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.
Pricing is still relevant, at least in Europe (from my experience). I’ve done a lot of low-budget traveling with small groups of students in France this year, and AirBnB was (unfortunately) consistently and significantly less expensive than hotels.
Also, many hotels don’t give you access to a kitchen, which really sucks if you don’t want to spend money eating out every day.
There are probably better local websites in the countries you’re going to if you want apartments. I don’t know any in France, but they have them in other countries. Ask around. Vacation destinations are literally all apartments for rent by tourists.
Ask around
All right. Do you know any for any European country?
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 😯
Turn your chicken coop into a 5 star Airbnb listing with one simple trick!
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.
now we can’t even us reddit anymore
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
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
AirBNB is only good if it is an extremely unique/convenient location and there are no hotels reasonably nearby. Otherwise Hotel absolutely > AirBNB
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.
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.
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.
Good gods how can you afford to go on so many vacations? :o
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
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.
Eliminate zoning and other regulations that make it impossible to build sufficient housing supply.
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.
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).
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.
Hotels are quite heavily regulated in all parts of their operation, many have unionized staff. AirBNB owners are wannabe landlords with no oversight.
Also Airbnb tends to kill communities by making it way too expensive for people to actually live there and sleeping in a complete stranger’s house does not sound too safe.
What’s the difference between renting a house on Airbnb and tearing said house to build a hotel?
I mean, 8 lots with 8 houses can sleep what…like 30-40 people max?
On that same space you can build a 5 story hotel with 80 rooms that sleep up to 4 each. That’s a vast increase in density and a much more efficient use of space.
I’m generalizing of course, but this is the gist.
The same argument could be said for an apartment building too. We need to collectively realize that Single Family Houses are a luxury that most of us will never see in our lifetimes. Our grandparents were able to enjoy them at low prices because the US had half the population it does today.
Restrictive building codes that only permit building SFH is the cause of our housing shortage and not short term rentals that consist of 0.2%-1% of all dwellings.
Yeah that is certainly the logical next step.
I live in a SFH and I won’t pretend I don’t like it. I also won’t pretend that I don’t like being surrounded by other SFHs, because half the reason I moved here was to have the sort of idyllic neighborhood feel I had when growing up. So I understand people who have a hard time accepting the idea of higher density housing.
At the same time, I regularly think about how fortunate I am to have bought out house when we did about a decade ago. If we were entering the market today we would struggle to buy. The people who move into our neighborhood today are in a completely different financial stratosphere than us, which is sort of odd.
We have a fair amount of higher density housing in my city but there will probably need to be more as time goes on.
I’d love for there to be some way to scale zoning regulations in an intelligent way. Just spit balling, but maybe you say ok look, you can restrict to SFH until population hits a certain point and then this or this area opens as available for higher density construction without needing to convince people in real time. I realize that has its own issues, but I just wish there were more creative ways to deal with it that didn’t involve trying to convince people when the need is already urgent.
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
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.
Sounds like a real shitboot.
Didn’t know that my autism made me racist too. Damn.
I’ve never had this kind of bad experience with Airbnb
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.
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?
And hotels are good for a city, instead of destructive.
Bringing business vs gentrifying black communities
