I cannot for the life of me figure out why these companies don't just stick to their core.
AirBnB provides an amazing service, the ability to painlessly book hotels that feel like houses.
I guarantee you they are not going to be the next Apple or Microsoft, they're instead just going to dilute the value of their core business chasing things that aren't going to work, instead of focusing on their core service, and then in so many years time they will become irrelevant rather than inevitable.
Because the writing is sort of on the wall for airbnb's current business model. Local regulations are finally catching up to them, limiting new listings or applying the same taxes and fees applied to regular hotels. And airbnb's are not cheaper anymore, and many times not any more convenient than a hotel, due crappy hosts and their excessive fees and regulations.
Airbnb is still a great option if the location is under served by normal hotels, or if you are traveling with families so you want to have a kitchen/amenities. But otherwise I almost exclusively book hotels now.
For travel it’s just an option and always will be. Thats okay because the travel use case only hits most people once or twice a year. The future of Airbnb was and always will be using that option as entry point into your life at home. The app update and launch into these lifestyle categories are the starting point of this.
They chose to stick experiences and services as a root choice in the mobile app, not something that is attached to a booking or stay you already have. While I expect the major use case to be using these new services during a stay, the app design shows they are paving a future where you take some of what you loved about your airbnb stay back home with you.
> The future of Airbnb was and always will be using that option as entry point into your life at home.
The future of Airbnb was and always will be a place to book stays in someone's home. These other things they are doing are a bad joke that will at best waste money for no gain, and at worst will cause their actual business to suffer. Trying to be all things to all people is idiocy, stick to what you're good at.
a bad joke is a little harsh. It's worth trying to do a few new things. Having stayed in many airbnbs, I have wondered why they don't start adding a menu of things I can do once I am there. It feels like a space they could deploy some offerings and have the attention of their customer. There are bad jokes that cost a lot more money. Look at Apple Vision Pro. I think this is relatively cheap vs. their cash flow.
I will always love AirBnB for driving down prices by breaking the hotel cartels in major cities.
Over 10 years ago I rented a folding couch right off of Pearl ST. Boulder, CO.
I stayed in the living room of someones 1 bedroom apartment for $300 a night instead of 1k+ a night for the equivalent at what amounted to a travel lodge motel. The prices there were out of control, no inventory, just awful.
There are "plausible deniability" cartels everywhere, it's and it's always nice to see their grip on a region drop.
Can you actually? Every major city I've been to in the past five years is pretty harsh on that sort of thing. I'd happily pay $300 to avoid the risks of arrest and having all my stuff stolen.
Funny but couches can be pretty comfortable, and in the days of Airbnb being a monetized couchsurf, you'd at least wake up to fresh coffee
Safe place to stash your luggage is another matter, there's a dozen apps that cater to this need now too so if you are sleeping in the bus station at least you can put your baggage behind a locked door
> there's a dozen apps that cater to this need now
Before someone declared a need for buggy and unreliable locker apps, for decades prior you could deposit something called a "coin" into a slot which would allow you remove an equally archaic object called a "key" from the lock, which you would deposit in your pocket and be on your merry way.
> Before someone declared a need for buggy and unreliable locker apps, for decades prior you could deposit something called a "coin" into a slot which would allow you remove an equally archaic object called a "key" from the lock, which you would deposit in your pocket and be on your merry way.
Back in the '90s, sure, but then some people flew a plane into a tower block and apparently this meant we need to pay $20 for some minimum wage dude to put our bags on a shelf that's only open 9-5 instead.
DC Union station charged me I think 10usd per bag per 24hr , no smaller unit accommodated, but I decided $30 was worth it to enjoy my Amtrak layover for 3 hours and walked to the botanic garden unencumbered
Vienna Austria has a great set of lockers at their central station, I think I paid 3 or 4 euro for 12 hours for a locker. Venice too, but I did not anticipate that Venice has nowhere to lock up a bicycle, so I ended up paying 18 euro to store my "oversize luggage" for the day.
All in all I found European train stations to have better accommodations than American (makes sense because people actually use them everyday, 100+ trains a day in Berlin vs a place like Cincinnati with 2 trains a day)
Bilbao Spain I was glad to find a convenience store that was on the apps but also just accepted 5 euro to take my bags into their store room a few hours. I bet most hotel receptions would make that deal with you too.
Nador, Morocco I could not find anyone to take my luggage, the train station attendant told me to try the bus station, but the bus station attendant refused without my having a bus ticket, "even with cash?" "Even with cash"
There used to be very few hotels with kitchenettes, any space really beside just a bed.
There's way more suite and kitchenette options.
Lots of people travel for longer than just a night or two, or to travel beyond just business, where you might want to be able to actually enjoy being in your private space.
Hotels weren't really designed for this.
They wanted you to never be in your room, and instead upselling you at the bar.
Now, you can pretty easily find relatively affordable hotels that have many different types of rooms layouts for all different purposes.
Now, that defeats a lot of the point in having an AirBNB.
As you said, AirBNB is really only good if you're traveling somewhere with lousy hotel options, you're going to be staying somewhere for a long time, or traveling in a huge group, or you want to host a rager party or something...
Maybe I'm just not in the right cities but people say 2 things: Airbnbs are just as expensive as hotels and hotels have upgraded and I never see these two things as true. Airbnbs are typically cheaper than hotels and hotels, at least where I travel are still just a bed and a bath. Extended stay hotels have kitchenettes but extended stay hotels have always had kitchenettes and they were always the most expensive options because they are typically purchased by businessmen who have high budgets.
Hotels seem cheaper in some cities and if you’re solo or with only people who are ok sleeping in one small room with max 2 beds.
As soon as you go to two rooms, airbnb gets more appealing fast.
It’s also great where there are either no hotels, or the only options are motels, if you want somewhere with a kitchen and such.
Good for destination-type getaways where the point is to mostly hang out at the airbnb. Hotels suck for that. Even the nicer suite-type ones mostly do.
My experiences in travel has been the same. Airbnb competition has been awesome just like Uber has been awesome for taxis in many places.
The narrative is always that "it's worse and making things worse" and gets blamed for everything such as the housing crisis which is insane but it's been an awesome asset to humanity. Not just Airbnb but other similar search lodging offerings.
This depends on where you live. Not every country is like this and you sure can't call a taxi or have the same level of drivers (and add other ride share apps).
There's an incentive by many to just trash these competition apps and services but they've been a net good.
You can get the same experience with VRBO. People list in both usually. AirBNB hasn’t cornered the market. Plus, VRBO or sites like VacationRentals pre dated AirBNB
They actually don't list on both usually. Go lookup the data before you start making statements like that. In fact just go punch this into Google:
"how much of airbnb inventory is unique?"
I’m basing it on personal experience looking into renting a vacation rental and I have family who list on both. I am not going to google that because I know what is true
That's quite a broad assumption based on anecdotal evidence, you know what's true based on your few experiences renting and from a few listings your immediate family has, how can you even believe it's true based on this flimsy data?
Quick edit: just searched on both VRBO and Airbnb for rentals in my city for the same date range, VRBO shows me 191 options, Airbnb shows 330 options.
My point already shows that your whole assumption is flawed, which was entirely my point... You don't need to argue but it'd be in good faith to at least acknowledge that your point has no basis at all, it's just your feeling, not a point.
By the way, I live in a capital city in Europe so the discrepancies between listings would probably translate to many other places...
I don't get airbnbs because they're cheaper, I get them because I want to rent something other than a hotel room. If best western had in-laws or 1br quadplexes I'd be happy to stay there, but most hotels I've stayed at are bad rooms in bad locations that almost always include at least one negative surprise every trip, and as you move up to more expensive ones they somehow get fancier but worse.
I think paypal is probably an example of why this is probably imposible for a publicly traded company.
Paypals revenues have been growing for ever. They basically do just one thing. But since the market in that one thing has a limit. The market can only price in a certain amount so the stock never grows.
> It is also revitalizing an unsuccessful experiment the company began in 2016: offering bespoke local activities, or what it calls “experiences.” The next stage, launch date unspecified, involves making your profile on Airbnb so robust that it’s “almost like a passport,” as Chesky puts it
> After that comes a deep immersion into AI: Inspired by his relationship with Altman, Chesky hopes to build the ultimate agent, a super-concierge who starts off handling customer service and eventually knows you well enough to plan your travel and maybe the rest of your life.
That kind of makes sense to me - Airbnb must have learned to deal with trust/safety/reputation issues better than basically any other consumer app based company (except maybe Uber/Lyft)
Looking at incumbents:
Tour booking - TripAdvisor and Viator, not enough network effect
Home services - Angie's List and Thumbtack, not enough network effect
Events and concerts - Ticketmaster, enough said
Classified ads - Facebook Marketplace, enough said
Gym and fitness - Classpass, which I think is pretty good actually, but definitely going to be acquired or copied by Big Tech
Volunteer event hosting - Meetup, anyone under 40 even remember that?
“ Airbnb must have learned to deal with trust/safety/reputation issues better than basically any other consumer app based company”
Not at all. Basically all reviews on Airbnb are positive bc of the threat of retaliation. Your reviews are like your social credit score, not worth threatening to post a negative but honest review.
The Airbnb review process is so weird I can only assume it’s actually broken.
Give someone three stars; which is “okay” (airbnbs own language) and you’re forced into specifying why a review (or part of a review) got three stars. The canned reasons are pretty negative (“felt unsafe”, etc). The “write in your own reason” option is limited to 50 characters.
So you’re incentivized to select 4 or 5 stars which allows you to click through the review without any other entry requirements.
I only give truthful reviews and I’ve only had three cases (out of ~70 stays) where the host was an asshat in response.
