Let's say for argument's sake it does go to the guest. What does $1,000 whenever Airbnb decides to credit your account, help you when you're stranded. I can only assume Airbnb pockets the fee because nowhere in their documentation do they state the guest receives the money, otherwise they would outright state it.
I had this situation come up like twice over here in Europe. In both cases Airbnb offered to assist with an alternative place to stay (one time taken one time declined) and in both cases provided me with credit of about the worth of the original stay
Good to know I could rent on Airbnb and unknowingly 100% of my expense could go straight to the platform, due to a host's previous cancellation on an otherwise unrelated reservation.
i.e., to their stock price, i.e., to investors, i.e., to pension funds both private and public (pensions are by far the largest AirBnB shareholders), i.e., it likely benefits the majority of the public (the majority of US households have stock exposure, quite often large pension funds or index funds - AirBnB is part of the Nasdaq 100, for example).
For comparison, if a Marriott/Hyatt/Hilton/IHG/Choice hotel is unable to accommodate your reservation, you obviously do not pay anything for that night, but they also have to pay and arrange for your first night’s stay somewhere else, and for a ride to and from that place (if they are bringing you back).
If the staff at the hotel does not abide by the walk policy, you can call the 800 number to complain, and they will send you a check for your expenses and then bill the hotel.
No, these are agreements between the franchisor (hotel brands) and the franchisees (hotel owners).
Obviously, exclusions to the walk policy are if you are banned at the hotel, or if you are walking in high with 3 prostitutes hanging off your arm, or any other reason that a hotel would want to refuse you because the hotel believes you will cause damage or disturb others.
> For comparison, if a Marriott/Hyatt/Hilton/IHG/Choice hotel is unable to accommodate your reservation, you obviously do not pay anything for that night, but they also have to pay and arrange for your first night’s stay somewhere else, and for a ride to and from that place (if they are bringing you back).
Like is that a law or something? I'm not sure it is. They may choose to do this.
Compare to flights and trains, where there are laws. For example is cancelled and you've started your journey, they must get you home, by law (in the UK.) I was in a five-hour taxi ride once after a train was cancelled.
No, it is not a law. Walk policies are standard for any half decent hotel brand. “Walk” is when you get sent from one hotel to another due to the hotel’s fault. Perhaps overbooking, or maintenance issue, or computer/clerical error, etc.
Regarding trains, it might be law, but my god they try hard not to take of you sometimes.
Often station staff will try their best to get rid of you and send you on to another station to make it their problem. And station managers can be hard to find. And they have sudden amnesia about the law etc
Do we really know that? I’m guessing it will give Airbnb the leeway to rebook people in more expensive accommodations as a replacement if needed. It’s not in their best interests for people to be left high and dry.
And the increased penalty will be applied to the screwed renter as credits toward another AirBNB or will that be available as a reimbursement for having to make alternative (and likely expensive) last-minute arrangements? If there's not messaging that this penalty will go to the cancelled renter then I still don't see a reason to trust AirBNB.
Ah this tired argument. "No one forced you to use this service, even though it's relatively close to a monopoly and sometimes there are literally no other options.. but in any case, because you 'chose' to use the service they can just do whatever you want and you have no recourse to complain or think it's wrong!"
If you want to go some places off-season Airbnb and friends are the main option; the only hotel in town closes for the winter at many towns in national parks, etc.
Still doesn’t “force” you to use Airbnb of course. And I wonder if people negotiating outside of Airbnb will begin to happen.
You've never vacationed somewhere that isn't a city? There are loads of worthy vacation spots in the US where there are either no convenient hotels, or they are very limited and fully booked months in advance. Usually because the visitors are highly seasonal and there's no reason to visit aside from that seasonal attraction.
If you take this absurd position to it's logical conclusion, nobody forced you to travel in the first place. Therefore, you can't complain about anything related to travel, ever.
In general yes, but a customer hostile attitude is also a pretty garbage way to approach business. Nobody grows a business with that attitude. It’s a lousy excuse for a problem that is not that hard to fix.
This is in fact an implication of GP having criteria of willingness to do business with the company. If forced into the arrangement, one would lack the luxury.
The fee will not go to the renter who’s accommodation has been cancelled. They will still benefit from the increase, though. Disincentivizing hosts to cancel last minute will make it rarer for the situation to arise in the first place.
In situations like this Airbnb usually helps the renter find comparable accommodations as a replacement. My guess is that this will give them more leeway to find replacements that are more expensive, and offset the cost onto the cancelling host, which feels very fair to me.
Then the host will just not go through the cancellation process and solve it out of band to avoid the fee. That happened to me earlier this year, 2 hours before checkin told me that something came up and I couldn't stay there. Sent me a ~95% refund but never cancelled the booking within Airbnb. Complained to Airbnb about it, but all they did was remove my negative review.
> Then the host will just not go through the cancellation process and solve it out of band to avoid the fee.
I've seen this happen in other service apps -- hailing a taxi via Uber/Lyft, and when the driver sees that I'm a little out of downtown, about 30% of the time I'll get a text message off-platform asking me to cancel the ride because "something happened to [their] car" in between them accepting the ride and them getting to my home. My only thought is that the heavy emphasis on driver/host ratings and penalty fees drives the providers off-platform, but that leaves their users stuck shouldering the burden and nobody happy.
It's really on AirBnb to fix this then. I'm sure if you created a support case with them and pushed for it being escalated that they would make it right. Annoying for customers having to go through that, though.
My understanding is if it is particularly last minute, Airbnb will arrange the rebook to another property, and this $1000 is to subsidize those costs to Airbnb?
Citation needed. I’ve had some pretty bad experiences with AirBnB and I am not sure what you are talking about. Maybe if you can get someone on the phone at 8pm on a Sunday then they might help out.
My recent experience with Airbnb rebooking another room is... do not rely on this. You should not rely on Airbnb for anything you must depend on. They're not a hotel and their support doesn't have control over the "supply" to help you in a pinch. (I wasted an insane amount of time on the phone last month helping a colleague rebook a room after the host cancelled mid-trip.)
AirBnB has gotten so expensive with fees. Not only that, most AirBnBs I have rented, have looked nothing like the pictures when I get there. The last one in NYC had cockroaches, with over 100 good reviews. Perhaps them doing this signals confidence and strength in their business, but the act of renting a place is almost like online dating. Everything looks great until you meet in person.
AirBnB's advantage was how cheap it was compared to hotels and other accommodations. That advantage is pretty much gone now, so basically you get an expensive place, with horrific quality control. It's a roll of the dice.
I've gone back to hotels. The experience is streamlined. No janky lockboxes with codes that don't work, no unresponsive hosts (someone available 24/7 at most), places are cleaned on request, and other amenities are typically available right on site.
Also going back to hotels. I've enjoyed staying at AirBnB rentals, but more and more I get the feeling that I'm just a pest who is supposed to help pay the mortgage on their investment property. The notes and manuals left by hosts can be off-putting, and the last place we stayed at looked like a bad flip-job with minimal furniture.
The fact that hosts can leave reviews for customers provides a disincentive to leave a bad review.
I’ve stayed in two places in the last two weeks.
First wasn’t like the pictures at all. Rammed with furniture and had no way to put garbage out.
Second stunk of mould on the first floor, AC was useless; and the washer/dryer was broken (actually dismantled causing the mould smell). We had to use a laundrette.
They both got glowing reviews because I can’t risk not being able to use the platform as they’ve swallowed the entire short term rental market.
This happened to me the first time I used AirBnB in 2016. I was attending a music festival in NYC, booked an AirBnB a month in advance in Brooklyn. 4 days before my flight the host cancels on me and I got a surge of anxiety. I tried to find other hosts on such short notice. I found someone one day before my flight (he rented out his apartment for 3 days and just stayed with a friend, also his first time using AirBnB).
The experience of getting cancelled and having no repercussions to the host was extremely off putting to me. I had no idea on what to do at the time, as the site loves to not handle edge cases that completely sour your experience with the product. Why they simply couldn't have an error screen that said, "your host cancelled? please do the following and checkout these hosts who ARE available and reliable."
This was my first and last time using AirBnB. Maybe it changed now, but I tell everyone I know to just rent a hotel instead. Such a shame too because I love AirBnB when it comes to engineering but the product itself I will never use again.
This happened to me in Amsterdam once, the host cancelled a couple of days before we went (this was in 2018 or so). I contacted AirBnB support, and they gave me 150% of the value of the stay to get an alternative accommodation last-minute. Got us a nice little bed and breakfast that was more expensive and everything worked out alright. Sorry your experience was so stressful!
I just had an experience last month with a host canceling and they wouldn't give me a coupon for more then 30% of the value of the stay. But the stay that had been cancelled was a month-long and it was cancelled 8 days in.
Rebooking with just a 30% coupon was impossible, even after 20+ hours on the phone, and I ended up giving up to book my colleague a hotel for a few nights. (I still haven't been reimbursed by Airbnb either, and I will never expect to.)
I'm glad to hear that not every experience is terrible, but it's also annoying that it seems to be random based on region or the rep you get.
AirBNB was useless when I was unable to get into an apartment around 10-11pm because the door had been physically bolted/latched from inside and the off-site owner wasn't responding.
The customer service agent slipped up (apparently) and confirmed there were other AirBNB guests in the unit, but when she escalated to get permission to call them, the story changed to "we cannot discuss whether there are other AirBNB customers in the unit due to privacy reasons."
I was not offered any help finding an alternative listing.
I was not offered a refund or any sort of compensation whatsoever.
I was left standing outside in winter in a cold part of the country, with nowhere to go, at midnight.
I think AirBNB should do all the leg work on cancellation just like a real hotel or airline would do. They should present me options with no additional cost showing. Just let me pick. The fact that you have to shoulder the stress to find a place absolutely sucks. Imagine if an airline overbooked/cancelled on you and just said fuck off, find a new flight, here's your credit.
The comparison with airlines is timely: "The Competition and Markets Authority and the Civil Aviation Authority have published an open letter to airlines, warning them about their obligations under consumer protection law." https://www.businesstraveller.com/business-travel/2022/07/22...
Never heard of Wizzair, but my experience in the US is that they book you on a new flight. If none of their options suffice, (I believe) they'll help you book on an alternative airline like when a computer outage happens and takes down their entire network. This seems to be the case even for our budget airlines like spirit.
This is what happens everywhere with any real airline. Wizzair and other low cost airlines are of couse bound by the same consumer protection laws, but they prey on their uneducated clientele who doesn't know their own rights so they don't know they can complain.
Of course even if you know, and you complain, they will make your life miserable.
With Things like these, plus all the dark patterns and scams regarding luggage, check-in, etc, I don't know why anyone would ever fly low cost.
WizzAir[0] is the cheap Hungarian carrier and offers tons of flights out of Budapest all over Europe.
Since the flag carrier, Malév[1], went bust -- in no small part due to the machinations of Wizz -- it's also the only airline with a direct route to many important destinations, such as Berlin.
So for the purposes of "cheap carrier screws you over" you could substitute EasyJet or RyanAir or whatever and have the same story, but with Wizzair you also have a lot of people flying it for business purposes because it's the only way to get to Berlin in under three hours.
And I've heard from a lot of friends who had their Wizz tickets unceremoniously cancelled this summer, so not surprise to see someone mention it here.
> Imagine if an airline overbooked/cancelled on you and just said fuck off, find a new flight, here's your credit.
This happened to me around 2014, mere hours before my flight. I got a call with an automated voice recording that just said "This is United. Your flight has been canceled. Goodbye." and ended. I'm not even joking: that was the message. Your flight has been canceled; goodbye. It was unbelievable. And this was United, not some shady budget carrier. This was a return flight home, having checked out of the hotel, with my bags in the rental car.
>Imagine if an airline overbooked/cancelled on you and just said fuck off, find a new flight, here's your credit.
Unfortunately this has happened to me on more than one occasion on major US carriers. On one occasion I had already taken the first flight, and while away on vacation they cancelled my return flight without explanation, only to offer me a flight that was taking off 3-days later.
These last minute cancels have happened to me so many times on airbnb that I've stopped using it. It's just not reliable. I'd rather get a hotel that basically never cancels than having a rug pulled underneath me days before a trip.
Will wait a year or two to see if this makes airbnb reliable in any form.
I've never actually had it happen to me, but it's one of the reasons I always book a hotel for the first night or two of a longer international trip, even if we're staying in Airbnbs for the rest of the time. Never want the experience of landing somewhere and having nowhere to stay.
We’ve used AirBnB a number of times and never had a host cancel on us. I assume we’re lucky here. My wife is always really proactive about chatting with the host quite a bit, I wonder if that is an indicator?
Me neither. I think there's a pretty big gulf between "no-frills 1BR in a major city" type rentals and "cutesy 3BR getaway near hiking trails" type rentals. The former are cheap to set up and have a lot of dodgy hosts, and the latter involve a lot more capital to set up.
"Wife" aka female might play a huge part in this. Whenever I need something from customer service, I let my girlfriend handle it. People are almost always very nice towards her while at best neutral towards me.
Who knows what the motives are, but it's happened to me on maybe 5–10% of bookings. I don't recall ever hearing a reason. Definitely frustrating when it happens after a long period of time of being booked.
The host of a friend's new year eye reservation in NYC one canceled less than 24 hours before check in as we were in transit to the city. That was an ordeal but Airbnb made it right by covering the difference for the next available comparable place which was significantly more expensive. Since everything was booked for the holiday, that turned out to be a penthouse.
Hosts seem to cancel if they realize there’s an event they had normal pricing for. I tried airbnb for an F1 race. Booked when I got my tickets. Got cancelled. Host then relisted the dates at a much higher rate. Cool stuff. I still use Airbnb for certain things (when I need a kitchen & laundry) but mostly just use hotels.
In many cases, when traveling with my family, I'd much prefer an AirBnb/vrbo/condo. Our kids are too young to have two rooms, and getting too big to fit into a single room.
I guess a hotel suite could work, but it's generally a lot less space and less convenient. In HBO's White Lotus, the main family has a suite that looks like it would cost several thousand a night, but the teenage son is sleeping on a cot in the kitchen. In that scenario, having a 2-4 bedroom condo or home would be much preferable than an ultra luxury suite.
We've rented an Airbnb home basically on the beach in Kauai. No comparison to any hotel at any price in terms of comfort. In Italy, we've rented an Airbnb that had a bedroom hidden behind a bookshelf. For a five year old kid, it was like the coolest thing ever.
My kids broke an IKEA vase while there and the host asked for EUR 100 saying it had sentimental value. I countered EUR 50 (it probably cost 15 but it takes time and effort to replace things) and they accepted…
Another great VRBO experience was renting a house on a lake. Our friends had a house on the other side of the lake. Every morning my wife would drive around the lake with one kid, and me and another kid would row across to meet our friends. These experiences aren't possible with a hotel, at any price.
