Stayed at an Airbnb last year where I left a ~4 star review taking off one star because of excessive noise from the bus stop outside (otherwise positive). Couple months later I get an email saying my review was removed for violating Airbnb policy. Had to contact support where they told me the host had submitted (fake) WhatsApp screenshots of me asking them for money to post a positive review and so they removed my review. No matter what I said customer support refused to reinstate my review. The most alarming thing is that they removed my review without any input from me. Interestingly, the property had added additional co-hosts where that property was their only property after my stay. Presumably these are fake profiles they used to file the dispute so it wouldn’t impact their main account.
In any case, I am never staying at an AirBnb again. Be aware that any rating on AirBnb can be easily manipulated by the host.
Also if you have status at a hotel, perks like room upgrades and late checkout are invaluable.
Value proposition isn’t there anymore either, airbnbs used to be super affordable but now match the price of hotels and if they don’t are in inconvenient locations.
Not to mention the impact it has on local housing supply and pricing.
Unfortunately, the pricing still makes sense for larger groups of people.
There are far too many of these leeches taking up valuable housing in the most desirable part of my city
I can’t find a place to rent, but oh boy! look at all these temp stay airbnbs owned by vacation companies, my bad guess I should own a house.
Why should you get to use that desirable space 100% of the time instead of many different people being able to enjoy it?
Dropped a /s?
Dang so all I have to do to scam is have another WhatsApp account and send myself threatening messages 😯
Praxis would be to weaponize this and get your room comped while your staying at the Airbnb by having the host threaten you while your in the room. Karen’s have taught me to fight these fuckers at their own games just for the trill
Sorry brainstorming
Be aware that any rating on AirBnb can be easily manipulated by the host.
This is the same reason that Yelp is bullshit. And Amazon reviews. And pretty much any reviews you can find online. It’s why people used the reddit search flag. Everything is gamed and manipulated. People suck.
Which is why reddit has been a target for gorilla marketing campaigns for a while now. I only trust review sites that I follow now
now we can’t even us reddit anymore
Also at a hotel: “It smells like smoke.” “Let me take you conveniently to another identical room for free.”
Or any problem, really. I once had to move rooms twice because the AC wasn’t working. In an Airbnb, you’re boned
They only reason I started using hotels again is because my fiance gets good deals and they usually upgrade us because she works in the industry 🙂
The pay isn’t great (even in upper management, unless you are at corporate), but working in hospitality does have its advantages. It does make travel planning a lot easier.
AirBNB is only good if it is an extremely unique/convenient location and there are no hotels reasonably nearby. Otherwise Hotel absolutely > AirBNB
225 a night hotel would be a freaking dream. Most hotels cost 100 a night. I agree a cabin in the woods our somewhere else special.
But landlords are putting up ordinary homes up and people actually rent them. More money then sense.
It’s useful for short term renting. I’m interning and it’s stupid hard to find a 3 month lease.
My problem is that people talk as if these are the only options.
There are other services, like VRBO, that do the same thing and usually have the same properties. AirBNB is garbage now, so just use an alternative that doesn’t have the same bad policies and high fees.
Yeah exactly.
I’ve stayed in apartments a lot when travelling, but I’ve never used AirBNB. Not because of any reason against them, but I’ve just tended to use other online services/sites.
Agreed. If I’m going on vacation I avoid cities as much as possible and want to be in the middle of nowhere in nature. That means no hotels for 10s of kilometers, but there’s usually at least one person renting out a room or something similar. I’ve also never experienced any of the things in this meme in places like that, but that could also be because it’s an American thing, which wouldn’t surprise me.
Exactly. Hotels are maybe good in the cities, when you need a simple boring room. But when you’re out in the nature or wish to stay in the more interesting place, have a celebration for family/friends gathering - it’s Air BnB all the way.
AirBNB was great when it first started out. It was basically people renting out a room in their home for a night or two, for far cheaper costs than hotels and in areas where a hotel wasn’t as readily available. It was a good way for those folks to make some cash on the side and helped the traveler find convenient low cost housing for a couple nights
Unfortunately companies and people decided they could buy up properties and start a business selling out rooms, prices skyrocketed and it no longer became worth it. I just stick to hotels now (or hostels if I ever decide to backpack through Europe or something)
The last few times I’ve used AirBNB it’s been a pretty much like borrowing someones home.
For one we were travelling in Portugal and stayed in this old portugese lady’s home in a small village along the coast. Really sweet lady, but a bit of a language barrier as she struggled with both english and spanish.
Next weekend me and some friends are renting a whole 4 bedroom summer house in southern Norway to use as a base for a weekend of diving.