There is no threat of retaliation for reviews because hosts and guests can't see each other's reviews until the review period is expired or they have already left their own review.
How? The reviews aren’t visible until after the window of time to review is closed or the review has already been submitted. AFAIK there’s no way to retaliate.
I cannot for the life of me figure out why these companies don't just stick to their core.
Because those CEO are unhappy. They want more in their life, they want everything; so that maybe then, they'll be fulfilled.
The path to success is made by many failures; and when you get to success, you can't take the success, you can't be 'done', you need more success. It's a long form of chasing the next dopamine rush.
He probably hasn't felt more alive than the week he threw everything in the blender. It's a mix of issues that starts with childhood and leads to a life of addiction for more.
On the cover of a magazine, it's an inspiring story, but deep down it's a sad human trait.
All power to him though, it sure makes for interesting stories.
> “I’m 43 and at a crossroads, where I can either be almost done or just getting started,” he tells me. “There's a scenario where I'm basically done. Airbnb is very profitable. We've kind of, mostly, nailed vacation rentals. But we can do more.”
The irony is that they haven't even nailed vacation rentals. It's probably different in US, but in the rest of the world, wherever I've traveled in the rest of the world I got better deals by using a combination of Google Maps, Booking, Agoda, etc...
AirBNB from 10 years ago "nailed" it in a better way than AirBnB of 2025, but that's the customer's perspective. From the business perspective, they probably "nailed it" in a sense of squeezing as much juice out of the unwitting guest...
"Duty to the shareholders": if you aren't the CEO growing revenue quarter over quarter, then your mostly stock compensation is worthless and the board is interviewing replacements.
> I cannot for the life of me figure out why these companies don't just stick to their core.
Greed. Founders and employees who cannot understand the value of a sustainable business that does one thing well and keeps people employed. We shouldn't seek to grow indefinitely, we should seek to reach comfortable levels of success and then focus our efforts on rewarding the people who are clients and employees maximally.
Yeah, I spent the whole time reading this article wondering "has this man lost his mind?". Airbnb works great for what it is. But nobody wants it to be an "everything" platform, and all that the CEO is accomplishing is wasting money chasing ventures that have no real chance of success. And that's if those ventures don't cause their actual business to suffer because resources are being spent elsewhere.
Here is how it should work. When people go on vacation they want an Apple like experience where it all just works. That is what AirBnB needs to sell. The only other person who probably understands this is Richard Branson (and Disney)...
call it AirBnB Concierge (or even AirBnB vacations) to blend in the AmEx style angle. It's easy peasy Chesky, make it happen.
That's exactly where Airbnb's business model collapses. They don't own or run the properties. They'll never be able to offer "it all just works" at any meaningful scale.
I think they can. It is pretty easy to start simply and experiment: AirBnB San Francisco. AirBnb Paris. AirBnB London. I'll give you an example. My wife is going to France with friends and we can pay money for a good experience but they are going 5-star and we can only afford 3-4 star which is where an AirBnB is also competitive. This sub-luxe market is wide open. If AirBnB isn't interested this is a YC startup for anyone who is.
You've not really addressed the core problem: they don't own the stuff. They are facilitating a transaction between you and the owner of the listing. It's very difficult to ensure any level of experience, especially without adding a ton of cost.
AirBnB allows you to find a temporary dwelling in places where hotels are few, or absent.
AirBnB also provides extra capacity when a city or town gets overcrowded due to an event (matches, concerts, convents, etc). Building a proper hotel is much more capital intensive than converting a house or an apartment into an AirBnB place, and back into a normal long-term rent unit, or your own abode, when needed.
FWIW I’ve probably stayed in 30+ airbnbs over more than a decade and the experience has been almost universally superior to hotels. Not denying others have had different experience, but always find these threads surprising.
I’ve had great experiences renting houses when that is what the situation calls for, but the most of my travel is to cities. In cities the main challenge is inventory and price and today I’m quite willing to spend a little more for staff and a free breakfast, after countless hassles trying to spend a little less on Airbnbs. That said I’ve recently stayed in nice hotels in NYC for $150/night which you can’t touch on Airbnb.
I would like a pony and a million dollars, but the real world is full of tradeoffs.
Vacation rental fulfil a niche that hotels do not, and I don't understand people who view them as substitutes. The fewer people use them the better. More for me and at better prices.
That said, Im probably not the median consumer. When I vacation, hotels cover almost none of my needs.
Im looking for a private beachfront Jacuzzi, hobbit hut in the forest, or someplace to party with family and kids.
It amazes me that companies like AirBnB get huge valuations and user bases when the fundamental feature of searching for listings is phenomenally atrocious.
- Paginated results that reset and call an API for new results when the map is moved (even to a subset of the initial call such as in a zoom).
- Inability to change pagination size.
- Inability to hide listings you aren't interested in.
- Map only displaying listings on the current page, which change dramatically per page.
- Page changes (the thing you do more of than comparing options), take way too long.
Maybe it's a real-estate website related issue as the two main property sites in Australia (Domain and RealEstate) as also garbage. I have a feeling it's also designed this way to prevent scraping.
Can someone at AirBnB please sort these basic QoL things out.
Did you notice that the search at Amazon is not that precise? It's not because they could not make it more precise. Equally, did you notice how milk and bread are in the opposite end of the grocery store? It's not because they could not put them next to the entrance. I suspect that a similar factor can be in play here.
As of slowness, I suspect they don't have a DC an Australia, so your packets need to travel across Pacific and back.
I also suspect that their web site already brings enough customers, and a serious rework to make it more usable won't bring in many more customers, and any more money. Investing in that is likely a poor business decision. I bet their resources mostly go to protection from fraud, legal battles, and other non-engineering concerns.
I understand your point, nobody is claiming that separating the bread and milk is a particularly good experience either and while it probably makes more money in a physical store where you want to buy multiple options at once, this doesn't apply to AirBnB with a single item checkout. The search at Amazon almost always gets me what I want on the first page, which is the desired behaviour almost everywhere to reduce friction to checkout. Why would I want to increase user frustration and bounce rate on a single product checkout?
I imagine significantly reducing database calls and blob downloads due to short-sighted pagination behaviour would result in significant cost saving, reduce bounce rate and increase conversions.
There are even more search issues that sometimes make it unusable:
- Impossible to filter / search by rating, which is a must-have if I am going to travel, no way I am risking staying at a first-time host, a lot of horror stories from forgetting bedsheets to outright scams.
- There is no way to see the precise location, which is understandable for safety in some places (mostly listings in areas with "single-family" similar neighborhoods, like Orlando suburbs, you don't want to advertise your home as "available"). But, in some cities, for example, in Rio, a large radius can make you uncertain if the apartment listing is beachside or in the favela's entrance.
As somebody traveling with small children, what's even more frustrating is that AirBnB seems to have a tag "Well reviewed by families", but refuses to allow you to search for it. Which means using more indirect filters (like "has a baby bed") and clicking through dozens of listings to find one with that tag.
I get why they do it (looking at more listing is great for them), but I feel like they're wasting my time and it sucks, researching holidays is a frustrating timesink as it is, and they make it worse.
Airbnb started strong, but it has become a minefield for travelers. Scam listings have exploded -- Airbnb admitted in 2023 that it removed nearly 60,000 fake ones, but that's only a fraction of what slips through. Investigations like one by VICE uncovered organized scams exploiting the platform for years, yet Airbnb has been slow to implement meaningful preventative measures. Meanwhile, pricing has grown increasingly deceptive: hosts tack on hefty cleaning and service fees, often doubling the advertised nightly rate. Although Airbnb recently added an option to show total prices up front, it's not the default, and hidden costs remain a major complaint.
Even more troubling are the widespread privacy violations. Thousands of guests have reported hidden cameras in their rentals -- some even found in bedrooms and bathrooms. Airbnb didn't ban indoor cameras until March 2024, after more than a decade of complaints and several high-profile criminal cases. Combined with fake photos, misleading descriptions, and little accountability for bad hosts, it's clear the trust that once defined the platform has eroded. Airbnb didn't just lose its shine -- it actively neglected the safety and transparency that made it appealing in the first place.
Yep. A few bad experiences and never again. The idea is pretty nice, but it always adds a layer of stress with the unreasonable cleaning demands and all. Hotels are more consistent and I know what I'm going to get as long as I stick with one of the main brands. I don't have to clean the entire house either.
Pretty much my exact experience before. I have another fun one.
One time the host kicked us out on the second day of a week-long stay to sell the house. She then put us up in a nicer house, but not in the area we wanted to be in. Our schedule was also completely screwed as we had to move our stuff over and the other family wasn't even out of the newer house yet. Everyone was confused and upset. Then there is a cleaning crew that typically doesn't speak English, so it's hard to communicate what is going on. You also don't want to leave your stuff there at the time as although they're just doing their jobs, they're also strangers and you don't know if they'll steal any of your stuff. So we had to end up waiting for awhile and burning up valuable vacation time. Never again.
I have an airbnb experience and just hired 2 people. Airbnb decided to pause my experience for no reason. Tried hitting up their support but they didn't provide a reason for the pause and a date when it would be resumed. This is why you never rely on one customer channel
Airbnb has been trying to push their "experiences" and they are mostly bad. The ones that were recommended to me were either far out of my target city or very nondescript. I hope more cities start to regulate Airbnb out of existence. I was comparing hotels and Airbnbs for a recent trip and found 25 houses that were Airbnbs owned by the same person. Completely absurd.
No, I don't care about hotels or hotel prices. People need places to live. You can deal with Hotel prices a bit high. There are millions of people in rich countries right now having hard time paying rent or finding any.
There’s many places with a lot of Airbnb’s per resident, just look outside of major cities where people still want to visit.
