I’ve never had this kind of bad experience with Airbnb
Same here.
For some reason, I trust the cleanliness of Airbnb’s more than hotels. Maybe this is baseless, maybe not.
Also, the amenities: you can never get a hotel room with a washing machine and a stove, so you either need to pack a lot of clothes or go to the laundry shop (if there’s any). And you cannot cook anything, you cannot even heat up leftover food. Hell, there aren’t even any cutleries.
Also, most of the case Airbnb wifi worked for me better than hotel wifi. Even if slow as hell, it’s still stable. But in a hotel… good luck with using the internet for anything.
You might want to check into extended stay hotels like Candlewood or Home2. You get a refrigerator, stove top, dishes and cutlery, a lending locker with things like toaster ovens and crock pots, laundry facilities, a small gym, etc.
Stay away from the cheap ones like Value Place and you’re usually good.
The guests tend to be blue collar types doing industrial work.
Same here. I’ve probably done over a dozen stays now. I just always book with a Super Host or whatever they call them, check their rules and fees over a few times, and most places I stay, the owner lives there on the same property.
I like it because I figure people won’t ignore things like bedbugs in their own full time living space, I like getting to know them and their tips for what to check out and where to eat. I like meeting their pets! And it makes it feel like you’re staying somewhere in particular, not in a generic space that could be anywhere in the world, it is one unique spot that is nowhere else.
I do agree with the problems it can cause in communities. My neighborhood isn’t Airbnb homes, but due to many foreclosures, we do have a lot more rentals and it does have a different vibe, so I can empathize with that. But I have only stayed at one that the host didn’t live on site. That is in a middle of nowhere place in a very rural area I’ve been visiting by entire life though, and most of the already not great hotels in the area have closed.
I wouldn’t not ever stay in a hotel, but I try to go to unique places and I feel the experience I seek out on Airbnb adds to my traveling.
And if you have a dog just hand over another 350$ in cleaning fees, plus 250$ for reservation on top of the 40% fees that air bnb normally adds on.
I’d have thought you’d get a similar experience in hotels when traveling with a dog?
My hotel is a high-end dog friendly hotel, we don’t require any additional cost for a guest bringing a room. Unless they order room service for their dog or something (yes, we have it).
We do need some additional paperwork, but nothing that most dog owners wouldn’t already have on hand I think.
In many chain hotels it’s just like 15€ per night fee.
Yup, $25 in the hostal I work for
AirBNB is only good if it is an extremely unique/convenient location and there are no hotels reasonably nearby. Otherwise Hotel absolutely > AirBNB
Hostal > Hotel > 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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
Seems to be a US thing. I’ve always had a good experience with AirBnB in Asia.
It’s probably a thing about Americans being trash.
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.
Airbnb quickly changed in the US from “hey rent out your house when you’re out of town for some spare cash” to “hey landlords here’s a way to gain more share of property and rent out those pesky properties in the short term”.
There are whole businesses built now for Airbnb just to take up properties and rent them on Airbnb at the highest rates possible. Then since they are looking for profit they pass the cleaning onto you.
Always trust capitalism and greedy people to ruin a good thing
My city in AZ just passed an ordinance that requires any short term rentals to have a permit, the owner must be able to respond to the property within 60 minutes, AND there must be a verified neighbor reachable 24 hours of the day and verified.
That should put a significant dent in landlord rent seeking behavior.
But it also takes away from the original nature of AirB&B which is rent out your home while you’re away or your personal second home
That’s what happens when capitalism ruins something with good intentions.
Amsterdam been more aggressive, you can rent a full home only 30days/year, the rest you have to live there.
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.
I used AirBnB for travel in Germany for the last 4 years and one thing that really helped with those fees is the Australian AirBnB website. They legally have to show upfront the complete cost including alle fees. So I exclusively use the Australian AirBnB website now to find properties, you even can set the currency to Euro.
Now that’s a life pro tip 👍🏼
Also at a hotel: “It smells like smoke.” “Let me take you conveniently to another identical room for free.”
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.
Or any problem, really. I once had to move rooms twice because the AC wasn’t working. In an Airbnb, you’re boned
Yeah, all you need is one shady AirBNB experience to forever turn you off to the idea. I had a horrible one in 2018 and haven’t stayed at one since.