But in general I’ve grown tired of the concept, and the scarcity it brings to the housing market in some cities is predatory.
I’m Portuguese, Airbnb “crappy clean before you leave” and 600$ fees haven’t caught up yet luckily. Last time I used a Airbnb was in 2016, rented a room on S. Miguel (main Azorean Island) for a fair price.
Since then I mostly just book hotels wherever I go, be it Europe or abroad. In Europe, because it’s just easier, often times cheaper, more flexible check-in/check-out and doesn’t have the language barrier like you said. And abroad because I just don’t feel as comfortable and it’s expensive
It was honestly quite nice. We could communicate decently enough, and I believe it was her kids who handled the booking. Was down by Vila Nova de Milfontes, super nice and calm place, would definitely want to go back one day.
Oh yeah, English is very widely spoken in Portugal, mainly the younger generation but a good part of 40s to 50 year old people do have a good enough grasp of it. Older than that usually French is the main 2nd language and English is very basic to none.
You’re welcome back anytime! Portugal is a great place to retire, not to work though :p
Yeah and I apologize, I was talking in a very US specific context and I should have specified that (the hostel comment kind of muddled it as well). I haven’t tried airbnb abroad, and I’m glad it’s more reasonable over in Portugal and Norway at least so i’ll check it out if or when I decide to head that way. Just venting some general frustration using it in the US in my recent experiences.
I’m just here to say fuck air bnb. Ban that shit for it’s contribution to the housing crisis.
In my neighborhood, half the houses are AirBnBs… Because we’re close to tourist destinations. 4 of my 5 neighbors are AirBnBs.
How do you even combat that ?
The community must pass laws to protect occupancy expectations.
I hate all the “fuck Airbnb” hate when it isn’t coupled with “fuck my local council, etc” because they are the real enemy, they and their buddies are all in cahoots
Enforce zoning regulations and apply rental laws or hotel regulations to Air BnBs. If you make them actually follow the rules, it suddenly becomes vastly less profitable.
Enforcing is unfortunately really difficult because the incentives are too strong. We have rules here which are meant to prevent AirBnB and similar by limiting the number of nights any domestic property can be let in a year. So all the hosts just jump from site to site and change the descriptions slightly to get around it. And it’s so brazen. They use the same photos and everything. The really organised ones have whole buildings and when you book they’re non-specific about the unit you get, so it’s very difficult to actually track which ones are rented at any point, particularly when the enforcement teams are so underfunded.
Like any business, they should be subject to audit and inspection at any time.
In my small touristy town the people in charge of the town are all in on the rental property game so they push hard against new policies about zoning and hotel regulations on homes. My uncle is doing it and I know if he was audited be fucked seven ways to Sunday.
Eliminate zoning and other regulations that make it impossible to build sufficient housing supply.
…Or actually enforce zoning and regulations that ban short term rentals in residential areas? Most Air B&B’s in America are already illegal, real estate interests just have a ton of sway in local governments.
Why would you want to ban short term rentals when you could instead build more housing supply? Short term rentals bring in tons of money not only to property owners, but to the local area at large. Housing isn’t a zero sum game where in order to have short term rentals, long term rental supply must go down. Zoning laws make it impossible to build high density housing and approvals for large building projects are subject to the whims of the local planning board or city council rather than concrete laws and requirements. If we were to fix zoning regulations and improve approval processes, you could have plenty of housing supply for both short term rentals and long term, and the community would be better off.
Because while you wait for housing to be built there is currently a housing shortage, and existing houses are being used as short term rentals. And you’re assuming developers will act in good faith and not just use multiple floors as short term rentals which already happens. I’m all for building more housing and saying fuck short term Air B&B’s. There’s no reason we can’t do both.
I live in a place that is plagued by short term rentals. It sucks for the neighbors to have a different bachelorette parties next door every week of the summer. Lime scooters get littered all over the sidewalks in front of said houses. And we’ve already voted to ban them in residential areas but there is 0 enforcement.
I’m not assuming anyone will act in good faith. Developers should build whatever is profitable. If they build a whole building of new short term rentals, that will increase the amount of existing units that become available to long term rentals. It seems like you just don’t like tourism in your area.
At it’s core, this is the root cause of the housing crisis. We do not have enough supply. The amount of Airbnb’s that exist is extremely miniscule and the targeting of Airbnbs is an intentional distraction tactic.
Depending on the source, 1% to 0.2% of all dwellings are listed for short-term rental in the US. That’s crazy small and has very little impact on housing prices overall.
The fact of the matter is that Single Family Homes are an incredible luxury that our parents and grandparents were able to enjoy when the country had half as many people as it does now. It is no longer sustainable to expect a SFH in the US, and the American public continuing to cling to that dream and restrictive zoning practices are really what is driving up prices.
