it was actually almost $1K with cleaning fees, airbnb fees, and local taxes. At that rate, I'm going back to traditional hotel rooms, and for the longer week stays, I'm just going to go back to using the other sites I used to use for booking longer-term rentals.
- xkjkls 5y agoHotel rooms have also shot through the roof in rates. There's huge pent up demand for vacations, given the year of lockdown people have gone through. I booked trips to San Diego and Honolulu recently, and prices were close to double what I would have expected. It will be interesting to see how this all ends up.
- yojo 5y agoOne option for saving a few bucks on fees is to try to disintermediate on booking. Especially where I tend to look (Oregon coast), most properties are run by a management company that will include their name in the listing. Once I find something I like on AirBnB, I search the property name on Google and typically save 10+%.
- voisin 5y agoI’ve long wondered why there isn’t a voluntary open database somewhere for hosts to register their AirBNB name and city and allow people to look up their direct contact details.
- bellyfullofbac 5y agoIn Iceland, I would look at guesthouses on booking.com, and look them up on a database called Google Maps. Airbnb tries to scare the hosts about the lack of insurance if they rent out their place directly to the guests... but I guess reading the stories about how Airbnb fights insurance claims all the way, it's not like this insurance cover is worth much after all..
- debaserab2 5y agoI'm very tired of the property investors that snatch up duplexes and turn them into quadplexes and then post them all on AirBnB with deceiving photos of the room layouts and amenities. The number of airbnb's that I've stayed at that have awkward rooms or incomplete amenities has been increasing year over year (such as a counter that prevents a refrigerator door from fully opening due to a hasty remodel, or a kitchen with a full set of pans but no silverware). The toiletries are almost always lacking, the bed sheets are always of the lowest quality - whatever the minimum the host can do to check the box on their AirBnB profile. The photos, reviews, and amenity lists on the host's profile never tell the fully story. This is more the norm than the exception in my recent experience.
- jjeaff 5y agoShouldn't this kind of stuff show up in the reviews rather quickly?
- mancerayder 5y agoAs per a comment I posted above, they censor the reviews enormously. You can find hosts giving each other tips on Reddit on how to do this and recently Bloomberg posted about it (https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-05-26/airbnb-took-down-my-negative-review-why https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-05-26/airbnb...). It makes me quite furious as I've had tame reviews removed.
- dingusthemingus 5y agoI had two bad hotel stays in big US cities during peak covid pandemic, 2 hotels in DC had taken in people who needed housing so smoking could be smelled in the building, cleaning crews were not running at full capacity, bars/restaurants closed, i had two overpriced airbnbs around the northeast that were good experiences.
- latchkey 5y agoAgreed! I lead a nomadic lifestyle between my campervan and staying in short term rentals and it has gotten to the point that all of the various sites are now a minefield on many fronts. Between scams, poor pictures and fees, it really is a huge challenge. My last rental in West Seattle was a super cute little house that I found on Zillow and I was lucky because it was owner rented, which saved us both on all those pesky lame fees. The days of VC-backed low prices are over. Now we get to experience the joys of paying them back for their investments.
- murph-almighty 5y agoWould you mind talking a bit about your lifestyle? I've been tossing around the idea a bit and in particular I'm curious about how much the van cost to setup and what you do for Wifi.
- latchkey 5y agoSure! As for cost... well... it really depends on what you get. I'd say a decent starter is cost of the van + 30-60k for the build out (including labor). AT&T has an unlimited 4G for business plan that is only about $100/month. They accept 'consultant' as a business (I went into a store to simplify the process of setting up the account). Get a mifi (Netgear M1)... it has 2 ports for a mimo antenna. Get an omni directional antenna and the shortest cables you think you need. That should get you coverage in most places. I've taken my daily zoom calls on the tops of mountains in the middle of nowhere. There is a newer Netgear 5G mifi out now too, but I haven't looked into it yet as I'm ok on 4G and 5G coverage, especially in remote areas, isn't that great yet. I spent 2 years on a small motorbike going all through super remote areas of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos and living out of hotels and short term rentals. Living in a van is easy after that. =)
- jjeaff 5y agoIs it truly unlimited? Or does it slow way down after x gb a month in traffic? I'm having trouble finding a truly unlimited hotspot on att's site right now.
- runako 5y agoI've had much more luck with VRBO/HomeAway and smaller regional sites (e.g. https://www.seashorevacations.com https://www.seashorevacations.com) than with AirBnB. Also looking forward to trying the Marriott vacation rentals as an option. Feels like you get a more "traditional" type of vacation rental owner. More professional? More likely to outsource all the management to a professional management company? I've been scammed on AirBnB, never through any other site. (The AirBnB scam was fortunately "only" the one where they switch you to a property in a different building because the one in the pictures is "under repairs". I didn't make too much of a stink about it because we had been traveling for a long time. But it's still fraud.)
- rawtxapp 5y agoI think airbnb is great for month long stays, anything shorter doesn't make too much sense once you factor in all the fees (p.s. use Australian version to see the prices with all fees included on the search page). I really like their direction of enabling month-long/flexible stays and considering whether I replace my lease with that so that I can move around more easily and see different places rather being stuck at the same place for 1+ years.
- rsj_hn 5y agoI did a month long stay with AirBnB in Miami and had an awesome time. I got a nice studio in a great location for $80/night. The various fees were offset by the discount for the long-term stay -- it would be really hard to do that with hotels.
- mancerayder 5y agoMonth costs around the NJ and NY area are extreme in price. Like 6-12k+ extreme, for anything not a dump, this summer.
- DantesKite 5y agoI don't have any strong opinions about it one way or the other. It's like a hammer. Useful in certain circumstances for me.
- grillvogel 5y agoi never understood the appeal over a hotel in the first place
- edmundsauto 5y agoYup, just like what happened to ebay back in the day. Or Etsy.
- jitl 5y agoBrowse on the Australian TLD, where regulations require showing the total price inclusive of all fees, not the per day price. you can still set the currency to USD (or whatever you pay with)