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You have to complete a “chore list” for Airbnb stays now? I thought this was a meme or joke. Why do people put up with this shit, especially on vacation? Why g

by xyst 3y ago

You have to complete a “chore list” for Airbnb stays now? I thought this was a meme or joke. Why do people put up with this shit, especially on vacation? Why go on vacation to do chores afterwards? May as well stay home and not have to pay for the experience.

jkubicek 3y ago
I'm more than willing to empty my own trash and wash my own dishes if it means I'm staying in a multi-bedroom house/condo with ample space and amenities. Staying for more than a few days in a hotel is depressing and claustrophobic.
potatolicious 3y ago
For single travelers IMO there isn't a good reason to pick Airbnb over a hotel. But there are types of properties that aren't really available widely in hotel-form: the vacation house. Want to gather with your family in a big house for some holiday? There isn't really anything else other than Airbnb (or Vrbo, which has many of the same issues). Some very heavily vacation-oriented places have hotels that rent out properties of that sort, but in most places this isn't an available product category. Buuuut even with this said, I'm very hesitant to stay in Airbnbs nowadays. I just had a terrible experience a month ago - rented a vacation house that had great reviews and looked great. Arrived after a red-eye flight and a long drive... and the lockbox code is wrong. The house is also in the woods so there was no cell reception, so drove a half hour to the nearest area with reception, contacted the host (hosts are never available on Airbnb, naturally), sorted that out, and got into the house... and it was filthy. Top to bottom filthy with air fresheners in every room to cover the smell. Immediately left and booked a room at the local Hampton Inn, which was overall a far superior experience. Airbnb in all of their grace only gave me ~70% back despite y'know, a totally unusable product. I'm still out over ~$1,000 over the whole thing, and Airbnb seems entirely ok with... what feels a lot like fraud? The reliability of the Airbnb experience is so poor that I'm at this point completely unwilling to hinge a family vacation on it. It's like rolling a 1d6 and needing to score 3 or above. Just way too risky.
- ianai 3y ago
  Seems like the Hampton inn suites are the hotel alternative for family vacations. The ones I’m thinking of are basically complete with a fridge, cooking range, and apparently on premise laundry. Being able to get a separate room for kids with a door open between the two is a thing at many places too. And of course you’re just dealing with a corporation. It’s not someone’s personal home. The management might be weird at a hotel or something but that weirdness would still be spread across many more units-and it has other mechanisms and people in play to normalize the whole experience. AirBnB seems much more ripe for abuse.
- carabiner 3y ago
  Link to the airbnb? Name and shame.
- debatem1 3y ago
  This seems to be a very common experience. I suggested booking an AirBNB for a team off-site a few months ago and heard half a dozen variations on it from a ten person team: code wrong and no host overnight, blatantly misrepresented properties, toilets overflowing upon entry, no power, etc. I haven't travelled much in a good number of years so I was very surprised how much the situation had changed.
bamfly 3y ago
I've never experienced the bad ones that want you to clean the place top-to-bottom. I believe they exist, but I've not seen it, and have been averaging probably 4ish AirBnB stays per year for several years (I'm posting from one now!). It's usually like "please load & start the dishwasher and take the trash out before leaving". Reasonable stuff, not, like, hours of work. Most onerous I've seen is stripping the beds and starting the first load of that laundry, which takes maybe ten minutes with several beds and only one person doing it. We tend to do more because we have young kids who make messes, so we clean up after them just so it doesn't turn into a truly unreasonable mess and/or outright damage (and because living in filth isn't pleasant) but that's not because of the chore list. > Why do people put up with this shit, especially on vacation? Why go on vacation to do chores afterwards? May as well stay home and not have to pay for the experience. Shrug. The way we use it, it's more like temporarily owning a vacation home than being in a hotel. With the good and the bad of that. Lots of space and beds for way less money than that'd cost in a hotel. Easy access to a washer and dryer, full kitchen, full-size fridge with freezer, and often in locations without any options for normal hotels. Far nicer to hang out in/around than hotel rooms, short of luxury suites and such. But you also can't be quite as messy as some people are comfortable being in a hotel—if we e.g. get crumbs all over the carpet or track a little dirt in, we vacuum it up like we would at home, rather than just grinding it into the fibers and leaving it to the cleaners. We'd do that in hotels, too, if they had a vacuum in the room. It's really not a big deal.
- dumbmrblah 3y ago
  I go on vacation to get away from chores.
  - bamfly 3y ago
    I guess I'm not following how people avoid the most time-consuming ones while traveling simply by picking a hotel over an AirBnB. Gotta do laundry (or pay to have it done). Gotta shop for food, cook it, and clean up after (or pay someone else to do that for you). Those aren't an AirBnB vs hotel thing. The ones we do avoid by staying in hotels or AirBnBs—either—are things like dusting, whole-house floor cleaning, laundering bedding (entirely, in all but one case, and in that exception we only had to do like 5% of the work, it took less time than stopping to refuel the car on a long drive, or many airport security lines), cleaning bathrooms, weeding landscaping beds, mowing the lawn, stuff like that. We get that benefit in both. Basically the same thing you'd get having a once- or twice-a-week cleaning service and a lawn service. I get that maybe some AirBnBs really do have absurd "chore lists", but nearly all the ones I've stayed at, we're talking like 15 minutes of effort for a whole week, maybe, that might have been avoided by staying in a hotel. Basically, take out the trash and don't leave dirty dishes scattered around the whole house. It's super not a big deal.
DANmode 3y ago
If you pick the correct one, you are afforded more privacy, and a cleaner stay, with the con of needing to throw your bedding in the wash and take your takeout trash to the dumpster on the way out.