If you want an affordable house you will need to move to a rural area where land and labor are cheap. If you want to live near any reasonably sized city, you better be upper middle class to even think about buying a SFH.
I totally agree. More housing would be built if we were to just fix our broken zoning regulations and building approval processes but everyone is obsessed with banning Airbnb.
That is a cool handle sir
Thank you! Anyone can change their display name in the website and use fancy text!
If you can’t do it from your instance page, open a tab on your browser and search for a font replacer. After you find one, type in what you want, pick a font, copy it, and then paste it to your screen name on your instance under your settings.
There are a lot of options :)
Some letters from some fronts may not properly show up on certain themes, though.
Hotels are quite heavily regulated in all parts of their operation, many have unionized staff. AirBNB owners are wannabe landlords with no oversight.
I have to take issue with your assertion about hotel staff being unionized (although I recognize that could be true for your region). I’ve worked in hotels before and the reason they stay “cheap” is because they pay the cleaning and non-customer-facing staff the absolute bare minimum.
I’m coming from Midwestern America which certainly colors this experience, but in my case the housekeeping staff was made up almost exclusively of non-native English speakers. They were paid minimum, or close to it, and had room quotas that left them with 15-20 to “clean” a room.
On the events side of the business, the guys who set up tables and chairs were almost exclusively young, poor black men. The hotel only ran the air conditioning in those ballrooms when guests were present so it was regularly 80-85 f in those rooms with minimum wage staff doing manual labor.
Please understand I don’t have any love for the investment vehicle model that has taken over air-bnb, but hotels are by far the most disgusting socioeconomic workplace I’ve been in. I really don’t have the money for air-bnb, but I’ll certainly take some person paying off their rental over large corporation exploiting unskilled workers and immigrants.
Maybe in your country. Here in France AirBnB are both cheaper and the rooms are nicer than hotel. Some of them could be landlords and profit… but some others rent something that would not be fitting as a location (like a vacation flat or a subpart of a house) but is OK for staying just a couple of days.
So I disagree heavily with your generalisation
In Montreal an Airbnb cought fire and killed 6 guests and one tenant because the owner converted a house to multiple Airbnb ignoring all regulation (including fire marshal rules)
English article https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/old-montreal-fire-airbnb-1.6801216
The french media had some follow up stories describing the owner total lack it respect for regulation. The province ended up banning Airbnbs but I don’t know the details of the bag
It was worth it back when it was people renting out a spare room in their house or their whole apartment when they were away for a small bit of cash on the side, there was a mutual understanding that you are staying in another individuals private space with all the rules and caveats that come with that, so the pricing will reflect the arrangement. For me, this made the inconvenience worth putting up with in most cases.
Now that booking an AirBnb costs as much as a hotel room and the service has been overrun by landlords looking to use it as their primary rental income though? I’m booking a hotel every time. If I’m paying hotel money I want hotel service and convenience.
Tiny soapbox time: I don’t trust AirBNB hosts to actually treat for bedbugs if they get them. I figure a reputable hotel chain at least has a fighting chance of taking it seriously.
Dodged bed bugs at an airbnb in LA earlier this year. When we made the report it didn’t allow us to comment on the listing. So somebody else could possibly run into the same issue without resolution
PSA: learn to how to check for bedbugs now instead of when you travel. Here’s a video that’s kind, but thorough.
The last time I used Airbnb, we rented 2 rooms in a guy’s house for a few days. At first, the guy seemed okay, only a minor reminder about leaving dishes out. I left a fairly positive review, but when it came time for his review of us he implied we were racist for not keeping eye contact and conversation with his roommate. I never saw the roommate, and my husband is the kind of introvert who doesn’t initiate conversations, especially when alone. It was ridiculous. We were also told that we had access to the rooms, bathroom, and kitchen and not to go into any other part of the house.
I’ll stick with hotels.
I will take a hotel for it’s convenience, service, and predictability any day.
Beds are comfy 99% of the time, there’s an ice machine, and my god I’ll take any opportunity for room service/being waited on.
And if you want to travel cheaper, youth hostels are very affordable. Though you are not garanteed to have a private room, it’s perfectly ok if you just want a place to sleep imho
I gave up on Airbnb after the hosts cancelling the booking with my guests halfway there. Just booked a hotel and never looked back since then. To all the Airbnb hosts: professionals have standards.
Ice machines was something puzzling to me when I was in the US. I am curious why would you need an ice machine if you already have a fridge in the room?