Things have mostly settled down, but suddenly taking a lot of housing off the market meant real supply shocks even if there was plenty of land available for development.
Zoning laws are a way bigger restriction on housing than anything else, Airbnb is a symptom and arguably a scapegoat compared to the dampening of the demand of building new housing supply.
Maybe in America. Outside the US, that's really not the problem. It's people buying up loads of houses and apartments in town centers and pushing everyone else out. Then landlords realize they can jack up rent because they can make more money in one weekend with some foreign tourists through Airbnb than they would from a local living there.
You can build new houses. But if locals are pushed miles away from town, the town dies. A new town is formed. And if that new town gets the slightest bit of popularity on social media, Airbnb swoops in to suck the blood out of it.
It's absolutely killing communities with incomes below the US average.
I don't think this is true. The proportion of short term rental places in some districts in European cities are as high as 8-10% and it's growing.
IMO it's meaningless to cite this 0.1% non-sense, because nobody will rent an AirBnB on the outskirts of huge cities far from tourist hotspots, so whoever comes up with these numbers, they probably try smearing the data by selecting an unreasonably wide area for comparison
Your entire comment is just made up with no evidence.
As a simple example, in Austin TX, Inside AirBnB tracks over 15000 short term rentals, which would be closer to 5% of housing stock.
And the "only a small percentage of housing is AirBNBs" is a poor argument anyway, because home prices are set at the margins, and a relatively small reduction in housing supply in a constrained market can have a significant effect on price. Plus, for people that rent out a room, in can essentially have the effect of increasing the amount they are willing to pay ("I could normally not afford this apartment, but I could if I rent out a room on AirBnB"), which also increases prices.
More importantly, though, people have actually done studies on the effect of AirBnBs on prices, and found they have a positive (i.e. housing gets more expensive) effect on rents and home prices. One example: https://marketing.wharton.upenn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/...
> Your entire comment is just made up with no evidence.
Quite the opposite. See for Montreal a recent article https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.7445844
Officials estimate 4k airbnbs which gives 0.2% of all residential dwellings.
Who cares about residential dwelling as a whole. Most of it is occupied by owners, we are talking about rentals and 4000+ taken by short term rentals is insanely high and sets the prices for what's left too.
I think the issue is locals who are already property owners and long time local tax payers will have a greater say than newcomers on new developments in that area.
With lodging, they have the risk of people finding a listing off-platform and paying cash, but because lodging is such a key aspect of a trip, people are often willing to pay the premium to have everything vetted/supported by Airbnb.
With personal services, they're risking having that problem at a lot bigger scale: are you willing to pay your barber or masseuse 18% extra to cover Airbnb's commission? I suspect a lot of people would use Airbnb to find a reputable provider, and then make contact off-platform.
I am not a chronic traveler but never understood the appeal of airbnb. Most low-mid to midrange chain hotels offer reasonably clean rooms for equivalent (or sometimes cheaper) price than airbnb after fees and I don’t need to play housekeeper either, or worry about weird owners, which seems to me like the whole nice thing about renting a short term place to sleep.
I have a 17 month old and she needs a dedicated space to nap; this is price prohibitive in hotels (suites, etc). So while I typically hate Airbnb, it’s the only solution for us right now.
Same here, plus if you’re traveling with extended family (like siblings’ families) the total price can become insane in a hotel. And feeding all of those people is cheaper if you have a normal sized kitchen.
I just wish more Airbnbs had really dark rooms with blackout curtains. Hotels normally have that covered
Airbnbs with kitchens are especially useful in the US due to the cost of eating out, with tax and tip etc. In other countries I use them more for getting luxury places at a lower cost, such as in parts of Asia, where eating out is much cheaper.
It’s just the standard investor grift where initially Airbnb was cheaper and had higher quality options, then once they established a dominant market position they enshitified
Hotels have been disgusting for years. They weren’t great before Covid. After Covid hotel owners stopped cleaning during your stay. Trash piles up in my room, with guests leaving trash in the halls. Carpets quickly get nasty. Nobody cleaning up the common hallways.
An Airbnb isn’t cleaned during my stay either, but at least the trash can can hold a day’s worth of trash, and there’s a proper kitchen and more space.
If hotels brought back proper service I would prefer them.
I love ABNB and I hope they can find a long-term business that works. Their original promise was so interesting and exciting…but reality has kind of caught up.
They’re kind of like Uber, in that way. But where Uber has become faceless and quiet, Airbnb wants to be a leader, and I respect that. Certainly there’s lots of cool things that _could_ happen with experiences, and I hope they do.
Yeah, Uber has pretty much got it dialled in. I remember the early days when “taking an Uber” was a weird mysterious thing. Now it is, for me, the most normal thing in the world. I’ve had one mediocre experience: I had a 60 mile one-way trip from an airport and multiple drivers accepted and then cancelled. I went and talk to one of the taxis at the taxi stand and they were asking double what Uber was… so I waited another 15 minutes or so and found a driver. Otherwise it’s been a completely satisfying experience.
Airbnb has definitely gone the opposite way. My first Airbnb experience involved getting woken up by the daughter of the family that lived downstairs asking me if I wanted breakfast for 5€. I was getting whole apartments for 30€/night. Now it’s just as expensive as regular hotels, half of them expect you to wash all of the linen before you leave, and it’s totally unpredictable what you’re going to get. I just book with Hilton instead. There’s free bottled water and snacks waiting for me when I get there, it’s a pretty consistent experience, and free good breakfast at most of them.
Uber is a lot better than AirBnb. I use an app and the person picks me up and drops me off. If the driver cancels I automatically get another one scheduled, they don’t check my ratings or care if I have never used an Uber before, don’t have to worry about the Uber not picking me up because of the color of my skin.
The AirBnb may be illegal, there is no consistency with how you get in and you can’t even find out the address until after you reserve. Hidden fees, weird policies, you never know what you are going to get or have any recourse if they cancel on you
The irony is the CEO probably can't tell it's mocking him.
What's the first sign of a midlife crisis?
That someone thinks a new car will turn them into a not-asshole.
> He wanted to bust the company he’d cofounded out of its pigeonhole of short-term home rentals. Amazon, he was fond of pointing out, was first an online bookstore before it became the everything store.
> “I was basically going from room to room just pouring out this stream-of-consciousness manifesto, like Jack Kerouac writing On the Road,” he says
> Chesky hopes to build the ultimate agent, a super-concierge who starts off handling customer service and eventually knows you well enough to plan your travel and maybe the rest of your life.
> “Brian’s been badly underrated as a tech CEO,” Altman says of his friend. “He's not usually mentioned in the same breath as Larry Page or Bill Gates, but I think he is on a path to build as big of a company.”
> “Steve Jobs, to me, is like Michelangelo or da Vinci,” he says. Despite never meeting Jobs, “I feel like I know him deeply, professionally, in a way that few people ever did, in a way that you only possibly could by starting a tech company as a creative person and going on a rocket ship,”
> “[AirBnB experiences] was like our Newton,” says Chesky, referring to Apple’s handheld device that predated the iPhone.
Yeah... somehow I don't think that guy understands subtlety or nuance. What a douche.
It was triggered by press release from them possibly embargoed so they could prepare the article on time. So it's not really an ad but driven by promotion. Without the PR there would be no article.
The PR pack contain actual ad for the company announcing API platform etc. this was submitted to HN at the same time by a few different people.
Most press just replicate whatever is in a press release from a company but some, better, publishers use it to write an article.
Basic problem with Airbnb is that you’re dealing with small proprietors and the quality and value can be pretty inconsistent. Airbnb has relied on reviews to enforce this but what I’ve found is that “hosts” usually wait to file a review of me as a guest until I file my review. So there’s a disincentive to leave a mixed review.
Additionally there’s a creep factor in the number of cameras on the property. Hotels have lots of cameras but you don’t get the same sense that you’re being policed. I realize some of this is necessary but it can still be off-putting; usually everyone in the rental comments on the cameras.
Airbnb could normalize the value by enforcing standards and capping certain unreasonable charges in particular cleaning fees. A uniform cancellation policy would also help.
Additionally there are no rewards for booking Airbnb and no perks at all for repeat customers.
I’ve moved from Airbnb to Marriot and I get 4pm late check out, upgrades to suites, free breakfast, priority booking etc… and I don’t have to take the garbage out, bundle up sheets, do the dishes, etc…
Maybe they do now. I have only left 2 mixed reviews. One when the place they rented was not the one showed in photos. The people weren’t allowed to rent in their building and this was not something that was advertised. This meant none of the building’s amenities were available to us despite being advertised. I ended up getting dinged somehow. I thought maybe they could see the review by a 2nd account or something. Could be wrong.
As an occasional host we always wait until the guest writes a review. Our goal is to basically never have a guest write a review so we don't write them hoping they just forget. If we write one they get an email telling them that we did and really pushing them to review.
Our place is all five star reviews and there is very little benefit for further five star reviews. So it's kind of all risk for us at this point when someone does review.
Yeah well, the main talent required for being a host on Airbnb isn't to host well, it's to manage reviews well.
Reviews should have an expiration date, because places age and wear out; I'm not interested in learning about the experience of someone from five years ago, I'd like to know how it was last week.
> what I’ve found is that “hosts” usually wait to file a review of me as a guest until I file my review. So there’s a disincentive to leave a mixed review.
yea i usually refrain from bad reviews because i might want to go stay with them in future.
As someone who doesn't have whatever lead poisoning makes people post reviews on yelp the review system is worse than useless.
I'm not gonna leave a mixed or negative review because snitches get stitches and I can't imagine anyone else reviewing has any less pathological incentives.
Hopefully the person flipping through reviews knows how to filter out illegitimate ones. Maybe my legitimate review tips the scale and they have a good time or avoid a bad time. Anyway, my point is that we don't all harbor such pathological perspectives regarding community contributions.
