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.
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?
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
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
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
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.
