21 ms·

Airbnb nightly rates shot up 36% in 3 years

267 points by lxm 4y ago

jeffbee 4y ago
This kind of housing inflation is not exactly unprecedented. Nominal rents in my city "shot up" 41% from 2013-2016. It's just what happens in supply-constrained markets.
CyberKimura 4y ago
Airbnb would be great if it weren't for the damn cleaning fees and other assorted crap tacked on from the price that is shown when you search for a place. "Hey this is in my budget! Great! Lets go ahead and book it...hey why did the price triple now???"
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Temporary_31337 4y ago
  Get the host details off social media and arrange a direct price
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - jedberg 4y ago
    That's a great way to scammed.
    - ajhurliman 4y ago
      Organizing on social media is probably a bad call, but many hosts have direct booking sites that they’d love to have people book through since they don’t have to pay the airbnb (or worse: VRBO) overhead. The direct booking sites come free with most of the property management systems out there: Guesty, Hostaway, etc. so most hosts have them, they’re just not allowed to advertise it on the online travel agencies (Airbnb etc).
- darkwizard42 4y ago
  In the US there is now a filter that allows you to see total price (excluding taxes): https://postimg.cc/hQxbkgnm https://postimg.cc/hQxbkgnm I'm not sure how this keeps getting brought up. There is a large thread started by @pitdesi on Twitter that sort of got it directly addressed.
bluetidepro 4y ago
The article touches up on it, but the "Additional fees and upfront pricing" is my biggest frustration with Airbnb that they refuse to fix (it's an easy solution, in my opinion). Hosts want to show lower prices, so in search you don't see all the fees, but then when you get all the way down the funnel you finally see these completely ridiculous fees (usually around cleaning) of what you'll actual pay. I don't understand why Airbnb is still on the side of hosts with this. They need to change the UX, and it would expose so much of the BS hosts try to pull around rates. This would quickly kill the need for hosts to try to game the system like they do now. Also in general, I refuse to use Airbnb these days when it's not only more than a hotel, but the audacity of some hosts have for checking out is hilariously dumb (cleaning, vacuuming, laundry, etc.). The reliability of hosts is all over the place, I see so many horror stories of last minute cancellations, hosts trying to pull one over on guests, and other sketchy practices they continue to allow. Note: I could be wrong now though (maybe they do show up front pricing now/), but they already burned the bridge where I stopped even looking at them as an option. Note (again): I just checked, and it does show a "total cost" in search, but it's still pretty deceptive. It should just be baked into the single nightly cost, and not a separate cost where you have to do the math to figure it all out. They should kill fees all together. Have it so it's just left at the hands of the host to make into a single cost that they want to charge per night, and simplify it.
- PaulHoule 4y ago
  Myself I came to the conclusion I could usually find a hotel I liked better than an AirBNB for a similar price, but with much less risk that anything goes wrong.
- Espressosaurus 4y ago
  AirBNB is relying on the bait and switch; why would they change unless they were forced to by regulation?
  - ipaddr 4y ago
    Customers choosing another provider
  - 4y ago
cs702 4y ago
...which works out to 10.7% annual inflation (1.36^(1/3) = 1.107).
- mikeyouse 4y ago
  Which is about ~2x the actual rate of inflation over that time period.. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=107Zn https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=107Zn And ~3x the rate of inflation for 'Lodging away from home' https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=107ZN https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=107ZN
  - dionian 4y ago
    I wonder if the traditional inflation measurements (à la shadowstats) is a more accurate indicator of inflation. Shadowstats has it well above 10%. http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts
    - mikeyouse 4y ago
      Unequivocally no, Shadowstats is garbage. Their methodology doesn't even make sense -- if they were actually "calculating" it, their measure would continue to diverge from CPI instead of just adding some fixed amount to the CPI number. If you look at their chart from say, 1990 to today, they show something like 8-9% annual. 8% annual inflation for 33 years would be ~1,300% cumulative. Do Hondas that cost $15k in 1990 cost $200k today? Does a gallon of milk that cost $1.50 in 1990 cost $20 today? Even housing -- a $100k house in 1990 would cost $1.4M today based on that rate... that may be true in very specific neighborhoods but that's not inflation as much as supply:demand mismatch in Tier A cities.
bbertelsen 4y ago
The last AirBNB I stayed at, I received a bad review. Their negative review stated, passively aggressively, that I had only completed "some of the checkout list items". The list of chores was 3 pages long and was provided after booking. They also charged me a $250 cleaning fee. Never again.
- roflyear 4y ago
  If they charge a cleaning fee and leave you a bad review about not cleaning you can dispute it usually and maybe even get the fee refunded.
  - throwayyy479087 4y ago
    Good advice, but I don't have to do any of this when I stay at hotels. I really like the core idea of AirBNB, but between their crappy hosts and the damage they do to neighborhoods, I won't deal with them anymore.
  - bgorman 4y ago
    I had a similar experience. Airbnb still has not refunded me, and the negative review is still online. I doubt I will get a refund. But I will certainly never use airbnb again.
    - mjhay 4y ago
      Go through your credit card - you can generally get a chargeback if the vendor has been unresponsive.
      - asdff 4y ago
        airbnb could ban you from the platform potentially
        BenjiWiebe 4y ago
        Since they said they'll never use airbnb again, that's probably not a concern.
aliljet 4y ago
AirBnB has a super core problem: hosts are in short supply. This leads the entire service to see guests as a secondary concern. This leads to a pretty obvious problem: opaque pricing, poor customer service (never trust me, check trustpilot), and probably a serious problem for AirBnB: a resurgence of the vertically integrated hotel chain.
- aliqot 4y ago
  Tell me the price, make the host and tennant have a singular universal set of expectations. It's not hard. Holiday Inn Express has been getting my business lately. Everything is labeled, no wild sudden items after checkin like "don't forget to put the back door mat on the balcony railing so the racoons don't run off with it". Everything that made AirBNB cool at first eventually made it bad inevitably. Glad to have made friends with hosts along the way before it went sour.
- dicomdan 4y ago
  Lack of housing supply is the root cause.
- rr888 4y ago
  I have two friends that had AirBnB rentals, they've both given up. The initial novelty and fun quickly wore off and became a grind. The local LLC with 10+ properties will stay the norm now I think.
  - LegitShady 4y ago
    I think if you have an LLC booking hotel rooms and its not an individual booking out rooms, they need to comply with all building codes and regulations for hotels.
  - naravara 4y ago
    I wonder how much of this is just people being bigger jerks now than before. Just anecdotally service workers and small business owners in general seem to complain about a major shift in norms towards customers more often being abusive or even vindictive towards them.
selfmodruntime 4y ago
Where I live, AirBnB is routinely 2x as expensive as chain hotels. I'm not sure who's using it anymore, but I'm surely not.
- tompagenet2 4y ago
  For me it’s absolutely horrible staying in a hotel with kids. You either all stay in one room (so no fun once they’ve gone to bed and we sit in the dark) or you buy two rooms (normally really expensive) and then either try and find the normally-unavailable option on hotel websites to buy interconnecting rooms or sleep one adult and one child in twin beds in each room. It’s rubbish. There’s nowhere for them to really play either. AirBnB fixes all of this.
  - Cyph0n 4y ago
    Yep, Airbnb more often than not is the only option for families, especially those with young children. I recently ended up booking a 2 bed apartment for essentially the same price as a nearby hotel. I don’t like the overall Airbnb experience, but I also don’t want to pay ~2x for an additional hotel room.
    - hombre_fatal 4y ago
      Also, hotels don’t have a kitchen. Eating out for every meal isn’t something I’m going to do for any stay longer than a few days.
      - switch007 4y ago
        Aparthotels are pretty common.
      - ghaff 4y ago
        >Also, hotels don’t have a kitchen. Not necessarily true. The suite/long-stay brands like Residence Inn usually have kitchenettes. (Not that I usually use them other than the refrigerator.)
      - 4y ago
golergka 4y ago
I constantly see bad feedback on Airbnb and Twitter, and when I ask where these things happened, it's usually USA. I lived in Airbnbs almost exclusively the whole 2022, and travelled through various european countries, moved 32 times total. I've never had any of these problems, any cleaning fees or other stuff like that. I've rented full apartments for $70 per night, where I could cook, do laundry and in general feel much more comfortable than in a hotel for a stay longer than a week. May be Airbnb is only bad in states?
- biesnecker 4y ago
  I definitely think there's something to this. I've had much better experiences in AirBnb in Mexico and Europe than I have in the US.
  - whitepoplar 4y ago
    landlord culture
    - asdff 4y ago
      Yup, everyone surprised by the ticky tacky cleaning fee nonsense has probably not gotten a security deposit back in recent years. Now you have the management companies that make a slumlord mom and pop look like a kind relative running some of these vacation rental properties as well, applying the same rigid Orwellian policies designed to shake out as much money from you on your way out as possible. There must be some books or trade magazines out there where they are all getting this stuff...
- CapmCrackaWaka 4y ago
  Small sample size but the only time a host complained about how clean I left a place was in Tignes, France. Their complaint? There were crumbs on the floor, _under_ the overhang of the dishwasher. I've probably booked 15 airbnbs in the US, and they've all been great. No complaints of unruly hosts, or crazy checkout chores. I think if you stick with superhosts or any property with lots of reviews, you'll usually have a good time. My biggest problem with airbnb at this point is the hidden fees until checkout.
subsubzero 4y ago
I feel like airbnb fees have gone through the roof, and I am done with them. So much so that we are no longer using them. I am now booking hotels, and if we want to rent a house we just use short term rental companies(who also post the same houses on their site and also on airbnb). We spent almost $60k on airbnbs the past 3 years so thats money that airbnb will no longer see.
throwayyy479087 4y ago