There are actually some really interesting problems to solve there:
It's now widely understood that online reviews can have a large impact on the success of a small business.
- What rating do you leave if you have a disappointing service from a really kind proprietor (like if the best humans make you the worst food)?
- Are we entering a world where there will be ramifications for the reviews you give? Will a restaurant be less likely to seat you if you left a middling review? As more places require you to identify with a phone number before you can be seated, will you receive worse service if you left a disappointing review or tip? It feels like reputation is about to flow in both directions.
- How do you avoid rating inflation when people who have bad experiences are reluctant to write about them?
And there are a bunch of little bugs in the current rating ecosystem:
- Culture impacts a rating. Americans are conditioned to start from 5 and deduct stars, which makes it harder to identify truly great places. Contrast this with Japan, where 3.5 stars is a really good rating, because Japanese people start from the median.
- If a place has thousands of reviews and a really high score, they're probably bribing people to rate them.
- How do you protect against spam? That includes reviews being bought from call centers, but also shitposts from people who don't like that something exists, or the way its staff behaves outside work.
- If people who eat fast food like a fast food place, it could have a better rating than an objectively better place that caters to more discerning clientele. How do you communicate that the people leaving reviews are/aren't representative of your tastes?
And as you alluded to, writing reviews (and HN comments) takes time that would often be better spent doing other things. What incentives do people have to take the time to leave a useful review? Can we find a way to make the process less burdensome?
i think on Google Maps they can't rate you back (maybe on Booking too?), so depends on the service. I don't review much anyway, but about a couple of times a year I run into a pretty amazing place that I can't help but compliment, and once in a blue moon a really crappy place that really upsets me so I feel like sharing that too. I see absolutely nothing pathological about that.
In the 2 mixed reviews the hosts substantially misrepresented the property and the legality of their listing impacting the quality of our stay and the value we were receiving.
As someone that has a backbone and isn’t afraid of the consequences of reporting when I get ripped off, I find mixed reviews to be valuable.
Airbnb made the same mistake Google did: They screwed up their core service. I used to be a steady ABB customer but now hotels are almost always cheaper, offer better service, and are more predictable.
Not to mention that hotel websites are typically easier to navigate and contain a lot less React-sludge that makes every click take forever to respond.
I had this experience too. Booked on AirBnb with someone who was about the same price as the hotels. Turns out the hosts were just employees of some letting company. They wanted photo ID, a deposit, and sign a second contract in a _separate website_, which I declined. Contacting AirBnb support they said this was fully allowed and I should have read the description harder. I did get a full refund but was told it was only because it was "my first time" and I've never had other issues.
I'm glad I turned around and booked with a hotel. It was very personable, good value, and better than what I would've gotten for the same price on AirBnb for that city.
There are too many shady middlemen in the vacation rentals space. I refuse to rent any place that has a separate lease, but they're no longer unheard of.
To some degree, I understand the businessification of rentals - it's uncomfortable for both parties if you're trying to get a grandma to meet you to exchange keys after a late flight. But also, that person-to-person charm is a big part of why people chose Airbnbs in the first place. If it's just an IKEA flip of an old apartment, why bother?
I've actually noticed that my taste in interior design has been impacted. The "pastel and sculpted veneer" aesthetic that took over Airbnb, "modern" coffee shops, and supposedly adult furniture brands like West Elm disgusts me now. I suspect it would have appealed to me if it hadn't been badly copied with shitty materials so many times. Now, I associate it with hollow experiences, poor craftsmanship, and attempts to get me to pay more for a "quality" I won't receive.
Here in Italy the law say that it’s mandatory to meet in person to give you the keys and to do identification, so the grandma should meet you anyway
Of course there are people that still ignore this, but the government has started to crackdown on this a bit, for example some months ago they started removing key boxes on the walls in the street
Not OP but something similar to me has happened in Berlin, but in my understanding this is more due to local regulation which effectively makes "true" Airbnb's illegal and the places that remain on the platform are basically apartment letting businesses
> They wanted photo ID, a deposit, and sign a second contract in a _separate website_
Yup my average airbnb experience in eg Spain is: dealing with an agent, asked to submit all my personal data to some random third party, all other communication done via WhatsApp, and often my number is given to third parties without my consent who spam me with things like offers of experiences/day trips etc
Just note that in a lot of countries, like Spain, the rental or hotel establishments are required by law to collect a lot of your information. It feels totally intrusive, but it's the law unfortunately.
Also, in places where there are such requirements, someone not following them and requesting the information could be a significant red flag. What other ordinances are they ignoring that could affect your safety or just your enjoyment?
Sure, but I expect AirBnB to handle this. (At least clearly communicate the requirement, cite the relevant statutes, link them, explain them, and help both parties be compliant while respecting users' privacy and hosts' time.)
I had some random folks in hostel reception taking full photo with their private smartphone of my id document "for the police", despite I clearly said I do not consent to have a copy of my document taken. Spanish hosts are absolutely shady and sloppy privacy wise.
EDIT. Spaniards don't take it personally. There is a war at the EU borders and there are waves of scams and various predatory behaviours, plus usual organised scams from Balkans, China, and India. Visitors will not be happy about their documents being scanned.
Where it’s the law for the lodging provides to have a copy of ID, you either consent to have them make a copy of your ID or you don’t get a place to stay. You don’t get to not consent and also get a place to stay.
They were probably telling the truth. It’s pretty common to have to register hotel/hostel stays with the authorities, and it’s increasingly uncommon to own a flatbed scanner - so what did you expect them to do, pull out a DSLR?
I stayed with a friend in a Balkan country a couple years back and she had to take my passport and that of a couple of relatives down to the police station.
I'd expect them to get the right equipment for them to operate their business instead of having people use their private cell phones to save my photo id to their personal iCloud account and God knows where else.
It's like you're arguing banks should be absolved of using tls because it's just so tricky.
If your business requires you to handle PII I expect you to have the right equipment and processes to handle it.
Shouldn’t it expected that a hotel would be able to provide a better service considering they are doing it in bulk and specialise in it. Vs a bunch of individual untrained hosts.
Seems more like Airbnb ran out of money to burn and hotels lifted their game.
In corporate lingo, I think their “core business” is any vacation rental? Partnering with hotels could perhaps have been a viable path for them to grow that and still fit with their business acumen. But I use other platforms for that service now.
There's no need to be super different. AirBnB has a huge userbase, cashflow, reputation, etc... they ought to provide a good search and booking service to users. (And there's all the potential for adding more and more upsell points and value-added services. From flights, insurance, car rental, local activities, museum and national park tickets to ... whatever they are now fucking around with, like fitness and food.)
I think it's mostly the fact that AirBnB stopped being outside the law. Once municipalities started regulating them, hosts started paying taxes etc.. they lost the price edge.
No, AirBnB just became much more expensive. And it's disguised as processing fees, cleaning fees, etc.
So if I ever take the risk of getting an Airbnb instead of a hotel, then I know the next time I book I'll pay cash directly with the host because it will be that much cheaper.
It's like uber: the bait and switch to a service that becomes less good and more expensive is costing them because the competition survived the first wave.
Also, the regulations caught up with them.
Basically, they wanted to win by scummy means, like a lot of American startup that calls doing illegal or immoral stuff "growth hacks".
Still worked well, they are a leader, but not enough to kill the game, and now they have to fight.
> ...the next time I book I'll pay cash directly with the host because it will be that much cheaper.
This probably won't work for you. It specifically violates Airbnb's TOS to attempt this, and Airbnb scans all messages between you and the host to ensure that you are not attempting this.
As for arranging it with a F2F conversation with the host, it's been years since I've rented an Airbnb and met a host F2F. That doesn't happen much any more.
The next ones I'll do it and I know it will work because I've been doing it regularly for years. I always get the personal phone number of the host, AirBnB can't do jack about it.
In fact, it's not legal for AirBnB to prevent it in my country.
I disagree. In the long run there was never a way for individual hosts to compete with hotels on price. Hotels have economy of scale so of course they are going to be better bang for the buck in places where both are options.
I think airbnb is still the better option in many situations - such as when you are willing to pay a premium to be in nature or you going on vacation with 6+ people.
I don't really see how better tech would ever prevent this outcome. Perhaps this disappointing in terms of continual growth, but I think it was inevitable and still provides a good path for the company to be uniquely useful.
And better. It was all around a better experience, analogous to Uber vs taxi. But while Uber is still more convenient than taxi, I haven't even considered using AirBnB in years.
agreeing (strongly) that uber is better than taxi, and yet again on price it is because uber skirts the law-- drivers typically do not have commercial insurance etc and also uber subsidized rides for a long time with VC money.
>When you earn with a transportation network company (TNC), referred to here as ridesharing, most states require extra—and costly—insurance.
>Uber maintains this commercial insurance on your behalf. What’s covered depends on factors such as who was at fault; whether you were offline, online, en route, or on-trip; and your personal insurance policy. Learn more about the commercial insurance coverage Uber maintains on your behalf below.
But I still think it was inevitable that cities caught up, either by restricting AirBNB units or giving in and allowing more hotel construction. There was no path for Airbnb to grow for 30 years without it ending up with basic econmics.
The only way to compete against the economy of scale was the original thesis of AirBnB. People were renting out their primary homes to bring in an extra stream of income. It was never going to be mainstream profitable to buy a normal apartment and rent it out on AirBnB.
> It was never going to be mainstream profitable to buy a normal apartment and rent it out on AirBnB.
It was never meant to be. It definitely has been though. Lots of people making much more money renting out AirBnBs rather than using their property for long term leasing. Which has obviously compounded the housing issues most cities are currently experiencing.
