too little too late.
This 100%.
AirBnB used to be cheaper than a hotel. Then it got so easy to tack on fees and ridiculous requirements that you’re basically paying more than a hotel to housekeep your own room. Mix in lots of shady hosts and most of the time I’d rather just stay at the Hilton for the same price.It can still be useful as a novelty, like book a party house somewhere or as easily cheaper way to house an awful lot of people. But for the most part, I’ll pass.
Yup. I used AirBnB when they first started and it wasn’t terrible but then it became a huge hassle. Don’t give me a list of chores and then I might get penalty fees if I don’t do them right. Plus all the other damn fees. I don’t even bother to look at ABnB any more
I stopped using their site for anything years ago. This was one of the main reasons. Too little too late for me.
Any alternatives? Especially European?
hotels/hostels?
Airbnb turns potential living space into hotel space and thereby helps driving up housing prices. The whole concept is inherently problematic.
Not quite hotel space as I have yet to find a hotel that can accommodate several families traveling together with a shared space, including a fully stocked kitchen, washer and dryer, parking, etc. There’s definitely a demand for something like this that isn’t filled in any other way.
In Germany it’s called “Ferienwohnung” where you can rent a whole house if you need it. This is going for decades before AirBNB, I’m sure there’s something comparable in other countries.
Appartment hotels maybe?
Great point. Hostels seem very fun.
Booking.com they also have private hosts on their platform
Never book flights through booking.com, they use a third party company called GoToGate who have the worst customer service possible and do not refund, and only try to charge for more.
HomeExchange looks good and is European.
It naturally lacks the depth of listings that Airbnb does but will grow if people use them
VRBO. Idk if it’s European.
DUMP AirBnB right away. They are kissing Trumps ass all the way. The CEO is very… very proud to be part of DOGE. Fuck them.
Gross. I didn’t know that. I do occasionally use AirBnB. I’m aware of their impact on the rental market, so I favor hotels most of the time. But there have been a few occasions in recent years where I was traveling in a larger group and an AirBnB made more sense. But no more of that.
I looked in to this a little, and Joe Gebbia is no longer the CEO, but he is still on the board. Still a good enough reason to boycott.
Wouldn’t this mane Americans uncomfortable, they aren’t used to seeing the actual cost if something until one step away from checkout, or sometimes not even then.
TOO LATE!
These companies are unbelievable. Create the most predatory system on the planet and when their bottom line tanks they turn around like they didn’t create the very thing they now want to “fix”.
Anyone have an ETA on the rocket to the sun?
Getting a rocket to the sun is easy. Getting it back is the hard part. Since you dont need the rocket to make it back, it sounds like you’re all set for operation “beam em up”.
Even by space flight standards, getting a rocket to the sun is very hard.
(The cost was fascism)
I read that airbnb lead to rents rise, because it made it so easy for landlords to run their property like hotels. I don’t use them, and kind of think lowly of people that are like “well it’s convenient so i don’t care”.
I think it shouldnt be on the consumers but on the lawmaker. Tax airbnbs like real bnbs or like hotels or there are many other levers that can be pulled to make it less profitable than renting to locals
It was a nice concept in the 2010s when it was like an advanced version of Couchsurfing or a digital version of a homestay. Then of course it became an unsustainable business model and went to dogs when it became a money making scheme for finance bros to buy up housing and charge 4-star hotel prices.
partially right, but its usually the corporate real estate companies doing this, they buy up the HOUSES and just air bnb, or rent them forever, without even selling any of the houses.
While Air B&B has done irreperable harm to the housing market, I’m not 100% convinced it should be banned. I propose if a house operates as an enterprise, it be taxed according to commercial rates, not residential. It would go a long way to resolving the inequities.
this. it should be taxed like any other hotel/motel
At least for the time it’s not used as a residence by the owners. If they want a mixed rate, they need to prove when they are there and when they’re not (i.e. when it’s listed for rent).
I imagine there are some “written in blood” laws and regulations that apply to hotels that airbnb is ignoring, too. That should also be addressed.
I read a story about that, it was a VRBO though.
This. They help destroy housing markets.
further destroy housing markets.
investors are already doing their work, too.
while hotels and motels run at low capacity utilization
I only use it when I travel in large groups. At which point it’s really really nice. It’s private. It’s quiet. It’s cheap (per person). It’s more social. We usually also save money on food by buying in bulk and cooking.