In Montreal an Airbnb cought fire and killed 6 guests and one tenant because the owner converted a house to multiple Airbnb ignoring all regulation (including fire marshal rules)
English article: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/montreal-old-port-fire-1.6788756
The province ended up banning Airbnbs but I don’t know the details of the bag
Airbnbs were already illegal in the old port before that event. The company still allowed them to be posted. I’m quite sure the province didn’t ban them too, there are still legal postings. Unfortunately, not much happened after this event. Media pressure made it so that Airbnb closed a bunch of illegal ads, but without legislation and enforcement its only temporary.
How did they end up banning AirBnBs? I was just browsing Montreal AirBnBs yesterday ( funny enough).
I didn’t really follow up on it. Maybe it was just politician saying stuff or it’s banned but not enforced so nobody cares
Tbh I never looked before all this went down (cause why would I lol), so maybe there were changes and it wasn’t a “all airbnbs are banned” sort of thing. Maybe it removed a lot of listings.
Exactly nothing changed. There’s still just as many illegal air bnbs in Montreal.
I find when I AirBNB in the places I have been across Europe I have had no issues and I end up getting more for my money with no silly cleaning charges.
Is this something other locations have problems with or am I just missing the terrible places?
Afaik, AirBnB in the US is a huge pile of shit. In Europe most of the times the offering is good and you get more for your money that a typical Hotel. Exceptions exist of course, but on average I would say AirBnB > Hotel.
It’s going downhill in Europe too. I used Airbnb comparably early when it was available in Germany and it was a great way to cut costs while staying in unique locations and getting great tips from local owners.
Now it’s mostly the commercial listings you would find on other sites too, riddled with strange fees and Hotel-like prices.
Seems to be a US thing. I’ve always had a good experience with AirBnB in Asia.
Removed by mod
I did AirBNB once and it was probably the last time.
Wife really wanted to stay there as someone suggested to not stay on the main strip. So we got this cabin up a mountain. When I say up a mountain I really mean that. Unbelievably steep and the car barely made it. Room was to have a hot tube, sauna, and cable TV. After a 10 hour drive we get there up the craziest road I’ve ever driven and decide to just relax and watch some TV and microwave some food we picked up.
Microwave didn’t work, well shit, let’s heat it up on the stove top and turn the TV on. Remote doesn’t have batteries. Well fuck let’s eat and sit in the hot tub. Hot tub is broken. Well what about the sauna. Well it’s the size of a shoe box and looks like death trap. Decide to just go to sleep and get going early.
Wake up go do some sight seeing and pick up some batteries for the remote. We get back to the cabin and hear a hissing sound. Water line had burst behind the fridge and I can’t find the shut off valve as it’s locked behind a door. Call the guy and he tells me a emergency plumber will be stopping by late. While we are waiting we try the TV’s again and one of them won’t even turn on the other will but it’s locked and can’t watch anything. Plumber shows up at 11:30pm. Fixes it about 12:30 am.
Next day just eating a bagel and I walk by the sink and the floor partially collapses. I let the guy we are renting the room know what I think about his place and we leave a day early and get a hotel room. Room was slightly nicer and everything worked. Was 2 mins walk away from what we were going to and perfectly quiet and we didn’t have to spend 15 mins on death road.
While I agree that hotels are generally better than Airbnb, I have always had really good luck with Airbnb. I traveled across the EU staying almost only in Airbnb’s and it was great. It also let me kind of see what the housing market was there if I ever wanted to move. Also one of my hosts in Amsterdam firmly believed in the “bed and breakfast” portion of Airbnb, and cooked breakfast in her kitchen for us every morning and had all kinds of great info about the city. Plus she had an old orange cat that liked to sit at the breakfast table with us.
I have almost always had good luck. Just one bad experience comes to my mind - my host in Germany was a psychopath. I didn’t have any problems with her, in fact I hardly ever met her during a one week stay. But I forgot the heating on when I left. She got so pissed off that she left a long, insulting review, where she said shit about how we never got along. Airbnb refused to delete the review, so I deleted my account. By the way, I don’t pay $200 for a night. I take the cheapest $20 room that I can find.
Anyway, I created a new Airbnb account. The nice thing is that I was able to use a referral link from my wife again to get the referral bonus. So by deleting and recreating my account, I actually made $50.
Last time I used Airbnb I had a chill French-Canadian host for two months in Mexico. He only cared about the temperature of the AC. Aside from that, I had girls over, I could listen to music late at night, and I could smoke weed inside
The strangest part is when the owner suddenly decides to spend the night in the apartment as well, even though you rented the whole apartment alone.
Yeah I never used an AirBNB but after hearing so many horror stories I’ll never spend the night in one…
I’ve read so many stories of this happening that it seems to be the norm. That’s part of why I’ll never use AirBNB. Don’t feel like hanging out with the owners.