Cities ossified to unimaginably bad levels, which clamped down demand for large-scale construction, which significantly contributed to the productivity of said industry stagnating since "forever".
Compared to these structural problems short term tourist rentals are a complete red herring.
Say I own a house and I just rent it out a few weeks a year. Even if it's not a source of income I am still going to price it to the highest amount that people are willing to pay.
Here in Europe there are a lot of local websites for this kind of group accomodations in nature etc. and often the hosts there are much much more approachable and friendly, plus it's often cheaper than Airbnb.
One big example is Gites de France [1] with 55k listings, which is a 70 year old guide. Most of these aren't anywhere else. It doesn't make sense to look elsewhere when travelling in France. Other countries often have something similar, maybe in a smaller scale. For example there are holiday homes websites in the Netherlands, with close to 1000 listings [2].
> I disagree. In the long run there was never a way for individual hosts to compete with hotels on price. Hotels have economy of scale so of course they are going to be better bang for the buck in places where both are options.
Reminder that airbnb was supposed to be about renting your place when you were out of town, not buying 5 buildings to become an hotel chain yourself...
At least hotels don't ask you to clean the dishes, switch of the fridge and do the laundry before you leave
This made me realize that their original strategy was to extract the promise from the fat long tail of their respective supply ("unique experience" for abnb, "relevant search results" for goog). But then the Septembers are apt to become eternal if you can't keep it at a level manageable by humans, like a dang-or-2
From TFA
>I want to be a luchador!” he tells me, then immediately regrets it.
(dang is probably quite great at minimizing regrets a la Jeff, the insta ones most of all)
>Leave it to the subconscious to highlight what matters.
Between loyalty programs, clearer pricing, and just not having to stress about cleaning rules or weird checkout times, they’ve quietly caught up while Airbnb got distracted
I lived next to an AirBnB in Toronto, guests partying until 4am on a Wednesday.
Owner of the unit did nothing and as did AirBnB.
Luckily it was only a few nights a year - there's no mechanism to eject a guest like this. They create new accounts if they are banned from the platform.
It sounds like that is the true issue here (which the unit being an Airbnb is exacerbating to be sure). If it was a normal home, and it happened to have owners who were assholes and didn't care about the neighborhood disturbance, you would be in just as bad of a situation (probably worse tbh). The fact that it is being turned over for lots of short term rentals makes it more likely that you'll get asshole tenants there at some point, but ultimately to fix this the people of Toronto would have to pass noise ordinances and make the police enforce them.
I don't think I claimed they did. The cops don't give a shit. But AirBNB cares that the police get called on a property over and over. They'll eventually cut off the owner.
Hilariously, I had the opposite experience; the Airbnb host was the one that partied when it wasn't booked.
Either way our condo started enforcing a rule that was long on the books that owners couldn't rent out their unites for less than 3 months. It was the bedbugs that did it.
Have had some insanely bad experiences with AirBNB and swore them off forever.
People listing mcmansions they cant sell in a state of disrepair, lies about amenities and internet. Had to relocate several people repeatedly in the middle of the pandemic lockdown and it took months for the refunds to process.
Had another host try to pressure me into a cash deal and then claim damages to extract fees when I turned it down. After supplying their text messages and proof that the place was fine I had to wait 18 months for a refund and was locked out of renting a safer place.
I can't imagine trusting them for anything else. I now exclusively use craigslist and other sites that allow you to directly deal with property owners and have been really impressed.
I’ve had my share of bad Airbnb hosts too, not as bad as yours, but still enough to ruin a holiday and make me hesitant to use them again.
The bit that I should have expected but didn't was how strongly they side with the hosts in case of disputes. In hindsight, of course they do; the hosts are their money makers, while I'm booking them only a few times a year.
I stopped using Airbnb and closed my account. Hotels are fine, and never had any major issues.
I'm not sure how anyone is getting scammed in a way that is unique to renting vacation homes, care to elaborate?
Everything was handled by local realtors and felt substantially more legitimate than AirBNB. You're really only going to find overpriced garbage on there. The places I have been renting are booked >2 years in advance. We often encounter other families on the beaches/lakes that have been booking the same month for a decade+!
Half the airbnbs I try to book these days turn out to be resellers of un booked hotel rooms. Try to book, get a message from “host” just checking availability… silence for three days then sorry, not free … it’s a deeply flawed experience and Airbnb need to get a lot better at policing their platform
Can't blame people for having an existential dread about stacking all those W's for exactly no more cultural impact than a perfectly designed recycling bin.
I'm looking forward to the book (or movie) at least, I dunno about the rest
maybe they should admit they are not special anymore and expand into other large markets like hotels? I don't even care anymore, I just use Google Maps or Booking, whether it's a "property" on Booking or a hotel, each one has it's pros and cons, I choose whatever feels right at the moment from what seems to be an exhaustive list of both. Properties can be more fun and better for larger groups, hotels are cleaned and don't have annoying "house rules" like washing the dishes etc, or chasing the owner if the lock doesn't work. I don't know how many travelers still stick exclusively to properties anymore.
“I don’t know if I want to call it a social network, because of the stigma associated with it,” says Ari Balogh, Airbnb’s CTO. So they employ a fuzzier term. “We think of it as a connection platform,” he says. “You’re going to see us build a lot more stuff on top of it, although we’re not an advertising system, thank goodness.” (My own observation is that any for-profit company that can host advertising will, but whatever.)
End quote
Launching a communications tool in 2025 that isn't one of the two overly trod spaces (the advertising-hyperengagement loop of instagram, etc. or the people-you-already-know of whatsapp) is a genuine moonshot in a way that "what if airbnb but for manicures" isn't, and it's something that an incumbent like Airbnb could do that would be impractical for anyone else.
Utilizing unused processor cycles seems interesting! Those cycles are just sitting there in people's homes, waiting to be harnessed. So maybe you should call it something-At-Home.
I dunno, now that I typed it it seems a bit awkward. How about "something@home"...?
Explains why ABB recruiters have been filling my inbox with invites to interview.
Note they have a fucking ridiculous interview process of at least _6 rounds_. Absolutely bonkers.
I was tempted to go for it but fortunately have many other companies in my pipeline with much saner interview processes.
Good luck to whoever gets those positions. Seems they pay quite well, but the question is whether ABB push to expand will pay off and become self sustaining.
It looks like senior roles top out at $220k and staff at $250k, with another $10k or so in indirect financial benefits (401k matching, ESPP, etc). The pay is certainly enough to be well-off, but it's on par with what any random startup offers, so for the sort of person likely to qualify for an ABB position I'm not sure cash would be the motivating factor for choosing them over the other options.
where are you getting that info? ABB total comp per levels.fyi 449K for senior and 626 for staff. Their compensation is pretty competitive. I don't know any startup that offers that much that is also liquid comp.
I was going off the posted salary ranges on their website and ignoring stuff everyone has like decent healthcare and vacation. Do they have a bonus program or stock beyond the ESPP to make up the difference?
In addition to stuff people are saying about AirBnB reviews in other comments, as far as I can tell there is no way to leave a review or otherwise provide public feedback in cases where the host cancels the booking before you get there. This seems to grossly incentivize scamming.
I reserved an AirBnB months ahead of time to see the eclipse in Dallas last year, and the host canceled it the day before I was to arrive, with no communication (even when I tried to message them). I got a refund, but that's pretty cold comfort. Without any disincentive to do this, it's pretty easy for hosts to screw people over.
Its worth noting that hotels do this kind of thing, too; just rarer, for bigger events. Its specifically been known to happen for things like Taylor Swift concerts, etc.
Had this happen a few times with booking.com too. With the difference that booking offered a alternative accommodation and if that one was more expensive, the host who cancelled my booking has to pay for the difference.
I mostly stopped using Airbnb. The same listings often appear in other sites too and those usually have less bad UX for search and booking.
Also host can't offer that date for another guest (at least it used to be like that). In case of cancelling 1 day prior then they either have a serious issue or another booking so thats not so punishing.
It may also affect internal ranking order by which they show properties to people, but who knows whats implemented internally right now, and what will be in place in 3 months.
In this case it wouldn't really matter. It's fine for weeding out exceptionally-chaotic hosts, but hosts who rug-pull on a once-in-a-lifetime event like the eclipse (whether to re-rent for higher prices or because they forgot to take the listing down and were planning on using the facility themselves) aren't affected.
The "Experiences" thing sounds like Groupon. What killed Groupon was that Groupon wanted too big a cut, and the service providers dropped out.
This trick only works if you reach oligopoly levels, so providers have to sign up or go broke.
AirBnB is there in short-stay housing. Doordash/Uber are there in food delivery. Doordash/Lyft are there in gig rides, but might not survive Waymo. Amazon is there in e-commerce, but it took decades.
Can AirBnB find a second niche they can start to take over?
Also there are already other products like that, like Viator and Klook. I wish companies like Airbnb didn't feel the need to conquer everything all the time. It already is useful as it is.
The appeal and selling point of Airbnb experiences was local guides and small groups compared to Viator with more traditional group tours. In my experience it was quite good in Europe at the beginning. But now prices are just too high to justify, like 200+ euros for few hours walking tour.
I had always heard what killed Groupon was the bad economics.
The "loss leader" concept is Business 101, and Groupon was presented to customers as a gallery of loss leaders they can shop.
Actually delivering a good loss leader is hard. Design the offer wrong, and people don't attach properly-- they either don't load up their cart with additional, higher-margin items, or they don't return for future full-price services. I suspect Groupon didn't help-- if they provided consulting, it was probably to steer the merchants to give the store away to make Groupon look compelling regardless of bankrupting the merchant.
