Also fuck enshittification!
Yeah, if it’s the same price why the hell would you not stay in a hotel instead of “pretend this random house is a hotel, but now with the added magic of no regulation”
A halfway decent kitchen
“Oops, left a mess (had a crumb on the counter). $350 cleaning fee.”
People always say this, but I’ve never run into any issues. Booking a cabin for the family or a week long stay through airbnb can still be the more cost effective option.
I always read the reviews and rules in depth before booking. The types of places that will pull what you describe usually are pretty apparent.
Obviously it’s still fucked that I the consumer have to go through all of that when Airbnb could just make some standards, but oh well.
Personally now I avoid Airbnbs except for the two cases I mentioned. Groups and extended stays. Yes extended stay hotels do exist too, but they are hit and miss imo.
Booking a cabin
To clarify - booking a cabin (presumably in the middle of the woods, no neighbours?) vs booking a hotel (also in the middle of the woods, no other guests)?
Or does cabin mean something else for you, e. g. any vacation house?
Woods, family vacations tended to often be in the mountains
Never been to a hotel in the middle of the woods with no other guests
Although other places could be appropriate for group travel. Like any vacation home
There’s a plethora of extended stay hotels that aren’t much, if any, more expensive than a regular hotel that have kitchens.
Yeah, and their “kitchens” suuuuck
A kitchen and other amenities are a big reason
Don’t forget having to find the cameras watching you, and text messages every 38 minutes telling you to leave 5 star reviews.
For sure, people think they know where to put the cameras for the best show, but they really don’t. Gotta help them out with that.
I like hitting my vape a few times around the AirBnB.
I want them to hit me with a cleaning fee and them explain how they knew I was vaping unflavored eliquid.
It still stinks. You’ve just blown out your ability to smell it. Don’t vape indoors in shared spaces, it’s gross.
After a quick search, they contain propylene glycoland and vegetable glycerin, sometimes they also add distilled water
None of them has a smell, they do have a sweet taste but that’s itIt’s an airbnb, not a shared space
Do you think AirBnB houses just….stop existing after you check out or something?
you could say the same about any other rental
Yes, and we do.
AirBnb became popular when hotels inflated prices around certain events or were at capacity. Since then, AirBnb owners have jacked up prices to be more expensive than hotels, and you have to deal with the “landlord attitude.” It turned from a genuine service into another cash grab scheme.
Enshittification strikes again!
The basic problem of AirBNB was that it was never going to scale. Individual condo owners will never be able to compete with the efficiencies of scale of hotels. Having cleaning staff have to drive from building to building can never compete with a bunch of rooms in a single hallway.
The AirBNB concept does make sense for a few niche applications:
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Small rental units in locations where big hotels aren’t viable. (Think remote mountain cabins.)
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Actual lived-in homes for people who are traveling and don’t mind strangers staying in their house while they’re away.
Neither of these scale. Cabin rentals can compete because it’s not viable to build a hundred unit hotel on top of a remote mountain. But that market can’t scale. Cabin rentals already have their own rental networks, and there are only so many of them. People renting out their actual residences can compete with hotels. You already have to pay your mortgage anyway, bringing in a short-term renter adds little marginal cost. But this model can’t scale, as very few people actually want to rent out their own homes while they’re out.
But AirBNB pulled the usual Silicon Valley bait-and-switch. Corner a market with unsustainably low prices, then raise them. The bait got many people to purchase rental units with the goal of renting them on AirBNB. But this was never going to be sustainable. Once AirBNB stopped subsidizing the rentals, the landlords have to raise the costs (both monetary and policy costs) to actually make the business profitable. And they simply cannot compete with the economies of scale of hotels.
Airbnb as a service for homeowners to rent to visitors is a great idea. Want to rent out your basement to weary travellers? Heres a service to do that.
Buying 20 single family homes to generate passive income is an incredibly stupid, antisocial, and dystopian idea.
Wasn’t that the original idea? I swear when my friend first used it he made it sound like crashing in a spare room.
It’s also good for family reunion or just traveling with your own family or kids and want a kitchen/ multiple rooms.
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AirBnB became too many people’s “passive income”.
They don’t want to take care of the property or have too many to take care of, so they treat customers like house sitters for the luxury of renting the property as well as building equity off them.
Pretty messed up. In the early days Airbnb was ok, we used it a couple times, but I don’t think I’d want to mess with it today.
Gosh, I hate passive income. It doesnt do anything meaningful to society. Yet, the investor somehow gains more benefit from the invested resources than the people who create and use them.
and it was being used by some corps to worsen the housing crisis too.
AirBnB is not for ‘cheap’ stays anymore (if it ever was), it works a lot better when you use it to find quirky/interesting places to stay (like a treehouse!). People still try to use it to replace a hotel though. $100/night can usually get you a decent room with breakfast at a hotel in most areas.
If you’re a party of 4 or fewer and are only staying for a couple of nights, a hotel with breakfast included is the better choice. Chain hotels also have a minimum baseline of quality so you at least have some expectation of consistency anywhere you go. Less chances of hidden cameras too.
Unless the point of your travel is the accommodation itself, you’ll likely only be in there for less than 12 hours a day, so all you really need is a secure room with a clean bed and bathroom.
Separate bedrooms and a kitchen have a pretty high value for a lot of travelers. You are making a big generalization here.
I’ve never stayed in an Airbnb, and after everything I’ve read online, I can’t think of a compelling reason to.
Edit: my goodness, such evangelism! Perhaps I should reconsider my position
the only reason o can think to use one is for partying and eat the fees.