TikTok HATES AirBNB. I don't think that the tech folks have realized how reviled AirBnB has become. The main issue I hear about - and have personally experienced - are hosts requiring a ~$200 "cleaning fee," then ALSO requiring chores to be done at checkout time. There's also STILL a lot of reports of cameras in showers, toilets, etc - and total silence from AirBNB. They need to deal with these issues immediately. Then, if you protest, they nuke your AirBNB rating and you can't book anywhere else. Ok, great - I'll go back to Marriott. It's cheaper, has on-site security, a pool, and I don't have to take out the trash.
- mdgrech23 4y ago
  That would require them to change their model to a curated list of rentals as opposed to a smorgasbord of shit. They know the more quality controls they put in place will result in less available units so there really isn't a motivation to crack down on shit rentals. Eventually when enough people stop using the platform someone in a boardroom will ask why rentals are down and someone in market research will say quality control of rentals at which some pea brained solution will be dreamt up. Also want to point out superhosts might of been attempt to address this problem but I've routinely picked superhosts and many have disappointed.
- rcme 4y ago
  > TikTok HATES AirBNB. Given TikTok's algorithm, it's hard to make a statement about TikTok in general. Most likely, you engage with anti-AirBnB content, so that's what you see more of.
- purpleblue 4y ago
  A small section may violently hate them (i've stopped using Airbnb as well) but the fact they are making increasing revenues is a sign that it's not working. I would love to know why some people aren't price sensitive.
- acchow 4y ago
  And you don't know what the chores will be when you pay for the reservation...
himanshuy 4y ago
I was an early adopter of AirBnB but stopped using completely. Hotels give me a consistent experience with no hassle.
jwilber 4y ago
Hotels are always cheaper than Airbnb nowadays, and a much better experience. I can’t think of a single positive thing about Airbnb anymore.
- Jommi 4y ago
  can you show me some links where an airbnb is more expensive than a hotel room?
  - jwilber 4y ago
    No, but - and you may find this crazy - you can go look in Manhattan and see for yourself!
    - Jommi 4y ago
      Ive done this, and airbnb has always been cheaper
PragmaticPulp 4y ago
AirBnB was fun at first when I could find someone renting out their personal beach house when they weren't using it, or an extra room in their house. I had many good experiences with family events or group get togethers at AirBnBs in the past. In recent years, the majority of AirBnBs I've stayed at feel like someone's side business that they started for "passive income" after reading some guru's financial advice. The properties are barely maintained or have clearly broken features. Cleaning fees are sky high, but the houses don't feel clean when I arrive. We showed up to one AirBnB and it didn't have any furniture. It was a completely empty house with some mattresses and blankets in the closets. All of the furniture in the photos was gone. AirBnB refunded us, but dealing with the issue consumed 1/4 of our trip and cost us extra money to find a replacement on short notice. It's no longer the fun, personal experience of renting someone's property when they've got extra space. It's now a playground for pseudo-entrepreneurs who want to buy an investment property, hire a cleaning company, and then push the limits of what they can get away with without getting kicked off the AirBnB platform.
- rchaud 4y ago
  > In recent years, the majority of AirBnBs I've stayed at feel like someone's side business that they started for "passive income" after reading some self-help books online. Airbnb encourages this, as it increases inventory for them and lets property owners engage in a race to the bottom on prices. Which as it turns out, affects the quality of the service!
  - asdff 4y ago
    Honestly somehow prices have just gone to a race to the top versus the bottom. If every time you march prices up it takes a week longer relative to the rest of the market to book that room, and you and the rest of the airbnb property owners don't necessarily mind waiting an extra week if it means you just hiked up prices, then prices are just going to keep going up and up so long as people keep coming. And they will keep coming, because as you are losing out your middle class tourists, you are gaining wealthy tourists, who are funding more luxury development and snowballing the effect until they are priced out for even more wealthy people.
seydor 4y ago
According to comments, seems like airbnb is a victim of its own success, too few hosts. But hosting is already a problem in many places as it pushes up rents for 'ordinary' residents. Where is this heading to, will everything become an airbnb, and we all become nomads? We will finally own nothing and be happy. Also a lot of people talk as if airbnb and hotels are interchangeable, but they are not. In my touristy european area, airbnb is everywhere and hotels can't match what people offer there. It's really about the different types and locations of accomodation that airbnb promotes in its homepage now, not for simply finding 'a place to sleep' like a hotel. Both of them have their place, but airbnb has a lot more space to expand in new types and modes of accomodation that we haven't discovered yet, and hotels cannot directly compete with those offerings.
cactusplant7374 4y ago
It's quite convenient to keep a book of contacts where you have stayed before and then can negotiate directly on a rate the next time you travel there. Something to be said about returning to the same places you've enjoyed before.
rchaud 4y ago
What's missing in this article is that Airbnb is actually profitable now. Operating income, last 3 years[0]: 2019 - $(0.5b) (loss) 2020 - $(3.5bn) (loss) 2021 - $0.4bn (profit) 2022 - $1.8bn (profit) Like with Uber and WeWork, these startups only look good next to market leaders when they have billions in VC capital to undercut their competitors with. Once they IPO, they're on their own, and their business practices start looking suspiciously similar to the bloated, bureaucratic incumbents they once threatened to replace. [0] https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/ABNB/financials/ https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/ABNB/financials/
- Salgat 4y ago
  They grow like crazy at a loss and then take advantage of their market dominance to strong-arm the prices back up. To be honest I'm more shocked that hotels are still having trouble beating AirBNB prices. When we went to Hawaii we wanted to go to a hotel but the prices for the same view were so much cheaper with AirBNB.
  - LegitShady 4y ago
    hotels aren't really competing with Airbnb. it might appear that way, but they aren't interested in the same customers, and those customers will get scammed by an airbnb and go back to hotels anyways. airbnb is for people who haven't learned the lesson about airbnb yet. Hotels aren't interested in competing on price with airbnb because they dont have to.
  - rchaud 4y ago
    That may be because Hawaii is small as tourist locations go, so hotels may be booked solid already. In many larger tourist destinations, I've found hotels to be cheaper. Not by much, but I will always take hotels over Airbnb.
  - wongarsu 4y ago
    It probably depends on location, but over Western Europe I'd generally say that if you just want a bed hotels are in the same price range as AirBnB while being much more predictable and reliable, and are available on short notice (booking the room at 11pm in the same night you want to sleep there isn't an issue, neither is checking in at 3am). AirBnB shines when you want more than a bed and a table, or when you want something more unique in local style.
MisterBastahrd 4y ago
AirBnB is a scam and is incredibly harmful to local populations, so I am enthusiastically happy that their increased rates have resulted in so many vacancies. I can either utilize a hotel which will take care of virtually every need I have wherever I'm at, or use an AirBnB and get stuck with doing my own housekeeping for twice the price.
karaterobot 4y ago
Do hosts get to set the price for their offerings? I remember talking to the owner of a place I was staying at, and he asked me how much AirBNB was charging. He said it was completely algorithmic, and outside his control. Because the place I was staying at was new, without a lot of reviews, it was a crazy good deal — he probably made $50 for my stay, which by rights should have been more like $300. I suppose that, in that situation, the cost of those hidden fees like cleaning might be a knob hosts can turn to feel in control.
jimt1234 4y ago
Airbnb was cool in the early days, when hosts were usually individual people just looking to make an extra buck on their vacation cabin in the mountains or something like that. Now it seems like Airbnb is dominated by companies who own/operate a bunch of host places. It's lost the personal touch. The last place I stayed at in Miami had an issue with the air conditioning - it wouldn't turn off, the place was freezing! I called the host, "Mark", the handsome guy in the Airbnb ad, who wrote all about his life in Miami. Well, I ended up talking to customer service rep in India. The dude just kept reading a script back to me, which was, of course, no help at all. I've heard other people with similar experiences - you get zero customer service once you're checked-in.
- npteljes 4y ago
  Exactly the same as Etsy. Last time my wife complained that even though the page states that the $100 item is located in the US, it dispatched from China. Sure enough, when I reverse image searched the product image, Aliexpress came up, with $20 as the listing price. Exact same images, even the wording was very similar. (And of course, with further digging, the original website came up, with their original product that the other sellers copied - with much better materials, a price tag of $350). Etsy was real cool when it was a bazaar of small handmade items, and such. Now it's chock full of same garbage you can get on any large ecommerce site.
0xDEF 4y ago
Economies of scale means there is room for a "Walmart of Hotels" that is both better than Airbnbs and cheaper than legacy hotels.
- bena 4y ago
  Or there is not and the "Walmart of Hotels" is already the goddamn Holiday Inn. And AirBnB is discovering what every "disruptor" is discovering: the system existed for a reason. The rules were there for a reason. Things cost what they cost for a reason. And the only way to come in under those prices is to cheat someone somewhere.
  - Der_Einzige 4y ago
    Walmart of hotels is motel 6. Holiday inn is like a target or something.
  - rightbyte 4y ago
    AirBnB has become a flee market and is cruising on past merits, just like Amazon. I guess the main problem is that they make so much money while diluting their brand before customers realize
- asdff 4y ago
  That's called when a legacy hotel puts their spare inventory for the day on an aggregator for a fire sale. It's like buying at Nordstrom Rack.
rticesterp 4y ago