I agree with other posters—I’ve had some better experiences using similar services to rent like entire villas for large work groups, but other than that I don’t think it’s worth it.
You can’t just say that and not tell the story!
Oh god, where to start.
Pay for early check in, show up, get ghosted by the host for two hours.
Receive a text—“Go to this Starbucks and await further instructions”
Get texted a 20 page pdf full of crazy shit including a line “If someone comes knocking on the door in the middle of the night asking for Chris tell them that you leased the apartment two months ago because he stopped paying and no one has seen him.” PDF includes GPS coordinates to a telephone pole with a master lock lock box on it that contains the keys to the place.
Arrive at the condo and it’s—I’m 100% not kidding—FILLED WITH SAD CLOWN ART. It was literally all pictures and statues of sad clown shit with an added touch of Jewish devotional stuff.
Go to a conference the next day and return to all of my shit moved around.
Literal horror story. Never again.
EDIT: Preemptively I was poor at the time and it was for a work conference that had already been reimbursed. I should’ve contacted AirBNB. But I was young, dumb, and wanted to advance at my place of work.
Holy shit, flipping horrific nightmare fuel
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.
And hotels are good for a city, instead of destructive.
Bringing business vs gentrifying black communities
Airbnb sounds like a good idea when you imagine people using it as first envisioned: doing short-term rentals on an otherwise unavailable space that’s not being used. Handy for vacationers, and it’s a fair way for owners to make a few extra bucks, right?
It sucks, but it’s predictable, that owners are abusing the system. Buying a place specifically for Airbnb rentals should be cracked down on. Ridiculously picky rules are NOT okay. Cleaning fees need to be capped, unless there’s solid evidence (solid evidence by courtroom standards, not Airbnb standards).
I mostly agree with this. But AirBNB is helpful because it lets me take my two dogs, who benefit greatly from having fenced yards. It saves me from having to pay a boarding fee, I can bring my dogs, and let them run free in the yard. Aside from that, I much prefer hotels.
FYI, I believe most or all La Quintas are pet-friendly. That’s where I’ve stayed when moving long distances with my 2 cats. You won’t have the yard benefits, but it’s still good to know.
Thanks! Definitely good to know!
I always just let my dogs run in the empty pool. Staff only needs to guard the shallow end and if it’s a peanut pool my dogs can get some wicked wall sprints going on.
Right, they have specific values outside of just the standard place to lay down your head. I prefer hotels as well, but will stay in an AirBNB if it more appropriately suits my needs.
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?
Yes. Adriatic.hr is good for Croatia.
But that requires effort on my part!
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.
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
I’m just here to say fuck air bnb. Ban that shit for it’s contribution to the housing crisis.
The housing crisis is caused by property taxes being too low, particularly on land values. Banning small rentals won’t work because they’ll continue to extract rent under longer-term leases.
We already have plenty of houses. Increase taxes and their market values will drop.
The housing crisis is caused by many things.
Ban the ownership of single family residential properties by corporations. I don’t see a world where it makes sense for houses to be owned by companies.
What would you say the housing crisis is? I’m viewing it not as a shortage, just that that market prices are too high.
Not that I strongly disagree with your suggestion, but taxes that raise money have an advantage over bans that cost money.
I think it depends on the area. Some places near me have very limited rentals available yet if you search airbnb in those areas they have way more. Airbnbs for a house can charge what a weeks rent is per night. The owner only needs to have people in the house for 2 months to make the same they would renting it out. When i first moved out of home rent prices jumped 50-100% in 2 years. I’m not sure what caused it but since then rents haven’t jump as much but are still very high. Rent used to be maybe 30% at most of wages now its 60%+. Of course theres more factors involved than just the landlords but airbnbs have helped pump rent prices up due to lack of supply. My single mother working part time was able to buy a house when I was younger, now dual income families can’t afford that. Some people out there don’t work and get money solely from owning houses and renting them out, decreasing supply for other people, increasing prices. The housing crisis, which is worldwide, is a multi-faceted issue which can be (over)simplified and explained by one word. Greed.