I've also stayed in an AirBnb that had cockroaches. We changed places the next day, switching to a place that was more than twice the price but infinitely better.
In short, I'd say that hotels and specific hotel brands have more consistency. Airbnbs can be amazing, and there can be horror stories. I guess it's like traveling to new places, foreign places. Much safer to stay with what you know, but you might be missing out on a lot.
For what it's worth, AirBnB does try harder now to find you similar places if your host cancels. Possibly they even eat some of the price difference, if necessary.
That said, I fully approve of raising the penalty on hosts who cancel. A guest who cancels is an annoying lack of income. A host who cancels could result in cancelling an entire trip, or staying in a terrible or even unsafe alternative.
I was supposed to stay at an Airbnb last weekend. I had booked it 3 months in advance, but then 2 weeks before the booking, the host canceled and relisted the place at a higher price. When I messaged the host about it, they said it was Airbnb's fault and gave a confusing explanation that I didn't really believe.
Airbnb refunded the money, but their support only provided me a link to other listings. The prices 2 weeks before my trip were significantly higher than they were 3 months before, but Airbnb wouldn't make any accommodations. I repeatedly called customer support, and every time they would tell me that the case had been escalated and I would receive another call within 24 hours. They never called back, and after spending hours on the phone I eventually got a credit for $170 towards a future listing. The place I ended up booking for the trip cost $1000 more than the original listing.
I've never had this experience with AirBnB - although I have had some crappy ones, but not nearly this bad.
I was just in the process of booking a car on Turo yesterday for the first time in a while, though, and did see a ton of listings where the owner says things like "go read these rules that are linked from my profile page; if you don't follow them to the letter I won't hesitate to cancel your booking last-minute"
Pretty offputting, honestly. If I could stomach driving automatics I'd just go to Enterprise.
When you first sign up as a host they turn on a feature where guest can auto book without you having to approve. My first guest booked at 7:30 pm for a checking at 10
This literally happened to me yesterday for a trip I'm leaving for in 3 days. The best part is that it's the second time I've been canceled on for this same trip. Naturally everywhere that isn't already booked up is 2-3x the price now. Just a huge hassle.
Hosts don't necessarily know all of the events that will bring in crowds.
So they book early for a guaranteed $x. Then if they see that market rates for nearby units rose to n*$x, it makes sense for them to cancel and rebook at that rate.
This happened to me in Boston. I was going to run the marathon and knew that I needed to book way ahead to ensure I could get a decent room, whether hotel or AirBNB. I booked an apartment in Back Bay. Two weeks later, the host realized it was going to be marathon weekend and tried to triple my price. When I refused his offer, he canceled me.
Fortunately, it was still early enough that I was able to book a hotel near the finish line. Unfortunately, that hotel ended up be the host of all of the press and press conferences when someone bombed the finish area.
Or fine double market rate for nearby substitutes.
Bonus points if they make it so that the host can't book anything on the days on and around the cancellation date. After all, if the host cancelled, then it has to be because there's a major issue preventing the place from being use by guests, right ;). Maybe a two-week blackout period.
Or just prohibit the host from offering it to new guest when they cancel. If I rent a place for a week and they cancel on me the day before, don't allow another rental through Airnbnb for that week.
Airbnb isn’t the only platform, so it’s unclear that even if Airbnb started trying to do this (which they likely wouldn’t, hosts are their source if income) that the host wouldn’t rebook on VRBO, Homeaway, etc.
I think this is actually the majority of the cancels. A host lists their unit on a bunch of different platforms (sometimes the same platform) with different costs and cancels all but the most expensive one last minute.
Or have fines proportional to the damage that cancellation causes. If I planned a vacation around being able to stay at your property and you cancel last minute, you've got to pay for reasonably comparable alternative accommodations. If none exist, refund me the cost of my plane ticket and any non refundable excursions I've already booked. If they can't guarantee their property will be available with high enough probability to risk those costs, why would I want to risk those costs while booking it?
Alternatively could a host allow you to check-in and then kick you out shortly afterwards ?
For example, on July 3 the the house cleaner for the AirBnB next door to my condo claimed they "kicked out" the guest on because they had more than 3(?) people over. When I asked her the eviction tactics she was vague and said "phone calls were made and AirBnB has a process". It seemed like a low bar to evict someone at a beach property during a holiday weekend and from my perspective those guests were just fine. Could a host just fabricate a violation such as "the neighbors are complaining about noise" and skip the $1000 fee ?
There is probably a lot more "cancellations" recently give inflation and Covid hence the update to AirBnB policy.
I'm sure many booked holidays a year ago at great rates when people couldn't travel and hosts desperately needed cash flow. Now that bookings are approaching (hotels do this as well) hosts are cancelling bookings and selling them to others who will pay a much higher price.
Sorry Airbnb, you've screwed too many people too many times. You've allowed, even enabled hosts to abuse travelers. I'm not rolling the dice anymore. The last straw for me was last year traveling to NYC for Christmas. The host refused to contact us back, never a peep from the host. Airbnb fought us tooth and nail in terms of refund. How am I going to put small children on a plane and hope everything is fine when we land? They didn't care. They were doing everything they could for the host. Finally after 3 days of arguing back and forth one of the off shore customer service representatives gave us a refund.
I shouldn't have to spend 12 hours on the phone over the course of three days, having my vacation completely ruined, just to get what I deserve which was my money back.
Thankfully I haven’t had this bad of an experience but I agree with the sentiment. It’s good for “luxury” rentals like a whole craftsman house for 10 people in an interesting part of the country. For short notice/basic stays I have had a much better experience with Hotel Tonight and standard travel deal sites.
I think the biggest issue is that the three way dynamic between guests, hosts, and AirBnB leads to weird situations where the guest needs to thread the needle between everyone else’s rules and pass through rules on a rental that represents very little margin for anyone involved above you. It’s easy to run afoul of them and get a bad rating or fine. There are the extra fees that are not shown by search results that may make the stay cost more than a hotel. And often the “it has a kitchen” remark means a bunch of single serving oats, a kettle, and a toaster. A random hotel breakfast has as much variety.
I'm done with them as well. ~10 years ago, it was a novel, fun way to travel and meet new people. Now it's become a business for many hosts and it shows. I have never appreciated a hotel room as much as I do now, having gone through the AirBNB gauntlet one time too many.
Doing Airbnb over hotels also contributes greatly to city housing shortages and gentrification. Major US cities have large swaths of apartment units sitting empty, held by some management company to rent out as a pseudo-hotel room.
I won’t disagree with this take, but why should I care about any of this? The reason I don’t own a house is because prices are so high. But my solution is to just live like a local wherever I want and pay someone else’s mortgage. It’s a lifestyle that suits me and I have the cash flow to do it. Do I care that I am in a house next to some owner who doesn’t want me there? You own a house and I don’t, so screw you. I know this sounds a bit nasty but I am offering a genuine take that puts airbnb as sort of a weapon between the haves (house owners) and have nots (nomads).
I think you focus on the neighbors alone, in which case I can understand the "f you" point of view.
From my POV one reason to care about is because AirBnB is making it harder for the "have nots" to become "haves": those that could have afforded their starter house suddenly can't because available properties are now AirBnBs, and those that could have rented near their work must now live further away, taking hours off their free time. Meanwhile, the "haves" reap more cash with less effort.
> I am offering a genuine take that puts airbnb as sort of a weapon between the haves (house owners) and have nots (nomads).
AirBnB is one of the weapons being used to keep you as a have not, though. You're basically helping to pay for the rent increases that are keeping you as a have not.
You're paying many times the mortgage payment to rent these homes in violation of zoning laws prohibiting them from operating as commercial properties and you're angry at the result?
I am not angry at anyone. If I can’t afford to own a home or don’t have the job stability for it then I am happy to pay for short term flexibility (vs renting long term) and live anywhere. It is more just a “dont give a fuck” attitude to home owners because I aint one
Gentrification and housing shortage is caused by bad policy. That's the root of the problem. Enforcement of existing zoning regulations, and also zoning regulations that dramatically under-provision the city for number of homes.
I likewise had a horrible experience where 5 hours before check-in the host asked me to send an additional $1k as a “deposit” over Venmo before giving me the key code, I had multiple other people arriving as well. Needless to say Airbnb support was useless so I ended up paying. And upon arrival the apartment was not even close to what was advertised. When I left a review detailing my experience Airbnb took down my review. I had to do a chargeback on my credit card to get back my deposit since Airbnb was also completely useless in this regard.
Never using Airbnb ever again. Hotels know how to treat people correctly.
That's a nightmare-level experience! The scary part about AirBnB is how differently hosts can handle things.
I've used AirBnB only once exactly for these reasons. That uncertainty is killer when I'm gonna be staying in a city where I don't know anyone who lives there and can help me get out of a jam. There's a piece of mind to getting a hotel and knowing for sure that I will have somewhere to stay. If something goes wrong, there's a company policy I can review that has explicit steps for recourse.
I have experienced something similar as well. I was visiting NYC, and the place we booked did not look anything like the online listing showed. Regardless, the hosts were nice and helpful, so I left them a 5 star rating on all parameters except cleanliness. This was the first time rated something on Airbnb that is not 5 stars, and I have travelled quite a bit before.
Few weeks after that I receive racist messages from the host on my personal cellphone. I am shocked Airbnb would share my personal details just like that. I reported it to Airbnb, but they were pretty clueless as this was happening outside their messaging system. I finally had to share screenshots of the text messages, and they said they will take down the hosts account. They did for sometime, but after a couple of months that host's account is still live and his place is still accepting reservations. My review has been taken down though.
Before then I didn't know AirBnb was moderating bad reviews in such an aggressive way. Good reviews mean nothing if all the bad ones are automatically taken down. It's ridiculous, and made me very wary of ever booking again with them.
(There's an interview of Bezos somewhere where he explains that when starting Amazon, publishing houses were complaining to him about the bad book reviews, and he told them something to the effect of: it's because we let bad reviews up that people trust us. Obviously things have changed and Amazon reviews aren't what they used to be, but still. Bezos in 1997 understood something that AirBnb fails to grasp.)
I would say hotels are better in general, sure, but there's plenty of exceptions.
The worst for me was a hotel in Paris I booked via Booking.com. It was completely different from the announced, and had several issues, such as having an outside bathroom without a lockable door. Luckily it closed during the pandemic.
Booking.com not only fought tooth and nail to charge me, claiming to my credit card that I needed to be charged since I "actually stayed at the hotel", but they then deleted my review claiming that "I didn't stay at the hotel". The key to getting a chargeback was sending the email of the deleted review to the credit card company.
Today I just search using Booking.com but make reservations via phone.
The problem is not AirBnB or Booking.com. The problem is "internet companies". They all suck.
I learned (the hard way), that hotels have "ghetto rooms," that they can't book out to other guests (think next to the elevators or vending, or with dysfunctional amenities).
If you book with one of the booking agencies (I will not name the two that I used), the hotel will often give you one of these rooms, off the bat. You can complain, and they'll get you another one, but that is not something that you want to do, when you just checked in at 11PM, and your first meeting is at 8AM, the next morning.
BTW: Hotels are not supposed to do that, but they do, anyway. It's hard to prove.
Every hotel has 'good' and 'bad' rooms in this sense, and they will absolutely prefer putting their loyal/higher-paying/most-likely to complain[1] guests into the 'good' ones. The 'bad' ones are often the last on the list to get filled.
[1] That's because if the front-desk guy/gal has any agency in this, they will absolutely not try to put a Karen into a bad room. Because they don't want to deal with his/her freakout over the noise of the vending machine, or the elevator, or some other factor that they can't control, but will get the guest to complain to management.
I'm not up to doing that, because lawyers. Also, the fault really lies with the hotels; not the booking services (one hotel was in London, another in Manhattan).
However, if you search the English alphabet for the letters between "N" and "Q," you are likely to find the first letter of the name of each booking service (not hotel).
Well, I choose not to post anonymously. As a result, I am more careful about what I "say" online, than many (Actually, a lot of folks that think they are "anonymous," are not, in fact, "anonymous," if a Big Dog gets pissed at them).
Of course, I've had pretty bad [1] hotel rooms booking directly with major chains as well.
[1] Bad as in little or no natural lighting, unusually small, etc. Some of the time a tall big city hotel abuts other buildings and has a lightwell and, especially on the lower floors, things can be pretty dark.
In these kinds of situations, I prefer to just dispute the transaction through my bank, get a temporary credit for the full amount (with Capital One at least), and let my bank investigate it. Most of the time this will be the end of it but in some cases you will need to provide additional documents/info to settle the dispute.
Now that I'm reading all these horrible experiences, I'm wondering why there isn't a review system for businesses where I can read about such issues? I guess Trustpilot has a rating for Airbnb, but it's not very well known. How else could we make other consumers aware of such cases?
Their competition isn't much better, either. I spent ~3 months trying to get a refund for a canceled booking from VRBO, that the host happily and enthusiastically provided. VRBO kept the money until I started trashing them online, then all of a sudden my case was escalated to someone who could correct the problem. For everyone who has sworn off Company X, there is someone else who has sworn off Company Y.
I've currently got a month-long AirBNB booking coming up and every day I cross my fingers and pray for no surprises. I don't remember ever having this kind of uncertainty and anxiety when booking with a plain old hotel.
The reason AirBNB will always have garbage service is because the hosts are their moneymakers, not you. The host has the property, the host sets the price, the host assumes all responsibility (even if they often do not live up to those responsibilities).
You're just one more weary traveler who will be near-instantly replaced by someone else, so fuck you.
This is also why I've never once booked with AirBNB, and why I've always booked a hotel wherever I travel. Yes, it's more expensive. It's also guaranteed. I also get someone to clean my room everyday. I also don't have to worry about walking into the kitchen and seeing an entire sink full of dirty dishes. I don't have to worry about a random teenager in the hotel taking up my bathroom for an hour. I don't have to worry about another teenage following me around and talking to me. I don't have to worry about the bathroom being dirty, and I don't have to worry about seeing a roach in the house.
What I just described was the experience of a former Marine buddy of mine who booked a 6 week stay in Plantation, FL. He was moving down here from Brooklyn, NY and needed a place to stay until his apartment with ready. The AirBNB provider he booked with labeled a SuperHost.
If that's what a SuperHost rental gets you, I'm totally uninterested in seeing what anything less gets you. I'd rather stay at a Motel 6.
"SuperHost" is such a joke because most of them are professional airbnb managers who don't actually own the properties. If they're good at their jobs maybe they would only accept properties that meet some standard, but from what I've seen they will work with anyone who will pay them.
This is the Amazon quandary: your core product is ostensibly "quality" (from an end user perspective), but at some point you've consumed the total available market of quality sellers...
So AirBnB has to keep allowing (and encouraging) property management companies, because no one else can bring them the volume they need to grow.