Over time, a lot of industries pulled away, either because they personally ran the numbers or simply saw their peers trying it and losing their shirt. The offers eventually retreated to what could survive in the cost structure: stuff like classes (near-zero marginal cost per attendee) rather than food or personal services with significant cost of goods or labour.
For me, it was one of those businesses that, as a consumer, you realized was sort of a novelty but the coupons weren't really really worth it and they were a PITA to use a lot of the time. And once the novelty wore off, they sort of slipped off your radar and weren't worth thinking about any longer even if there might be an interesting deal here or there.
And the volume of people caused the good customers to get shitty service so it was basically impossible to make it work. Also it was a mega loss leader since Groupon took a huge cut
Just seeing the number of different ways people have typed the name in this thread reminds me that "Airbnb" has got to be the ugliest, most confusing, and least riffable name of any startup to achieve unicorn status. I would guess it has cost them something.
I'm surprised they're not launching with more coverage. I just spot-checked what was available in NYC - it's a handful of unappealing tours. Some categories, like massage, are totally empty.
Are they abandoning NYC as a market since rentals are restricted there, or did they just not put enough effort into recruiting before launch?
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 295 ms ] threadAirBnB provides an amazing service, the ability to painlessly book hotels that feel like houses.
I guarantee you they are not going to be the next Apple or Microsoft, they're instead just going to dilute the value of their core business chasing things that aren't going to work, instead of focusing on their core service, and then in so many years time they will become irrelevant rather than inevitable.
Airbnb is still a great option if the location is under served by normal hotels, or if you are traveling with families so you want to have a kitchen/amenities. But otherwise I almost exclusively book hotels now.
They chose to stick experiences and services as a root choice in the mobile app, not something that is attached to a booking or stay you already have. While I expect the major use case to be using these new services during a stay, the app design shows they are paving a future where you take some of what you loved about your airbnb stay back home with you.
The future of Airbnb was and always will be a place to book stays in someone's home. These other things they are doing are a bad joke that will at best waste money for no gain, and at worst will cause their actual business to suffer. Trying to be all things to all people is idiocy, stick to what you're good at.
Over 10 years ago I rented a folding couch right off of Pearl ST. Boulder, CO.
I stayed in the living room of someones 1 bedroom apartment for $300 a night instead of 1k+ a night for the equivalent at what amounted to a travel lodge motel. The prices there were out of control, no inventory, just awful.
There are "plausible deniability" cartels everywhere, it's and it's always nice to see their grip on a region drop.
Safe place to stash your luggage is another matter, there's a dozen apps that cater to this need now too so if you are sleeping in the bus station at least you can put your baggage behind a locked door
Before someone declared a need for buggy and unreliable locker apps, for decades prior you could deposit something called a "coin" into a slot which would allow you remove an equally archaic object called a "key" from the lock, which you would deposit in your pocket and be on your merry way.
Back in the '90s, sure, but then some people flew a plane into a tower block and apparently this meant we need to pay $20 for some minimum wage dude to put our bags on a shelf that's only open 9-5 instead.
Vienna Austria has a great set of lockers at their central station, I think I paid 3 or 4 euro for 12 hours for a locker. Venice too, but I did not anticipate that Venice has nowhere to lock up a bicycle, so I ended up paying 18 euro to store my "oversize luggage" for the day.
All in all I found European train stations to have better accommodations than American (makes sense because people actually use them everyday, 100+ trains a day in Berlin vs a place like Cincinnati with 2 trains a day)
Bilbao Spain I was glad to find a convenience store that was on the apps but also just accepted 5 euro to take my bags into their store room a few hours. I bet most hotel receptions would make that deal with you too.
Nador, Morocco I could not find anyone to take my luggage, the train station attendant told me to try the bus station, but the bus station attendant refused without my having a bus ticket, "even with cash?" "Even with cash"
Source: Have hosted couchsurfers very long ago
There used to be very few hotels with kitchenettes, any space really beside just a bed.
There's way more suite and kitchenette options.
Lots of people travel for longer than just a night or two, or to travel beyond just business, where you might want to be able to actually enjoy being in your private space.
Hotels weren't really designed for this.
They wanted you to never be in your room, and instead upselling you at the bar.
Now, you can pretty easily find relatively affordable hotels that have many different types of rooms layouts for all different purposes.
Now, that defeats a lot of the point in having an AirBNB.
As you said, AirBNB is really only good if you're traveling somewhere with lousy hotel options, you're going to be staying somewhere for a long time, or traveling in a huge group, or you want to host a rager party or something...
As soon as you go to two rooms, airbnb gets more appealing fast.
It’s also great where there are either no hotels, or the only options are motels, if you want somewhere with a kitchen and such.
Good for destination-type getaways where the point is to mostly hang out at the airbnb. Hotels suck for that. Even the nicer suite-type ones mostly do.
Any data to back it up, please?
The narrative is always that "it's worse and making things worse" and gets blamed for everything such as the housing crisis which is insane but it's been an awesome asset to humanity. Not just Airbnb but other similar search lodging offerings.
Perhaps someone here on HN will read this here, make an app out of it, get funding and set up such a thing in the US.
And Uber did the same thing for taxis. Now Uber's ridiculously expensive and taxis are often a better option.
There's an incentive by many to just trash these competition apps and services but they've been a net good.
Dodging regulation and taxes was Airbnb's biggest competitive advantage.
Regulatory entrepreneurship only works long-term if you can continue to dodge, or change, the law (either statutes or case law.)
We will see what happens with all of the AI companies who claim fair use.
Quick edit: just searched on both VRBO and Airbnb for rentals in my city for the same date range, VRBO shows me 191 options, Airbnb shows 330 options.
By the way, I live in a capital city in Europe so the discrepancies between listings would probably translate to many other places...
Paypals revenues have been growing for ever. They basically do just one thing. But since the market in that one thing has a limit. The market can only price in a certain amount so the stock never grows.
So they look for growth else where
> It is also revitalizing an unsuccessful experiment the company began in 2016: offering bespoke local activities, or what it calls “experiences.” The next stage, launch date unspecified, involves making your profile on Airbnb so robust that it’s “almost like a passport,” as Chesky puts it
> After that comes a deep immersion into AI: Inspired by his relationship with Altman, Chesky hopes to build the ultimate agent, a super-concierge who starts off handling customer service and eventually knows you well enough to plan your travel and maybe the rest of your life.
That kind of makes sense to me - Airbnb must have learned to deal with trust/safety/reputation issues better than basically any other consumer app based company (except maybe Uber/Lyft)
Looking at incumbents:
Tour booking - TripAdvisor and Viator, not enough network effect
Home services - Angie's List and Thumbtack, not enough network effect
Events and concerts - Ticketmaster, enough said
Classified ads - Facebook Marketplace, enough said
Gym and fitness - Classpass, which I think is pretty good actually, but definitely going to be acquired or copied by Big Tech
Volunteer event hosting - Meetup, anyone under 40 even remember that?
Not at all. Basically all reviews on Airbnb are positive bc of the threat of retaliation. Your reviews are like your social credit score, not worth threatening to post a negative but honest review.
Give someone three stars; which is “okay” (airbnbs own language) and you’re forced into specifying why a review (or part of a review) got three stars. The canned reasons are pretty negative (“felt unsafe”, etc). The “write in your own reason” option is limited to 50 characters.
So you’re incentivized to select 4 or 5 stars which allows you to click through the review without any other entry requirements.
I only give truthful reviews and I’ve only had three cases (out of ~70 stays) where the host was an asshat in response.
The path to success is made by many failures; and when you get to success, you can't take the success, you can't be 'done', you need more success. It's a long form of chasing the next dopamine rush.
He probably hasn't felt more alive than the week he threw everything in the blender. It's a mix of issues that starts with childhood and leads to a life of addiction for more.
On the cover of a magazine, it's an inspiring story, but deep down it's a sad human trait.
All power to him though, it sure makes for interesting stories.
AirBNB from 10 years ago "nailed" it in a better way than AirBnB of 2025, but that's the customer's perspective. From the business perspective, they probably "nailed it" in a sense of squeezing as much juice out of the unwitting guest...
Greed. Founders and employees who cannot understand the value of a sustainable business that does one thing well and keeps people employed. We shouldn't seek to grow indefinitely, we should seek to reach comfortable levels of success and then focus our efforts on rewarding the people who are clients and employees maximally.
Hey, that sounds like AmEx Concierge.
Airbnb had novelty, inventory, and savings as its special sauce.
Nowadays we all know what a sub-par, overpriced Airbnb is like and it’s worse than a hotel because it’s usually far more inconvenient.
So we’re back to a hotel like experienced as the desire: convenience, available, and competitively priced.
AirBnB also provides extra capacity when a city or town gets overcrowded due to an event (matches, concerts, convents, etc). Building a proper hotel is much more capital intensive than converting a house or an apartment into an AirBnB place, and back into a normal long-term rent unit, or your own abode, when needed.
Vacation rental fulfil a niche that hotels do not, and I don't understand people who view them as substitutes. The fewer people use them the better. More for me and at better prices.
That said, Im probably not the median consumer. When I vacation, hotels cover almost none of my needs.
Im looking for a private beachfront Jacuzzi, hobbit hut in the forest, or someplace to party with family and kids.
I cant imagine using one as a hotel substitute.
- Paginated results that reset and call an API for new results when the map is moved (even to a subset of the initial call such as in a zoom).
- Inability to change pagination size.
- Inability to hide listings you aren't interested in.
- Map only displaying listings on the current page, which change dramatically per page.
- Page changes (the thing you do more of than comparing options), take way too long.
Maybe it's a real-estate website related issue as the two main property sites in Australia (Domain and RealEstate) as also garbage. I have a feeling it's also designed this way to prevent scraping.
