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Airbnb shares drop 12% as company flags weakening US demand
- webaholic 2y agoWith all the hidden fees and exorbitant cleaning fees, I think it is much cheaper to book a hotel than an airbnb nowadays. No wonder demand is going down.
- notesinthefield 2y agoIt tends to succeed in a few situations for me - vacations in backcountry areas, a backup to Hipcamp for campsites and getting a single room. I have found bizarrely it is not cheaper to find a comparable hotel unless the destination is popular.
- garciasn 2y agoIt makes a lot of sense if I am traveling with more than two, staying more than two nights, and I want to cook my own meals and/or do laundry. I’m traveling to upstate NY for a wedding during the fall. All of the shitty motels and hotels were $350/night and Airbnb was $400, but I ended up with a lot more comfort and creature comforts as well as it being 20 mins closer than any of the chain hotels; those are the only reason I chose it for a one-night stay.
- bamboozled 2y agoIt's like tech people have to relearn why we had age old things in the first place. We're starting to workout why hotels are a good idea now. I saw Elon Musk questioning why we have medical regulations the other day, he was saying that it "slows down innovation" and so he thinks medical regulation should be abolished. He did the same for content moderation on his platform. Well I don't agree that regulations stifle innovation, they might slow down the rollout of innovative products, but there is a very good reason why regulation was established in the first place. Could it be better? Yes.
- nvy 2y ago>I saw Elon Musk questioning why we have medical regulations the other day, he was saying that it "slows down innovation" and so he thinks medical regulation should be abolished Is he just posturing for his fans? I see so many statements of this nature from him and I just can't believe that a person that successful can be so monumentally stupid.
- mandevil 2y ago“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” - Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night
- jpalawaga 2y agoI see many, many tech people take an extremely simple position on a topic contrary to general knowledge. Then they say something like 'I believe in strongly held beliefs, held weakly'. I'm so bored of debating people with opinions on things they've spent zero time researching or even thinking about. Just say you don't know. It's okay.
- ineedaj0b 2y agothis is like complaining about small talk. small talk is meant to draw people in. same with saying outrageous things. no one wants to chat in depth immediately and saying wild things draws a crowd. no one is going to talk with you if you're drawing out all the nuance of medical regulation (nearly an 5k essay to broach) with nuance.
- phs318u 2y ago> no one is going to talk with you if you're drawing out all the nuance of medical regulation Then why should anyone talk with you about it? What would be the point?
- Sabinus 2y agoAs a 'captain of industry' and generally wealthy man, Musk is much more constrained by regulation than he is protected by it. Unlike the common man. So he's responding to his incentives, railing at the constraints on the ingenuity and productivity of people like himself. Likely underdeveloped empathy does not help.
- addaon 2y agoYou can use the Australian AirBNB site to see all-fees-included prices, sort by them, etc.
- paxys 2y agoIf you just need a room for the night, sure, of course you should book a hotel. Airbnb never made sense in that case to begin with. For a slightly higher price, however, Airbnb gets you a 1 bedroom apartment (or 2-4 rooms for an entire group) plus a living room, functioning kitchen, multiple bathrooms, and depending on the property a private patio, pool etc. No hotel can compete with that.
- FireBeyond 2y ago> If you just need a room for the night, sure, of course you should book a hotel. Airbnb never made sense in that case to begin with. That was literally the origin story and first iteration. "Crash on someone's couch or in their spare bedroom."
- paxys 2y agoPeople still put spare rooms in their house on Airbnb, and you can still book them. It will be a lot cheaper than a hotel. But that's not what anyone really means when they are talking about Airbnb anymore. The vast majority are looking for a private space.
- tmpz22 2y agoIt feels good as a consumer to finally see companies face stock price consequences for tanking quality while jacking up prices. Though its a wildly different market the same is happening for Starbucks and McDonalds.
- jondwillis 2y agoIt's all fun and games until businesses just stop ceasing their already-hobbled services instead and start to shed employees... oops now you have a deflationary spiral with decline of quality of life.
- olladecarne 2y agoI used to use Airbnb all the time but a single experience dealing with their customer service and a bad host was enough for me to never use them again. The lows of using Airbnb are 100x lower than the lows of hotels, and the highs are higher but not nearly enough to justify the risk.
- djohnston 2y agoYep 100%. It took one experience being stuck on the street in London with my bags to never use AirBnb again. The negatives are just not worth the risk.
- addaon 2y agoI’m an AirBNB host, so I get a $100 non-transferable coupon each year; so I stay at an AirBNB once a year, and never without a backup plan. I’d be thrilled to stay at a place like mine, but I don’t understand how to use the tools they provide to be confident in that outcome, so I book hotels with brands that I trust to be accountable instead.