I have a whole home AirBnB. My energy prices have tripled in the past three years. My labor costs have gone up 50% in the past three years. Guest has a problem connecting to WiFi? HandyMan charges $95 just to show up and $120/hour with a minimum of one hour. $200 just to reset the router. That eats into a $300/night stay quickly. It's always something and guests expect the same level of service as a hotel and that's not cheap to provide. That's why that even with a $2000 a month mortgage, I need at least $6000 a month to break even. I leave 5 star reviews for all guests and my only checklist item is for it not to look like the hotel room from the hangover. I pay cleaners good money to clean your mess. AirBnB has been vary guest friendly IMO. I have over 200 five star reviews. A guest tried to push for a discounted stay. I pushed back and they told AirBnB my place was unsafe and I was removed from search for a week. EDIT: TLDR. I started this 4 years ago as a side hustle but I'm ready to be out of the game. It doesn't scale to provide a nice place that I also use as a vacation home. Also, I'm constantly replacing and repairing things. The only way to win is to be a slumlord AirBnB host
- rideontime 4y ago
  Sounds like an unsustainable business model.
  - rticesterp 4y ago
    It definitely is. I was lured in by the promise of 60K in revenue with 24K in mortgage expenses. There's so much wear and tear and so many things break. I agree that eventually it will be a race to the bottom. The good hosts and guests will leave.
- LegitShady 4y ago
  There's no reason to think you must be profitable renting out a house by the night, or that you'll be efficient running a one client hotel that relies on a site like airbnb that has been in serious decline for some time.
- adoxyz 4y ago
  $300/night is more than most hotels charge with a lot of amenities and service. If you don't want to pay the handyman charges to reset the router, you can go and do it yourself for free. You're paying for convenience of not having to do it yourself and that cuts into profit.
caseyross 4y ago
For comparison, US median house prices are up by 42% over the same period [1]. Hospitality prices (especially for traditional hotels, which raised rates by about 10%), are actually significantly trailing inflation. [1]: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MSPUS https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MSPUS
anarticle 4y ago
Hotels are light years easier, and I don't worry about anything. Last AirBnB I had to read a list of rules a mile long. $200 cleaning fee and I still have to take the trash out. Also every host has a different set of rules. No thanks. Quality between bnbs is also wildly different, I simply don't care that much.
jmuguy 4y ago
My team develops a platform (data.rabbu.com) thats based in large part on Airbnb data and I swear its kind of ridiculous how much hate Airbnb gets on social media. Like for one thing - compared to the other options Airbnb is doing WAY more for both hosts and guests. Try to get someone on the line at VRBO or Booking.com that cares one iota about any issues you have. Everything else is anecdotal. I think having a bad experience when you're on vacation is like 10x worse than anything else. So any bad experience with an Airbnb gets amplified and whenever people get a chance they'll go blue in the face telling you about the time some shady host tried to put them on ice and harvest their organs. Cleaning fees going up? Guess what - cleaning sucks, and the hospitality industry got completely gutted by Covid. So maybe they're not trying to rip you off, maybe they can't find anyone to clean for the price everyone stills expects based on pre-Covid travel.
tristor 4y ago
I used to heavily use AirBnB. I no longer do. I don't even bother checking it. The quality of experience / stay has gone down, and the price has gone up considerably. I now expect that an AirBnB will provide a worse experience for the same or higher cost than a hotel in any location I might travel to. The only benefit an AirBnB brings is that it may provide more square footage, but this is not worth the tradeoff when traveling solo or with my wife, it only comes into account when traveling with large groups where shared accommodations would be acceptable. I have a large double-digit number of stays with AirBnB over the years, and I don't even go to their website or app anymore. A good example is over the summer, we had an AirBnB for my wife and my step-daughter and I in Rome for a few nights. We had so many issues that when we came back through Rome on our way back home I booked a 5-star luxury hotel. The hotel ended up being cheaper than the AirBnB when you count the tacked on fees, and had none of the issues we experienced, although there was less total square footage. It was in a better location as well, and the AirBnB was far from a luxury 5-star experience. I typically stay in 2-star or 3-star lodgings when I travel, and AirBnBs are now typically worse than a 2-star offer, but charging higher than 5-star prices. It's ridiculous.
elforce002 4y ago
Tbh, I much rather spend money on resorts and hotels. I don't want to pay any extra fees for anything else. Last time I used one was 3 years ago. We had to cook, clean, etc... We decided to just save more and go to a resort/hotel. Of course Airbnb has its use cases but in general, hotels are way better, and let's not talk about hidden cameras on properties, etc...
- ghaff 4y ago
  Not that hotels in some places are adverse to tacking on a small print "resort fee."
coding123 4y ago
I get that CPI is calculated so carefully, but when all is said and done, I think my personal inflation being at 50% average through most of the pandemic is going to be the final settling number, and they won't admit that until 2025 I think. In my personal opinion this was driven by the massive hiring sprees that elevated a lot of bus boys, waitresses, and other jobs to "experience officers", "diversity officers", HR positions that never existed before. I've been applying to companies at size levels that I've worked at before that had just one HR person that was dedicated to payroll. Now there are entire teams of workers that process applications. The average startup is operating as if it's UnitedHealth Group or something. Now don't get me wrong, I am so glad people are getting higher paying jobs, but the pandemic causing that job rush so fast and furiously is what brought on this inflation. Every layoff article we see where they are letting go of 15% here, 20% there, it's nothing compared to the actual 80% hiring these companies did 20-23. That 80% hiring rate IS the inflation we're seeing. We elevated a lot of people to wages all us programmers had about 15 years ago - 90 - 120k. And of course us programmers are now asking 160 - 220k. Again, great that people are more employed and there are higher wages. However the inflation that went so fast and furiously with it - it's causing the people that aren't so lucky to quickly fall into homelessness, drug use, depression and suicide (by drug use mostly).
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jsonne 4y ago
I lived in Aribnb's for roughly a year and a half. They actually did a profile on our family on the Today Show on NBC about it. I think the thing I hated about it the most was the system of hosts rating the guests. It was always stressful especially when our ability to simply secure our next place to live was dependent on, to some degree, a hosts subjective evaluation of how they felt the stay went. For instance I have a toddler, at one location my toddler played with some toys that were in the house. We put them back where they were but they were incorrectly arranged (not damaged just put back not the way they wanted) and the host left us a negative review. We disputed it and airbnb sided us, but the whole feeling of constant judgement makes it difficult to relax in a space. I wish they had some better / more objective system as you never know when you'll encounter an unreasonable person. To me this is the single biggest negative. A sort of cloud of social credit hanging over your head. At this point I would never use Airbnb except for long term (30 days+) type of travel. Between the extremely intense chores you're basically given plus huge cleaning fees hotels are superior in nearly every way for short term trips. The significant % reduction for staying a month too makes it a lot more palatable. I think Airbnb sees this too which is why they're leaning so heavily into the digital nomad / long term travel user segment. It's a place they can genuinely win vs a hotel. For short term stays not dealing with unreasonable hosts, not getting surprise fees, and there not being a bunch of chores makes things significantly more enjoyable. As noted on social platforms by others getting hit with a massive cleaning fee and also then being expected to do chores also feels like a slap in the face.
- renewiltord 4y ago
  It seems like the social credit system is actually quite good. The problem is it isn't page ranked or weighted. Low rated people should count for less and people who low rate everyone should count for less. Dynamic range in your ratings should matter. FWIW I use Airbnb and hotels extensively. They fill different needs for me. And sometimes I use the composites: Hilton Residences or whatever. So far mostly good. I generally don't do anything extensive. The most you'll get from me is putting the sheets in the dryer. If you want me to clean the shoe mat and stuff you need to have no cleaning fee.
- purpleblue 4y ago
slaw 4y ago
The reason I stopped using Airbnb is their reviews system is broken. Airbnb actively removes bad reviews, you have only positive reviews left.
pelagic_sky 4y ago
We've been staying in hotels or hostels a lot more ever since the price and fees for AirBnB went through the "roof". As others have mentioned, the quality of hosts have gone from actual caring people to a shit side hustle. Really disappointing. What other services are people using instead of AirBnB?
- FredPret 4y ago
  There's also VRBO, and for a longer term stay you can look for a place on Facebook Marketplace and become an actual tenant
49531 4y ago
Anecdotally, I am traveling to a beach town in the off season (east coast US) next week to see family. A lot of Airbnb's were showing rates competitive with local hotels, ~$120/night. Staying 3 nights, I expected to checkout seeing ~$400, but upon checkout I see a bill for $800! Needless to say, I am staying at a hotel for $400. At least I won't be given a list of chores to complete upon checkout ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
__MatrixMan__ 4y ago
Three years ago we made a list of recipes. We're not very creative in the kitchen, so we've just been cycling through them. When we started, I wrote down the price of each ingredient. For the last three years I've been buying the same things at the grocery store and watching the total increase. I know the official inflation numbers are lower than 33%, but that's about the increase I'm seeing in the grocery store. I'm no lover of Airbnb, but I think this is just money getting worse.
stuaxo 4y ago
It's not even worth using AirBnB now. So many of the places aren't that good for the price, or they have strange rules attached. I cancelled one place, after it turned out to be (quite a nice) shed at the end of the owners garden... with the owner present and their family - you had to walk past all the toys strewn about their garden; I don't want to wake them up because I come back late. Similarly, others with crazy intrusive rules; only mentioned after booking.
kilroy123 4y ago
I'm somewhat of an Airbnb "super user". I was a very early adopter, over the last decade, I've spent over $60,000 on Airbnbs around the world. What I've noticed over the years is the service has very much gone downhill. Prices have super skyrocketed across the globe. I try to use hotels as much as possible and only go for Airbnb on long stays of 1-6 months. If it's less than a month, I now opt for a hotel.