Can someone at AirBnB please sort these basic QoL things out.
As of slowness, I suspect they don't have a DC an Australia, so your packets need to travel across Pacific and back.
I also suspect that their web site already brings enough customers, and a serious rework to make it more usable won't bring in many more customers, and any more money. Investing in that is likely a poor business decision. I bet their resources mostly go to protection from fraud, legal battles, and other non-engineering concerns.
I imagine significantly reducing database calls and blob downloads due to short-sighted pagination behaviour would result in significant cost saving, reduce bounce rate and increase conversions.
- Impossible to filter / search by rating, which is a must-have if I am going to travel, no way I am risking staying at a first-time host, a lot of horror stories from forgetting bedsheets to outright scams.
- There is no way to see the precise location, which is understandable for safety in some places (mostly listings in areas with "single-family" similar neighborhoods, like Orlando suburbs, you don't want to advertise your home as "available"). But, in some cities, for example, in Rio, a large radius can make you uncertain if the apartment listing is beachside or in the favela's entrance.
Much better to spend years on an expensive redesign that somehow makes the user experience worse. Now that's how you get ahead.
Even more troubling are the widespread privacy violations. Thousands of guests have reported hidden cameras in their rentals -- some even found in bedrooms and bathrooms. Airbnb didn't ban indoor cameras until March 2024, after more than a decade of complaints and several high-profile criminal cases. Combined with fake photos, misleading descriptions, and little accountability for bad hosts, it's clear the trust that once defined the platform has eroded. Airbnb didn't just lose its shine -- it actively neglected the safety and transparency that made it appealing in the first place.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/nationwide-fake-host-scam-on...
https://img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/BB1n...
One time the host kicked us out on the second day of a week-long stay to sell the house. She then put us up in a nicer house, but not in the area we wanted to be in. Our schedule was also completely screwed as we had to move our stuff over and the other family wasn't even out of the newer house yet. Everyone was confused and upset. Then there is a cleaning crew that typically doesn't speak English, so it's hard to communicate what is going on. You also don't want to leave your stuff there at the time as although they're just doing their jobs, they're also strangers and you don't know if they'll steal any of your stuff. So we had to end up waiting for awhile and burning up valuable vacation time. Never again.
Pretty sure the only price you can see now is the total price.
I was looking a couple weeks ago and got annoyed that I couldn't find nightly price or how it breaks down
Things have mostly settled down, but suddenly taking a lot of housing off the market meant real supply shocks even if there was plenty of land available for development.
You can build new houses. But if locals are pushed miles away from town, the town dies. A new town is formed. And if that new town gets the slightest bit of popularity on social media, Airbnb swoops in to suck the blood out of it.
It's absolutely killing communities with incomes below the US average.
IMO it's meaningless to cite this 0.1% non-sense, because nobody will rent an AirBnB on the outskirts of huge cities far from tourist hotspots, so whoever comes up with these numbers, they probably try smearing the data by selecting an unreasonably wide area for comparison
As a simple example, in Austin TX, Inside AirBnB tracks over 15000 short term rentals, which would be closer to 5% of housing stock.
And the "only a small percentage of housing is AirBNBs" is a poor argument anyway, because home prices are set at the margins, and a relatively small reduction in housing supply in a constrained market can have a significant effect on price. Plus, for people that rent out a room, in can essentially have the effect of increasing the amount they are willing to pay ("I could normally not afford this apartment, but I could if I rent out a room on AirBnB"), which also increases prices.
More importantly, though, people have actually done studies on the effect of AirBnBs on prices, and found they have a positive (i.e. housing gets more expensive) effect on rents and home prices. One example: https://marketing.wharton.upenn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/...
Quite the opposite. See for Montreal a recent article https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.7445844 Officials estimate 4k airbnbs which gives 0.2% of all residential dwellings.
Who cares about residential dwelling as a whole. Most of it is occupied by owners, we are talking about rentals and 4000+ taken by short term rentals is insanely high and sets the prices for what's left too.
https://www.redrocknews.com/2025/02/28/interactive-map-of-se...
With personal services, they're risking having that problem at a lot bigger scale: are you willing to pay your barber or masseuse 18% extra to cover Airbnb's commission? I suspect a lot of people would use Airbnb to find a reputable provider, and then make contact off-platform.
I just wish more Airbnbs had really dark rooms with blackout curtains. Hotels normally have that covered
Perks of ABNB- Private jacuzzi, functional kitchen for large group meals. Stay with friends and their kids under the same roof.
I can't gut a fish or leave gear on the porch at a hotel.
Beyond that, I value beauty and character, and find hotels devoid of both.
I understand your point if all you're looking for is somewhere to sleep that's clean and comfy.
An Airbnb isn’t cleaned during my stay either, but at least the trash can can hold a day’s worth of trash, and there’s a proper kitchen and more space.
If hotels brought back proper service I would prefer them.
They’re kind of like Uber, in that way. But where Uber has become faceless and quiet, Airbnb wants to be a leader, and I respect that. Certainly there’s lots of cool things that _could_ happen with experiences, and I hope they do.
Airbnb has definitely gone the opposite way. My first Airbnb experience involved getting woken up by the daughter of the family that lived downstairs asking me if I wanted breakfast for 5€. I was getting whole apartments for 30€/night. Now it’s just as expensive as regular hotels, half of them expect you to wash all of the linen before you leave, and it’s totally unpredictable what you’re going to get. I just book with Hilton instead. There’s free bottled water and snacks waiting for me when I get there, it’s a pretty consistent experience, and free good breakfast at most of them.
The AirBnb may be illegal, there is no consistency with how you get in and you can’t even find out the address until after you reserve. Hidden fees, weird policies, you never know what you are going to get or have any recourse if they cancel on you
And also did you have a problem with AirBnB based on skin color?
https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/13/tech/airbnb-project-lighthous...
I spent over $10K on Uber over a year a couple of years ago.
What's the first sign of a midlife crisis?
That someone thinks a new car will turn them into a not-asshole.
> He wanted to bust the company he’d cofounded out of its pigeonhole of short-term home rentals. Amazon, he was fond of pointing out, was first an online bookstore before it became the everything store.
> “I was basically going from room to room just pouring out this stream-of-consciousness manifesto, like Jack Kerouac writing On the Road,” he says
> Chesky hopes to build the ultimate agent, a super-concierge who starts off handling customer service and eventually knows you well enough to plan your travel and maybe the rest of your life.
> “Brian’s been badly underrated as a tech CEO,” Altman says of his friend. “He's not usually mentioned in the same breath as Larry Page or Bill Gates, but I think he is on a path to build as big of a company.”
> “Steve Jobs, to me, is like Michelangelo or da Vinci,” he says. Despite never meeting Jobs, “I feel like I know him deeply, professionally, in a way that few people ever did, in a way that you only possibly could by starting a tech company as a creative person and going on a rocket ship,”
> “[AirBnB experiences] was like our Newton,” says Chesky, referring to Apple’s handheld device that predated the iPhone.
Yeah... somehow I don't think that guy understands subtlety or nuance. What a douche.
The PR pack contain actual ad for the company announcing API platform etc. this was submitted to HN at the same time by a few different people.
Most press just replicate whatever is in a press release from a company but some, better, publishers use it to write an article.
Additionally there’s a creep factor in the number of cameras on the property. Hotels have lots of cameras but you don’t get the same sense that you’re being policed. I realize some of this is necessary but it can still be off-putting; usually everyone in the rental comments on the cameras.
Airbnb could normalize the value by enforcing standards and capping certain unreasonable charges in particular cleaning fees. A uniform cancellation policy would also help.
Additionally there are no rewards for booking Airbnb and no perks at all for repeat customers.
I’ve moved from Airbnb to Marriot and I get 4pm late check out, upgrades to suites, free breakfast, priority booking etc… and I don’t have to take the garbage out, bundle up sheets, do the dishes, etc…
Oh, I thought they did a double unlock. I.e. waiting for both reviews to be finished before publishing either.
i don't think so. I've seen reviews from hosts that i haven't reviewed.
https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/13
Our place is all five star reviews and there is very little benefit for further five star reviews. So it's kind of all risk for us at this point when someone does review.
Reviews should have an expiration date, because places age and wear out; I'm not interested in learning about the experience of someone from five years ago, I'd like to know how it was last week.
yea i usually refrain from bad reviews because i might want to go stay with them in future.
I'm not gonna leave a mixed or negative review because snitches get stitches and I can't imagine anyone else reviewing has any less pathological incentives.
Source: look at online reviews of literally anything
It's now widely understood that online reviews can have a large impact on the success of a small business.
- What rating do you leave if you have a disappointing service from a really kind proprietor (like if the best humans make you the worst food)?
- Are we entering a world where there will be ramifications for the reviews you give? Will a restaurant be less likely to seat you if you left a middling review? As more places require you to identify with a phone number before you can be seated, will you receive worse service if you left a disappointing review or tip? It feels like reputation is about to flow in both directions.
- How do you avoid rating inflation when people who have bad experiences are reluctant to write about them?
And there are a bunch of little bugs in the current rating ecosystem:
- Culture impacts a rating. Americans are conditioned to start from 5 and deduct stars, which makes it harder to identify truly great places. Contrast this with Japan, where 3.5 stars is a really good rating, because Japanese people start from the median.
- If a place has thousands of reviews and a really high score, they're probably bribing people to rate them.
- How do you protect against spam? That includes reviews being bought from call centers, but also shitposts from people who don't like that something exists, or the way its staff behaves outside work.
- If people who eat fast food like a fast food place, it could have a better rating than an objectively better place that caters to more discerning clientele. How do you communicate that the people leaving reviews are/aren't representative of your tastes?