Yeah its supposed to be a cheaper way to stay but I’d rather pay a little bit more for the structure, show up check in at the desk, then just leave when you’re ready. If I want cheaper travel I’d rather just camp
They’re good for extended stays with other people, where you want multiple bedrooms, a kitchen, and a living room. Or if you want a more private stay in a scenic area away from other people.
They’re good for big groups and certain locations.
My wife has a big online friend group that likes to get together a couple times a year in various places around the US. For 15ish people, AirBnB is cheaper than hotels and lets everyone stay together in one place with room to congregate and cook real meals. It’s also easier to find cabins and stuff in remote nature areas than hotels.
We’re also planning a weeklong trip to NYC, and even with rewards points AirBnB was cheaper than a hotel.
Outside those specific circumstances, if it’s just us and we’re only spending a night or two in a less expensive location, hotels are basically always better
Might be an American thing. Never had any significant problem or excessive demand on Airbnb, both as a host and a guest, in Europe.
I’ve had good luck, but most of the time for a 1 night stay a hotel is better.
If it’s multiple nights or a group that’s where airbnb is more appealing. You have to put in the work to read everything the owner posts and the reviews to figure out if they are they type to engage in shenanigans. It’s worked so far, but ridiculous to have to check for it
If you’re a low-maintenance kind of pet that just wants a pull-out sofa to sleep on, a shower, and possibly a kettle+microwave to make coffee+bad food for a day or two, you can find Airbnbs at ¼ the price of a hotel.
At that price its going to be way out of where you want to be and possibly out of public transit network, be dilapitated and probably smell bad.
I’ve done this a lot, so I’m speaking from experience. I haven’t been compromising on location (closeness to where I need to be), only on comfort. It probably depends on where you’re travelling to though.
I’ve never done it myself, but there seem to be a couple of different reasons why it would be preferable over a standard hotel room.
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Easier and cheaper way to get a huge living space with a kitchen for a large group of people.
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The possibility of staying in a unique type of room that a hotel just can’t provide.
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By “both” keys, you mean both sets of replacements you got because you kept locking yourself out of the room, right?
I’ve been enjoying watching the Internet collectively bully that one AirBnB couple, Cassie and Jon.
I’m out of the loop on that one. What happened?
They’re a couple that just go crazy with what they expect from people that stay at their place. The clip that I first saw that I think made them go viral was them upset the guests left the TV remote in a different room (on the table next to where they keep their rulebook), moved a footstool, left the bed unmade, and left a few things of food in the fridge in containers. They do charge a hefty cleaning fee and have some crazy rules with steep fines like charging I think like $50 for every minute past their early checkout time or something.
$1k deposit, but yeah
Idk my airbnb had a heat alarm fitted on the ceiling directly above the stove, so when we decided to cook we discovered that it sets off above 45°C, is not a smoke alarm, and we were already overwhelmed with stress before that cataclysmic screech. I smashed it off the ceiling (because I can’t think through the noise to find the latch), told them “fuck you, hated the stay,” and I never got a fine. Left the pieces of alarm where they lay.
Those are supposed to be an improvement for small spaces where smoke alarms can be too sensitive and go off all the time. Of course, they’re supposed to be on the ceiling.
To be frank it was a very small space aha - kitchen was just round a corner from the living space, almost 3 walls of a square, and about 1.5 metres wide. Nowhere for the heat to go but up
Hotels suck ass too. We stayed in a “luxury” hilton and it was shit. It looked nice at first, but then
- Everything was falling apart.
- You got a “complimentary” water bottle (like a kirkland style) if you were a member, but it was $2.50 (maybe even $3.50 which I think I would have remembered cuz it’s funny) if you weren’t.
- They charged you a $60 deposit in case you use that bottle of water or something? We got that back, but it was stupid that we had to check.
- We didn’t use the parking pass for 2 days and they refused to give that money back.
They’re only being a little nicer right now because they’re losing business. They’ll go back to huge shits if they get the market share back.
Maybe I misunderstand the parking pass thing, but I’m not sure why you would get the money back just because you didn’t use it. My assumption (which may be wrong!) is that while you had that pass, capacity was allocated to you and could not be sold to someone else. Like buying a seat ticket for a show and not showing up.
That said, I wouldn’t be shocked to learn that isn’t quite the case. I should probably give you the benefit of the doubt.
We asked and they said they would, then wouldn’t, multiple times. We were so annoyed at that point that we were going to annoy them back.
That’s just the Hilton for you, to be honest. I stayed in one in San Diego long time back for visiting a conference in the center right next to it. Was quite expensive and for that amount of money nothing special was given. I only had free wifi because I booked under the conference offer, so normally not even that was free.
This is the Fed’s fault.
There should have never been less than 3 percent mortgages. They basically gave away free home equity to an entire generation. And you know what they did? Bought 2nd homes and allowed VRBO/AirB&B to thrive. Now with “normal” interest rates, none of this makes any sense.
Wait how are they even able to enforce the fee?
With your credit card, which they have on file.
They just give your card credentials to random people? Ffs I didn’t know they do it like that. It’s crazy that we just allow it.
I was previously using a separate card for them specifically, and way after the trip someone made an attempt to grab some ~200€ from my card. I’ve noticed instantly so I had a convo with bank and blocked.
Now it all makes sense. Fucking hell.
Seems you need a throwaway cards every time you want to use them then.
privacy.com is great, although they only operate in the US. Not sure what the European alternative is.
You can spin up throw away and merchant locked cards, set limits per card, and pause or delete them anytime without having to deal with bank and getting a new card.
Not sure what the European alternative is.
Revolut would be the most common option for the following:
spin up throw away and merchant locked cards, set limits per card, and pause or delete them anytime