This is a big one, and I’d add in an aggressive tax for owning multiple properties. Make single land ownership ~70% of what it currently is, and each additional property increases all your property tax by 300%. Couple that with getting rid of idiotic exemptions (seriously…I have a friend with parents that owned more than a hundred different properties in a semi-rural area [one that was going to become suburban soon] and paid nearly no taxes because they plunked a few cows onto each one until the development companies paid the big moolah for them) and there would be plenty of homes for everyone. Last report I remember said we had more than enough empty homes sitting around to house every homeless person multiple times over.
Many leading economist argue for land value tax only as a way to incentivize the most efficient use for our most valuable resource. If land tax was used instead of property tax, a multi-acre plot in a dense urban would be taxed just as much a multi-story apartment building that takes up the same amount of space.
See the Strongtowns article on the subject. https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2019/3/8/if-the-land-tax-is-such-a-good-idea-why-isnt-it-being-implemented
In my neighborhood, half the houses are AirBnBs… Because we’re close to tourist destinations. 4 of my 5 neighbors are AirBnBs.
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.
How do you even combat that ?
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.
Just rely on neighbors to report it
See, this is why we need to divert over-bloated policing budgets to proper civil servants.
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
Eliminate zoning and other regulations that make it impossible to build sufficient housing supply.
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.
…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.
Hotels are good if you just wanna sleep in them. AirBnB is better if you wanna chill in the house with friends. We get once once a year and cook, play games and fuck about in the house. Would be shit for 8 of us to stay in 4 hotel rooms.
This is how I typically approach things for my use. If I am going to a place where just being there is the destination, like near a beach or a house with a private pool, AirBNB is my go to choice. If I just need to sleep because the destination for a trip is like an amusement park or somewhere where I plan on being gone almost all day, then a hotel is ideal. If my vacation includes a lot of time just hanging out, hanging out in a hotel sucks.
Yeah but a $100 airbnb vs a $225 hotel is a different discussion
True, but are Airbnb’s even cheaper than hotel rooms anymore in cities?
Only time I’ve found that to be true is when you have a lot of people, getting a single Airbnb can be cheaper than multiple hotel rooms. Otherwise, Airbnb’s basically are similar in price or negligibly cheaper.
I find it to almost always be cheaper. Staying with kids makes it much better as well.
Yes.
I’m convinced 90% of the people complaining here don’t even travel, cause it isn’t even close. AirBnB is just cheaper almost everywhere I’ve been.
Couple months ago in Austin Texas.
Cheapest hotel: 250 a night. Airbnb in walking distance of good stuff, right outside downtown: $100 a night.
Don’t have the numbers off the top of my head, but Finger lakes region in NY it was cheaper. In Portland it was cheaper. Lincoln Nebraska it was cheaper.
Just got done booking AirBnBs in Japan, cause they were cheaper than hotels.
Dunno what you’re doing to make airbnbs the same price as hotels tbh.
I just checked Airbnb prices in Austin with flexible pricing for a weekend, and the only way I could even sniff $100 a night is if I turned on “Display total price,” which factors in the cleaning fee. Turning it on rockets up the price.
The cheapest place that gives you the whole place to yourself on Airbnb is the Holiday Inn lol.
Which again, supports my experience of hotels being competitive. They’ve only just given you the option to turn on “Display total price,” so if you’re browsing Airbnb’s before, the price didn’t include the exorbitant cleaning fees which is how the owners hid their prices.
Maybe worth taking a look at those receipts in your email to see if you actually paid $100 a night. If 90% of people are complaining, either your a genius or it’s actually a real issue ;)
You’re right, I didn’t count the cleaning and service fee.
My total price for the entire trip was $538 for 4 nights.
Still cheaper than a hotel.
90% of people are not complaining. You’re creating an echo chamber for yourself if you truly think that.
The days of airbnbs being cheaper than hotels are long gone. When planning a trip to NOLA I looked into Airbnbs and they were all outrageously expensive, and insane cleaning fees, and had inane pet deposits. Ended up booking Marriott room with a kitchenette, no pet deposit, and parking for $100 less per night on top of none of the weird fees Airbnb hosts have, two blocks from bourbon street. I’ll never use Airbnb or similar services again.
I usually find AirBnb more expensive than hotels. But I have had so many problems with AirBnb properties that I don’t even look there anymore…
Airbnb hosts hiring maids so you have to check out early but still making you do all the cleaning 🤡
Yall have some rough luck with ABNB properties. I stay 4-6 times per year and it’s been a breeze.