The only use case where AirBNB sort of makes sense is for poor young solo travelers (like backpackers) as an alternative to hostels. I can't understand why anyone would even consider it for a business trip or family vacation. What are those travelers thinking? Like I seriously don't understand why anyone would take that kind of risk instead of making a reservation with a real hotel. Caveat emptor.
To me a hotel and an airbnb are 2 totally different products. I prefer using airbnb (or vrbo) because I can get an entire house (yes I know this is technically possible with a hotel, but typically not) with a kitchen, multiple bedrooms, etc.
And I shouldn't jinx myself, but I've used Airbnbs on every trip I've taken, and I've yet to run into a real show stopping problem. Not saying it doesn't happen, just pointing out that it's not as frequent as you are making it out to be.
I'd say one thing in favour of an AirBnB type rental is having a kitchen where you can cook your own food... I find on holiday sometimes it's quite nice to just have some "normal" food at home rather than eating out all the time.
I'd rather book a proper dedicated rental flat from another platform than someone's random flat on AirBnB these days though, after all the horror stories (personally I've never had an issue).
Edit: I read another comment lower down talking about hotel rooms with a kitchen. Personally never encountered this, maybe it's a US thing, but that could be an OK solution if it included all the stuff you need to cook a basic meal.
Responding to your edit comment:
I've found hotels and apartment-hotels with kitchen or kitchenettes through Expedia and their subsidiaries in Germany, Poland, Mexico, and Brazil. Agoda offers similar features, but I've not tried it out yet.
They're usually well stocked with most of the things needed for a basic meal.
I use them versus AirBnB because they seem to look out for me very well. I've had minor hassle getting a refund only once in last twelve years, but they did come through for me. I also like the simple reward program. They've added some fees in the last few years, but it's still good.
Ah yeah good point, I forgot about “aparthotels”. They’re a pretty good in between, a nice Airbnb can be nicer but an aparthotel is probably more reliable.
In the contrary, AirBnb only makes sense for a larger group of people. For solo travel, hostels or hotels offer much better value. But for a group of 3-5 friends, it's often significantly less expensive to book an apartment then multiple hotel rooms, and you get a kitchen to cook in to boot.
If you pick the least expensive option then you can expect some problems. Marriott Residence Inn hotels are located near most major US destinations, and can accommodate groups of 5 in a suite with a kitchen. This may be slightly more expensive than an AirBNB, but they won't randomly cancel your reservation and there are trained staff on the property to resolve issues.
I should have mentioned, I don't have any experience with the USA. In Europe, I don't think you have any realistic chance of finding a hotel offering a room for 5 people, except ultra-luxury suites. At least nowhere that is actually inside a city.
If you think about it, that's more or less the original idea. Affordable accommodation for young solo travelers. People that do not have the time and energy to face the inconveniences of Airbnb's are better off in a hotel after all. When I book an airbnb I do not expect to get hotel like service.
Edit: maybe drop the "solo", it's probably not worth it if you don't travel in a group.
Airbnb puts you in a local neighbourhood (not the city centre) and gives you a full apartment and a kitchen so your trip feels a bit more like living in the country. That's the reason I used it, anyway. There are definitely advantages to hotels too.
As a parent, an Airbnb (or any vacation rental) is 100x better than a hotel. We've got 3 young kids, so multiple bedrooms, a kitchen, and a separate common space where adults can hang out after kids are down is absolutely crucial.
The thought of cramming the whole fam into a hotel room, or having little kids sleeping in a separate room (and freaking out alone in the middle of the night) sounds like hell to me.
Hotels are fine for business travel for me, where I don't care much about the space and just need a clean, reliable place to sleep.
But hotels have all of those options. "Hotels" I've stayed at include a place in Ireland with standalone 3 bedroom houses, two bedroom extended stay suites with kitchens and living rooms around America, etc.
> The only use case where AirBNB sort of makes sense
Here's a weird case where AirBNB might make more sense than a hotel:
I have a medical cannabis licence. Hotels don't seem to like the idea of me vapourising cannabis indoors, but an AirBNB host might be okay with it if I ask first (assuming otherwise legal in the area).
Just don’t ask. They won’t hit you with a cleaning fee because vaping doesn’t leave the stink that cigs do. And vaping is basically not only socially acceptable but most likely socially encouraged by your average hotel worker.
AirBnB makes sense from my experience for a very select set of experiences which require considerable research. In these situations, I wasn't optimizing for lower costs which most travelers are probably doing. Examples:
1. Several nights on a houseboat in Amsterdam.
2. Two weeks in Cape May, NJ in a walkable location to the beach with enough space to bring kids, laundry facilities, and a garden to entertain friends joining us.
3. Long weekend with extended family in the middle of Harper's Ferry, WV.
Finding and organizing these experiences would be harder without AirBnB. There is no way I'd use AirBnB for a regular trip though.
>I wasn't optimizing for lower costs which most travelers are probably doing
I suspect that, as with many other marketplaces with suppliers of widely differing quality (e.g. Amazon), there are a lot of people who optimize for price and then are surprised when they get burned on deals that seem too good to be true.
I book AirBnBs (and VRBOs) for work retreats fairly regularly. Going to one next month, in fact.
Rent a huge house (8+BR, 6+ bath, 3500-5000 ft²), bring the leadership team together to live and work together for a couple of intense days. In Monday evening, cook dinner together, work Tues/Wed, leave Thursday AM.
There’s no hotel-equivalent that I’m aware of. (And given that it covers 3 nights’ accommodations and cheaper meals for 8-ish people, it’s notably cheaper than a hotel and restaurants in almost every case.)
I've used Airbnb in the following places, usually traveling as a couple for vacation. Domestically, with our dog as well. We like Airbnb for more space (proper living room, sofa, etc) and a kitchen during extended stays.
- Iceland, flat in Reykjavik, 5 day trip. Kitchen and more space vs hotel, similar cost.
- Italy, flat in Florence, 5 day trip, part of longer trip, used hotels in Rome and Riccione. Lower cost, kitchen, more space vs hotel
- Scotland, cottages in Portree and Stornaway, 5 days each, used hotels in Fort William and Inverness (1 night each). Less expensive, more space, full kitchen vs hotels in this area.
- Roanoke VA, 3 night weekend, dog allowed, kitchen and more space, lower cost vs hotel
- Mt Rogers VA, 7 day, no hotels nearby, plus dog
- St Michaels MD, 3 day weekend, dog, kitchen, limited hotels in town (though plenty on the outskirts)
- Emerald Isle, NC - house, 3 day weekend, needed 4 dogs and 2 couples, and kitchen
- Cape Canaveral, FL - flat, 14 days, needed kitchen and dog alllowance
- Cocoa Beach, FL - house, needed 2 couples, 1 solo, and 4 dogs, plus kitchen
Maybe I'm being naive, but filtering to Superhosts and entire home, then checking for multiple listings and high ratings seems to work ok. And for big cities, I'd probably just get a hotel, since Airbnb is likely to be a small flat anyway.
I think can explain one possible reason. tl;dr: For long stays, as hotels typically don't offer home-like experience.
I have two typical modes of travel.
One is a short (1-2 week) trip somewhere, for some business (work or personal). A hotel is totally fine, but I still check both hotels and Airbnb for price and feature comparison. In this scenario I don't need a proper kitchen but I still want a microwave, a proper table, a decent chair, and good Internet connectivity - which sound like some basics but aren't exactly common. But, yeah, a hotel is typically a good option. Airbnb quality seem to degrade, so I'm typically looking at the hotels those days. E.g. my last trip was to San Diego, CA and Airbnb offerings I've seen were much worse (based on my personal preferences) than similarly priced hotels.
The other mode is multiple months of living somewhere else - like as in "digital nomad". Hotels typically cease to work for this purpose. For those scenario I want a full apartment (or a house) to myself, I don't need any room service (I can wipe dust and vacuum on my own, thank you), but I want something comparable to home. A full kitchen (with a dishwasher and an oven), a good working area (separate area - ideally a dedicated room, with favorable lighting conditions, normal height sturdy table, an ergonomic chair, etc.), a separate rest area (comfy non-leather couch and a correctly placed big TV with an accessible HDMI input), proximity to a grocery store, etc. It is very hard to find merely a suitable place - I spend multiple days, sometimes weeks, going through the listings, looking at the photos, checking neighborhoods etc. - but at least there's a chance to find something. I do check hotels (because why not) but most of the time they're simply not an option at all - they're tailored for very different use cases and simply don't offer this kind of service. And, well, my other alternatives are local classifieds and searching Google Maps for advertised rentals (which I do), but at least Airbnb has some standards so it's my first option. Last year I had a 2-month trip to Tbilisi, Georgia and the apartments I've found on Airbnb were almost perfect - I'm sure my experience would've been worse (and significantly costlier) if we would've stayed in a hotel.
Best kind of Airbnb is when a host had a place for themselves to live, but their circumstances had changed (e.g. they bought a second property) and now they're renting it out. Such places are simply made for living. Worst kind is a property bought specifically for renting out.
So here's how I attack these issues you've mentioned:
Extended Stay America. Almost every large city has one ("large" defined as more than 100,000 - 200,000 people). You can book for months at a time if necessary. They have WiFi at all locations, however...
I just donate to The Calyx Institute. My $750 pledge bought me a year of Sprint (now T-Mobile, and far more reliable) cellular access with a 5G WiFi hotspot and absolutely no data cap, ever. I ran 1.1 TiB through that access point one month and never had a moment's trouble. Long story short, Sprint bought Clearwire, Clearwire had a deal with the federal government to provide non-profits with cheap unlimited (actual unlimited) 4G / LTE hotspots and no fuckery (no slow-downs after X gigabytes transferred, no "preferred tier" customers like how MVNOs are second tier to the host provider). When Sprint bought Clearwire, the Feds only approved it with the provision Sprint had to honor the deal. Now that T-Mobile owns Sprint, they have to also honor the deal.
I've added a bit to my comment after the initial posting - an example of my last long-term stay. It was in Georgia (Sakartvelo, not the US state), and it's a good but developing country - to best of my awareness they don't really have anything similar, or at least my searches hadn't found it. So I suppose it depends on a country.
But you're absolutely correct, Extended Stay America is probably a very good option. When I've immigrated to the US, it was very high on my list. I still went with an Airbnb because I needed to find a new permanent home anyway (so I was renting short-term only as I was looking for a job), and Airbnb was in a more favorable location as I needed things in a walking distance (had no never driven a car at the time, hah), and maybe that was a mistake - it was OK but not exactly great. Anyway, I do have a home in the US now (and love the country) and I'm not really exploring the country just yet - but if/when I'll have a long-term trip somewhere else here, I'll definitely consider Extended Stay America. So far my US trips were all fairly short though.
And thanks for the tip about The Calyx Internet Membership. I don't have use for this right now, but this might come in handy!
BTW, does anyone know - is there something similar in Mexico, in safe(r) areas, ideally a gated community? This is the next country life is sending me to - because of some family circumstances I'll have spend some months down there...
The first city I checked, DC, does not (listed in Google's hotel search). The suburbs have several, but that's a terrible option if don't want to "commute" during the trip. Downtown DC does have other chains that are extended stay, but I haven't found a good way to search for "hotel with a kitchen and living room" - basically requiring me to know which brands have those amenities.
Recently stayed in hotels in Seattle and Sunnyvale, CA for a few nights. The one in Seattle greeted us at the reception with "we don't do room service", even though we were staying for a week and it was about 300/night. Ridiculous.
Sunnyvale was a Hilton garden Inn and while uninspired, was completely fine - clean and quiet.
Partly why I just stick with the chains, at least for now. Very very predictable, and while you won't get the best experience at the hotel, you get a lot of guarantees that it at least won't be a bad experience.
Maybe this will be different when I'm traveling more for the sake of traveling, but for the most part I'm traveling to see something specific in a city rather than the city at large.
Are you talking about daily housekeeping or actual room service (food delivery)? In all my life, I've never ordered room service as it is criminally expensive.
The last few hotels I've stayed at, including one in Seattle, didn't do housekeeping unless you were staying more than 2 nights and then only on request. They would happily send up more towels or whatever you need but were limiting the number of rooms they actually entered each day. Covid was the excuse but really I think it was short staffing.
Either way, I'm shocked that they would refuse to clean your room for a week. Of course, if you didn't ask, they won't.
When I was in a hotel last time, there was no room service either, but that's fine for me as long as clean towels and bed sheets are provided at the lobby whenever I need.
I haven't been staying in a lot of hotels recently but not servicing rooms has been pretty common over the past year in my experience. (Ostensibly because of COVID.)
Hotels aren’t necessarily more expensive for short travels unless you are booking some of the bottom end airbnbs. For long stays though airbnb almost always wins out.
AirBNB is now almost as expensive as a hotel in the city centre. There are some very nice properties, but increasingly a lot of crappy properties - flats converted into multiple airbnb 'apartments', bare minimum furniture, often in dodgy areas, and your neighbours are also airbnb tenants so expect lots of noise.
For this reason I also have gone back to hotels unless I'm booking a place for more than 2 weeks. Airbnb often has a monthly discount so remains a decent place for long stays, although if you put in the work (and pay cash) you can usually find cheaper options.
I wonder how hotels could do this effectively and safely.
Include a mini-kitchen with 2 burners and a small counter. Burners are disabled but could be enabled by request, or some keypad on the wall (child proofed). You can pick up a box of kitchen supplies (pots, knives, etc) from the front desk or request room service to cart them up.
Put the supplies back in the box before you leave (box is lined with a rubbermaid dish bin).
This would offset the cost of furnishing each room with supplies, while also killing one of airbnb's value props.
The place I've stayed at in London a fair number of times calls itself a "serviced apartment" and includes a kitchenette. I don't really use it much other than the refrigerator but it's there and I've stayed there with a friend who would cook eggs in the morning.
I'm pretty sure some of the suite-style chains in the US do as well.
In Oz, you can often and easily find rooms in an ordinary motel that has pots and pans, a little 2 element cooktop/oven combo & a sink. They're more expensive to rent of course, but they're very widely available.
We also have serviced apartments, designed for the longer stays, but are generally only to be found on the cities.
Yep, that's why more and more countries or cities are banning short-term rentals. Imagime living in an avrage apartment building, and your neighbor decides to rent out the apartment to airbnbers, every few days, a new group of people, partying all day and night long, not caring about neighbors, and in the meantime, the property prices are rising sky high, becuase every apartment in remotly touristy areas is bought up immediatly to serve as an airbnb rental property.
I was looking for long term stays in an Airbnb while waiting for my apartment to be ready in a cross state move. I was baffled at the amount of listing that looked like duplicates - until I realized that they were massive houses carved up into multiple “rent a room” offers. I can’t imagine traveling and renting just a room and finding a bunch of travelers living there too.
Renting out just a room in your house seems ok. My cousin did this when she bought a house to help cover the expenses after she lost a job, but to book out the whole house as some sort of crappy hostel seems unbearable.