- dvzk 2y agoThe last occasions that I stayed at $200/night hotels, someone triggered the building fire alarms at 2:00 and 4:30 AM. Everyone was forced to evacuate until the fire department arrived (the alarm sirens were agonizingly loud). Still, I agree, the Airbnb roulette experience is often worse.
- sebazzz 2y agoI’m pretty happy with them. I’ve booked over 12 trips with my family using AirBnB. Last year we got a bad one though, dirty house, a lamp was stuck in the socket using wires instead of a plug. I reported this to AirBnB and they cancelled the reservation and refunded. The only disadvantage of the customer service is that although you can do everything in Dutch, once customer service is involved you get called from some weird US phone number, but get an Indian outsourced helpdesk on the other side of the line - who don’t always speak good English.
- givinguflac 2y agoI’ve decided to never use them again. I’ve had horrendous experiences with hosts and while Airbnb does do something it’s never actually made anything right. There are great hosts out there, and then there are scammers and inconsiderate jerks with ridiculous house rules a mile long. They need to do better at the downside management. I literally sent them a video showing it was in fact not the same apartment as the listing and they offered 20% off. The same host lied about sending someone to fix the broken hot water. Airbnb offered 30% instead of 20%. Laughable.
- wepple 2y agoNo surprises, they’re late stage enshittification.
- zx8080 2y agoAfter being scammed by host using a "final price" ("tax on top") scheme in 2015, I don't use Airbnb. So even though for a public company the stock price is not really connected to anything except shareholders wealth, I still welcome the recent dropping of their share price. Just considering them allowing many scammy practices (yes, Airbnb support does not help in most cases).
- dboreham 2y agoFrequent AirBnB user here. Never had a problem. Yes some hosts charge stupid fees. Don't rent their places. No they're not more expensive than hotels if you have 4 people and need 3 bathrooms. Perhaps for one person they are. Perhaps demand is dropping as the pent-up post-covid demand dissipates?
- makeitdouble 2y agoTo note there's a spectrum of options between standard hotels and AirBnB. When traveling with a whole family or two, weekly aparts were the best value we ever got. They were in more remote areas requiring a car, but professionaly cleaned, well adapted to the purpose with perfect transparency on the price and the contract.
- jghn 2y agoI've mostly switched to VRBO for the group house situations. I find the prices are usually a wee bit better and the cancellation policies much, much better for the same houses. Although YMMV of course.
- redwood 2y agoNever used it again after being stranded by a host that canceled the day before new years eve
- BWStearns 2y agoMorbid thought of the evening: If there is a meaningful broader downturn I wonder if they'll benefit from people losing stable housing and turning to ABNB for itinerant shelter.
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- m3kw9 2y agoMaybe is due to all the complaints and people start shying away
- kbos87 2y agoMost of the complaints you hear about Airbnb come off as off-the-shelf repeats of things people have read on social media. If you read reviews and pay attention to the listing there's little risk of having a bad experience or being surprised by a fee (which is extremely common at hotels.) All that being said, if you actually get to the point where you need to engage Airbnb or Vrbo for help, they are actively harmful to the situation. The people on the other end of the phone or live chat don't have a single clue what is going on. They deserve a correction.
- Tiktaalik 2y agoBritish Columbia has effectively banned whole house Airbnb rentals Province wide, and it's no longer possible to buy a condo and rent it out 24/7 as if it was a hotel.* Have any other States enacted rules this severe? Are any about to? Various cities have enacted Airbnb regulations, but it's at the State/Provincial level where enforcement would start to have real teeth and Airbnb would genuinely start to be in trouble. * Exceptions: Municipalities below 10k and those with rental vacancy above 3% can opt out of the rules.
- tangoman 2y agoThis law looks nice on paper, but in practice is another thing. I don't know how the enforcement it's done, but anecdotally a friend moved from Calgary to Vancouver for work and the company rented him an Airbnb apartment, the whole place for him, even the building have signs that the Strata forbids Airbnb.
- Tiktaalik 2y agoIt's pretty much a brand new law (as of May 1) so we're yet to see what the level of enforcement is. Vancouver has had its own Airbnb bylaws (that the Provincial rules crib from) for years but bylaws are easily ignored and Vancouver's enforcement ability was very low. No real surprise to hear that someone in Vancouver was breaking the Vancouver Airbnb bylaws. The Province does have much more ability to enforce the law that a city. So will be interesting to see.
- Sabinus 2y agoI've found Airbnb to be good for 6-10 people in a large house. Over our 10 ~trips every host has been normal to good. I probably wouldn't use them for a single or couple stay, nor in extremely high demand tourist areas and holidays.
