Also fuck enshittification!
Yeah, if it’s the same price why the hell would you not stay in a hotel instead of “pretend this random house is a hotel, but now with the added magic of no regulation”
A halfway decent kitchen
“Oops, left a mess (had a crumb on the counter). $350 cleaning fee.”
People always say this, but I’ve never run into any issues. Booking a cabin for the family or a week long stay through airbnb can still be the more cost effective option.
I always read the reviews and rules in depth before booking. The types of places that will pull what you describe usually are pretty apparent.
Obviously it’s still fucked that I the consumer have to go through all of that when Airbnb could just make some standards, but oh well.
Personally now I avoid Airbnbs except for the two cases I mentioned. Groups and extended stays. Yes extended stay hotels do exist too, but they are hit and miss imo.
Booking a cabin
To clarify - booking a cabin (presumably in the middle of the woods, no neighbours?) vs booking a hotel (also in the middle of the woods, no other guests)?
Or does cabin mean something else for you, e. g. any vacation house?
Woods, family vacations tended to often be in the mountains
Never been to a hotel in the middle of the woods with no other guests
Although other places could be appropriate for group travel. Like any vacation home
Never been to a hotel in the middle of the woods with no other guests
That’s my point. You’re not picking hotel alternative not because airbnb is better, but because there is no alternative.
its cheap for large groups, but smaller groups not so much
That’s why I always leave a tip (what others call an “upper decker”).
I’ve really been working on upgrading this one but it really does the job
Who are you choosing? You have to do some research and never be the first one.
with a service fee.
There’s a plethora of extended stay hotels that aren’t much, if any, more expensive than a regular hotel that have kitchens.
Yeah, and their “kitchens” suuuuck
What, you too good for a 24"x18" counter with a combination dishwasher, coffee maker, microwave, and minifridge?
They are at least half descent like you asked. If you wanted good, you should have been more specific.
No, they’re not half decent for preparing a meal.
Just having a fridge and a toaster helps loads in saving costs if you are staying for a while. Search “apartment” instead of “hotel” to find these places.
A kitchen and other amenities are a big reason
I stay at hotels like that sometimes.
Plenty of options around here. Staybridge has dinner and drinks Mon-Wed
The basic problem of AirBNB was that it was never going to scale. Individual condo owners will never be able to compete with the efficiencies of scale of hotels. Having cleaning staff have to drive from building to building can never compete with a bunch of rooms in a single hallway.
The AirBNB concept does make sense for a few niche applications:
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Small rental units in locations where big hotels aren’t viable. (Think remote mountain cabins.)
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Actual lived-in homes for people who are traveling and don’t mind strangers staying in their house while they’re away.
Neither of these scale. Cabin rentals can compete because it’s not viable to build a hundred unit hotel on top of a remote mountain. But that market can’t scale. Cabin rentals already have their own rental networks, and there are only so many of them. People renting out their actual residences can compete with hotels. You already have to pay your mortgage anyway, bringing in a short-term renter adds little marginal cost. But this model can’t scale, as very few people actually want to rent out their own homes while they’re out.
But AirBNB pulled the usual Silicon Valley bait-and-switch. Corner a market with unsustainably low prices, then raise them. The bait got many people to purchase rental units with the goal of renting them on AirBNB. But this was never going to be sustainable. Once AirBNB stopped subsidizing the rentals, the landlords have to raise the costs (both monetary and policy costs) to actually make the business profitable. And they simply cannot compete with the economies of scale of hotels.
Airbnb as a service for homeowners to rent to visitors is a great idea. Want to rent out your basement to weary travellers? Heres a service to do that.
Buying 20 single family homes to generate passive income is an incredibly stupid, antisocial, and dystopian idea.
Wasn’t that the original idea? I swear when my friend first used it he made it sound like crashing in a spare room.
Yeah because it was a paid knock off of couch surfing. I made so many great friends in my trip to Europe because most of those doing it were college students or recent grads who wanted some extra cash and meet people.
It’s also good for family reunion or just traveling with your own family or kids and want a kitchen/ multiple rooms.
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Don’t forget having to find the cameras watching you, and text messages every 38 minutes telling you to leave 5 star reviews.
For sure, people think they know where to put the cameras for the best show, but they really don’t. Gotta help them out with that.
AirBnB became too many people’s “passive income”.
They don’t want to take care of the property or have too many to take care of, so they treat customers like house sitters for the luxury of renting the property as well as building equity off them.
Pretty messed up. In the early days Airbnb was ok, we used it a couple times, but I don’t think I’d want to mess with it today.
Gosh, I hate passive income. It doesnt do anything meaningful to society. Yet, the investor somehow gains more benefit from the invested resources than the people who create and use them.
Somewhere in America a landlord is crying…
and it was being used by some corps to worsen the housing crisis too.
Idk my airbnb had a heat alarm fitted on the ceiling directly above the stove, so when we decided to cook we discovered that it sets off above 45°C, is not a smoke alarm, and we were already overwhelmed with stress before that cataclysmic screech. I smashed it off the ceiling (because I can’t think through the noise to find the latch), told them “fuck you, hated the stay,” and I never got a fine. Left the pieces of alarm where they lay.