- standardUser 4y ago
  Similar experience. I used to feel like a pro. I was always very particular and would spend a lot of time parsing reviews, and as a result always got amazing AirBnBs. I assumed the haters were just bad at picking rentals! But the last few years I've had a string of very sub-par places with stellar reviews. Now, I can't trust the reviews. That, and the price gap between decent hotels and AirBnBs has certainly narrowed.
nlh 4y ago
Protip if you're looking to travel to a typically well-toured place (eg Vail, Tahoe, Wine Country, etc.) -- The old school vacation rental companies are still the best game in town. These are often small local businesses with names like "Tahoe Mountain Rentals". They've been doing this for years (decades?), know all the local property owners, have the best inventory, and are usually professionally-run operations that come as close to the actual hotel level of hospitality as possible. They've had to co-list a lot of their properties on AirBNB recently, but you'll often find better rates just searching for the properties and booking directly from the management companies.
casenmgreen 4y ago
I've been using AirBnB for about ten years, about 30 or 40 stays in total. There are a number of issues. 1. When I come to use AirBnB again, and so to log in, I never know if I will be able to log in. AirBnB repeatedly break log in, and in ways which can be problematic - "your account has been frozen, click here to notify support, we'll email you in a few days". That's not what you want to discover when you are looking to book now. 2. Relating to that, AirBnB support is Satan's method on Earth to cause and spread screaming psychic and emotional torture amongst the human population. It is the worst. Screaming, dribbling, rabid insanity. It is unspeakable. There is no support, because you do not use it, ever. 3. AirBnB seems completely unaware, or uncaring, about the actual outcomes of the various mechanisms they have in place in their product. The "clean fee" problem is a recent example, but I've heard many more. This is classic large-company syndrome; completely oblivious to the actual experience of the end user. 4. I increasingly hear now of negative reviews being removed by AirBnB. This is putting their entire proposition at risk; if I cannot trust reviews, every booking is blind, and that's not good. 5. A long term problem is that most hosts do not know how to price their property. You can see a lot on the map, but look more closely and a lot of it is crazy money. 6. Finally of course, AirBnB keep raising their fees to landlords and tenants. They now charge monopoly rates, and they need to, because the company is I would say vast and bloated. The big advantage AirBnB has over every other company in this space is they bake long-term stay discounts into their UI/pricing model, and so they are normally offered. I do not see that on VBRO, etc.
FredPret 4y ago
I'm a heavy AirBnB'er. As in, I live in them part-time. I just want a kitchen, a laundry machine for longer trips, and a nice place to work. I also don't want a hotel even if it has those things because then there are lots of other guests around. AirBnB is the best way to do this especially for month + stays; but you have to carefully check host reviews and cleaning fees. Any hint of host weirdness in the reviews (I've seen some truly odd things) and I book elsewhere.
bitL 4y ago
It looks to me like AirBnb has an equalizer effect on property rentals - I looked at prices at some remote places in Argentina before a trip to Andes and they were pretty much similar to US prices. There is a little benefit in using it now whereas 10 years ago when I did my first trip around the world AirBnb actually allowed me to visit many places without killing my budget, but it wouldn't be possible these days.
bilsbie 4y ago
Why can’t you just search by total fees?
voidfunc 4y ago
I've stopped using AirBnB, it's a worse experience than hotels now and usually very similar price due to all the fees. It was an awesome service several years ago but not anymore.
purpleblue 4y ago
I stopped using Airbnb and went back to hotels. It's gotten too expensive with draconian rules, it's just not worth it. And at hotels, they clean your room once a day, there's no value in Airbnb anymore. But I do find it interesting that even in the face of rapidly rising price increases, companies like Airbnb and Uber are very profitable and it hasn't hit them at all. I wonder what this phenomenon is, if it's just acceptance of higher prices or a convenience factor.
speby 4y ago
Ya know, I remember a time when Airbnb was still pretty new (this would be 2010 or 2011 or so). Didn't have all the fees and other bullshit UX problems they have now. And it actually was pretty cheap. Often, you could get an interesting, cool, or off-beat room or whole unit/place/house for cheap and often the same or less than competing hotels. This made it compelling. But then, one time, trying to get check into a place and the combination padlock or whatever wasn't working to get the key inside and I couldn't get ahold of the host took another 2 hours, I was like, I don't have time for this crap. That sort of problem would NEVER happen at a hotel. And now, 12+ years later, while some things have improved (like keyless entry and whatnot that lots of hosts have finally), the situation is worse in many other areas, including cost. Generally speaking, hotels work better for me. No bull shit fees (except some of those resorts that throw in the ridiculous daily 'resort fee' on top of the room rate, which is not reflected when you are searching and booking the room, except in fine print). No bullshit like cleaning up the room/place before you leave (isn't that why you are paying a cleaning fee?).
- asdff 4y ago
  I think it suffered from a cobra problem to an extent. Airbnb was saying "rent out your spare square footage on the side for some beer money" and that model worked fine for a time. People would rent out a room for $50 a night and that would be great for them, because it was $50 they didn't have before that they wouldn't have made otherwise, and it was great for guests because it meant they could pay $50 and not be in a smoky motel. Now we have people breeding cobras instead of being paid for cobras they already have so to speak. You have people building entire apartments with plans to put the entire thing on airbnb. Suddenly $50 a night doesn't cut it when you have a huge loan to pay off on that build, then if enough people in the market are operating like this prices just go up and up just like the wider landlord rental market (relative to the polite couple renting a backroom for way under market rate market, perhaps). You have people buying property and renovating it just to justify higher rental income, which only serves to feed the beast without creating any new supply in the market of course.
SergeAx 4y ago
I really love AirBnB. These guys are marvelous at disruption of the oldest market on the planet. Thanks to AirBnB competition hotels are much more pleasant to stay, offer better service, better amenities and facilities, tidiness and cleanness, and their prices are really in check. Hotel staying experience is a best than ever before. I also tried to stay with AirBnB couple of times and avoid it ever since.
bogomipz 4y ago
There was a good article in the Wall Street Journal a few months ago: "Welcome to Your Airbnb, the Cleaning Fees Are $143 and You’ll Still Have to Wash the Linens": https://archive.is/jTHxx https://archive.is/jTHxx From the above link: >'Last month, Amanda Morari spent her sister’s bachelorette weekend at a lakefront cottage in Ontario province. The washer was out-of-order and the vacuum wouldn’t charge so the women spent their last day “wetting paper towels and wiping the floor,” she said.' >'The host told her not to worry about it, Ms. Morari said, but then came the unexpected: she got a three-star review because the cleaning wasn’t up to the mark. Her perfect five-star rating dipped to 4.1.'
rjsw 4y ago
I would like to be able to leave negative reviews for guests when I'm not their host. This could be automatic, just add a "didn't put out the garbage correctly" to everyone who stays at a particular listing.
bastardoperator 4y ago
How about all the hosts that think I should pay insane cleaning fees and then ask me to clean up? I'm not doing sweeping, loading a dishwasher, or taking out your trash. I'll never trust AirBNB again and I used to be an avid supporter when I was travelling 1-2 times a week. The last straw for me was when the host refused to communicate for for 5K stay during XMAS in NYC. It took 2 days of hounding AirBNB and them also not being able to communicate with host. I also had to point out that address in question was a commercial building with no apartments in it. They went out of their way to steal my money. Finally my wife ended up getting someone who cared and when she rattled off the company values aka empathy, it changed the entire conversation and we finally got a refund. I can't and won't do that again so hotels is where it's at for me moving forward.
bpicolo 4y ago
> maybe a fully stocked kitchen Every listing with a "fully stocked kitchen" is really just stocked with a crusty bottle of salt, dull knives, and scratched-to-heck pans.
emadda 4y ago
AirBnB search engine to show accurate prices: https://stay100.app https://stay100.app
bluecalm 4y ago
I stopped using Airbnb after being scammed by it two times in a row. Both times the property rented was unliveable and completely different than the description. They said they couldn't do anything about it. I asked if I can at least review it so others don't fall into the trap. They said sure. A few days after my review went online they removed it because "checkout didn't take place". It did take place and I am out several hundred Euros. I guess they wanted me to spend the night with the scammer in unliveable place. The whole experience was refusal of cooperation by Airbnb and protecting the scammer. I think it's very likely they are on the scam themselves. Afterall the only person who is out of money is me and I am not even allowed to warn others (being left late in the day to find emergency accomodation in the high booking season is another small problem I had to deal with). The whole process is designed to make it as difficult as possible to win a case vs dishonest host or even leave a review (ridiculous design like max 1000 words of review, no ability to go back if you make a typo and click next, several minutes of chatting with bots before you can get disinterested human the line etc.) If you don't want to get scammed with no recourse don't use Airbnb. The reviews you see are heavily filtered to make hosts look better. Hotels are better and cheaper. Private apartments are way better via Booking as they take customer's side regularly (which is why many Airbnb hosts find Booking hard to work with).
StanislavPetrov 4y ago
With the increases in fees, hassles, cleaning procedures and whatnot, it just doesn't seem either cost effective or convenient to book an Airbnb in the vast majority of circumstances. Most mid-level chain hotel/motels are cheaper, cleaner and more ubiquitous. I'd rather book a $100/night room at a Holiday Inn Express that I don't have to worry about than an Airbnb that comes with a whole host of unknown hassles and fees.