My girlfriend went to Italy a couple of years back with her kid, kid's friend and kid's friend's mom. They rented something they thought would be nice (according to reviews) in Italy. Two women, two girls - it was worse than a hostel. I ended up having to use booking.com to find them somewhere reasonable yet nice because they didn't feel safe. Airbnb ended up crediting them back the stay.
AirBNB is terrible as a place to stay, but it's great for destination vacations. If you are having a family vacation with 10 people it's a lot more fun to be in a big house than in 4 hotel rooms.
> The reason AirBNB will always have garbage service is because the hosts are their moneymakers, not you.
I don't share the same opinion.
This is the fault of Airbnb, they chose to operate that way, it's not a market force.
Take Uber (not a marvellous company or service, but certainly better for consumers): drivers own cars, they choose when and how long to drive, they're the money makers.
Yet, I've never experienced bullshit service from Uber as I have with Airbnb. The same for everyone I've talked about this around me.
How many hosts are in the area you're staying, open and available for your travel time range, with the same quality and amenities that you want?
Who cares what kind of uber car you get? There are thousands of them, and they just get you from point A to B.
I tried Airbnb once, only to find out just before departure that the host had booked the place for someone else on VRBO. (I only found out because I asked the host a question about parking!)
Eh. As an Airbnb host, honestly I've never been given any slack by Airbnb. Maybe they've made some recent changes, but in my experience they pretty much always side with the guest even over minor things and I'm the one that has to fight tooth and nail for fair treatment when a guest abuses my house or breaks the rules.
Hotels are definitely nice if you like the pampering they provide (e.g. clean your room everyday), but the value of Airbnb is getting amenities and space of a house for an affordable rate. Good luck booking a hotel suite (w/ kitchen, common room, etc) without paying insane rates north of 1k a night. That's where Airbnb shines.
Can't speak to your experience, but there are heavy, heavy penalties for the behavior you're describing - you can't just do that carefree as a host. I would probably lose my business if I let that kind of stuff happen even just once or twice.
That being said, shitty hosts are out there. If they have extensive review history and positive remarks (over ~4.7/5.0 rating) it should be fine. I've honestly never had a bad experience as a guest over 5+ years of staying at Airbnbs with that criteria.
> Good luck booking a hotel suite (w/ kitchen, common room, etc) without paying insane rates north of 1k a night.
Isn't this the domain of extended stay hotels, like Residence Inn (Marriott), Staybridge Suites (IHG), and Homewood Suites (Hilton), and serviced apartments? They don't tend to be in the $1k/night range.
It really depends. They may have a lot of charm, but also cut every damn corner with basic things like forks and knives. I've been in a few places that I swear must have purchased their cutlery from some aliexpress outlet for $5 or something. The edges of the forks were razor sharp.
Don't even get started on how few of them clean the dishwasher filter or anything like that. Ever looked at the filter trap on one of those places? Yuk!
> Good luck booking a hotel suite (w/ kitchen, common room, etc)
This seems like a huge luxury that is not needed for most travelers. If you really need the kitchen and entertainment spaces then you're going to pay a lot even with Air BnB ("alot" being super subjective).
For 1-2 nights? Probably not. I don't think having access to a kitchen or sitting area is a "massive luxury" for someone staying a week or longer for a vacation, work, etc. though.
The point is you get these amenities (or at least of them) for around the same price as a hotel room.
In some big markets (New York City or similar), it might be above a hotel room rate, but still a really good deal if you consider the value.
I just feel like there is an adequate "middle option" where you get a hotel room with a den and rely on the breakfast bar / hotel and local restaurants, to plug the gap while still paying the average hotel room price. I could see marginal cost savings cooking, but even the price of groceries (especially when not local-savvy) is quite high.
This is the common scenario if you have multiple family members who want to jointly rent a house. A hotel doesn't quite cut it for that. Granted you can all book at the same hotel but it isn't the same as renting a whole house for a week.
I am in the same boat. Never booked with them and probably never will. I will pay more for hotel chains to get predictable service, and a help desk to talk to.
When I go on a vacation with the family the last thing I need is some unpredictable situation with a shady host and then fighting overseas AirBnB support for refunds.
But most people don't appear to prefer Airbnb to anything else? Hotels are still a far larger market than airbnb, 5-10x as big in revenue, in number of rooms that exist, in almost any metric - and that doesn't even take into account that there are tons of hotels listed on airbnb now.
Yes... because this is just one in a litany of horror stories that I have:
* Read about online
* Heard about personally from friends & family
Do you need to step in a pile of shit personally to realize it's unpleasant, or would you rather take the word of the people who already stepped in it?
I have used AirBnB on at least 20 different occasions and had almost entirely fantastic experiences (and maybe 3 sub par ones). So you can add that to your anecdotal evidence.
I'll be honest, I'm not interested in hearing about entirely fantastic experiences; indulge me while I explain why.
When I'm traveling, if you want to entice me to use your AirBNB, you need to provide - at the minimum - an exactly equivalent or superior experience to what I can get at a hotel, and for a cheaper price. If you can't, then logically there's zero reason for me to book a stay with you. Why would I pay more for less service? That isn't logical.
Yes, I understand some things are, more or less, impossible to do with an AirBNB (I don't expect turndown service, or room service for instance). However, most other things that a hotel could offer, I would expect, such as a coffee maker, a mini-fridge, a microwave, Internet connectively, and perhaps printer access (after all, a color laser printer isn't prohibitively expensive, and the toner makes usage cheap).
Everything I mentioned I can get at an Extended Stay America, or a Residence Inn, or some other long-term hotel-like setting. As for actual hotels, I can frequently get either better service, or a more extensive suite of services, many of which are complimentary, some of which are available for small fees and which no AirBNB could ever realistically offer.
Now having said all this...
I'm only interested in unpleasant stories. I only want to hear about when things go wrong. Because just like a good site reliability manager, I'm looking for 99.999999% uptime. I expect everything to go smoothly, always. And when it doesn't, I expect, at the minimum, steps taken to rectify the situation, and if the situation becomes an inconvenience to me bordering on a disruption of stay, then I expect a refund. These are all areas where AirBNB is significantly worse than large hotel chains - even the modest hotel chains like Holiday Inn or Microtel or Motel 6.
This reminds me of Ron White's bit about staying at The Ritz Carlton in Atlanta...
"I get to Atlanta and I check into the Ritz Carlton Hotel. And, uh, the next morning I go to take a shower and there's no hot water. And I called the front desk and I tell the girl at the front desk, I said, 'There's no hot water.' The girl at the front desk said, 'Sometimes there's no hot water.' Didn't I just tell you that? I said, 'I've stayed at $20 a night motels. The water was so hot you could cook your nuts with it.' She goes, 'Well, every once in a while, everybody will wake up at the same time and they all take a shower at the same time and we run smack outta hot water.' You guys didn't think about that? They thought about it at the Motel 6. But that whole concept of people wake up in the morning with shit to do got right by the Ritz Carlton Hotel?"
This is why I'm interested in hearing where it all goes wrong, when, and why. No hot water in a $500 a night hotel is completely unacceptable, anywhere, anytime, ever. There's nothing you could say to me that will change my mind.
"Power went out, sir." Well where the fuck is your backup generator and why isn't it running?
"There's something wrong with the natural gas lines, sir." Well why don't you have an on-site backup tank for these situations?
"Everyone woke up and took a shower at the same time!" Well why the fuck don't you have secondary boilers that monitor the primary ones and anticipate and correct for that?
"Internet access is down sir." Why the fuck don't you have multiple connections with failover to ensure connectivity is maintained?
This is why I want a hotel and not an AirBNB. AirBNB doesn't have the scale to deal with these kinds of issues because it's essentially Hotel Uber. I understand not everyone is this exacting. That's fine. That's more than fine. More power to you, book on AirBNB all day every day if you want to. But I'm not going to, because I&#x...
I guess some people don't enjoy a little adventure. I commented in this thread elsewhere that AirBnB is a risk/reward proposition. The rewards can be awesome for those who take the (carefully calculated) risk.
> The reason AirBNB will always have garbage service is because the hosts are their moneymakers, not you. The host has the property, the host sets the price, the host assumes all responsibility (even if they often do not live up to those responsibilities).
I disagree. The marketplace is the moneymaker. It would be like saying that app makers are the moneymakers, and not the iOS/Android store as a whole marketplace.
> They were doing everything they could for the host.
For some reason AirBnb is very protective of their hosts. I had a bad experience a few months ago with a so-called "Superhost" where the property didn't match the description or the reviews. After my stay I left a negative review (my first ever; always left very nice reviews before then).
Well... AirBnB simply removed the review, for completely bogus and irrelevant reasons.
Made me extremely suspicious of any listing; it will probably be a long time before I book again.
>For some reason Airbnb is very protective of their hosts
The host is Airbnb's customer, listings are non-exclusive (e.g. VRBO), and switching costs for hosts are low. The hosts bring an extraordinarily valuable asset (real estate) and without the hosts, Airbnb has no business.
You are the hosts' customer. You might argue that without the renter, there is no business, but that's true irrespective of the platform. Those hosts will list somewhere and get renters, as long as there's a market.
Presumably, bad hosts (not Airbnb) would take the hit of offering a poor experience over time, and better hosts would prevail. So, Airbnb's goal is to stay out of that fray and keep as many hosts as possible on their platform in order to capture as much revenue as possible from the good hosts, as well as any revenue available from hosts on the descent.
Yes, that's probably right. But they are slowly (or not so slowly) destroying their brand for short-term gains. It doesn't sound clever, or sustainable.
One solution might be for all listing platforms to outsource reviews to the same third-party, and get out of the business of moderating reviews. It's really a conflict of interest, so this would eliminate the pressure and incentive to whitewash.
There's always another fool who has yet to be burned bad enough ready to roll the AirBnB dice. Guest churn is expected. But no hosts in an area means AirBnB has nothing to offer in the area.
Had this same experience - my girlfriend and I booked an AirBNB for New Years roughly 5 years ago. I spent considerably more than a hotel on the AirBNB for a luxury highrise condo. We show up, host is MIA. Of course trying to book anything on New Years in NYC is like pulling teeth. I had been using AirBNB for years before I realized that my only hotel experience had been cheap Holiday Inns and I had bought into the marketing that Airbnbs were universally better in my early 20s. When it works its great, when it doesn't, the stress alone makes the whole thing not worth it. I haven't used Airbnb since.
When Airbnb is bad, it's really bad. You're gambling with the possibility of completely ruining whatever trip you had in mind. I've had both cases where a host cancelled last minute and also where I tried to cancel months in advance and was denied. Both of those experiences cost me more than I'll ever save by using Airbnb in my lifetime. I'm never using Airbnb again if I can help it. The last time I booked a hotel I felt so much less stressed and I realized whatever premium they charge is 100% worth it.
That's probably true. Your chain midrange business hotel probably has some rooms that aren't in a great location and maybe it's a bit overdue for a refresh. But I can't remember the last time I had a genuine problem with a hotel whether room availability or billing.
I have used Airbnb once. And it was quite pleasant. In a tourist area where the hotels were really pricey and this was somewhat cheaper (though not cheap)/likely better. So it worked out. But I'm aware it's probably a bit of a crapshoot.
> You're gambling with the possibility of completely ruining whatever trip you had in mind.
Exactly. Landing in a new city with the family, taking time off work and then gambling on some random guy with a house coming through and not ripping us off is just too much risk.
AirBnB might even “fix it” but then we’re running around at night, with suitcases, to a new part of time and then spending days on the phone getting refunds.
Maybe that sounds adventurous and exciting for someone else but just doesn’t work for us.
Airbnb has been more expensive then hotels lately and there is absolutely no reason to book airbnb unless traveling in large groups for larger homes or secluded mountain locations.
Or for stays of more than 2 weeks - airbnbs often have a weekly or monthly option and in certain countries the price isn't too much more than what you'd pay to rent a real property.
Yep.. showed up at my Airbnb in NYC around 8pm. Followed the instructions texted to me by the host, let myself in and waited in the living room with no one around, not sure which room was mine.
Host came after 30 mins to tell me he double booked me and that I had to leave. He could barely make eye contact with me.
!
The only thing airbnb did for me was to give me a coupon for my next booking. It was small, and expired before I was able to use it.
A coupon is such a ridiculous way to try to “make things right” by the customer in that situation. You need a place to sleep. That night. Not some night in the future. Why would someone even use the service again after they’ve been left without a roof over their head?
> Why would someone even use the service again after they’ve been left without a roof over their head?
I still use it.
When the only other option is $300+/night for a hotel, a $100/night airbnb is mighty nice. And I often stay for 1week to 1month, and Airbnb's give a nice discount which I'm not sure hotels would. So often the comparison is.. $2000/month for airbnb, or more like $9000 for a hotel for a month?
That gap is closing in larger cities though. In Toronto it's hard to find an Airbnb where i get the whole place that isn't a basement for under $150/night, so creeping into hotel territory.
I also swore off Airbnb after a couple bad experiences. Then went back to hotels, which are better in their own way, but still couldn’t shake the feeling that I’m getting swindled every time I check into one, between resort fees, $30/day slow wifi, rooms that look nothing like the pics, etc.
Then I realized that the entire travel industry just tries to rip everyone off as much as possible since they know you’re probably only coming to that one destination one time anyway, so they might as well slaughter the cow instead of milking it.
Once the pandemic hit and I couldn’t travel, I realized how much I actually don’t need to travel to have a relaxing vacation. Between airlines packing you in like cattle (if you can even get on a flight on time that hasn’t been delayed/cancelled 7 times first), the TSA, being treated like a drug lord at every border crossing, tourist trap shitty restaurants and hotels manipulating their reviews and every other business in the tourism industry trying to swindle you as much as possible, no thank you. I would need to take additional time off just to recover from the stress of that “vacation.”
Now I just spend travel money on home projects to make my house so good I never want to leave, and couldn’t be happier.
That is a fair opinion but probably not an accurate representation of travel for most people. I've never paid for hotel wifi ever for example. It might be because you're using resorts, where they know you're going to be stuck in that place for a long time and can exploit that to charge more for everything.
I'm admittedly a member of pretty much all the chain loyalty clubs. But, for the most part, paying for WiFi access is mostly a thing of the past. Other than mandatory resort fees that include WiFi in some places (e.g. Vegas and actual resorts), I don't know the last time I specifically made for WiFi either.
I travel for work 6 months or so out of the year and your experiences are definitely not representative of mine.
"between resort fees, $30/day slow wifi, rooms that look nothing like the pics" This is 100% because you are staying in "luxury" hotels. Less expensive hotels don't have any of these.
Now I usually stay in Sonders and hotels. Better prices and similar locations and more stable outcomes. Hotels and Sonders won't cancel you last minute.
