Tbh I’m a bit surprised how quickly Airb’n’b enshitified. It’s not even a competitor anymore imo.
Too many people who should not own and rent investment properties bought investment properties to rent as ABnBs. It broke the spirit of the thing, which was to rent space in your house, not a property used solely for that purpose.
Why haven’t zoning laws caught up?
They do but it’s apparently hard to enforce.
Couldn’t you just search Airbnb for your jurisdiction, then catch the landlord red handed?
I would agree.
I say it less as I know why and more that I know a lot of municipalities (including mine) have laws and codes in place that prevent using properties as hotels, and have had them for years, and yet they still operate.
So either they’re hard to enforce or they’re understaffed to do so.
They can pretend they live there. It’s harder than you think. And legislation takes time that a new app development does not. It is also local, so you are talking about thousand of civic governments not in concert with each other, and often playing the game with rental properties themselves.
The early days were actually great. People renting out spare rooms for cheap was a win/win, but of course “entrepreneurs” had to turn that into a side business and AirBnB had to maximise profits so it all went to shit.
Criminal money actually have real utility for being criminal money, the only problem is it being used as an investment vehicle.
It’s interesting how the newer ones are more valued. Piracy isn’t even on there anymore. 🧓
Holy shit, I love this!
I think about it once a month
Sure, they were…but Airbnb is now so old Trump wouldn’t try to fuck it, so why are people still giving them money?
They have also destroyed rent in lots of places. Here in Spain prices have more than doubled for rent since AirBnB is a thing. Landlords even tell you that they get way more money from airbnb, so supply and demand and all that.
Supply and demand isn’t really a thing with housing. I understand that Spaniards are upset, but that’s why you tell your socialist government to convert everything to public housing.
worst, its behind the housing crisis in many countries.
I’ve stayed at dozens of ~$80 a night motels in my day and never once has it been a negative experience. I check the room over with a UV light regardless, but I’ve never found anything. The service is always under paid burnouts so if you’re cool they’re cool. Plus the vibe is always this beautiful liminal emptyness that you can’t get anywhere else.
beautiful liminal emptiness
Love that!
Hostels are the best. Just give me a bed to crash and tomorrow morning I’ll be off again.
I would love for the Japanese capsule hotels to become a thing here in the US. I’ve always hated paying $150 or whatever for a full room (or suite) during a road trip late at night when all I do is crash out on the bed and then get up and drive first thing the next morning.
Weirdly, the capsule hotels tend to be more expensive than traditional hostels, and that’s for 150 dudes in a room.
I assume part of it is the novelty + influencers will pay anything for a few more clicks.
Maybe, but the couple I stayed in were mostly 30-50 year olds traveling for business.
in japan or in the US?
Japan, compared to traditional hostels in Japan, which can be quite nice. I didn’t know there were capsules in the US.
I sleep in my car, often. If I drive until 2 am, and have to be back on the road around 8, I don’t see the point in spending a bunch of dough.
If I was home, I’d probably be sleeping in my TV chair anyway.
I wish I could do that but I drive a roadster. Absolutely no fucking way to stretch out comfortably.
Yeah, a full stretch out doesn’t really work in my van, either, but I can deal with it for a few hours. I can see where a roadster would be absolutely impossible.
At least your getting good gas mileage. You can use the savings to pay for the room.
By the way, when I do stay in a motel, I always stay in cheap places like Motel 6 and Super 8. They’ve renovated most of them, and while they aren’t fancy, they’re clean, the beds are comfortable, the shower works, and they have a TV. They usually have a fridge and microwave, but I seldom use them. You can usually find one under $75, and I recently found one for $37!
At least your getting good gas mileage.
Lol I get about 16-18 mpg. 6-cylinder engines ain’t fuel efficient even when they’re jammed into a go-kart. For bonus points, the damned thing takes 93 octane.
And I’m bitching because my van only gets about 22.
Keep the dirty side down, and the shiny side up!
It’s funny, I also own a used school bus and that gets barely worse mileage than the roadster.
Capsule offers no benefit over regular bunk beds. I’ve been in both but I try to avoid capsule now. You don’t even save that much space, people still need to get in and out of their space anyways. But getting to your bed from the short end is just a damn hassle
But I prefer having the walls around me if I’m honest.
Last hostel I stayed at in Berlin (the one with the cool painted facade they were forced to change) the bathroom was so small I had to sit sideways on the toilet. Was still a fine room to be honest.
The hotel I stayed at in Park Slope Brooklyn for a few months was $90 per night after I worked my hotel discount magic (this was a few years ago). As a 6’ long person, I nearly had to sit sideways on the toilet. I couldn’t close the door because of my knees. No problem!
Not to mention a lot of them even have private rooms for pretty cheap.
I stayed at one AirBnB where the owner had replaced all the kitchen counters with untreated butcher block. The instructions basically said “don’t use the kitchen”. For bonus points, my parents got the one bedroom and I had to sleep in the kids’ room … on the bottom bunk with the actual kid’s sheets because there weren’t any other sheets in the house. I just felt sorry for the kid.