267 points by lxm 4y ago

This kind of housing inflation is not exactly unprecedented. Nominal rents in my city "shot up" 41% from 2013-2016. It's just what happens in supply-constrained markets.

CyberKimura 4y ago

Airbnb would be great if it weren't for the damn cleaning fees and other assorted crap tacked on from the price that is shown when you search for a place. "Hey this is in my budget! Great! Lets go ahead and book it...hey why did the price triple now???"

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Temporary_31337 4y ago
Get the host details off social media and arrange a direct price
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- jedberg 4y ago
  That's a great way to scammed.
  - ajhurliman 4y ago
    Organizing on social media is probably a bad call, but many hosts have direct booking sites that they’d love to have people book through since they don’t have to pay the airbnb (or worse: VRBO) overhead. The direct booking sites come free with most of the property management systems out there: Guesty, Hostaway, etc. so most hosts have them, they’re just not allowed to advertise it on the online travel agencies (Airbnb etc).
darkwizard42 4y ago
In the US there is now a filter that allows you to see total price (excluding taxes): https://postimg.cc/hQxbkgnm https://postimg.cc/hQxbkgnm I'm not sure how this keeps getting brought up. There is a large thread started by @pitdesi on Twitter that sort of got it directly addressed.

bluetidepro 4y ago

The article touches up on it, but the "Additional fees and upfront pricing" is my biggest frustration with Airbnb that they refuse to fix (it's an easy solution, in my opinion). Hosts want to show lower prices, so in search you don't see all the fees, but then when you get all the way down the funnel you finally see these completely ridiculous fees (usually around cleaning) of what you'll actual pay. I don't understand why Airbnb is still on the side of hosts with this. They need to change the UX, and it would expose so much of the BS hosts try to pull around rates. This would quickly kill the need for hosts to try to game the system like they do now. Also in general, I refuse to use Airbnb these days when it's not only more than a hotel, but the audacity of some hosts have for checking out is hilariously dumb (cleaning, vacuuming, laundry, etc.). The reliability of hosts is all over the place, I see so many horror stories of last minute cancellations, hosts trying to pull one over on guests, and other sketchy practices they continue to allow. Note: I could be wrong now though (maybe they do show up front pricing now/), but they already burned the bridge where I stopped even looking at them as an option. Note (again): I just checked, and it does show a "total cost" in search, but it's still pretty deceptive. It should just be baked into the single nightly cost, and not a separate cost where you have to do the math to figure it all out. They should kill fees all together. Have it so it's just left at the hands of the host to make into a single cost that they want to charge per night, and simplify it.

PaulHoule 4y ago
Myself I came to the conclusion I could usually find a hotel I liked better than an AirBNB for a similar price, but with much less risk that anything goes wrong.
Espressosaurus 4y ago
AirBNB is relying on the bait and switch; why would they change unless they were forced to by regulation?
- ipaddr 4y ago
  Customers choosing another provider
- 4y ago

cs702 4y ago

...which works out to 10.7% annual inflation (1.36^(1/3) = 1.107).

mikeyouse 4y ago
Which is about ~2x the actual rate of inflation over that time period.. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=107Zn https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=107Zn And ~3x the rate of inflation for 'Lodging away from home' https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=107ZN https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=107ZN
- dionian 4y ago
  I wonder if the traditional inflation measurements (à la shadowstats) is a more accurate indicator of inflation. Shadowstats has it well above 10%. http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts
  - mikeyouse 4y ago
    Unequivocally no, Shadowstats is garbage. Their methodology doesn't even make sense -- if they were actually "calculating" it, their measure would continue to diverge from CPI instead of just adding some fixed amount to the CPI number. If you look at their chart from say, 1990 to today, they show something like 8-9% annual. 8% annual inflation for 33 years would be ~1,300% cumulative. Do Hondas that cost $15k in 1990 cost $200k today? Does a gallon of milk that cost $1.50 in 1990 cost $20 today? Even housing -- a $100k house in 1990 would cost $1.4M today based on that rate... that may be true in very specific neighborhoods but that's not inflation as much as supply:demand mismatch in Tier A cities.

bbertelsen 4y ago

The last AirBNB I stayed at, I received a bad review. Their negative review stated, passively aggressively, that I had only completed "some of the checkout list items". The list of chores was 3 pages long and was provided after booking. They also charged me a $250 cleaning fee. Never again.

roflyear 4y ago
If they charge a cleaning fee and leave you a bad review about not cleaning you can dispute it usually and maybe even get the fee refunded.
- throwayyy479087 4y ago
  Good advice, but I don't have to do any of this when I stay at hotels. I really like the core idea of AirBNB, but between their crappy hosts and the damage they do to neighborhoods, I won't deal with them anymore.
- bgorman 4y ago
  I had a similar experience. Airbnb still has not refunded me, and the negative review is still online. I doubt I will get a refund. But I will certainly never use airbnb again.
  - mjhay 4y ago
    Go through your credit card - you can generally get a chargeback if the vendor has been unresponsive.
    - asdff 4y ago
      airbnb could ban you from the platform potentially
      - BenjiWiebe 4y ago
        Since they said they'll never use airbnb again, that's probably not a concern.

aliljet 4y ago

AirBnB has a super core problem: hosts are in short supply. This leads the entire service to see guests as a secondary concern. This leads to a pretty obvious problem: opaque pricing, poor customer service (never trust me, check trustpilot), and probably a serious problem for AirBnB: a resurgence of the vertically integrated hotel chain.

aliqot 4y ago
Tell me the price, make the host and tennant have a singular universal set of expectations. It's not hard. Holiday Inn Express has been getting my business lately. Everything is labeled, no wild sudden items after checkin like "don't forget to put the back door mat on the balcony railing so the racoons don't run off with it". Everything that made AirBNB cool at first eventually made it bad inevitably. Glad to have made friends with hosts along the way before it went sour.
dicomdan 4y ago
Lack of housing supply is the root cause.
rr888 4y ago
I have two friends that had AirBnB rentals, they've both given up. The initial novelty and fun quickly wore off and became a grind. The local LLC with 10+ properties will stay the norm now I think.
- LegitShady 4y ago
  I think if you have an LLC booking hotel rooms and its not an individual booking out rooms, they need to comply with all building codes and regulations for hotels.
- naravara 4y ago
  I wonder how much of this is just people being bigger jerks now than before. Just anecdotally service workers and small business owners in general seem to complain about a major shift in norms towards customers more often being abusive or even vindictive towards them.

selfmodruntime 4y ago

Where I live, AirBnB is routinely 2x as expensive as chain hotels. I'm not sure who's using it anymore, but I'm surely not.

tompagenet2 4y ago
For me it’s absolutely horrible staying in a hotel with kids. You either all stay in one room (so no fun once they’ve gone to bed and we sit in the dark) or you buy two rooms (normally really expensive) and then either try and find the normally-unavailable option on hotel websites to buy interconnecting rooms or sleep one adult and one child in twin beds in each room. It’s rubbish. There’s nowhere for them to really play either. AirBnB fixes all of this.
- Cyph0n 4y ago
  Yep, Airbnb more often than not is the only option for families, especially those with young children. I recently ended up booking a 2 bed apartment for essentially the same price as a nearby hotel. I don’t like the overall Airbnb experience, but I also don’t want to pay ~2x for an additional hotel room.
  - hombre_fatal 4y ago
    Also, hotels don’t have a kitchen. Eating out for every meal isn’t something I’m going to do for any stay longer than a few days.
    - switch007 4y ago
      Aparthotels are pretty common.
    - ghaff 4y ago
      >Also, hotels don’t have a kitchen. Not necessarily true. The suite/long-stay brands like Residence Inn usually have kitchenettes. (Not that I usually use them other than the refrigerator.)
    - 4y ago

golergka 4y ago

I constantly see bad feedback on Airbnb and Twitter, and when I ask where these things happened, it's usually USA. I lived in Airbnbs almost exclusively the whole 2022, and travelled through various european countries, moved 32 times total. I've never had any of these problems, any cleaning fees or other stuff like that. I've rented full apartments for $70 per night, where I could cook, do laundry and in general feel much more comfortable than in a hotel for a stay longer than a week. May be Airbnb is only bad in states?

biesnecker 4y ago
I definitely think there's something to this. I've had much better experiences in AirBnb in Mexico and Europe than I have in the US.
- whitepoplar 4y ago
  landlord culture
  - asdff 4y ago
    Yup, everyone surprised by the ticky tacky cleaning fee nonsense has probably not gotten a security deposit back in recent years. Now you have the management companies that make a slumlord mom and pop look like a kind relative running some of these vacation rental properties as well, applying the same rigid Orwellian policies designed to shake out as much money from you on your way out as possible. There must be some books or trade magazines out there where they are all getting this stuff...
CapmCrackaWaka 4y ago
Small sample size but the only time a host complained about how clean I left a place was in Tignes, France. Their complaint? There were crumbs on the floor, _under_ the overhang of the dishwasher. I've probably booked 15 airbnbs in the US, and they've all been great. No complaints of unruly hosts, or crazy checkout chores. I think if you stick with superhosts or any property with lots of reviews, you'll usually have a good time. My biggest problem with airbnb at this point is the hidden fees until checkout.