Glad you got a refund. I booked one for a month and because of travel delays got there after midnight. On first sight, I refused to stay there as it wasn't anything like the pictures or description. On trying to get this sorted out, found out I should have read the fine print. Monthly rentals are subject to different terms and conditions. Paid for the entire month, never stayed there, no refund.
I’d have to look to be sure, but I’ve likely got over 100 nights in over 50 AirBnBs. Most were as-expected or better. One was definitely dirtier than I’d have taken the family but I was crashing there during a trip in support of one of my hobbies and spending only sleeping time in the place.
The one “screw job” I got was in Vegas staying in a sub-$40 place for one night waiting for my family to join me. Place had no running water. AirBnB support asked me if that was a problem. “Yeah, it’s 100°F outside and I’m going to need to shower and probably going to use the toilet at some point.” Got asked to wait about 15 minutes while they tried to reach the host and then got a refund with no fuss. Was no problem to find a crappy casino hotel room in Vegas in July.
But plenty of the AirBnBs are places that I couldn’t find an equivalent. Two nights in a tree house in Costa Rica. Two massive houses on Martha’s Vineyard. A cabin backing up to a nature preserve in Belize.
Clicked through to type a similar comment. They have let me and my family down so many times, the trust is gone. They should have been harder on this stuff from day 1. Their marketplace needs both supply and demand to work.
It's weird to read this and also see how hosts are absolutely pissed over Airbnb not doing anything about guests abusing hosts - trashing the place, making false claims, etc etc. It's almost like if Airbnb just doesn't do anything to resolve issues, both for hosts and guests.
All this said, my personal Airbnb experience was positive. Surely beats rental classifieds or searching Google Maps, and I'm not aware about any serious general-purpose alternatives. My issue is that hotels are simply conceptually (and practically) different - there's a huge difference between a proper rental house/apartment and a hotel room (though Airbnb goes there, it used to be good but today many listings aren't better if not worse than a hotel room now). Sure, hotel brands had realized this and started to offer some curated properties, but this is very uncommon.
I empathize, but there are terrible hotels too, right? It sounds to me like you're better at distinguishing decent hotels from fleabags than you are at distinguishing good rentals from bad ones.
It's not guaranteed to work, but I'm always extremely careful about choosing my rentals and I have been disappointed on very few occasions. Everyone has an occasional bad experience with a business (see: all of Yelp) but I'm not going to write off the thousands of highly-rated hosts I haven't interacted with because a few in the past have given me problems, especially if those ones did not have exceptionally high ratings and plenty of them.
But it is a risk/reward proposition, and a hotel is always going to be the lower risk option. But I like the "reward" that you can sometimes find in the form of unusual locations, interesting living spaces or just a cheap place to stay.
Scheduling a vacation with family (kids) over Christmas, flying into New York City and using Airbnb is rolling the dice. Spend the extra few dollars for a hotel room and enjoy your vacation. You got what you were promised: a discount for an unstable experience and easy to use booking platform.
Just do direct inspections. (Virtual equivalent.) Airbnb is a jobs program for useless designer types, just get a handful them to spend a couple hours per day on Zoom. Plenty of other options too ie escrow deposits etc.
Is the scam basically ... a host will book someone, then closer to arrival if the rates in the region are higher they'll cancel and rebook with someone else at a higher rate?
Rights? It's room sharing. Not a hotel. Not a business. (I get you but this is the gig economy in a nutshell. If I can make $500 more a night you're damned right you're getting cancelled)
That is 100% what the gig economy is about. Just like 'surge' pricing with Uber/Lyft. These people are renting out their homes, why not make the most money as possible? Is it scummy? Sure. Illegal? It's capitalism. You can't knock someone who can earn a substantial amount more money with THEIR private property.
>You can't knock someone who can earn a substantial amount more money with THEIR private property.
Of course you can. That is exactly what people in this thread are doing.
>Is it scummy? Sure.
Correct.
>Illegal? It's capitalism.
We are saying if AirBnB doesn't fix this problem, we will take our business elsewhere. That is capitalism. If you're trying to forbid us from threatening to take our business elsewhere, then you are the one who is taking anti-capitalist measures.
I don't know why so many people try to reinvent the definition of capitalism to suit their own needs. Capitalism doesn't mean we're supposed to give the "gig economy" some protected status, or whatever you're trying to suggest here.
> We are saying if AirBnB doesn't fix this problem, we will take our business elsewhere.
But you wont. They are now too big. If the tech industry leaves it will just be filled with the rest of the world. Im on your side, I think its scummy. They were a scummy business to start with, skirting laws, subsidized by VC money, just like Lyft, Uber, etc.... However, this is how its done now. The gig economy is an economy built on 'what can I make right now' I dont want them protected. It's just schlepps earning a buck here and now because they cant anywhere else.
It's a kind of garbage capitalism that will drive business activity down to nothing because buyers and sellers get to a point where neither trusts the other to complete a contract.
Isn’t that all of the US currently? I was in a thread the other day where someone complained that every business in the US is turning into three scams in a trenchcoat, which I thought was an apt description of the times
The US is really a bad example of capitalism (and it's not a real free market either). It doesn't help that it's the US tech companies and culture that are dominating this world; and they are bringing their ugly/stupid dark patterns with them (like not showing the total price and hidden a gazzillion fee that double the price initially shown).
Unless guests are able to set their own cancellation policy — including the host is forced to cover market rate at time of cancellation if rebooked within X-days for a like or better booking, this is a joke.
AirBNB’s penalties for host go to AirBNB, not the guests, and AirBNB frequently waves the host penalties without explanation. If the stay was canceled prior to booking and the fees waved, no review is allowed to be left either by the guest or automatically; the automatic cancellation reviews are only left if host gets a penalty, which again AirBNB frequently waves without explanation.
I have personally lost thousands due to AirBNB allowing host to cancel at the last second then repost and book the stay for 300% more; host even offered to allow me to rebook, so clearly cancellation was unrelated to anything to do with me.
Use AirBNB at your own risk, they will happily leave you without a place to stay if a host cancels a booking. Always have a backup plan and look into travel insurance.
Actually why shouldn't hosts be able to set any cancellation policy. Or even use policy. Then it is up to renter to review the small print. It seems only reasonable for me.
My point is that guests per stay should be able to set there own policies would be viewable to a host prior to booking or in a list of pre-approved guest policies. Host is under no obligation to book a guest with a policy they are not agreeable to.
Rented an AirBnB for a friend’s wedding and it caught fire. We were at the wedding when it occurred but I sometimes think about what would have happened if we were sleeping inside at the time. There would have been no escape except through the upper-story window.
The host initially accused us of causing the fire through negligence, then it was eventually revealed to be an electrical fault in the building, which had been built by the homeowner himself.
The bigger problem was that they hadn’t told their insurance company they were subletting. We eventually agreed a deal with lawyers for them to compensate us. (It probably goes without saying that AirBnB was of course no help throughout the whole process.)
It occurred to me that none of this would have occurred in a regular hotel. The hotel would have a proper fire and sprinkler system with actual fire escape routes, the electrics would not be amateur and they would have had proper insurance.
Airbnb feels like WeWork – they both desperately want to be "tech companies" but at the end of the day neither one of them really is. They should have more important things to focus on before tech. Instead of making sure their app has the nicest UI, they should first make sure all of their rentals have proper fire exits.
WeWork either owned or rented all of it's properties. Airbnb is a tech platform that doesn't own any properties so by definition it's a tech company. I hear the same argument about Uber not being a tech company but they are too. Airbnb and Uber build apps and benefit from being a tech company because they can scale globally without investing in properties or taxis
When I book on AirBnB I am paying less in exchange for possibly burning alive or having substandard construction cave in and crush me. Seems fair by my book, I know the game going in.
> It occurred to me that none of this would have occurred in a regular hotel. The hotel would have a proper fire and sprinkler system with actual fire escape routes, the electrics would not be amateur and they would have had proper insurance.
It's not like there's zero chance of negligence at a proper hotel, but yeah the odds should be better.
I'm reminded of an incident ages ago when I was renting a modern townhouse in a large corporate complex where they were arranged like duplexes with shared garage walls. My gf at the time had fallen asleep immediately after starting one of those Duraflame logs without opening the flue. She and our cats nearly died from smoke inhalation.
The units were all on a centralized smoke detector/fire alarm system powered by in-wall wiring that we weren't responsible for. We didn't know it at the time, but someone had unplugged all of the detectors so no alarms went off while her and the cats came dangerously close to dying in the buttoned up space. I came home to find her and the cats sitting on the front stoop, all coughing and sooty. The interior was all blackened with smoke damage.
> It's not like there's zero chance of negligence at a proper hotel, but yeah the odds should be better.
If you're staying at the Sheraton, there may be negligence but you can be confident that there will be proper insurance.
Much more common than a fire would be theft. My friend was staying at the Shangri-La in Paris for his honeymoon. The porter took his bags while he was checking in, and their bags were stolen right out front the hotel.
The hotel apologized profusely, upgraded them to a very nice suite, and they got something like EUR 5000 for their belongings. He had a camera but mostly it was just their clothes (and suitcases) that they had to replace.
Hotels are like the opposite of Comcast or United. There is a lot of competition. They are literally called the Service Industry. AirBnb's offer a lot that hotels don't (charm, locations, potentially cost), but security and consistency is not it.
> It occurred to me that none of this would have occurred in a regular hotel.
I assume that rentals without smoke detectors have other red flags. For the owner's sake, installing a smoke detector protects their investment! Pure negligence.
P.S. You definitely don't want to stay at an AirBnB in Italy!
> [For rentals allowing smoking,] the lowest prevalence of smoke detectors was among venues in Italy (2 percent) and the highest was in Scotland (83 percent). [0]
I couldn't find the original study, but as an Australian, I'm shocked.
100% of homes require smoke detectors here, must be positioned outside of every bedroom, and must be less than 10 years old. It's a requirement for building.
As a host I couldn’t be any happier about this. I work hard to give my guests a great experience… hosts who do this sort of thing are hurting perception for the rest of us. This should knock some low quality inventory off the market.
As a host I feel that AirBnB is not doing enough to solve the bad guest problem. AirCover is a joke and guests are still able to leave revenge reviews, even after it was established the guest indeed did bad things.
I will be looking at alternatives, because I'm fed up with their attitude towards hosts.
This sounds like it could become dangerous for guests. e.g. a host doesn't want to host you, but they also don't want to lose $1,000. So you show up at their house and they convince you that it's in your best interest to cancel the reservation on your end... or else.
I've had >1 Uber driver call me and ask me to cancel the request on my end because he realized he couldn't get to me for X reason, and he didn't want the cancellation to negatively impact his driver account.
Why are people still rolling the dice with AirBnB.
I stayed in one once, in 2018. It was a neutral experience. But certainly not better than a hotel. Unsure of the price as I didn't personally pay for it. Getting in initially was more work than a hotel, but not horribly so.
But after what they do to the housing situation, the numerous shitty hosts sometimes doing blatantly illegal things, things like the above, etc. I'd rather not have all that on my mental plate while trying to find accomodation. Book a hotel, call it a day. Hotels exist to solve the problem or temporary accommodation. They've been doing it for decades.
The only way I'd use an AirBnB is if the choices for hotels didn't exist for some reason. Like with Uber/Lyft and Taxis. Uber is still useful in some scenarios, but for the most part, take a Taxi if you're in a city.
I only use Airbnb to get a cheaper place to stay than a hotel. I can usually get a place for ~100/night within walking distance from the beach. That is not possible with hotels (In the USA).
I am willing to accept a lower standard for a lower price. The problem is some people think they deserve a 5 star experience for $100. The places I stay are old and outdated, you may see some bugs, and usually no toiletries/towels are provided.
Yes, Hotels offer a better experience. But my entire expenses for a 5 day vacation by the beach, including flights, lodging, and food is less than $1,000 with a cheap AirBnB.
But this was long overdue. Some cities are rife with Airbnb scams
You can pretend only the technology matters but customer service can sink or swim a service. And I don't get why Airbnb is not apparently paying attention to those issues
Surprised but not surprised at how many commenters are fed up with Airbnb. After ~20+ stays with a few frustrating experiences, I had my breaking point about a year ago. After ~20 hours of flights, I landed in my destination city at 10pm only to receive a message from the host telling me to go to an address different than the listing. There were no pictures of the new place and it was in a different neighbourhood which was no longer walking distance to where I had work meetings. Plus, it just felt unsafe and sketchy. AirBnB eventually refunded me, but I still paid more for a hotel and lost many hours on the phone with customer service. I haven't used Airbnb since.
This is a common fraud method that I've read a few articles about over the years. I initially had sympathy for Airbnb in that it's much harder for them to deal when a host is a "bad actor", but that sympathy evaporated when I saw that they have no recourse for making any type of resolution swift or even possible.
I've worked on fraud, at scale, before and it is a hard problem. But when you're giving fraudsters $$$ by letting scams happen and hurting people's lives in the process... for years... it escapes understanding.
When you turn a blind eye, you're effective "creating" a world for fraudsters to thrive. As a founder, myself, I'm always thinking about what the world would look like if I am successful. At some point it's your duty as a founder to put your foot down and "be the change you want to see in the world" even if it hurts your profit margin.
But maybe this is also the difference that lets people rise to the top. It's just sobering. At least people like Bill Gates have been able to distance themselves from their ruthless business tactics and steer that influence towards promoting positive change.
They do not. I cited this exact policy and it fell on deaf ears. I couldn't believe it myself -- maybe I should write a dedicated post about the details just for visibility.
Setting aside freeqaz's response to you explaining that they do in fact not follow the policies on that page, even if they did it wouldn't mean they "find you a new place". It says right on that page that they'll find you a new place _or_ refund you. A last-minute refund is basically airbnb doing nothing at all.
This exactly! I have my own Airbnb horror story and what most people don't realize is that their policy says find you a new place OR refund you. And this is the real kicker. It's at THEIR discretion not yours.
This means you can tell them that you just want a comparable place nearby (due to some unforseen issue with original booking) and they can say it's too much work or too much money to book you one and just kick you a refund last minute.
- support didn't offer to find a new last-minute place for our big group, but they did say they'd cover a new place
- basically 0% availability, so only $$$$ places left, and multiply that by a big group: 5-figure bill for lodging
- vrbo explicitly agreed to cover it after going through internal approvals, so we pulled the trigger. big event and clock was ticking before we'd be sleeping on the streets, so we were relieved.
- ... and then I got shafted with a 5-figure bill because, after-the-fact, they put up bureaucratic hurdles & denied our claim
After that shockingly fraudulent experience, I did some googling, and apparently this is common practices to all big players in this space. Multiple (winning) class action lawsuits.
On the plus side, better motivation for our business: we do gpu graph visualization & graph neural networks to help companies detect & prevent this kind of behavior based on all sorts of account metadata (transactions, image forensics, IPs, clickstreams) so personally motivated to help others target the bad guys causing problems for everyone else :)
I had a fun experience being told to go to some random shop to pick up the key for the property, which I had trouble finding. Then I had trouble opening the door (it had like 3 different keyholes and none seemed to work) and couldn't reach the host by phone to get some help. Was a really bad start to the trip.