Living next to a few short-term rentals, it is so extremely creepy to have various large groups of people in and out, staring at you and your stuff, blocking the street with Ubers and scooters, and you only think it’s quiet because you’re the house making all the noise.
It sucks to make a neighborhood a nice place to live only to have all that leeched for profit selling to bachelorette parties full of girls going WOOO at 1 AM.
I live in a neighborhood that regularly (as in, at least once, often more times a week) has people blasting concert grade speakers until like 4 in the morning, with revving cars, fireworks, gunshots, etc etc.
and thats from people who live there. no airbnbs.
Shitty people are shitty people. at least with an airbnb you have a chance at a break in the neighbors being dickheads.
As usual, a few jerks ruin it for the rest of us.
I’ve stayed at a number of airbnbs and we’re very respectful of our neighbors. We basically treat the place as if we lived there, because that’s what we’re looking for.
Hotels suck:
- no kitchen, just a microwave if you’re lucky
- expensive for a small space
- housekeeping - I don’t want strangers looking through my stuff
- target for crime - cars get broken into a lot at hotels and motels
- annoying check-in process, always seem to need to ask the desk people for something, etc
I just don’t like hotels. Maybe zoning could limit airbnbs to townhouse/condo communities or something that are all rentals, but give me more options than a stupid hotel.
Maybe hotels could just learn something from ABnB and offer some larger, more comfortable spaces with kitchens and 4-5 bedrooms? They’re all over in Vegas.
Airbnb kitchens aren’t great either (dull knives, wrecked pans) but at least they exist.
They’re hit and miss, but yes, existing is the critical part here. I can make up for a missing/wrecked pan, I can’t conjure an oven.
I don’t doubt it’s not great to live next to them.
you only think it’s quiet because you’re the house making all the noise.
That’s awful presumptious of you. Why would I think it was quiet if the noise was coming from inside the house? How does that make any sense to you?
Yep instead of lowering rent because your unit is unaffordable you just buy up and rent them all out creating housing scarcity and prices will increase right up until the point ppl can’t afford to vacation anymore… Which is pretty much now anyway. Queue up all the BS stories. “Millennials/zoomers don’t ‘want’ to vacation anymore”
The Snake is going to eat it’s tail.
don’t forget the rudeness of some people. they behave like the whole building is a hotel and they can do whatever they damn well please.
If it were up to me, I would obliterate this concept. Hotels are for holidays, not people’s houses where everyone brings along their holiday brains and are being generally disrespectful towards the communities.
In Paris, France, government officials went around the inner city area and forcefully removed all unofficial key safes from buildings. That’s how all cities should handle this.
However, some years ago there was a news story going around about one person that owns various different places in Berlin, all listed under different names on AirBnB and that person barely visits those places as he has cleaning people do everything in between bookings. They only pocket the huge amounts of money while doing nothing. And the description to find the door key was like “find the public bicycle rack and look for the broken bike with a pink frame, the key will be under the saddle” and there were specific instructions to not talk to anyone in that building. So they definitely knew that this was kind of a grey area…
We used one in Manhattan that was somewhat like this about a decade ago. We were told to tell anyone else in the building that we were friends of some guy (can’t recall the name) who was different than the one doing the booking.
Hotels suck.
holiday brains
Not sure what this is, every time I use an airbnb I treat the place as if I lived there, because that’s why I’m selecting an airbnb instead of a hotel. We often leave the place better than it was when we got there.
Surely there’s some way to preserve the benefits of airbnb while cutting down on the abusers.
Where I feel like they have a suitable place is for vacation rentals. Like when I was a kid our family would rent a house at the beach for a week as our summer vacation. The beach we’d go to had several real estate companies that would manage the rentals and published little booklets every year with the listings. The houses were privately owned, though, so as Airbnb and especially VRBO came along this gave the homeowners another option that was perhaps less expensive than the agencies. These are houses in a vacation area, though, generally not taking away housing from locals. This also was traditionally a family that owned one extra house for family getaways and trying to rent it out when they weren’t using it, not investors creating “hotel” chains. Setting up what is effectively a hotel in a residential area and cutting off housing from people who need it should be an obvious problem yet many people don’t recognize it.
yeah I get things like its the only option yet somehow people traveled and found a place to stay before it existed.