subsubzero 4y ago

I feel like airbnb fees have gone through the roof, and I am done with them. So much so that we are no longer using them. I am now booking hotels, and if we want to rent a house we just use short term rental companies(who also post the same houses on their site and also on airbnb). We spent almost $60k on airbnbs the past 3 years so thats money that airbnb will no longer see.

throwayyy479087 4y ago

TikTok HATES AirBNB. I don't think that the tech folks have realized how reviled AirBnB has become. The main issue I hear about - and have personally experienced - are hosts requiring a ~$200 "cleaning fee," then ALSO requiring chores to be done at checkout time. There's also STILL a lot of reports of cameras in showers, toilets, etc - and total silence from AirBNB. They need to deal with these issues immediately. Then, if you protest, they nuke your AirBNB rating and you can't book anywhere else. Ok, great - I'll go back to Marriott. It's cheaper, has on-site security, a pool, and I don't have to take out the trash.

mdgrech23 4y ago
That would require them to change their model to a curated list of rentals as opposed to a smorgasbord of shit. They know the more quality controls they put in place will result in less available units so there really isn't a motivation to crack down on shit rentals. Eventually when enough people stop using the platform someone in a boardroom will ask why rentals are down and someone in market research will say quality control of rentals at which some pea brained solution will be dreamt up. Also want to point out superhosts might of been attempt to address this problem but I've routinely picked superhosts and many have disappointed.
rcme 4y ago
> TikTok HATES AirBNB. Given TikTok's algorithm, it's hard to make a statement about TikTok in general. Most likely, you engage with anti-AirBnB content, so that's what you see more of.
purpleblue 4y ago
A small section may violently hate them (i've stopped using Airbnb as well) but the fact they are making increasing revenues is a sign that it's not working. I would love to know why some people aren't price sensitive.
acchow 4y ago
And you don't know what the chores will be when you pay for the reservation...

himanshuy 4y ago

I was an early adopter of AirBnB but stopped using completely. Hotels give me a consistent experience with no hassle.

jwilber 4y ago

Hotels are always cheaper than Airbnb nowadays, and a much better experience. I can’t think of a single positive thing about Airbnb anymore.

Jommi 4y ago
can you show me some links where an airbnb is more expensive than a hotel room?
- jwilber 4y ago
  No, but - and you may find this crazy - you can go look in Manhattan and see for yourself!
  - Jommi 4y ago
    Ive done this, and airbnb has always been cheaper

PragmaticPulp 4y ago

AirBnB was fun at first when I could find someone renting out their personal beach house when they weren't using it, or an extra room in their house. I had many good experiences with family events or group get togethers at AirBnBs in the past. In recent years, the majority of AirBnBs I've stayed at feel like someone's side business that they started for "passive income" after reading some guru's financial advice. The properties are barely maintained or have clearly broken features. Cleaning fees are sky high, but the houses don't feel clean when I arrive. We showed up to one AirBnB and it didn't have any furniture. It was a completely empty house with some mattresses and blankets in the closets. All of the furniture in the photos was gone. AirBnB refunded us, but dealing with the issue consumed 1/4 of our trip and cost us extra money to find a replacement on short notice. It's no longer the fun, personal experience of renting someone's property when they've got extra space. It's now a playground for pseudo-entrepreneurs who want to buy an investment property, hire a cleaning company, and then push the limits of what they can get away with without getting kicked off the AirBnB platform.

rchaud 4y ago
> In recent years, the majority of AirBnBs I've stayed at feel like someone's side business that they started for "passive income" after reading some self-help books online. Airbnb encourages this, as it increases inventory for them and lets property owners engage in a race to the bottom on prices. Which as it turns out, affects the quality of the service!
- asdff 4y ago
  Honestly somehow prices have just gone to a race to the top versus the bottom. If every time you march prices up it takes a week longer relative to the rest of the market to book that room, and you and the rest of the airbnb property owners don't necessarily mind waiting an extra week if it means you just hiked up prices, then prices are just going to keep going up and up so long as people keep coming. And they will keep coming, because as you are losing out your middle class tourists, you are gaining wealthy tourists, who are funding more luxury development and snowballing the effect until they are priced out for even more wealthy people.

seydor 4y ago

According to comments, seems like airbnb is a victim of its own success, too few hosts. But hosting is already a problem in many places as it pushes up rents for 'ordinary' residents. Where is this heading to, will everything become an airbnb, and we all become nomads? We will finally own nothing and be happy. Also a lot of people talk as if airbnb and hotels are interchangeable, but they are not. In my touristy european area, airbnb is everywhere and hotels can't match what people offer there. It's really about the different types and locations of accomodation that airbnb promotes in its homepage now, not for simply finding 'a place to sleep' like a hotel. Both of them have their place, but airbnb has a lot more space to expand in new types and modes of accomodation that we haven't discovered yet, and hotels cannot directly compete with those offerings.

cactusplant7374 4y ago

It's quite convenient to keep a book of contacts where you have stayed before and then can negotiate directly on a rate the next time you travel there. Something to be said about returning to the same places you've enjoyed before.

rchaud 4y ago

What's missing in this article is that Airbnb is actually profitable now. Operating income, last 3 years[0]: 2019 - $(0.5b) (loss) 2020 - $(3.5bn) (loss) 2021 - $0.4bn (profit) 2022 - $1.8bn (profit) Like with Uber and WeWork, these startups only look good next to market leaders when they have billions in VC capital to undercut their competitors with. Once they IPO, they're on their own, and their business practices start looking suspiciously similar to the bloated, bureaucratic incumbents they once threatened to replace. [0] https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/ABNB/financials/ https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/ABNB/financials/

Salgat 4y ago
They grow like crazy at a loss and then take advantage of their market dominance to strong-arm the prices back up. To be honest I'm more shocked that hotels are still having trouble beating AirBNB prices. When we went to Hawaii we wanted to go to a hotel but the prices for the same view were so much cheaper with AirBNB.
- LegitShady 4y ago
  hotels aren't really competing with Airbnb. it might appear that way, but they aren't interested in the same customers, and those customers will get scammed by an airbnb and go back to hotels anyways. airbnb is for people who haven't learned the lesson about airbnb yet. Hotels aren't interested in competing on price with airbnb because they dont have to.
- rchaud 4y ago
  That may be because Hawaii is small as tourist locations go, so hotels may be booked solid already. In many larger tourist destinations, I've found hotels to be cheaper. Not by much, but I will always take hotels over Airbnb.
- wongarsu 4y ago
  It probably depends on location, but over Western Europe I'd generally say that if you just want a bed hotels are in the same price range as AirBnB while being much more predictable and reliable, and are available on short notice (booking the room at 11pm in the same night you want to sleep there isn't an issue, neither is checking in at 3am). AirBnB shines when you want more than a bed and a table, or when you want something more unique in local style.

MisterBastahrd 4y ago

AirBnB is a scam and is incredibly harmful to local populations, so I am enthusiastically happy that their increased rates have resulted in so many vacancies. I can either utilize a hotel which will take care of virtually every need I have wherever I'm at, or use an AirBnB and get stuck with doing my own housekeeping for twice the price.

karaterobot 4y ago

Do hosts get to set the price for their offerings? I remember talking to the owner of a place I was staying at, and he asked me how much AirBNB was charging. He said it was completely algorithmic, and outside his control. Because the place I was staying at was new, without a lot of reviews, it was a crazy good deal — he probably made $50 for my stay, which by rights should have been more like $300. I suppose that, in that situation, the cost of those hidden fees like cleaning might be a knob hosts can turn to feel in control.

jimt1234 4y ago

Airbnb was cool in the early days, when hosts were usually individual people just looking to make an extra buck on their vacation cabin in the mountains or something like that. Now it seems like Airbnb is dominated by companies who own/operate a bunch of host places. It's lost the personal touch. The last place I stayed at in Miami had an issue with the air conditioning - it wouldn't turn off, the place was freezing! I called the host, "Mark", the handsome guy in the Airbnb ad, who wrote all about his life in Miami. Well, I ended up talking to customer service rep in India. The dude just kept reading a script back to me, which was, of course, no help at all. I've heard other people with similar experiences - you get zero customer service once you're checked-in.

npteljes 4y ago
Exactly the same as Etsy. Last time my wife complained that even though the page states that the $100 item is located in the US, it dispatched from China. Sure enough, when I reverse image searched the product image, Aliexpress came up, with $20 as the listing price. Exact same images, even the wording was very similar. (And of course, with further digging, the original website came up, with their original product that the other sellers copied - with much better materials, a price tag of $350). Etsy was real cool when it was a bazaar of small handmade items, and such. Now it's chock full of same garbage you can get on any large ecommerce site.