Hope they wash them at least
You can’t truely wash porous surfaces.
I rent apartments a lot on booking.com for staff travel, it’s never any hassle.
Used Airbnb once, never again.
Family book it often if I don’t get ahead of them, apart from one time the places are always sub par and half the stuff is broken.
This makes an assumption that the Airbnb you booked actually exists. That is usually but not always a correct assumption. 🫥
And if it does exist, sometimes it’s not legal. 🤡
I once had the guy tell me to enter and exit the building discreetly because the other tenants weren’t supposed to know he was subleasing the apartment. I think they knew.
Yeah so many places have those types of rules and yet shocker nobody ever enforces them ever.
All depends on how many people you’ve got with you. If you’re traveling with 8 people, splitting an AirBnB starts to make sense. Traveling solo? Hotels all the way.
I’ve recently rented an AirnBnB with 6 other People and at 21:26 the owner knocked and complained about noise. At that time we were playing cards and just enjoying each other’s company. The next day they wanted to kick us out because “partys” were not permitted. In no way other than drinking like 2 beers each we were having anything close to a party. I don’t know what they expected when they decided to offer a room for 8 Adults, but apparently they only welcome monks with a vow of silence.
8 people? Sounds like the perfect excuse to rent the penthouse. (Disclaimer: I’ve only seen penthouse hotel suites in movies)
Yeah if we’ve got a big team together for work we use AirBNB. I’ve stayed in some nice houses, and if everyone pitches in to keep the place clean it’s no big deal. This included plenty of drinking and weed, on outdoor cameras. Only problem I had was in NH right over the state line from Mass. The old-ass neighbor bitched multiple times every day about us having a fire in the fire pit and talking. Nobody was loud or drunk. We had to get up at 5 every day so it’s not like we were up late. He complained to the owner, she looked at the cameras, and took our side. Gave us a great review. She was probably tired of his shit too.
Oh this sounds like a challenge.
AirBnB may have some niche uses, but it is no replacement for hotels if you are just looking for general lodging.
I’ve never Airbnb’d and I never intend to. I like my hotels thank you very much.
I’ve never used AirBNB. What’s so special about it?
It used to be the cheaper option compared to hotels. Because it used to be people renting out a spare room.
And now it is (helping) ruining the housing market for us normal folk, with all these “entrepreneurs” buying up houses to list for high short stay rents on airbnb.
I would be shocked if it had any appreciable impact at all, but it certainly isn’t helping.
You’re wrong, sadly.
E: I’d rate interaction with the “buttnugget” LLM at 1 of 5 stars, the model is a dumbass that can only parrot very weak talking points in a meekly aggressive tone. When presented with evidence, this shit-box LLM can only respond with “lmfao” and terminate the interaction.
If it were a living being I’d tell them their mother is ashamed of them for lack of critical thinking skills, but considering that it’s just a weak model, I’ll say that its programmer is a clownass who was rejected round one in hiring for obvious reasons.
I’d be happy to be wrong but since supply and demand aren’t really impactful on market rate housing, it probably doesn’t do much except piss off morons.
You’re right on a micro level, but on macro scale, it’s absolutely making an impact.
I’d love to see some evidence of that since I’ve only ever seen reactionary YIMBY lies about it.
In large cities there are entire apartment buildings that have been converted to illegal hotels on Air BNB. It’s a huge problem, not the entire problem, but a damn big one.
I go to a lot of estate sales. A subset of the customers are people who have Airbnbs and are there for furniture and decorations.
Supply and demand are not really issues with housing, so again, it’s probably not an appreciable impact. Don’t believe the YIMBY lies.
There’s a reason it is banned or considered being banned in some cities around the world.
Correct! The reason it could be banned is because it is acceptable to ban under the neoliberal order. Notice how they haven’t banned rent even though that permanently solves the problem.
Yep! And those hosts bend over backwards. Like here’s a spare room, here’s some local chocolates from our town chocolatier. I made these jerkies. You’re invited to our 8pm fireplace time and have s’mores.
It was a real community. They still exist. But they’re overshadowed by shitty Airbnbs that want you to clean the gutters and mop the floors now for twice the price of a hotel.
jerkies
Reading the plural form of “jerky” makes me feel oddly uneasy.
Is that just like… several pieces of beef jerky or deer jerky?
I’m something of a jerkonnoisseur myself, and I have never considered the plural form of Jerky. This is like experiencing semantic satiation for the first time.
Mass nouns and their use is one of the most difficult features in the English language for English as a second language learners.
People do this with the word “code” all the time, and I have a strong urge to correct it. But I usually don’t.
I have a fondness for AirBnB. It’s gotten way bad in the past decade, since it’s being gamed.
Back then, there wasn’t much of a review system for shitty places. Today, Google Maps, Yelp, forums, social media - they can warn you about shitty places. And from my experience back then, a lot of hotels were scams.