- refurb 2y agoThat’s the one use that I would see go to AirBnB for. But for me it’s not longer even an option if hotels are available. The last few years have only turned up places that cost the same as a hotel or more.
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- jairuhme 2y agoI'll rehash some of the complaints others have mentioned. Unless its a larger group, it really doesn't make sense to use vs. a hotel. Even if price is constant, there's just a bit more friction with AirBnB. Sometimes its easy, but other times you're trying to find the code that you have to enter for the key. Then I have to find the rules for the property to make sure I cleaned it according to their standards (while paying a cleaning fee?). At a hotel, I go up to the front desk, they give me a key, and then I return it at the end. One thing that is not ever mentioned is that there is no reward (that I am aware of) for being a frequent user of AirBnB's. If I go to Marriott/Hilton/Hyatt hotels regularly, I can earn benefits and travers up their tier list for benefits. Not sure I have seen anything like that with AirBnB.
- paxys 2y agoThe big difference for me is that Airbnbs have kitchens. Any trip more than 1-2 days in length is greatly improved when I can buy basic groceries and cook rather than have to eat every single meal at a restaurant. Because of that the overall cost works out to be cheaper as well.
- aaronharnly 2y agoTraveling with small kids, having a kitchen makes the difference between being able to actually feed the family vs scraping together insane combinations of whatever sliver of restaurant meals the kids can eat and packaged food.
- jairuhme 2y agoThat's a fair point. But for me, thats more friction. Now when I get to my destination, I also have to go grocery shopping and then spend even more time cooking and cleaning the dishes after. Personally, if I am going somewhere new, I'd prefer to spend a bit more money to not do all of the the tiring things I have to do at home so I can spend that time actually exploring. I will add, I don't have kids and can see how my viewpoint may change when they do come into the picture
- dvzk 2y agoThere are extended stay hotels with stovetops and ovens (and outdoor grills) with low-grade used (ugh!) cookware included. It's usually not much more expensive than regular midtier hotels: possibly cheaper, if you can negotiate a longer term stay.
- paxys 2y ago$2.75B revenue, up 11% YoY. $555M net income (20% margin). $1B free cash flow. $75B market cap (after the dip). Yes they may have missed analyst expectations, but AirBnb is still a very solid business. Not on its last legs as everyone here seems to be convinced.
- elforce002 2y agoInteresting. We're not taking into account the intangibles, aka people's perception. People are angrier than usual since they feel (and rightly so) they're being displaced from their places. Look at Portugal and Spain.
- IG_Semmelweiss 2y agoImoortant data point: NYC anti-airbnb law came into effect 9 months ago[1] This has destroyed airbnb listings in nyc to the joy of hotels everywhere. I believe bookings made before the law came to be survived, so they stayed on the books as revenue, assuming a lead time of avg 6 months, you'd exoect the hit to be happening in Q2-Q3 of thia year. There are also regulations that came online ij all of BC and some other cities in CAN as well. If this is happening in more major markets, maybe that's the reason for the fall? [1] https://slate.com/business/2023/09/new-york-city-airbnb-new-rules.html https://slate.com/business/2023/09/new-york-city-airbnb-new-...
- localhost8000 2y agoA reason for Airbnb I’m not seeing in the other comments: traveling with a dog is much easier with Airbnb than a hotel. I can find a fenced backyard and also have lots of indoor space. I also choose airbnbs for cooking. We almost always choose a place with a grill, since our apartment doesn’t have one, and often a fire pit, too.
- kbos87 2y agoSomething else not mentioned here - there’s a strong incentive for both guests and hosts to use Airbnb as a way to find each other but not to book. I’m a host and I regularly get direct reach-outs from people who have found my listing on Airbnb, googled the name of my house, and reach out asking to book directly with me. Returning guests who did book through the platform always come back to me directly. Airbnb doesn’t deserve $200 from them and $100 from me for doing next to nothing. This isn’t a sign that STRs are in trouble, people have been renting their second homes for a hundred years. This is a sign that the platforms are reaping what they sowed.
- devinegan 2y agoI haven’t seen the “reverse image search” issue mentioned. It is pretty common knowledge now that you can take photos from AirBNB listings and many times find a direct booking with the company that is listing. Not always, but this has saved me thousands across two trips so far this year. *weeklong stays in Maui, San Diego
- hdjjhhvvhga 2y agoIn Europe Airbnb seems to be much less popular, most people I know just use Booking.com which list private properties too. I use these quite often when I travel with my family and we intend to cook rather than go out (which is generally more healthy and less expensive, and when everybody helps, it doesn't take that much time).