0xDEF 4y ago

Economies of scale means there is room for a "Walmart of Hotels" that is both better than Airbnbs and cheaper than legacy hotels.

bena 4y ago
Or there is not and the "Walmart of Hotels" is already the goddamn Holiday Inn. And AirBnB is discovering what every "disruptor" is discovering: the system existed for a reason. The rules were there for a reason. Things cost what they cost for a reason. And the only way to come in under those prices is to cheat someone somewhere.
- Der_Einzige 4y ago
  Walmart of hotels is motel 6. Holiday inn is like a target or something.
- rightbyte 4y ago
  AirBnB has become a flee market and is cruising on past merits, just like Amazon. I guess the main problem is that they make so much money while diluting their brand before customers realize
asdff 4y ago
That's called when a legacy hotel puts their spare inventory for the day on an aggregator for a fire sale. It's like buying at Nordstrom Rack.

rticesterp 4y ago

I have a whole home AirBnB. My energy prices have tripled in the past three years. My labor costs have gone up 50% in the past three years. Guest has a problem connecting to WiFi? HandyMan charges $95 just to show up and $120/hour with a minimum of one hour. $200 just to reset the router. That eats into a $300/night stay quickly. It's always something and guests expect the same level of service as a hotel and that's not cheap to provide. That's why that even with a $2000 a month mortgage, I need at least $6000 a month to break even. I leave 5 star reviews for all guests and my only checklist item is for it not to look like the hotel room from the hangover. I pay cleaners good money to clean your mess. AirBnB has been vary guest friendly IMO. I have over 200 five star reviews. A guest tried to push for a discounted stay. I pushed back and they told AirBnB my place was unsafe and I was removed from search for a week. EDIT: TLDR. I started this 4 years ago as a side hustle but I'm ready to be out of the game. It doesn't scale to provide a nice place that I also use as a vacation home. Also, I'm constantly replacing and repairing things. The only way to win is to be a slumlord AirBnB host

rideontime 4y ago
Sounds like an unsustainable business model.
- rticesterp 4y ago
  It definitely is. I was lured in by the promise of 60K in revenue with 24K in mortgage expenses. There's so much wear and tear and so many things break. I agree that eventually it will be a race to the bottom. The good hosts and guests will leave.
LegitShady 4y ago
There's no reason to think you must be profitable renting out a house by the night, or that you'll be efficient running a one client hotel that relies on a site like airbnb that has been in serious decline for some time.
adoxyz 4y ago
$300/night is more than most hotels charge with a lot of amenities and service. If you don't want to pay the handyman charges to reset the router, you can go and do it yourself for free. You're paying for convenience of not having to do it yourself and that cuts into profit.

caseyross 4y ago

For comparison, US median house prices are up by 42% over the same period [1]. Hospitality prices (especially for traditional hotels, which raised rates by about 10%), are actually significantly trailing inflation. [1]: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MSPUS https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MSPUS

anarticle 4y ago

Hotels are light years easier, and I don't worry about anything. Last AirBnB I had to read a list of rules a mile long. $200 cleaning fee and I still have to take the trash out. Also every host has a different set of rules. No thanks. Quality between bnbs is also wildly different, I simply don't care that much.

jmuguy 4y ago

My team develops a platform (data.rabbu.com) thats based in large part on Airbnb data and I swear its kind of ridiculous how much hate Airbnb gets on social media. Like for one thing - compared to the other options Airbnb is doing WAY more for both hosts and guests. Try to get someone on the line at VRBO or Booking.com that cares one iota about any issues you have. Everything else is anecdotal. I think having a bad experience when you're on vacation is like 10x worse than anything else. So any bad experience with an Airbnb gets amplified and whenever people get a chance they'll go blue in the face telling you about the time some shady host tried to put them on ice and harvest their organs. Cleaning fees going up? Guess what - cleaning sucks, and the hospitality industry got completely gutted by Covid. So maybe they're not trying to rip you off, maybe they can't find anyone to clean for the price everyone stills expects based on pre-Covid travel.

tristor 4y ago

I used to heavily use AirBnB. I no longer do. I don't even bother checking it. The quality of experience / stay has gone down, and the price has gone up considerably. I now expect that an AirBnB will provide a worse experience for the same or higher cost than a hotel in any location I might travel to. The only benefit an AirBnB brings is that it may provide more square footage, but this is not worth the tradeoff when traveling solo or with my wife, it only comes into account when traveling with large groups where shared accommodations would be acceptable. I have a large double-digit number of stays with AirBnB over the years, and I don't even go to their website or app anymore. A good example is over the summer, we had an AirBnB for my wife and my step-daughter and I in Rome for a few nights. We had so many issues that when we came back through Rome on our way back home I booked a 5-star luxury hotel. The hotel ended up being cheaper than the AirBnB when you count the tacked on fees, and had none of the issues we experienced, although there was less total square footage. It was in a better location as well, and the AirBnB was far from a luxury 5-star experience. I typically stay in 2-star or 3-star lodgings when I travel, and AirBnBs are now typically worse than a 2-star offer, but charging higher than 5-star prices. It's ridiculous.

elforce002 4y ago

Tbh, I much rather spend money on resorts and hotels. I don't want to pay any extra fees for anything else. Last time I used one was 3 years ago. We had to cook, clean, etc... We decided to just save more and go to a resort/hotel. Of course Airbnb has its use cases but in general, hotels are way better, and let's not talk about hidden cameras on properties, etc...

ghaff 4y ago
Not that hotels in some places are adverse to tacking on a small print "resort fee."

coding123 4y ago

I get that CPI is calculated so carefully, but when all is said and done, I think my personal inflation being at 50% average through most of the pandemic is going to be the final settling number, and they won't admit that until 2025 I think. In my personal opinion this was driven by the massive hiring sprees that elevated a lot of bus boys, waitresses, and other jobs to "experience officers", "diversity officers", HR positions that never existed before. I've been applying to companies at size levels that I've worked at before that had just one HR person that was dedicated to payroll. Now there are entire teams of workers that process applications. The average startup is operating as if it's UnitedHealth Group or something. Now don't get me wrong, I am so glad people are getting higher paying jobs, but the pandemic causing that job rush so fast and furiously is what brought on this inflation. Every layoff article we see where they are letting go of 15% here, 20% there, it's nothing compared to the actual 80% hiring these companies did 20-23. That 80% hiring rate IS the inflation we're seeing. We elevated a lot of people to wages all us programmers had about 15 years ago - 90 - 120k. And of course us programmers are now asking 160 - 220k. Again, great that people are more employed and there are higher wages. However the inflation that went so fast and furiously with it - it's causing the people that aren't so lucky to quickly fall into homelessness, drug use, depression and suicide (by drug use mostly).

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jsonne 4y ago

I lived in Aribnb's for roughly a year and a half. They actually did a profile on our family on the Today Show on NBC about it. I think the thing I hated about it the most was the system of hosts rating the guests. It was always stressful especially when our ability to simply secure our next place to live was dependent on, to some degree, a hosts subjective evaluation of how they felt the stay went. For instance I have a toddler, at one location my toddler played with some toys that were in the house. We put them back where they were but they were incorrectly arranged (not damaged just put back not the way they wanted) and the host left us a negative review. We disputed it and airbnb sided us, but the whole feeling of constant judgement makes it difficult to relax in a space. I wish they had some better / more objective system as you never know when you'll encounter an unreasonable person. To me this is the single biggest negative. A sort of cloud of social credit hanging over your head. At this point I would never use Airbnb except for long term (30 days+) type of travel. Between the extremely intense chores you're basically given plus huge cleaning fees hotels are superior in nearly every way for short term trips. The significant % reduction for staying a month too makes it a lot more palatable. I think Airbnb sees this too which is why they're leaning so heavily into the digital nomad / long term travel user segment. It's a place they can genuinely win vs a hotel. For short term stays not dealing with unreasonable hosts, not getting surprise fees, and there not being a bunch of chores makes things significantly more enjoyable. As noted on social platforms by others getting hit with a massive cleaning fee and also then being expected to do chores also feels like a slap in the face.

renewiltord 4y ago
It seems like the social credit system is actually quite good. The problem is it isn't page ranked or weighted. Low rated people should count for less and people who low rate everyone should count for less. Dynamic range in your ratings should matter. FWIW I use Airbnb and hotels extensively. They fill different needs for me. And sometimes I use the composites: Hilton Residences or whatever. So far mostly good. I generally don't do anything extensive. The most you'll get from me is putting the sheets in the dryer. If you want me to clean the shoe mat and stuff you need to have no cleaning fee.
purpleblue 4y ago

slaw 4y ago

The reason I stopped using Airbnb is their reviews system is broken. Airbnb actively removes bad reviews, you have only positive reviews left.

pelagic_sky 4y ago

We've been staying in hotels or hostels a lot more ever since the price and fees for AirBnB went through the "roof". As others have mentioned, the quality of hosts have gone from actual caring people to a shit side hustle. Really disappointing. What other services are people using instead of AirBnB?

FredPret 4y ago
There's also VRBO, and for a longer term stay you can look for a place on Facebook Marketplace and become an actual tenant

49531 4y ago

Anecdotally, I am traveling to a beach town in the off season (east coast US) next week to see family. A lot of Airbnb's were showing rates competitive with local hotels, ~$120/night. Staying 3 nights, I expected to checkout seeing ~$400, but upon checkout I see a bill for $800! Needless to say, I am staying at a hotel for $400. At least I won't be given a list of chores to complete upon checkout ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

__MatrixMan__ 4y ago

Three years ago we made a list of recipes. We're not very creative in the kitchen, so we've just been cycling through them. When we started, I wrote down the price of each ingredient. For the last three years I've been buying the same things at the grocery store and watching the total increase. I know the official inflation numbers are lower than 33%, but that's about the increase I'm seeing in the grocery store. I'm no lover of Airbnb, but I think this is just money getting worse.

stuaxo 4y ago

It's not even worth using AirBnB now. So many of the places aren't that good for the price, or they have strange rules attached. I cancelled one place, after it turned out to be (quite a nice) shed at the end of the owners garden... with the owner present and their family - you had to walk past all the toys strewn about their garden; I don't want to wake them up because I come back late. Similarly, others with crazy intrusive rules; only mentioned after booking.

kilroy123 4y ago

I'm somewhat of an Airbnb "super user". I was a very early adopter, over the last decade, I've spent over $60,000 on Airbnbs around the world. What I've noticed over the years is the service has very much gone downhill. Prices have super skyrocketed across the globe. I try to use hotels as much as possible and only go for Airbnb on long stays of 1-6 months. If it's less than a month, I now opt for a hotel.