Need a place to crash? You can either get a scary motel for like $40 that might have bed bugs, or a hotel for $300. I remember my first time in 2000 booking a hotel over the phone, having them save me a room, only to get there and these fuckers tried to upcharge me. I walked and they said, “Good luck finding a room in the middle of the night!” My mom eats specific foods because of her health issues, and Airbnbs often have shared kitchens. Hotels only recently started adding kitchenettes. And some hotels had locked devices. TV was extra. Fridge was extra. Touch snacks, fucking extra. You expected to pay $250 and here’s a bill for $600. Don’t want to pay? Well we’ll call the cops.
Airbnb and Uber gave people options, and you can give bad reviews to these bad actors. Having all this competition, hotels and taxis improved dramatically.
Of course, now Airbnb hosts (not Airbnb the company) took a lot of the shitty behavior that hotels used to do. Not to mention a lot of the Airbnbs are now owned by real estate companies who are trying to squeeze every penny.
So yeah, hotels have come back around to being a better service. And now if you get fucked over by the Marriot or something, take photos, leave a bad review, and they bend over backwards to apologize.
Rent a house instead of a hotel room. We’ve used that and other services like VRBO to rent cabins in the mountains. There’s nothing really “special” about it and it’s not really different from those other services like VRBO that came before. I think originally the difference was letting people rent a spare room, but I’ve personally never met anyone who has used that functionality (leasing or renting side).
Why would anyone want to stay anywhere but a hotel/resort on vacation? How does AirBnB handle housekeeping services? It’s not really up to the guest to clean, right?
Define clean? If there are dishes, you do them yourself. If you make a massive mess you clean it yourself to avoid fees. At the end of the stay you generally do something simple like toss all used bedding into one spot. Sometimes they expect you to start laundry by putting all towels in the washer. So, yeah, sort of, but there’s a massive difference between cleaning up after yourself and starting the laundry compared to sanitizing everything, vacuuming everything, etc.
Let me put it like this. I hate house keeping. It’s the worst. I’ve never viewed the check out requirements at any of the places I stayed as too much. Sure, there’s the occasional nightmare scenario, but hotels have nightmares too.
Location and large parties. You can usually find a short term rental in places where there aren’t any hotels (like near national parks, remote beaches, specific parts of certain cities).
It’s often cheaper to split a short term house rental between a large party than it is to get everyone rooms in a hotel. I’ve spent $700 a night at an AirBnB before because it was for a house with enough bedrooms, living rooms and kitchens for 14 people (with beach access). It was like renting an entire small hotel for a weekend.
15 years ago it was much cheaper than a hotel. Depending on the type of reservation, you may also get a kitchen and basically a house.
But things have changed and now they’re not the cheapest route anymore. Some people get horror stories as you can imagine because… People do shitty things sometimes as is human law of statistics.
I will do an AirBNnB when traveling with the wife and kids and another family, so all the kids can interact with each other early in the morning and us adults can all hang out later at night. We have had really good places, but we also do research on the place. I also skip anyplace that has no picture of the front of the place so I can find it on Google Street view and I skip any where with all the BS like in the picture. Otherwise, hotels all the way are better.
To me, it’s simple.
Crash out in the evening, be gone in the morning? A bed in a dormitory will do fine.
Stay for a few nights, go out every day to see the city/hike/etc? Gimme a cheap hotel room with a shared bathroom.
A longer stay for a workation/etc? Get a cheap apartment (at least a studio with a bathroom and a kitchen), because going out to eat fucking sucks.
I usually opt for a Staybridge Inn or Homewood Suites. All rooms have kitchenettes regardless of size with a full size fridge, oven, stove, etc. They have studios at regular hotel prices and 1, 2 and 3 bedroom suites for not much more. Complimentary breakfast and dinner as well as two free drinks per night (at least at Staybridge). Onsite laundry, gym, and usually a pool as well. These places were Lifesavers when I used to travel for work.
Perfectly sums up why I always pick a chain hotel for my vacations. I’m here to relax, not follow a cleaning checklist.
I mean, seriously, does AirBnB really not include housekeeping services as part of your stay? Why would anyone agree to stay at one of these? Daily housekeeping is a make or break amenity for me. How is that not the case for everyone?
Idk, but I’ve never paid more than 30€/night on AirBnB
Where?
Somewhere in Kazakhstan would be my guess.
It turns out you can actually sleep in a closet in Parisian suburbs for about $50, so I could see advance booking getting you down to 30 euro.
Tenerife, Paris, Milan, among others. I’ve only ever traveled within Europe.
Idk indeed.
Okay I see this meme a lot, but just curious, is taxis/rideshares in the same situation or not.
I rarely ever need to use those but just curious in case I might need it someday.
A lot of taxis also work for the apps, it’s kinda like hotels that are listed on airBNB for some reason.
I’ve had too many bad experiences with taxi drivers demanding too much money or trying to drop me off too early, I almost exclusively book through apps now. I know the app takes 20-30%, why tf are you trying to charge me 2-5x what the app would for this route?
Before you take any taxi, look up what the route would cost on an app, then use that as the max you would pay.
I stayed at an airport bnb once. Never again.