A more annoying situation I've encountered more and more frequently is that the AirBNB is not anywhere near the circle it claims to be. Rented a place recently that was a 38 minute drive from the town the listing said it was in. AirBNB not only didn't care, but didn't consider there to be anything wrong with the listing.
Booked a different place in the same "town" and it was a 10 minute drive from where it was supposed to have been. We just accepted it.
I did eventually get a refund on the first one, but only after raising a fit at AirBNB. I think I'll stay at hotels in most cases moving forward.
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[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 260 ms ] threadhttps://www.airbnb.co.uk/resources/hosting-homes/a/changing-...
https://www.airbnb.co.uk/help/article/990/host-cancellation-...
It's plain as day, the fees are charged to the host, and thus Airbnb takes the fees.
Ie. someone gets a DUI, we don't directly pay out the fee to anyone near by who may have been affected.
However, in most cases, damages will need to be pursued civilly.
My point was, the primary goal of expensive punishments are not to make victims whole.
The Airbnb penalty goes to cushion Airbnb's pockets.
i.e., to their stock price, i.e., to investors, i.e., to pension funds both private and public (pensions are by far the largest AirBnB shareholders), i.e., it likely benefits the majority of the public (the majority of US households have stock exposure, quite often large pension funds or index funds - AirBnB is part of the Nasdaq 100, for example).
If the staff at the hotel does not abide by the walk policy, you can call the 800 number to complain, and they will send you a check for your expenses and then bill the hotel.
Obviously, exclusions to the walk policy are if you are banned at the hotel, or if you are walking in high with 3 prostitutes hanging off your arm, or any other reason that a hotel would want to refuse you because the hotel believes you will cause damage or disturb others.
Like is that a law or something? I'm not sure it is. They may choose to do this.
Compare to flights and trains, where there are laws. For example is cancelled and you've started your journey, they must get you home, by law (in the UK.) I was in a five-hour taxi ride once after a train was cancelled.
There was fresh fruit and chocolate, a kitchen, an office, a living room, and two bedrooms.
Often station staff will try their best to get rid of you and send you on to another station to make it their problem. And station managers can be hard to find. And they have sudden amnesia about the law etc
Still doesn’t “force” you to use Airbnb of course. And I wonder if people negotiating outside of Airbnb will begin to happen.
That's wild hyperbole. Hotels, motels, hostels, B&Bs. Plus all the hometstay alts, like VRBO, Flipkey, Vacasa, CouchSurfing, etc...
I've seen this happen in other service apps -- hailing a taxi via Uber/Lyft, and when the driver sees that I'm a little out of downtown, about 30% of the time I'll get a text message off-platform asking me to cancel the ride because "something happened to [their] car" in between them accepting the ride and them getting to my home. My only thought is that the heavy emphasis on driver/host ratings and penalty fees drives the providers off-platform, but that leaves their users stuck shouldering the burden and nobody happy.
I've gone back to hotels. The experience is streamlined. No janky lockboxes with codes that don't work, no unresponsive hosts (someone available 24/7 at most), places are cleaned on request, and other amenities are typically available right on site.
I’ve stayed in two places in the last two weeks.
First wasn’t like the pictures at all. Rammed with furniture and had no way to put garbage out.
Second stunk of mould on the first floor, AC was useless; and the washer/dryer was broken (actually dismantled causing the mould smell). We had to use a laundrette.
They both got glowing reviews because I can’t risk not being able to use the platform as they’ve swallowed the entire short term rental market.
Rip 'em a new one. They deserve it.
https://rankbreeze.com/airreview/
The experience of getting cancelled and having no repercussions to the host was extremely off putting to me. I had no idea on what to do at the time, as the site loves to not handle edge cases that completely sour your experience with the product. Why they simply couldn't have an error screen that said, "your host cancelled? please do the following and checkout these hosts who ARE available and reliable."
This was my first and last time using AirBnB. Maybe it changed now, but I tell everyone I know to just rent a hotel instead. Such a shame too because I love AirBnB when it comes to engineering but the product itself I will never use again.
This happened to me in Amsterdam once, the host cancelled a couple of days before we went (this was in 2018 or so). I contacted AirBnB support, and they gave me 150% of the value of the stay to get an alternative accommodation last-minute. Got us a nice little bed and breakfast that was more expensive and everything worked out alright. Sorry your experience was so stressful!
I just had an experience last month with a host canceling and they wouldn't give me a coupon for more then 30% of the value of the stay. But the stay that had been cancelled was a month-long and it was cancelled 8 days in.
Rebooking with just a 30% coupon was impossible, even after 20+ hours on the phone, and I ended up giving up to book my colleague a hotel for a few nights. (I still haven't been reimbursed by Airbnb either, and I will never expect to.)
I'm glad to hear that not every experience is terrible, but it's also annoying that it seems to be random based on region or the rep you get.
That is a different kind of cancellation as now it could be for cause which isn't the case for a cancellation before the stay.
The customer service agent slipped up (apparently) and confirmed there were other AirBNB guests in the unit, but when she escalated to get permission to call them, the story changed to "we cannot discuss whether there are other AirBNB customers in the unit due to privacy reasons."
I was not offered any help finding an alternative listing.
I was not offered a refund or any sort of compensation whatsoever.
I was left standing outside in winter in a cold part of the country, with nowhere to go, at midnight.
Fuck AirBNB.
You don't have to imagine. This happens quite regularly with Wizzair nowadays.
Of course even if you know, and you complain, they will make your life miserable.
With Things like these, plus all the dark patterns and scams regarding luggage, check-in, etc, I don't know why anyone would ever fly low cost.
Since the flag carrier, Malév[1], went bust -- in no small part due to the machinations of Wizz -- it's also the only airline with a direct route to many important destinations, such as Berlin.
So for the purposes of "cheap carrier screws you over" you could substitute EasyJet or RyanAir or whatever and have the same story, but with Wizzair you also have a lot of people flying it for business purposes because it's the only way to get to Berlin in under three hours.
And I've heard from a lot of friends who had their Wizz tickets unceremoniously cancelled this summer, so not surprise to see someone mention it here.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wizz_Air
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malév_Hungarian_Airlines
This happened to me around 2014, mere hours before my flight. I got a call with an automated voice recording that just said "This is United. Your flight has been canceled. Goodbye." and ended. I'm not even joking: that was the message. Your flight has been canceled; goodbye. It was unbelievable. And this was United, not some shady budget carrier. This was a return flight home, having checked out of the hotel, with my bags in the rental car.
Unfortunately this has happened to me on more than one occasion on major US carriers. On one occasion I had already taken the first flight, and while away on vacation they cancelled my return flight without explanation, only to offer me a flight that was taking off 3-days later.
Will wait a year or two to see if this makes airbnb reliable in any form.
The host of a friend's new year eye reservation in NYC one canceled less than 24 hours before check in as we were in transit to the city. That was an ordeal but Airbnb made it right by covering the difference for the next available comparable place which was significantly more expensive. Since everything was booked for the holiday, that turned out to be a penthouse.
We would almost all rather a hotel.
We're not going for the company, but for the price, and sometimes charm.
There should be professionals able to provide discount lodging with a bit of charm.
There is something perversely wrong with zoning in cities, it should be completely reasonable to have 'lodging' basically anywhere people live.
Literally any building could/should be used for temporary lodging with just a few parameters/adjustments.
In many cases, when traveling with my family, I'd much prefer an AirBnb/vrbo/condo. Our kids are too young to have two rooms, and getting too big to fit into a single room.
I guess a hotel suite could work, but it's generally a lot less space and less convenient. In HBO's White Lotus, the main family has a suite that looks like it would cost several thousand a night, but the teenage son is sleeping on a cot in the kitchen. In that scenario, having a 2-4 bedroom condo or home would be much preferable than an ultra luxury suite.
We've rented an Airbnb home basically on the beach in Kauai. No comparison to any hotel at any price in terms of comfort. In Italy, we've rented an Airbnb that had a bedroom hidden behind a bookshelf. For a five year old kid, it was like the coolest thing ever.
My kids broke an IKEA vase while there and the host asked for EUR 100 saying it had sentimental value. I countered EUR 50 (it probably cost 15 but it takes time and effort to replace things) and they accepted…
Another great VRBO experience was renting a house on a lake. Our friends had a house on the other side of the lake. Every morning my wife would drive around the lake with one kid, and me and another kid would row across to meet our friends. These experiences aren't possible with a hotel, at any price.
I've also stayed in an AirBnb that had cockroaches. We changed places the next day, switching to a place that was more than twice the price but infinitely better.
In short, I'd say that hotels and specific hotel brands have more consistency. Airbnbs can be amazing, and there can be horror stories. I guess it's like traveling to new places, foreign places. Much safer to stay with what you know, but you might be missing out on a lot.
Yes, lake houses will probably not be like that.
That said, I fully approve of raising the penalty on hosts who cancel. A guest who cancels is an annoying lack of income. A host who cancels could result in cancelling an entire trip, or staying in a terrible or even unsafe alternative.
Airbnb refunded the money, but their support only provided me a link to other listings. The prices 2 weeks before my trip were significantly higher than they were 3 months before, but Airbnb wouldn't make any accommodations. I repeatedly called customer support, and every time they would tell me that the case had been escalated and I would receive another call within 24 hours. They never called back, and after spending hours on the phone I eventually got a credit for $170 towards a future listing. The place I ended up booking for the trip cost $1000 more than the original listing.
I was just in the process of booking a car on Turo yesterday for the first time in a while, though, and did see a ton of listings where the owner says things like "go read these rules that are linked from my profile page; if you don't follow them to the letter I won't hesitate to cancel your booking last-minute"
Pretty offputting, honestly. If I could stomach driving automatics I'd just go to Enterprise.
So the host can cancel, rebook at 3x , pay $1k and still come out on top?
Correct way to do this would've been start is exponential fines. Start with 100, 200 next time, 400 after that ect till an upper limit.
So they book early for a guaranteed $x. Then if they see that market rates for nearby units rose to n*$x, it makes sense for them to cancel and rebook at that rate.
Fortunately, it was still early enough that I was able to book a hotel near the finish line. Unfortunately, that hotel ended up be the host of all of the press and press conferences when someone bombed the finish area.
Bonus points if they make it so that the host can't book anything on the days on and around the cancellation date. After all, if the host cancelled, then it has to be because there's a major issue preventing the place from being use by guests, right ;). Maybe a two-week blackout period.
For example, on July 3 the the house cleaner for the AirBnB next door to my condo claimed they "kicked out" the guest on because they had more than 3(?) people over. When I asked her the eviction tactics she was vague and said "phone calls were made and AirBnB has a process". It seemed like a low bar to evict someone at a beach property during a holiday weekend and from my perspective those guests were just fine. Could a host just fabricate a violation such as "the neighbors are complaining about noise" and skip the $1000 fee ?
I'm sure many booked holidays a year ago at great rates when people couldn't travel and hosts desperately needed cash flow. Now that bookings are approaching (hotels do this as well) hosts are cancelling bookings and selling them to others who will pay a much higher price.
I shouldn't have to spend 12 hours on the phone over the course of three days, having my vacation completely ruined, just to get what I deserve which was my money back.
I think the biggest issue is that the three way dynamic between guests, hosts, and AirBnB leads to weird situations where the guest needs to thread the needle between everyone else’s rules and pass through rules on a rental that represents very little margin for anyone involved above you. It’s easy to run afoul of them and get a bad rating or fine. There are the extra fees that are not shown by search results that may make the stay cost more than a hotel. And often the “it has a kitchen” remark means a bunch of single serving oats, a kettle, and a toaster. A random hotel breakfast has as much variety.
From my POV one reason to care about is because AirBnB is making it harder for the "have nots" to become "haves": those that could have afforded their starter house suddenly can't because available properties are now AirBnBs, and those that could have rented near their work must now live further away, taking hours off their free time. Meanwhile, the "haves" reap more cash with less effort.
AirBnB is one of the weapons being used to keep you as a have not, though. You're basically helping to pay for the rent increases that are keeping you as a have not.
Renting AirBnB is way more expansive than owning the home so you are the rich guy screwing with the neighbourhood not the other way around.
Never using Airbnb ever again. Hotels know how to treat people correctly.
I've used AirBnB only once exactly for these reasons. That uncertainty is killer when I'm gonna be staying in a city where I don't know anyone who lives there and can help me get out of a jam. There's a piece of mind to getting a hotel and knowing for sure that I will have somewhere to stay. If something goes wrong, there's a company policy I can review that has explicit steps for recourse.
Few weeks after that I receive racist messages from the host on my personal cellphone. I am shocked Airbnb would share my personal details just like that. I reported it to Airbnb, but they were pretty clueless as this was happening outside their messaging system. I finally had to share screenshots of the text messages, and they said they will take down the hosts account. They did for sometime, but after a couple of months that host's account is still live and his place is still accepting reservations. My review has been taken down though.
Same thing happened to me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32194057
Before then I didn't know AirBnb was moderating bad reviews in such an aggressive way. Good reviews mean nothing if all the bad ones are automatically taken down. It's ridiculous, and made me very wary of ever booking again with them.
(There's an interview of Bezos somewhere where he explains that when starting Amazon, publishing houses were complaining to him about the bad book reviews, and he told them something to the effect of: it's because we let bad reviews up that people trust us. Obviously things have changed and Amazon reviews aren't what they used to be, but still. Bezos in 1997 understood something that AirBnb fails to grasp.)
The worst for me was a hotel in Paris I booked via Booking.com. It was completely different from the announced, and had several issues, such as having an outside bathroom without a lockable door. Luckily it closed during the pandemic.
Booking.com not only fought tooth and nail to charge me, claiming to my credit card that I needed to be charged since I "actually stayed at the hotel", but they then deleted my review claiming that "I didn't stay at the hotel". The key to getting a chargeback was sending the email of the deleted review to the credit card company.
Today I just search using Booking.com but make reservations via phone.
The problem is not AirBnB or Booking.com. The problem is "internet companies". They all suck.
If you book with one of the booking agencies (I will not name the two that I used), the hotel will often give you one of these rooms, off the bat. You can complain, and they'll get you another one, but that is not something that you want to do, when you just checked in at 11PM, and your first meeting is at 8AM, the next morning.
BTW: Hotels are not supposed to do that, but they do, anyway. It's hard to prove.
[1] That's because if the front-desk guy/gal has any agency in this, they will absolutely not try to put a Karen into a bad room. Because they don't want to deal with his/her freakout over the noise of the vending machine, or the elevator, or some other factor that they can't control, but will get the guest to complain to management.
However, if you search the English alphabet for the letters between "N" and "Q," you are likely to find the first letter of the name of each booking service (not hotel).