by xyst 3y ago

jkubicek 3y ago

I'm more than willing to empty my own trash and wash my own dishes if it means I'm staying in a multi-bedroom house/condo with ample space and amenities. Staying for more than a few days in a hotel is depressing and claustrophobic.

potatolicious 3y ago

For single travelers IMO there isn't a good reason to pick Airbnb over a hotel. But there are types of properties that aren't really available widely in hotel-form: the vacation house. Want to gather with your family in a big house for some holiday? There isn't really anything else other than Airbnb (or Vrbo, which has many of the same issues). Some very heavily vacation-oriented places have hotels that rent out properties of that sort, but in most places this isn't an available product category. Buuuut even with this said, I'm very hesitant to stay in Airbnbs nowadays. I just had a terrible experience a month ago - rented a vacation house that had great reviews and looked great. Arrived after a red-eye flight and a long drive... and the lockbox code is wrong. The house is also in the woods so there was no cell reception, so drove a half hour to the nearest area with reception, contacted the host (hosts are never available on Airbnb, naturally), sorted that out, and got into the house... and it was filthy. Top to bottom filthy with air fresheners in every room to cover the smell. Immediately left and booked a room at the local Hampton Inn, which was overall a far superior experience. Airbnb in all of their grace only gave me ~70% back despite y'know, a totally unusable product. I'm still out over ~$1,000 over the whole thing, and Airbnb seems entirely ok with... what feels a lot like fraud? The reliability of the Airbnb experience is so poor that I'm at this point completely unwilling to hinge a family vacation on it. It's like rolling a 1d6 and needing to score 3 or above. Just way too risky.

ianai 3y ago
Seems like the Hampton inn suites are the hotel alternative for family vacations. The ones I’m thinking of are basically complete with a fridge, cooking range, and apparently on premise laundry. Being able to get a separate room for kids with a door open between the two is a thing at many places too. And of course you’re just dealing with a corporation. It’s not someone’s personal home. The management might be weird at a hotel or something but that weirdness would still be spread across many more units-and it has other mechanisms and people in play to normalize the whole experience. AirBnB seems much more ripe for abuse.
carabiner 3y ago
Link to the airbnb? Name and shame.
debatem1 3y ago
This seems to be a very common experience. I suggested booking an AirBNB for a team off-site a few months ago and heard half a dozen variations on it from a ten person team: code wrong and no host overnight, blatantly misrepresented properties, toilets overflowing upon entry, no power, etc. I haven't travelled much in a good number of years so I was very surprised how much the situation had changed.

bamfly 3y ago

I've never experienced the bad ones that want you to clean the place top-to-bottom. I believe they exist, but I've not seen it, and have been averaging probably 4ish AirBnB stays per year for several years (I'm posting from one now!). It's usually like "please load & start the dishwasher and take the trash out before leaving". Reasonable stuff, not, like, hours of work. Most onerous I've seen is stripping the beds and starting the first load of that laundry, which takes maybe ten minutes with several beds and only one person doing it. We tend to do more because we have young kids who make messes, so we clean up after them just so it doesn't turn into a truly unreasonable mess and/or outright damage (and because living in filth isn't pleasant) but that's not because of the chore list. > Why do people put up with this shit, especially on vacation? Why go on vacation to do chores afterwards? May as well stay home and not have to pay for the experience. Shrug. The way we use it, it's more like temporarily owning a vacation home than being in a hotel. With the good and the bad of that. Lots of space and beds for way less money than that'd cost in a hotel. Easy access to a washer and dryer, full kitchen, full-size fridge with freezer, and often in locations without any options for normal hotels. Far nicer to hang out in/around than hotel rooms, short of luxury suites and such. But you also can't be quite as messy as some people are comfortable being in a hotel—if we e.g. get crumbs all over the carpet or track a little dirt in, we vacuum it up like we would at home, rather than just grinding it into the fibers and leaving it to the cleaners. We'd do that in hotels, too, if they had a vacuum in the room. It's really not a big deal.

dumbmrblah 3y ago
I go on vacation to get away from chores.
- bamfly 3y ago
  I guess I'm not following how people avoid the most time-consuming ones while traveling simply by picking a hotel over an AirBnB. Gotta do laundry (or pay to have it done). Gotta shop for food, cook it, and clean up after (or pay someone else to do that for you). Those aren't an AirBnB vs hotel thing. The ones we do avoid by staying in hotels or AirBnBs—either—are things like dusting, whole-house floor cleaning, laundering bedding (entirely, in all but one case, and in that exception we only had to do like 5% of the work, it took less time than stopping to refuel the car on a long drive, or many airport security lines), cleaning bathrooms, weeding landscaping beds, mowing the lawn, stuff like that. We get that benefit in both. Basically the same thing you'd get having a once- or twice-a-week cleaning service and a lawn service. I get that maybe some AirBnBs really do have absurd "chore lists", but nearly all the ones I've stayed at, we're talking like 15 minutes of effort for a whole week, maybe, that might have been avoided by staying in a hotel. Basically, take out the trash and don't leave dirty dishes scattered around the whole house. It's super not a big deal.

DANmode 3y ago

If you pick the correct one, you are afforded more privacy, and a cleaner stay, with the con of needing to throw your bedding in the wash and take your takeout trash to the dumpster on the way out.