And as you alluded to, writing reviews (and HN comments) takes time that would often be better spent doing other things. What incentives do people have to take the time to leave a useful review? Can we find a way to make the process less burdensome?
i think on Google Maps they can't rate you back (maybe on Booking too?), so depends on the service. I don't review much anyway, but about a couple of times a year I run into a pretty amazing place that I can't help but compliment, and once in a blue moon a really crappy place that really upsets me so I feel like sharing that too. I see absolutely nothing pathological about that.
When I do I shut my mouth, lest it be overrun by influencers, content creators or other undesirables.
As someone that has a backbone and isn’t afraid of the consequences of reporting when I get ripped off, I find mixed reviews to be valuable.
Not to mention that hotel websites are typically easier to navigate and contain a lot less React-sludge that makes every click take forever to respond.
I'm glad I turned around and booked with a hotel. It was very personable, good value, and better than what I would've gotten for the same price on AirBnb for that city.
To some degree, I understand the businessification of rentals - it's uncomfortable for both parties if you're trying to get a grandma to meet you to exchange keys after a late flight. But also, that person-to-person charm is a big part of why people chose Airbnbs in the first place. If it's just an IKEA flip of an old apartment, why bother?
I've actually noticed that my taste in interior design has been impacted. The "pastel and sculpted veneer" aesthetic that took over Airbnb, "modern" coffee shops, and supposedly adult furniture brands like West Elm disgusts me now. I suspect it would have appealed to me if it hadn't been badly copied with shitty materials so many times. Now, I associate it with hollow experiences, poor craftsmanship, and attempts to get me to pay more for a "quality" I won't receive.
Of course there are people that still ignore this, but the government has started to crackdown on this a bit, for example some months ago they started removing key boxes on the walls in the street
Yup my average airbnb experience in eg Spain is: dealing with an agent, asked to submit all my personal data to some random third party, all other communication done via WhatsApp, and often my number is given to third parties without my consent who spam me with things like offers of experiences/day trips etc
EDIT. Spaniards don't take it personally. There is a war at the EU borders and there are waves of scams and various predatory behaviours, plus usual organised scams from Balkans, China, and India. Visitors will not be happy about their documents being scanned.
It's like you're arguing banks should be absolved of using tls because it's just so tricky.
If your business requires you to handle PII I expect you to have the right equipment and processes to handle it.
Seems more like Airbnb ran out of money to burn and hotels lifted their game.
So if I ever take the risk of getting an Airbnb instead of a hotel, then I know the next time I book I'll pay cash directly with the host because it will be that much cheaper.
It's like uber: the bait and switch to a service that becomes less good and more expensive is costing them because the competition survived the first wave.
Also, the regulations caught up with them.
Basically, they wanted to win by scummy means, like a lot of American startup that calls doing illegal or immoral stuff "growth hacks".
Still worked well, they are a leader, but not enough to kill the game, and now they have to fight.
Good.
This probably won't work for you. It specifically violates Airbnb's TOS to attempt this, and Airbnb scans all messages between you and the host to ensure that you are not attempting this.
As for arranging it with a F2F conversation with the host, it's been years since I've rented an Airbnb and met a host F2F. That doesn't happen much any more.
In fact, it's not legal for AirBnB to prevent it in my country.
I think airbnb is still the better option in many situations - such as when you are willing to pay a premium to be in nature or you going on vacation with 6+ people.
I don't really see how better tech would ever prevent this outcome. Perhaps this disappointing in terms of continual growth, but I think it was inevitable and still provides a good path for the company to be uniquely useful.
That way was to skirt laws around obtaining hotel permits and zoning and paying all the relevant hotel taxes and business insurance.
https://www.uber.com/us/en/drive/insurance/?city=portland
>When you earn with a transportation network company (TNC), referred to here as ridesharing, most states require extra—and costly—insurance.
>Uber maintains this commercial insurance on your behalf. What’s covered depends on factors such as who was at fault; whether you were offline, online, en route, or on-trip; and your personal insurance policy. Learn more about the commercial insurance coverage Uber maintains on your behalf below.
But I still think it was inevitable that cities caught up, either by restricting AirBNB units or giving in and allowing more hotel construction. There was no path for Airbnb to grow for 30 years without it ending up with basic econmics.
It was never meant to be. It definitely has been though. Lots of people making much more money renting out AirBnBs rather than using their property for long term leasing. Which has obviously compounded the housing issues most cities are currently experiencing.
Compared to these structural problems short term tourist rentals are a complete red herring.
Say I own a house and I just rent it out a few weeks a year. Even if it's not a source of income I am still going to price it to the highest amount that people are willing to pay.
One big example is Gites de France [1] with 55k listings, which is a 70 year old guide. Most of these aren't anywhere else. It doesn't make sense to look elsewhere when travelling in France. Other countries often have something similar, maybe in a smaller scale. For example there are holiday homes websites in the Netherlands, with close to 1000 listings [2].
[1] https://www.gites-de-france.com/en [2] https://www.vakantieadressen.nl/
Reminder that airbnb was supposed to be about renting your place when you were out of town, not buying 5 buildings to become an hotel chain yourself...
At least hotels don't ask you to clean the dishes, switch of the fridge and do the laundry before you leave
This made me realize that their original strategy was to extract the promise from the fat long tail of their respective supply ("unique experience" for abnb, "relevant search results" for goog). But then the Septembers are apt to become eternal if you can't keep it at a level manageable by humans, like a dang-or-2
From TFA
>I want to be a luchador!” he tells me, then immediately regrets it.
(dang is probably quite great at minimizing regrets a la Jeff, the insta ones most of all)
>Leave it to the subconscious to highlight what matters.
Owner of the unit did nothing and as did AirBnB.
Luckily it was only a few nights a year - there's no mechanism to eject a guest like this. They create new accounts if they are banned from the platform.
Airbnb doesn't give a shit about you (and frankly, neither do the cops), but the cops and Airbnb don't want to tussle with one another.
Either way our condo started enforcing a rule that was long on the books that owners couldn't rent out their unites for less than 3 months. It was the bedbugs that did it.
People listing mcmansions they cant sell in a state of disrepair, lies about amenities and internet. Had to relocate several people repeatedly in the middle of the pandemic lockdown and it took months for the refunds to process.
Had another host try to pressure me into a cash deal and then claim damages to extract fees when I turned it down. After supplying their text messages and proof that the place was fine I had to wait 18 months for a refund and was locked out of renting a safer place.
I can't imagine trusting them for anything else. I now exclusively use craigslist and other sites that allow you to directly deal with property owners and have been really impressed.
You rent vacation rentals on Craigslist? That's the first I have heard of this even being a thing.
The bit that I should have expected but didn't was how strongly they side with the hosts in case of disputes. In hindsight, of course they do; the hosts are their money makers, while I'm booking them only a few times a year.
I stopped using Airbnb and closed my account. Hotels are fine, and never had any major issues.
So apparently you have found the ~10% or so of craigslist short term rental listings that aren't outright scams?
Everything was handled by local realtors and felt substantially more legitimate than AirBNB. You're really only going to find overpriced garbage on there. The places I have been renting are booked >2 years in advance. We often encounter other families on the beaches/lakes that have been booking the same month for a decade+!
I'm looking forward to the book (or movie) at least, I dunno about the rest
Quote
“I don’t know if I want to call it a social network, because of the stigma associated with it,” says Ari Balogh, Airbnb’s CTO. So they employ a fuzzier term. “We think of it as a connection platform,” he says. “You’re going to see us build a lot more stuff on top of it, although we’re not an advertising system, thank goodness.” (My own observation is that any for-profit company that can host advertising will, but whatever.)
End quote
Launching a communications tool in 2025 that isn't one of the two overly trod spaces (the advertising-hyperengagement loop of instagram, etc. or the people-you-already-know of whatsapp) is a genuine moonshot in a way that "what if airbnb but for manicures" isn't, and it's something that an incumbent like Airbnb could do that would be impractical for anyone else.
I dunno, now that I typed it it seems a bit awkward. How about "something@home"...?
Note they have a fucking ridiculous interview process of at least _6 rounds_. Absolutely bonkers.
I was tempted to go for it but fortunately have many other companies in my pipeline with much saner interview processes.
Good luck to whoever gets those positions. Seems they pay quite well, but the question is whether ABB push to expand will pay off and become self sustaining.
I reserved an AirBnB months ahead of time to see the eclipse in Dallas last year, and the host canceled it the day before I was to arrive, with no communication (even when I tried to message them). I got a refund, but that's pretty cold comfort. Without any disincentive to do this, it's pretty easy for hosts to screw people over.
I find it hard to believe those places paid any penalty and if they did it’s not enough.
I mostly stopped using Airbnb. The same listings often appear in other sites too and those usually have less bad UX for search and booking.
It may also affect internal ranking order by which they show properties to people, but who knows whats implemented internally right now, and what will be in place in 3 months.
Can AirBnB find a second niche they can start to take over?
The "loss leader" concept is Business 101, and Groupon was presented to customers as a gallery of loss leaders they can shop.
Actually delivering a good loss leader is hard. Design the offer wrong, and people don't attach properly-- they either don't load up their cart with additional, higher-margin items, or they don't return for future full-price services. I suspect Groupon didn't help-- if they provided consulting, it was probably to steer the merchants to give the store away to make Groupon look compelling regardless of bankrupting the merchant.
Over time, a lot of industries pulled away, either because they personally ran the numbers or simply saw their peers trying it and losing their shirt. The offers eventually retreated to what could survive in the cost structure: stuff like classes (near-zero marginal cost per attendee) rather than food or personal services with significant cost of goods or labour.
Are they abandoning NYC as a market since rentals are restricted there, or did they just not put enough effort into recruiting before launch?