Those are supposed to be an improvement for small spaces where smoke alarms can be too sensitive and go off all the time. Of course, they’re supposed to be on the ceiling.
To be frank it was a very small space aha - kitchen was just round a corner from the living space, almost 3 walls of a square, and about 1.5 metres wide. Nowhere for the heat to go but up
Nobody in their right mind puts a smoke alarm in the kitchen anyway
I absolutely despise the social media feel of AirBnB. I already hate creating more accounts. Why the fuck do I need to make a whole ass profile and tick off a bunch of interests and whatever, and then when I see a property I want to rent, send a personal message sucking up to the property owner? Yeah, no. Lots of options out there that don’t involve that bullshit ant it baffles me that anyone finds it attractive.
Seems more like data farming than renting a room
I’ve been enjoying watching the Internet collectively bully that one AirBnB couple, Cassie and Jon.
I’m out of the loop on that one. What happened?
They’re a couple that just go crazy with what they expect from people that stay at their place. The clip that I first saw that I think made them go viral was them upset the guests left the TV remote in a different room (on the table next to where they keep their rulebook), moved a footstool, left the bed unmade, and left a few things of food in the fridge in containers. They do charge a hefty cleaning fee and have some crazy rules with steep fines like charging I think like $50 for every minute past their early checkout time or something.
This is the Fed’s fault.
There should have never been less than 3 percent mortgages. They basically gave away free home equity to an entire generation. And you know what they did? Bought 2nd homes and allowed VRBO/AirB&B to thrive. Now with “normal” interest rates, none of this makes any sense.
AirBnB is not for ‘cheap’ stays anymore (if it ever was), it works a lot better when you use it to find quirky/interesting places to stay (like a treehouse!). People still try to use it to replace a hotel though. $100/night can usually get you a decent room with breakfast at a hotel in most areas.
Do most people care about “quirky” places to stay, or do they just want somewhere to crash?
That being said, the only use I see for AirBnB is if you’re with a group of people and you can get a whole house and you can split the cost.
It was a cool way for my wife and I to spend a night in a treehouse for our anniversary and wasn’t very expensive (and within reasonable driving distance of our home). Maybe ‘quirky’ is the wrong word but more ‘interesting’? 🤷♂️
I know some people that have had good experiences using AirBnB for long term stays but overall I’m not a huge fan. It can be nice to have access to a kitchen instead of having to eat out, but for a place to just crash I’d definitely prefer a hotel.
Hotels suck ass too. We stayed in a “luxury” hilton and it was shit. It looked nice at first, but then
- Everything was falling apart.
- You got a “complimentary” water bottle (like a kirkland style) if you were a member, but it was $2.50 (maybe even $3.50 which I think I would have remembered cuz it’s funny) if you weren’t.
- They charged you a $60 deposit in case you use that bottle of water or something? We got that back, but it was stupid that we had to check.
- We didn’t use the parking pass for 2 days and they refused to give that money back.
They’re only being a little nicer right now because they’re losing business. They’ll go back to huge shits if they get the market share back.
Maybe I misunderstand the parking pass thing, but I’m not sure why you would get the money back just because you didn’t use it. My assumption (which may be wrong!) is that while you had that pass, capacity was allocated to you and could not be sold to someone else. Like buying a seat ticket for a show and not showing up.
That said, I wouldn’t be shocked to learn that isn’t quite the case. I should probably give you the benefit of the doubt.
We asked and they said they would, then wouldn’t, multiple times. We were so annoyed at that point that we were going to annoy them back.
Not my first choice. But I stay in cabins a lot and all the good ones use Airbnb or Vrbo because they have to. You got big companies like KOA, but those are typically crowded.
Places like that used to have their own listings and websites before the craze, but now if they aren’t listed they go unseen.
Im extra careful, but I typically find some amazing off the beaten path places. Lot of family owned and well cared for areas. Most also have some owner supplying homemade baked goods, fresh farm raised eggs, and produce pre-stocked. All completely free with a kind note.
$1k deposit, but yeah
Deposit at a hotel? I haven’t seen that before.
These days they just put a hold on your credit card which basically has the same effect.
I have, they want to get a deposit in case you use their services or something. Hotels suck too.
Edit: Airbnbs suck when they’re bought out by corporations. I’ve seen that a few times. Hotels are all owned by corporations. I try my luck more with airbnbs depending on where it is.
Family of 5. We stayed at an Airbnb in Salem, MA that was Harry Potter themed. Kids loved it. Good experience.
Generally though, hotels, please.
I booked a AirBNB once, and we had already driven an hour, and the owner said they never approved the booking, and “Airbnb messed up” when I called an hour into the drive
Nope, she clearly had forgotten to disable it that night. Then, after I argued, she said “oh just wait 10 mins, I’ll see if I can fix it”, and wanted me to sit there for 10mins in my car doing nothing.
Another time, its was NYE, it was $400 a night, and the bin there was overflowing at the BBQ, and, we bought ice cream but the freezer was frozen over completely, so it wouldn’t fit.