[1] Bad as in little or no natural lighting, unusually small, etc. Some of the time a tall big city hotel abuts other buildings and has a lightwell and, especially on the lower floors, things can be pretty dark.
I've currently got a month-long AirBNB booking coming up and every day I cross my fingers and pray for no surprises. I don't remember ever having this kind of uncertainty and anxiety when booking with a plain old hotel.
We got cancelled on the week before Thanksgiving in a rural area...
You're just one more weary traveler who will be near-instantly replaced by someone else, so fuck you.
This is also why I've never once booked with AirBNB, and why I've always booked a hotel wherever I travel. Yes, it's more expensive. It's also guaranteed. I also get someone to clean my room everyday. I also don't have to worry about walking into the kitchen and seeing an entire sink full of dirty dishes. I don't have to worry about a random teenager in the hotel taking up my bathroom for an hour. I don't have to worry about another teenage following me around and talking to me. I don't have to worry about the bathroom being dirty, and I don't have to worry about seeing a roach in the house.
What I just described was the experience of a former Marine buddy of mine who booked a 6 week stay in Plantation, FL. He was moving down here from Brooklyn, NY and needed a place to stay until his apartment with ready. The AirBNB provider he booked with labeled a SuperHost.
If that's what a SuperHost rental gets you, I'm totally uninterested in seeing what anything less gets you. I'd rather stay at a Motel 6.
So AirBnB has to keep allowing (and encouraging) property management companies, because no one else can bring them the volume they need to grow.
And I shouldn't jinx myself, but I've used Airbnbs on every trip I've taken, and I've yet to run into a real show stopping problem. Not saying it doesn't happen, just pointing out that it's not as frequent as you are making it out to be.
I'd rather book a proper dedicated rental flat from another platform than someone's random flat on AirBnB these days though, after all the horror stories (personally I've never had an issue).
Edit: I read another comment lower down talking about hotel rooms with a kitchen. Personally never encountered this, maybe it's a US thing, but that could be an OK solution if it included all the stuff you need to cook a basic meal.
They're usually well stocked with most of the things needed for a basic meal.
I use them versus AirBnB because they seem to look out for me very well. I've had minor hassle getting a refund only once in last twelve years, but they did come through for me. I also like the simple reward program. They've added some fees in the last few years, but it's still good.
Edit: maybe drop the "solo", it's probably not worth it if you don't travel in a group.
Hotels are fine for business travel for me, where I don't care much about the space and just need a clean, reliable place to sleep.
disclaimer: I used to work at Airbnb, so biased.
Here's a weird case where AirBNB might make more sense than a hotel:
I have a medical cannabis licence. Hotels don't seem to like the idea of me vapourising cannabis indoors, but an AirBNB host might be okay with it if I ask first (assuming otherwise legal in the area).
1. Several nights on a houseboat in Amsterdam.
2. Two weeks in Cape May, NJ in a walkable location to the beach with enough space to bring kids, laundry facilities, and a garden to entertain friends joining us.
3. Long weekend with extended family in the middle of Harper's Ferry, WV.
Finding and organizing these experiences would be harder without AirBnB. There is no way I'd use AirBnB for a regular trip though.
I suspect that, as with many other marketplaces with suppliers of widely differing quality (e.g. Amazon), there are a lot of people who optimize for price and then are surprised when they get burned on deals that seem too good to be true.
Rent a huge house (8+BR, 6+ bath, 3500-5000 ft²), bring the leadership team together to live and work together for a couple of intense days. In Monday evening, cook dinner together, work Tues/Wed, leave Thursday AM.
There’s no hotel-equivalent that I’m aware of. (And given that it covers 3 nights’ accommodations and cheaper meals for 8-ish people, it’s notably cheaper than a hotel and restaurants in almost every case.)
- Iceland, flat in Reykjavik, 5 day trip. Kitchen and more space vs hotel, similar cost. - Italy, flat in Florence, 5 day trip, part of longer trip, used hotels in Rome and Riccione. Lower cost, kitchen, more space vs hotel - Scotland, cottages in Portree and Stornaway, 5 days each, used hotels in Fort William and Inverness (1 night each). Less expensive, more space, full kitchen vs hotels in this area. - Roanoke VA, 3 night weekend, dog allowed, kitchen and more space, lower cost vs hotel - Mt Rogers VA, 7 day, no hotels nearby, plus dog - St Michaels MD, 3 day weekend, dog, kitchen, limited hotels in town (though plenty on the outskirts) - Emerald Isle, NC - house, 3 day weekend, needed 4 dogs and 2 couples, and kitchen - Cape Canaveral, FL - flat, 14 days, needed kitchen and dog alllowance - Cocoa Beach, FL - house, needed 2 couples, 1 solo, and 4 dogs, plus kitchen
Maybe I'm being naive, but filtering to Superhosts and entire home, then checking for multiple listings and high ratings seems to work ok. And for big cities, I'd probably just get a hotel, since Airbnb is likely to be a small flat anyway.
I have two typical modes of travel.
One is a short (1-2 week) trip somewhere, for some business (work or personal). A hotel is totally fine, but I still check both hotels and Airbnb for price and feature comparison. In this scenario I don't need a proper kitchen but I still want a microwave, a proper table, a decent chair, and good Internet connectivity - which sound like some basics but aren't exactly common. But, yeah, a hotel is typically a good option. Airbnb quality seem to degrade, so I'm typically looking at the hotels those days. E.g. my last trip was to San Diego, CA and Airbnb offerings I've seen were much worse (based on my personal preferences) than similarly priced hotels.
The other mode is multiple months of living somewhere else - like as in "digital nomad". Hotels typically cease to work for this purpose. For those scenario I want a full apartment (or a house) to myself, I don't need any room service (I can wipe dust and vacuum on my own, thank you), but I want something comparable to home. A full kitchen (with a dishwasher and an oven), a good working area (separate area - ideally a dedicated room, with favorable lighting conditions, normal height sturdy table, an ergonomic chair, etc.), a separate rest area (comfy non-leather couch and a correctly placed big TV with an accessible HDMI input), proximity to a grocery store, etc. It is very hard to find merely a suitable place - I spend multiple days, sometimes weeks, going through the listings, looking at the photos, checking neighborhoods etc. - but at least there's a chance to find something. I do check hotels (because why not) but most of the time they're simply not an option at all - they're tailored for very different use cases and simply don't offer this kind of service. And, well, my other alternatives are local classifieds and searching Google Maps for advertised rentals (which I do), but at least Airbnb has some standards so it's my first option. Last year I had a 2-month trip to Tbilisi, Georgia and the apartments I've found on Airbnb were almost perfect - I'm sure my experience would've been worse (and significantly costlier) if we would've stayed in a hotel.
Best kind of Airbnb is when a host had a place for themselves to live, but their circumstances had changed (e.g. they bought a second property) and now they're renting it out. Such places are simply made for living. Worst kind is a property bought specifically for renting out.
Extended Stay America. Almost every large city has one ("large" defined as more than 100,000 - 200,000 people). You can book for months at a time if necessary. They have WiFi at all locations, however...
I just donate to The Calyx Institute. My $750 pledge bought me a year of Sprint (now T-Mobile, and far more reliable) cellular access with a 5G WiFi hotspot and absolutely no data cap, ever. I ran 1.1 TiB through that access point one month and never had a moment's trouble. Long story short, Sprint bought Clearwire, Clearwire had a deal with the federal government to provide non-profits with cheap unlimited (actual unlimited) 4G / LTE hotspots and no fuckery (no slow-downs after X gigabytes transferred, no "preferred tier" customers like how MVNOs are second tier to the host provider). When Sprint bought Clearwire, the Feds only approved it with the provision Sprint had to honor the deal. Now that T-Mobile owns Sprint, they have to also honor the deal.
The third word is the key. ;)
I've added a bit to my comment after the initial posting - an example of my last long-term stay. It was in Georgia (Sakartvelo, not the US state), and it's a good but developing country - to best of my awareness they don't really have anything similar, or at least my searches hadn't found it. So I suppose it depends on a country.
But you're absolutely correct, Extended Stay America is probably a very good option. When I've immigrated to the US, it was very high on my list. I still went with an Airbnb because I needed to find a new permanent home anyway (so I was renting short-term only as I was looking for a job), and Airbnb was in a more favorable location as I needed things in a walking distance (had no never driven a car at the time, hah), and maybe that was a mistake - it was OK but not exactly great. Anyway, I do have a home in the US now (and love the country) and I'm not really exploring the country just yet - but if/when I'll have a long-term trip somewhere else here, I'll definitely consider Extended Stay America. So far my US trips were all fairly short though.
And thanks for the tip about The Calyx Internet Membership. I don't have use for this right now, but this might come in handy!
BTW, does anyone know - is there something similar in Mexico, in safe(r) areas, ideally a gated community? This is the next country life is sending me to - because of some family circumstances I'll have spend some months down there...
The first city I checked, DC, does not (listed in Google's hotel search). The suburbs have several, but that's a terrible option if don't want to "commute" during the trip. Downtown DC does have other chains that are extended stay, but I haven't found a good way to search for "hotel with a kitchen and living room" - basically requiring me to know which brands have those amenities.
Sunnyvale was a Hilton garden Inn and while uninspired, was completely fine - clean and quiet.
Maybe this will be different when I'm traveling more for the sake of traveling, but for the most part I'm traveling to see something specific in a city rather than the city at large.
Either way, I'm shocked that they would refuse to clean your room for a week. Of course, if you didn't ask, they won't.
For this reason I also have gone back to hotels unless I'm booking a place for more than 2 weeks. Airbnb often has a monthly discount so remains a decent place for long stays, although if you put in the work (and pay cash) you can usually find cheaper options.
Otherwise, I'd pick hotels without even blinking.
Include a mini-kitchen with 2 burners and a small counter. Burners are disabled but could be enabled by request, or some keypad on the wall (child proofed). You can pick up a box of kitchen supplies (pots, knives, etc) from the front desk or request room service to cart them up.
Put the supplies back in the box before you leave (box is lined with a rubbermaid dish bin).
This would offset the cost of furnishing each room with supplies, while also killing one of airbnb's value props.
I'm pretty sure some of the suite-style chains in the US do as well.
We also have serviced apartments, designed for the longer stays, but are generally only to be found on the cities.
In Spain, at least in my experience, it doesn't make much sense to get an AirBnB.
Prices are higher most of the time, and hotels can and do have better location and service.
AirBnB was supposed to be a mean for people to rent spare rooms temporarily.
Renting out just a room in your house seems ok. My cousin did this when she bought a house to help cover the expenses after she lost a job, but to book out the whole house as some sort of crappy hostel seems unbearable.
I don't share the same opinion.
This is the fault of Airbnb, they chose to operate that way, it's not a market force.
Take Uber (not a marvellous company or service, but certainly better for consumers): drivers own cars, they choose when and how long to drive, they're the money makers.
Yet, I've never experienced bullshit service from Uber as I have with Airbnb. The same for everyone I've talked about this around me.
How many hosts are in the area you're staying, open and available for your travel time range, with the same quality and amenities that you want?
Who cares what kind of uber car you get? There are thousands of them, and they just get you from point A to B.
I tried Airbnb once, only to find out just before departure that the host had booked the place for someone else on VRBO. (I only found out because I asked the host a question about parking!)
Hotels are definitely nice if you like the pampering they provide (e.g. clean your room everyday), but the value of Airbnb is getting amenities and space of a house for an affordable rate. Good luck booking a hotel suite (w/ kitchen, common room, etc) without paying insane rates north of 1k a night. That's where Airbnb shines.
Can't speak to your experience, but there are heavy, heavy penalties for the behavior you're describing - you can't just do that carefree as a host. I would probably lose my business if I let that kind of stuff happen even just once or twice.
That being said, shitty hosts are out there. If they have extensive review history and positive remarks (over ~4.7/5.0 rating) it should be fine. I've honestly never had a bad experience as a guest over 5+ years of staying at Airbnbs with that criteria.
Isn't this the domain of extended stay hotels, like Residence Inn (Marriott), Staybridge Suites (IHG), and Homewood Suites (Hilton), and serviced apartments? They don't tend to be in the $1k/night range.
Don't even get started on how few of them clean the dishwasher filter or anything like that. Ever looked at the filter trap on one of those places? Yuk!
This seems like a huge luxury that is not needed for most travelers. If you really need the kitchen and entertainment spaces then you're going to pay a lot even with Air BnB ("alot" being super subjective).
The point is you get these amenities (or at least of them) for around the same price as a hotel room.
In some big markets (New York City or similar), it might be above a hotel room rate, but still a really good deal if you consider the value.
When I go on a vacation with the family the last thing I need is some unpredictable situation with a shady host and then fighting overseas AirBnB support for refunds.
Ummm... the fact that most people prefer Airbnb to anything else seems to directly contradict your statement.
Also, why would you say guests are not their moneymakers? It is the guest that pays the money that ultimately land in Airbnb's pockets.
https://backlinko.com/airbnb-stats https://www.statista.com/statistics/245864/us-hotel-rooms-by...
This is a fact? Could you please provide any meaningful citation or even the slightest bit of supporting evidence of this "fact"?
You're admitting you have zero experience with the service you spent several paragraphs attacking.
* Read about online
* Heard about personally from friends & family
Do you need to step in a pile of shit personally to realize it's unpleasant, or would you rather take the word of the people who already stepped in it?
When I'm traveling, if you want to entice me to use your AirBNB, you need to provide - at the minimum - an exactly equivalent or superior experience to what I can get at a hotel, and for a cheaper price. If you can't, then logically there's zero reason for me to book a stay with you. Why would I pay more for less service? That isn't logical.
Yes, I understand some things are, more or less, impossible to do with an AirBNB (I don't expect turndown service, or room service for instance). However, most other things that a hotel could offer, I would expect, such as a coffee maker, a mini-fridge, a microwave, Internet connectively, and perhaps printer access (after all, a color laser printer isn't prohibitively expensive, and the toner makes usage cheap).
Everything I mentioned I can get at an Extended Stay America, or a Residence Inn, or some other long-term hotel-like setting. As for actual hotels, I can frequently get either better service, or a more extensive suite of services, many of which are complimentary, some of which are available for small fees and which no AirBNB could ever realistically offer.
Now having said all this...
I'm only interested in unpleasant stories. I only want to hear about when things go wrong. Because just like a good site reliability manager, I'm looking for 99.999999% uptime. I expect everything to go smoothly, always. And when it doesn't, I expect, at the minimum, steps taken to rectify the situation, and if the situation becomes an inconvenience to me bordering on a disruption of stay, then I expect a refund. These are all areas where AirBNB is significantly worse than large hotel chains - even the modest hotel chains like Holiday Inn or Microtel or Motel 6.
This reminds me of Ron White's bit about staying at The Ritz Carlton in Atlanta...