Originally, they did fill a niche. If you have a big group of people, a hotel breaks the group up into rooms. Airbnb lets you have one place all to yourself.
Nowadays it’s gone to shit with low quality spaces, hotels listing themselves on Airbnb, stuff like that. I hope there’s a middle ground.
I share a lot of of the criticism towards AirBnB. However, I’ve often ended up using them either way. We travel with a dog and a toddler. They need to be allowed in the first place. And ideally we get a kitchen, a separate room so we can still have normal noise and light when the kid sleeps. Often we even find Airbnbs with toys, kids books, dog beds, treats on the table when we arrive, …
You simply don’t get that in hotels. At least not in a price range I’ve considered so far
i don’t think people need to justify Airbnb’s, it’s a great alternative to a hotel for many reasons including those you listed. What needs to be addressed is the damage the shareholders who are running the company are doing to society. let’s not give them too much credit about this choice: they are still sucking up homes from homeowners and removing money from the middle class. they only made this change because someone realized it will make them more money.
I guess: great concept, shitty company.
Like with so many “tech giants”, they had a great idea but greed is spoiling it. I wish we had more “public infrastructure” for this. I’d love to have OSS, tax-funded or at least heavily regulated SoMe, video sharing, home swapping/renting, local marketplace, … Those should not be industries, they should be part of our society’s fabric like the fire department or trash pick-up.
Their footnote section is doing a lot of work.
1 In some countries and regions taxes are included in the total price displayed. The total price including taxes is always displayed prior to checkout.
They also either don’t know how notations work, or the AI they’re using to generate this doesn’t because it has a separate footnote with that same sentence later on.
I would be thoroughly unsurprised if some EU or other regulation came into effect so that they have to do this, and now they’re taking credit for being consumer friendly.
It’s actually a US regulation which goes into effect on May 10th. Most other booking sites should be following suit with something similar over the next few weeks.
That’s awesome! Hopefully AirBnB doesn’t donate a million dollars to Trump for an exemption.
I do kind of wish these things required some kind of disclosure instead of letting them pretend they’re super consumer friendly and don’t need any of that demonic regulation.
Exactly!
I have young kids, and airbnbs offer a lot that hotels don’t, and they don’t have the crap I hate about hotels (housekeeping, sketchy parking lot, etc).
Surely we can find a solution where you and I can get what we want, while residents get what they want.
Yeah, I mean, there is a solution. Liberalized zoning and Georgist tax policies. The problem is rarely that there is a lack of space to live - it is that that space is poorly utilized. And this is true because (1) it is illegal to build what people want where they want it in many places and (2) investors and homeowners speculate on land value without providing value to anyone else.
Yup, I’m absolutely a fan of georgist tax policies.
Tried that many times. It has given me the exact same place for slightly cheaper than AirBnB once. Other times it was more expensive but most often of simply had worse choices.
I never stayed in an Airbnb, always found easier and/or better options at hotels, or an apartment at booking.com. People act like Airbnb came up with the concept of renting apartments, while websites like this have been doing this for a decade by the time it came around.
Booking is also pretty scummy. There was a blog post a few years ago from a hotel that always showed up as sold out, even it had plenty empty rooms. In the end it was a “feature” where other hotels could “promote” their business in a city so it would show up first, but the competition would also be listed as unavailable to force visitors into the promoted business. The other thing is that booking will show “only one room left” to pressure you into booking right now, but what ot actually means is that a hotel might only allocate 20 of 100 rooms to booking, and still has 81 free rooms if you call them directly.
Hotels have always been better in my experience.
Unless you want something like a fishing cabin on a river, but even then I’ve started to look at resorts because after all the fees, they work out to the same price as an airBNB.
Same price, fewer chores.
5 years too late, hotels have been cheaper and better for a while now. All of these companies that touted revolutionizing industries have just become worse versions.
Netflix, airbnb, uber, etc all of them are worse for people than the things they replaced
Richard Wolf had a very good take on all of these Silicon Valley “disruptors”. It’s basically been the neoliberal US american MO for the past quarter century:
Step 1: get a bunch VC money by promising the moon
Step 2: “disrupt” by undercutting the established moon due to lack of regulation. Even though it’s an inferior product, it’s VC subsidised, so it’s cheaper than the established businesses.
