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I take a weeklong trip to San Francisco every few months -- a city with loads of Airbnb uptake. I used Airbnb for the first few trips and was happy with the apa
by unfletch 13y ago
I take a weeklong trip to San Francisco every few months -- a city with loads of Airbnb uptake. I used Airbnb for the first few trips and was happy with the apartments I rented, but I've stopped even looking at Airbnb because the booking process is such a pain.
Every time I've used it there's been 24-72 hours of back and forth with a host before I even know whether I can reserve their place. Often I lose a day waiting to hear from a host only to find out their calendar wasn't up to date and it's not actually available.
Hotels are more expensive, but booking one is trivially easy. That convenience is worth a lot to me.
- dhess 13y agoI've been having the same problem with Honolulu. In the last 3 weeks I've had 3 or 4 booking attempts declined because the host's calendar was not accurate. Airbnb folks: this drags your product down to the level of VRBO, Flipkey, etc., where spotty availability calendars creates a large disincentive to use the service.
- trustfundbaby 13y agoI was pro-airbnb-all-the-time till I booked a room that looked good in the photos but was in a shitty building in a shitty part of town ... (I was in a hurry and couldn't really do as much research as I normally would have). I was there for a nice relaxing vacation so it was quite a surprise and I wound up losing $500 because I immediately ended my reservation and used hotel tonight to get a better room for about the same price. With hotels, at least you generally get what you pay for, and you can rely on branding (brand names and star ratings) to get you most of the way there as well. So while I hope to use airbnb again, I'm quite chastened by the experience and am definitely more aware of the things I used to take for granted with booking hotels.