standardUser 4y ago
Similar experience. I used to feel like a pro. I was always very particular and would spend a lot of time parsing reviews, and as a result always got amazing AirBnBs. I assumed the haters were just bad at picking rentals! But the last few years I've had a string of very sub-par places with stellar reviews. Now, I can't trust the reviews. That, and the price gap between decent hotels and AirBnBs has certainly narrowed.

nlh 4y ago

Protip if you're looking to travel to a typically well-toured place (eg Vail, Tahoe, Wine Country, etc.) -- The old school vacation rental companies are still the best game in town. These are often small local businesses with names like "Tahoe Mountain Rentals". They've been doing this for years (decades?), know all the local property owners, have the best inventory, and are usually professionally-run operations that come as close to the actual hotel level of hospitality as possible. They've had to co-list a lot of their properties on AirBNB recently, but you'll often find better rates just searching for the properties and booking directly from the management companies.

casenmgreen 4y ago

I've been using AirBnB for about ten years, about 30 or 40 stays in total. There are a number of issues. 1. When I come to use AirBnB again, and so to log in, I never know if I will be able to log in. AirBnB repeatedly break log in, and in ways which can be problematic - "your account has been frozen, click here to notify support, we'll email you in a few days". That's not what you want to discover when you are looking to book now. 2. Relating to that, AirBnB support is Satan's method on Earth to cause and spread screaming psychic and emotional torture amongst the human population. It is the worst. Screaming, dribbling, rabid insanity. It is unspeakable. There is no support, because you do not use it, ever. 3. AirBnB seems completely unaware, or uncaring, about the actual outcomes of the various mechanisms they have in place in their product. The "clean fee" problem is a recent example, but I've heard many more. This is classic large-company syndrome; completely oblivious to the actual experience of the end user. 4. I increasingly hear now of negative reviews being removed by AirBnB. This is putting their entire proposition at risk; if I cannot trust reviews, every booking is blind, and that's not good. 5. A long term problem is that most hosts do not know how to price their property. You can see a lot on the map, but look more closely and a lot of it is crazy money. 6. Finally of course, AirBnB keep raising their fees to landlords and tenants. They now charge monopoly rates, and they need to, because the company is I would say vast and bloated. The big advantage AirBnB has over every other company in this space is they bake long-term stay discounts into their UI/pricing model, and so they are normally offered. I do not see that on VBRO, etc.

FredPret 4y ago

I'm a heavy AirBnB'er. As in, I live in them part-time. I just want a kitchen, a laundry machine for longer trips, and a nice place to work. I also don't want a hotel even if it has those things because then there are lots of other guests around. AirBnB is the best way to do this especially for month + stays; but you have to carefully check host reviews and cleaning fees. Any hint of host weirdness in the reviews (I've seen some truly odd things) and I book elsewhere.

bitL 4y ago

It looks to me like AirBnb has an equalizer effect on property rentals - I looked at prices at some remote places in Argentina before a trip to Andes and they were pretty much similar to US prices. There is a little benefit in using it now whereas 10 years ago when I did my first trip around the world AirBnb actually allowed me to visit many places without killing my budget, but it wouldn't be possible these days.

bilsbie 4y ago

Why can’t you just search by total fees?

voidfunc 4y ago

I've stopped using AirBnB, it's a worse experience than hotels now and usually very similar price due to all the fees. It was an awesome service several years ago but not anymore.

purpleblue 4y ago

I stopped using Airbnb and went back to hotels. It's gotten too expensive with draconian rules, it's just not worth it. And at hotels, they clean your room once a day, there's no value in Airbnb anymore. But I do find it interesting that even in the face of rapidly rising price increases, companies like Airbnb and Uber are very profitable and it hasn't hit them at all. I wonder what this phenomenon is, if it's just acceptance of higher prices or a convenience factor.

speby 4y ago

Ya know, I remember a time when Airbnb was still pretty new (this would be 2010 or 2011 or so). Didn't have all the fees and other bullshit UX problems they have now. And it actually was pretty cheap. Often, you could get an interesting, cool, or off-beat room or whole unit/place/house for cheap and often the same or less than competing hotels. This made it compelling. But then, one time, trying to get check into a place and the combination padlock or whatever wasn't working to get the key inside and I couldn't get ahold of the host took another 2 hours, I was like, I don't have time for this crap. That sort of problem would NEVER happen at a hotel. And now, 12+ years later, while some things have improved (like keyless entry and whatnot that lots of hosts have finally), the situation is worse in many other areas, including cost. Generally speaking, hotels work better for me. No bull shit fees (except some of those resorts that throw in the ridiculous daily 'resort fee' on top of the room rate, which is not reflected when you are searching and booking the room, except in fine print). No bullshit like cleaning up the room/place before you leave (isn't that why you are paying a cleaning fee?).

asdff 4y ago
I think it suffered from a cobra problem to an extent. Airbnb was saying "rent out your spare square footage on the side for some beer money" and that model worked fine for a time. People would rent out a room for $50 a night and that would be great for them, because it was $50 they didn't have before that they wouldn't have made otherwise, and it was great for guests because it meant they could pay $50 and not be in a smoky motel. Now we have people breeding cobras instead of being paid for cobras they already have so to speak. You have people building entire apartments with plans to put the entire thing on airbnb. Suddenly $50 a night doesn't cut it when you have a huge loan to pay off on that build, then if enough people in the market are operating like this prices just go up and up just like the wider landlord rental market (relative to the polite couple renting a backroom for way under market rate market, perhaps). You have people buying property and renovating it just to justify higher rental income, which only serves to feed the beast without creating any new supply in the market of course.

SergeAx 4y ago

I really love AirBnB. These guys are marvelous at disruption of the oldest market on the planet. Thanks to AirBnB competition hotels are much more pleasant to stay, offer better service, better amenities and facilities, tidiness and cleanness, and their prices are really in check. Hotel staying experience is a best than ever before. I also tried to stay with AirBnB couple of times and avoid it ever since.

bogomipz 4y ago

There was a good article in the Wall Street Journal a few months ago: "Welcome to Your Airbnb, the Cleaning Fees Are $143 and You’ll Still Have to Wash the Linens": https://archive.is/jTHxx https://archive.is/jTHxx From the above link: >'Last month, Amanda Morari spent her sister’s bachelorette weekend at a lakefront cottage in Ontario province. The washer was out-of-order and the vacuum wouldn’t charge so the women spent their last day “wetting paper towels and wiping the floor,” she said.' >'The host told her not to worry about it, Ms. Morari said, but then came the unexpected: she got a three-star review because the cleaning wasn’t up to the mark. Her perfect five-star rating dipped to 4.1.'

rjsw 4y ago

I would like to be able to leave negative reviews for guests when I'm not their host. This could be automatic, just add a "didn't put out the garbage correctly" to everyone who stays at a particular listing.

bastardoperator 4y ago

How about all the hosts that think I should pay insane cleaning fees and then ask me to clean up? I'm not doing sweeping, loading a dishwasher, or taking out your trash. I'll never trust AirBNB again and I used to be an avid supporter when I was travelling 1-2 times a week. The last straw for me was when the host refused to communicate for for 5K stay during XMAS in NYC. It took 2 days of hounding AirBNB and them also not being able to communicate with host. I also had to point out that address in question was a commercial building with no apartments in it. They went out of their way to steal my money. Finally my wife ended up getting someone who cared and when she rattled off the company values aka empathy, it changed the entire conversation and we finally got a refund. I can't and won't do that again so hotels is where it's at for me moving forward.

bpicolo 4y ago

> maybe a fully stocked kitchen Every listing with a "fully stocked kitchen" is really just stocked with a crusty bottle of salt, dull knives, and scratched-to-heck pans.

emadda 4y ago

AirBnB search engine to show accurate prices: https://stay100.app https://stay100.app

bluecalm 4y ago

I stopped using Airbnb after being scammed by it two times in a row. Both times the property rented was unliveable and completely different than the description. They said they couldn't do anything about it. I asked if I can at least review it so others don't fall into the trap. They said sure. A few days after my review went online they removed it because "checkout didn't take place". It did take place and I am out several hundred Euros. I guess they wanted me to spend the night with the scammer in unliveable place. The whole experience was refusal of cooperation by Airbnb and protecting the scammer. I think it's very likely they are on the scam themselves. Afterall the only person who is out of money is me and I am not even allowed to warn others (being left late in the day to find emergency accomodation in the high booking season is another small problem I had to deal with). The whole process is designed to make it as difficult as possible to win a case vs dishonest host or even leave a review (ridiculous design like max 1000 words of review, no ability to go back if you make a typo and click next, several minutes of chatting with bots before you can get disinterested human the line etc.) If you don't want to get scammed with no recourse don't use Airbnb. The reviews you see are heavily filtered to make hosts look better. Hotels are better and cheaper. Private apartments are way better via Booking as they take customer's side regularly (which is why many Airbnb hosts find Booking hard to work with).

StanislavPetrov 4y ago

With the increases in fees, hassles, cleaning procedures and whatnot, it just doesn't seem either cost effective or convenient to book an Airbnb in the vast majority of circumstances. Most mid-level chain hotel/motels are cheaper, cleaner and more ubiquitous. I'd rather book a $100/night room at a Holiday Inn Express that I don't have to worry about than an Airbnb that comes with a whole host of unknown hassles and fees.