Step 3: due to lack of regulation, your business drives established operators to bankruptcy. This is basically dumping but the regulation hasn’t caught up.
Step 4: become the monopoly and suck as much money as possible from your customers to generate “shareholder value”
It’s almost like capitalism is an inherently broken system or something
American business practices summed up for pretty much my entire lifetime right here. No wonder we live in such a shit hole - society as a whole has mortgaged and undercut for an entire generation.
I’ve been the weird one in my friend group because I’ve refused to use Airbnb. Why would I want a less guaranteed place to stay that doesn’t have amenities and now costs more?
Yep, the one time I’ve tried to use AirBnB I had booked a nice place way in advance only to get it cancelled a few weeks later b/c the owner apparently needed it for something else. Or realised there was an event during that time where he could get more money.
Contrary to that, when the hotel we had booked for some time during Covid realised they weren’t open for the public yet, they moved our booking to a nearby higher tier partner hotel and they then even upgraded us. You won’t get this with AirBnB, I guess.
hotels have been cheaper and better for a while now
Strongly disagree. Here’s stuff I hate about hotels:
- housekeeping - just leave me alone and clean up when I leave
- rarely have separate bedrooms - I have young kids, so we can’t use the room once they go to sleep
- parking lot is a crime magnet
- more expensive for larger groups - we often travel w/ friends, so there’s often 10 or so of us
- minimal included entertainment - usually just TV and maybe pool; airbnbs often have kids toys, private hot tub, etc
Airbnbs are essentially the inverse of all of that.
We occasionally go to hotels, but if we can find an airbnb that’s a similar price for the scale we need, we go for that every time.
For large groups I suppose airbnbs are more reasonable, though it’s honestly not that big of a difference in pricing for vacation rentals.
Housekeeping is easy, just put the little do not disturb sign up, they won’t bug you.
I don’t have an opinion on the other stuff though.
I also didn’t mention a massive difference here: full kitchen. That goes into the cost as well, since now I can cook at the rental instead of eating out.
Hotels are fine, and we use them sometimes, but I definitely prefer airbnbs.
Long term/ extended stay hotels exist that will provide these things. But the vast majority of people don’t even consider those. They rely on what they can search up on Google for the area and algorithms don’t take into account that you need to bring your dog, want a separate set of bedrooms in the same suite, or that you’re looking for a kitchen.
I see this Everytime AirBnB is mentioned and every time I wonder if people even know extended stay hotels exist.
I’ve heard about them, but as you say, they don’t show up on searches. I’ll have to look harder then.
before taxes
Why is
the Westlike thisEdit: America. Sorry for bundling you functional EU countries into this
We always see prices after tax in the EU
Unfortunately, Canada too. Very annoying.
Feeding on the simple minded and ensuring the feeling of taxes is like the devil.
Theres been only a couple times in my life where I considered an AirBnB over a motel/hotel.
Every time I ended up staying at the Hotel/Motel, because it ended up being cheaper.
I remember looking at an airbnb that was like 25 dollars a night, and went to check out… and had to do a fucking comic book double take because the 25 dollars a night (was only needing it for one night) ended up being like 250 dollars thanks to bullshit cleaning fees and other exploitative, hidden bullshit.
So if that 25 dollar a night place is now being displayed as 250 dollars a night… then I forsee AirBnB bookings plummeting.
the motel I ended up at instead was only 75 bucks all in, just as point of reference.
For me it was about the tiny houses attched to the back of peoples properties in the forests and mountains. Hotels can’t compete with finding a spot out nature way.
But after finding out about the DOGE shit i wont eber be using them again.
Are you traveling alone? If so, that makes a ton of sense.
I’ve had a really good experience w/ airbnbs, but we generally go as larger groups (i.e. 2-3 families, so 10 or so people). We check the fees and whatnot before signing up so there are no surprises, and generally speaking, it ends up cheaper for us vs a hotel.
Capitalism breeds innovation
Yeah, just not on the consumer side 🙃
It’s not called “workingclassism”.
Is that because their founder joined trump’s team and they face a massive boycott?
It’s because FTC regulations requiring fee-inclusive pricing go into effect on May 10th. Everyone dealing with short term rentals and hotels in the US will be updating to this over the next few weeks.
Yeah they can improve their UX all they want but since their co-founder is part of DOGE and wants to mess with social security, it makes choosing alternatives easier.