"I get to Atlanta and I check into the Ritz Carlton Hotel. And, uh, the next morning I go to take a shower and there's no hot water. And I called the front desk and I tell the girl at the front desk, I said, 'There's no hot water.' The girl at the front desk said, 'Sometimes there's no hot water.' Didn't I just tell you that? I said, 'I've stayed at $20 a night motels. The water was so hot you could cook your nuts with it.' She goes, 'Well, every once in a while, everybody will wake up at the same time and they all take a shower at the same time and we run smack outta hot water.' You guys didn't think about that? They thought about it at the Motel 6. But that whole concept of people wake up in the morning with shit to do got right by the Ritz Carlton Hotel?"
This is why I'm interested in hearing where it all goes wrong, when, and why. No hot water in a $500 a night hotel is completely unacceptable, anywhere, anytime, ever. There's nothing you could say to me that will change my mind.
"Power went out, sir." Well where the fuck is your backup generator and why isn't it running?
"There's something wrong with the natural gas lines, sir." Well why don't you have an on-site backup tank for these situations?
"Everyone woke up and took a shower at the same time!" Well why the fuck don't you have secondary boilers that monitor the primary ones and anticipate and correct for that?
"Internet access is down sir." Why the fuck don't you have multiple connections with failover to ensure connectivity is maintained?
This is why I want a hotel and not an AirBNB. AirBNB doesn't have the scale to deal with these kinds of issues because it's essentially Hotel Uber. I understand not everyone is this exacting. That's fine. That's more than fine. More power to you, book on AirBNB all day every day if you want to. But I'm not going to, because I&#x...
Sometimes I prefer Airbnb, sometimes I prefer a hotel, it all depends on the kind of travel experience I'm looking for.
I disagree. The marketplace is the moneymaker. It would be like saying that app makers are the moneymakers, and not the iOS/Android store as a whole marketplace.
It’s a moot point really anyway, because the important thing is it’s definitely not the users who are valued by the parent company in either case.
For some reason AirBnb is very protective of their hosts. I had a bad experience a few months ago with a so-called "Superhost" where the property didn't match the description or the reviews. After my stay I left a negative review (my first ever; always left very nice reviews before then).
Well... AirBnB simply removed the review, for completely bogus and irrelevant reasons.
Made me extremely suspicious of any listing; it will probably be a long time before I book again.
The host is Airbnb's customer, listings are non-exclusive (e.g. VRBO), and switching costs for hosts are low. The hosts bring an extraordinarily valuable asset (real estate) and without the hosts, Airbnb has no business.
You are the hosts' customer. You might argue that without the renter, there is no business, but that's true irrespective of the platform. Those hosts will list somewhere and get renters, as long as there's a market.
Presumably, bad hosts (not Airbnb) would take the hit of offering a poor experience over time, and better hosts would prevail. So, Airbnb's goal is to stay out of that fray and keep as many hosts as possible on their platform in order to capture as much revenue as possible from the good hosts, as well as any revenue available from hosts on the descent.
Oh yeah, quite possibly.
One solution might be for all listing platforms to outsource reviews to the same third-party, and get out of the business of moderating reviews. It's really a conflict of interest, so this would eliminate the pressure and incentive to whitewash.
There's always another fool who has yet to be burned bad enough ready to roll the AirBnB dice. Guest churn is expected. But no hosts in an area means AirBnB has nothing to offer in the area.
I have used Airbnb once. And it was quite pleasant. In a tourist area where the hotels were really pricey and this was somewhat cheaper (though not cheap)/likely better. So it worked out. But I'm aware it's probably a bit of a crapshoot.
Exactly. Landing in a new city with the family, taking time off work and then gambling on some random guy with a house coming through and not ripping us off is just too much risk.
AirBnB might even “fix it” but then we’re running around at night, with suitcases, to a new part of time and then spending days on the phone getting refunds.
Maybe that sounds adventurous and exciting for someone else but just doesn’t work for us.
Hotels are nicer in almost every single way.
Host came after 30 mins to tell me he double booked me and that I had to leave. He could barely make eye contact with me.
!
The only thing airbnb did for me was to give me a coupon for my next booking. It was small, and expired before I was able to use it.
I still use it.
When the only other option is $300+/night for a hotel, a $100/night airbnb is mighty nice. And I often stay for 1week to 1month, and Airbnb's give a nice discount which I'm not sure hotels would. So often the comparison is.. $2000/month for airbnb, or more like $9000 for a hotel for a month?
That gap is closing in larger cities though. In Toronto it's hard to find an Airbnb where i get the whole place that isn't a basement for under $150/night, so creeping into hotel territory.
Then I realized that the entire travel industry just tries to rip everyone off as much as possible since they know you’re probably only coming to that one destination one time anyway, so they might as well slaughter the cow instead of milking it.
Once the pandemic hit and I couldn’t travel, I realized how much I actually don’t need to travel to have a relaxing vacation. Between airlines packing you in like cattle (if you can even get on a flight on time that hasn’t been delayed/cancelled 7 times first), the TSA, being treated like a drug lord at every border crossing, tourist trap shitty restaurants and hotels manipulating their reviews and every other business in the tourism industry trying to swindle you as much as possible, no thank you. I would need to take additional time off just to recover from the stress of that “vacation.”
Now I just spend travel money on home projects to make my house so good I never want to leave, and couldn’t be happier.
"between resort fees, $30/day slow wifi, rooms that look nothing like the pics" This is 100% because you are staying in "luxury" hotels. Less expensive hotels don't have any of these.
https://www.marketplace.org/2014/01/27/why-do-luxury-hotels-...
The one “screw job” I got was in Vegas staying in a sub-$40 place for one night waiting for my family to join me. Place had no running water. AirBnB support asked me if that was a problem. “Yeah, it’s 100°F outside and I’m going to need to shower and probably going to use the toilet at some point.” Got asked to wait about 15 minutes while they tried to reach the host and then got a refund with no fuss. Was no problem to find a crappy casino hotel room in Vegas in July.
But plenty of the AirBnBs are places that I couldn’t find an equivalent. Two nights in a tree house in Costa Rica. Two massive houses on Martha’s Vineyard. A cabin backing up to a nature preserve in Belize.
All this said, my personal Airbnb experience was positive. Surely beats rental classifieds or searching Google Maps, and I'm not aware about any serious general-purpose alternatives. My issue is that hotels are simply conceptually (and practically) different - there's a huge difference between a proper rental house/apartment and a hotel room (though Airbnb goes there, it used to be good but today many listings aren't better if not worse than a hotel room now). Sure, hotel brands had realized this and started to offer some curated properties, but this is very uncommon.
But it is a risk/reward proposition, and a hotel is always going to be the lower risk option. But I like the "reward" that you can sometimes find in the form of unusual locations, interesting living spaces or just a cheap place to stay.
This is what people are taking issue with. Calling it the "gig economy" doesn't explain why people should be fine with it.
Of course you can. That is exactly what people in this thread are doing.
>Is it scummy? Sure.
Correct.
>Illegal? It's capitalism.
We are saying if AirBnB doesn't fix this problem, we will take our business elsewhere. That is capitalism. If you're trying to forbid us from threatening to take our business elsewhere, then you are the one who is taking anti-capitalist measures.
I don't know why so many people try to reinvent the definition of capitalism to suit their own needs. Capitalism doesn't mean we're supposed to give the "gig economy" some protected status, or whatever you're trying to suggest here.
But you wont. They are now too big. If the tech industry leaves it will just be filled with the rest of the world. Im on your side, I think its scummy. They were a scummy business to start with, skirting laws, subsidized by VC money, just like Lyft, Uber, etc.... However, this is how its done now. The gig economy is an economy built on 'what can I make right now' I dont want them protected. It's just schlepps earning a buck here and now because they cant anywhere else.
I already have, and this demonstrates how much you understand about the situation.
AirBNB’s penalties for host go to AirBNB, not the guests, and AirBNB frequently waves the host penalties without explanation. If the stay was canceled prior to booking and the fees waved, no review is allowed to be left either by the guest or automatically; the automatic cancellation reviews are only left if host gets a penalty, which again AirBNB frequently waves without explanation.
I have personally lost thousands due to AirBNB allowing host to cancel at the last second then repost and book the stay for 300% more; host even offered to allow me to rebook, so clearly cancellation was unrelated to anything to do with me.
Use AirBNB at your own risk, they will happily leave you without a place to stay if a host cancels a booking. Always have a backup plan and look into travel insurance.
My point is that guests per stay should be able to set there own policies would be viewable to a host prior to booking or in a list of pre-approved guest policies. Host is under no obligation to book a guest with a policy they are not agreeable to.
The host initially accused us of causing the fire through negligence, then it was eventually revealed to be an electrical fault in the building, which had been built by the homeowner himself.
The bigger problem was that they hadn’t told their insurance company they were subletting. We eventually agreed a deal with lawyers for them to compensate us. (It probably goes without saying that AirBnB was of course no help throughout the whole process.)
It occurred to me that none of this would have occurred in a regular hotel. The hotel would have a proper fire and sprinkler system with actual fire escape routes, the electrics would not be amateur and they would have had proper insurance.
Airbnb feels like WeWork – they both desperately want to be "tech companies" but at the end of the day neither one of them really is. They should have more important things to focus on before tech. Instead of making sure their app has the nicest UI, they should first make sure all of their rentals have proper fire exits.
Using tech for your business doesn't make it a tech business.
The same business has been run for years before the internet with cork-boards.
The difference between “host” and “franchisee” seems to mostly be accountability and capital, not ownership by the brand on the booking site.
Amusingly enough, I once stayed in an Airbnb at a Wyndham.
Using technology to enable the business doesn't make the company a tech company. By that definition every company on earth is a tech company.
It's not like there's zero chance of negligence at a proper hotel, but yeah the odds should be better.
I'm reminded of an incident ages ago when I was renting a modern townhouse in a large corporate complex where they were arranged like duplexes with shared garage walls. My gf at the time had fallen asleep immediately after starting one of those Duraflame logs without opening the flue. She and our cats nearly died from smoke inhalation.
The units were all on a centralized smoke detector/fire alarm system powered by in-wall wiring that we weren't responsible for. We didn't know it at the time, but someone had unplugged all of the detectors so no alarms went off while her and the cats came dangerously close to dying in the buttoned up space. I came home to find her and the cats sitting on the front stoop, all coughing and sooty. The interior was all blackened with smoke damage.
If you're staying at the Sheraton, there may be negligence but you can be confident that there will be proper insurance.
Much more common than a fire would be theft. My friend was staying at the Shangri-La in Paris for his honeymoon. The porter took his bags while he was checking in, and their bags were stolen right out front the hotel.
The hotel apologized profusely, upgraded them to a very nice suite, and they got something like EUR 5000 for their belongings. He had a camera but mostly it was just their clothes (and suitcases) that they had to replace.
Hotels are like the opposite of Comcast or United. There is a lot of competition. They are literally called the Service Industry. AirBnb's offer a lot that hotels don't (charm, locations, potentially cost), but security and consistency is not it.
I assume that rentals without smoke detectors have other red flags. For the owner's sake, installing a smoke detector protects their investment! Pure negligence.
P.S. You definitely don't want to stay at an AirBnB in Italy!
> [For rentals allowing smoking,] the lowest prevalence of smoke detectors was among venues in Italy (2 percent) and the highest was in Scotland (83 percent). [0]
[0] https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2019/multi-country-study-many-a...
100% of homes require smoke detectors here, must be positioned outside of every bedroom, and must be less than 10 years old. It's a requirement for building.
83% seems crazy low to me, let alone 2%!
I will be looking at alternatives, because I'm fed up with their attitude towards hosts.
I've had >1 Uber driver call me and ask me to cancel the request on my end because he realized he couldn't get to me for X reason, and he didn't want the cancellation to negatively impact his driver account.
I've found this kind of behavior is much more common abroad than in the US.
I stayed in one once, in 2018. It was a neutral experience. But certainly not better than a hotel. Unsure of the price as I didn't personally pay for it. Getting in initially was more work than a hotel, but not horribly so.
But after what they do to the housing situation, the numerous shitty hosts sometimes doing blatantly illegal things, things like the above, etc. I'd rather not have all that on my mental plate while trying to find accomodation. Book a hotel, call it a day. Hotels exist to solve the problem or temporary accommodation. They've been doing it for decades.
The only way I'd use an AirBnB is if the choices for hotels didn't exist for some reason. Like with Uber/Lyft and Taxis. Uber is still useful in some scenarios, but for the most part, take a Taxi if you're in a city.
I am willing to accept a lower standard for a lower price. The problem is some people think they deserve a 5 star experience for $100. The places I stay are old and outdated, you may see some bugs, and usually no toiletries/towels are provided.
Yes, Hotels offer a better experience. But my entire expenses for a 5 day vacation by the beach, including flights, lodging, and food is less than $1,000 with a cheap AirBnB.
But this was long overdue. Some cities are rife with Airbnb scams
You can pretend only the technology matters but customer service can sink or swim a service. And I don't get why Airbnb is not apparently paying attention to those issues
I've worked on fraud, at scale, before and it is a hard problem. But when you're giving fraudsters $$$ by letting scams happen and hurting people's lives in the process... for years... it escapes understanding.
When you turn a blind eye, you're effective "creating" a world for fraudsters to thrive. As a founder, myself, I'm always thinking about what the world would look like if I am successful. At some point it's your duty as a founder to put your foot down and "be the change you want to see in the world" even if it hurts your profit margin.
But maybe this is also the difference that lets people rise to the top. It's just sobering. At least people like Bill Gates have been able to distance themselves from their ruthless business tactics and steer that influence towards promoting positive change.
This means you can tell them that you just want a comparable place nearby (due to some unforseen issue with original booking) and they can say it's too much work or too much money to book you one and just kick you a refund last minute.
- support didn't offer to find a new last-minute place for our big group, but they did say they'd cover a new place
- basically 0% availability, so only $$$$ places left, and multiply that by a big group: 5-figure bill for lodging
- vrbo explicitly agreed to cover it after going through internal approvals, so we pulled the trigger. big event and clock was ticking before we'd be sleeping on the streets, so we were relieved.
- ... and then I got shafted with a 5-figure bill because, after-the-fact, they put up bureaucratic hurdles & denied our claim
After that shockingly fraudulent experience, I did some googling, and apparently this is common practices to all big players in this space. Multiple (winning) class action lawsuits.
On the plus side, better motivation for our business: we do gpu graph visualization & graph neural networks to help companies detect & prevent this kind of behavior based on all sorts of account metadata (transactions, image forensics, IPs, clickstreams) so personally motivated to help others target the bad guys causing problems for everyone else :)
Booked a different place in the same "town" and it was a 10 minute drive from where it was supposed to have been. We just accepted it.
I did eventually get a refund on the first one, but only after raising a fit at AirBNB. I think I'll stay at hotels in most cases moving forward.