I had two hosts cancel on me (last minute, both times around Christmas) and haven't dared to use Airbnb since (it was very inconvenient to find alternate accommodation last minute, to say the least.)
I understand that there can be exceptional circumstances. However, I've stayed in more hotels by a factor of at least 25, and this has never happened once. In fact, any minor inconvenience at a hotel is usually remedied promptly, and user reviews generally feel accurate.
Airbnb wouldn't share any information about why the host was allowed to cancel (I understand there may be privacy concerns, but I'm left wondering if they simply found a better paying private offer, given it was for the holiday season and booked well in advance). In one case I found an alternative in the same building, so there was no widespread issue.
Those two are enough to put me off Airbnb forever. I just don't want the additional stress of wondering whether I'll receive a last minute cancellation, even if they're exceedingly rare.
This has also happened to me twice. In both cases, it was when we got a good price booking well in advance for a known-busy season, and the cancellation was last minute and left us totally screwed because there were no alternative accommodations available within our budget.
In both cases, Airbnb would only offer us a refund plus maybe like 10%. They would not make any effort to rebook us at an equivalent property.
My theory is that because Airbnb does not sufficiently penalize hosts for these sort of late cancellations, hosts are incentivized to cancel cheap bookings to get a more expensive booking on another platform if prices meaningfully increase.
Yeah, the ability for hosts to cancel on a whim and the couple of cases where racist hosts canceled in the middle of the night kinda put me off trying them. I know exactly what I'm getting in a hotel.
> cancel on me (last minute, both times around Christmas
I don't think it ever makes sense for an AirBnB host to honor early reservation for holidays. The price they lock you in advance is just their stoploss, while the actual market closer to the date provides an almost guaranteed upside. Bonus points if they collect your payment in advance: free credit!
> they simply found a better paying private offer, given it was for the holiday season and booked well in advance
This happened to me on booking.com, twice. The host didn't allow prepayment, and when the payment time arrived, they cancelled saying there is a problem with the credit card. I tried to contact them but they didn't respond. Booking.com didn't care. From that time on I generally prefer hotels than private apartments.
I've only had two instances where a hotel was unable to accommodate my reservation. The first time, they booked me in an room at the nearest hotel with space, which happened to be a competitor and an upgraded room. The second time, the hotel booked me into the largest room they had available, which happened to be their Presidential suite. (I booked through my credit card's "The Edit" program.)
I've had several AirBnb hosts cancel. Airbnb provided an alternative option the first time but the second time did not. Luckily my credit card's travel insurance treated it like a hotel booking and was able to secure a reservation at a nearby hotel. And that was the last time I used AirBnB.
Contrarian view here but honestly I can't imagine not cleaning up after yourself by default. Of course I am not saying that I do a deep clean at every place I stay but if I'm staying in an AirBNB the very least I do is to leave the place in a civilised way. For example, if I use kitchen utensils I either clean them or put in the dishwasher when available. I seriously never understood people that just leave completely dirty things behind, especially when they are travelling with their kids.
There's a difference between putting dishes in the dishwasher and doing the dishes. I'm glad to put trash in the trash can. I'm not willing to take the trash down two flights of stairs and find the right dumpster. I'm willing to put my sheets in the washing machine. I'm not willing to do the laundry.
My issue is the double dipping. You want me to clean? Fine, waive the cleaning fee. You don’t get to charge me the fucking cleaning fee and also ask me to clean. Pick one
Are you serious? I do the dishes and take out trash/recycling (and other regular cleaning work) as an obvious matter of course to not live in a total stinky shithole. But also once a month we pay for a real service to do a serious cleaning that gets into all the corners and under furniture and ceiling and descaling in the bathroom (hard water) etc etc, which my SO wants kept up with and I think that's reasonable. Between kids, pets, guests and so on more accumulates in a house then trivial regular clean up deals with. They're not the same thing; everyone is expected to do their dishes and contribute to taking out the trash or other chores, but not necessarily to putting on heavier duty protective kit and dealing with bathroom tile or oven accumulation. And obviously there's a fee for that (and putting it off to 2-4 months isn't actually necessarily helpful if it ends up meaning each cleaning takes much longer and thus costs more).
Not having used in forever nor ever run an AirBnB, I will say that yes, I can see it being annoying to get charged if you were just there overnight and caused no issues. And I strongly think that anything which is part of standard practice after every single visit should also be part of the upfront price not a "fee". Extra fees should only be for unique things, like someone actually creating a big mess that takes extra time. But I also think basic humanity that takes a few minutes is different from something that takes an hour and extra equipment. If you leave a sink full of dirty dishes or trash laying around that's disrespectful, gross, will get worse much more quickly then dust bunnies. I'd be ok with dinging someone for that. Cleaners aren't lesser people servants, they're specialist professionals there to help not be maids to spoiled brats. A hotel room (or BnB) mini kitchen isn't a full service restaurant. If you want that level of help that to me feels reasonable to say is extra.
In Finland, summer cottage rental self-cleaning (and bringing your own towels and bedding) is common - with an additional fee if you don't want to do it yourself.
It really brings down the price of a single night or weekend stay when you're just using the bed and bathroom and cleaning is a 10 minute job.
I think the hassle lies in uncertainty. Different hosts have different stands on house chores. One may expect me to simply put dishes in the dishwasher, while another may expect me to wash and dry all their bedsheets. Many people would rather just get out of this worry all together.
I can see both sides of the issue, that is, hosts protecting themselves (to an extent) from dirty guests. I've seen once the huge pile of dishes in a shared stay, and it wasn't nice.
I think it's not a big issue for people who clean up after themselves daily, but on the other hand, sparing those last 10 minutes on the checkout morning... ;)
I would never be expected to clean my dishes after ordering room service in a hotel. The price of an AirBNB would have to be much cheaper than a hotel in order for me to do my own cleaning. And in my city at least, it never was.
but you are paying extra for the room service. the price pf washing is included in that. when i bring my own food then i totally expect to clean the dishes i use from the host myself.
ok, yes, it depends how high the cleaning fee is. and i would also consider what is normal usage.
for example if i spend a several days or longer in a place and instead of washing and reusing dishes as i would at home, i never wash any dishes but use up all the available dishes instead then i would not consider that normal.
dirty dishes also contain leftover food which can rot, or dry up, making it hard to clean, etc, you don't want to leave that stuff out for to long.
bed sheets on the other hand i wouldn't wash unless i am there long enough that i want to reuse them myself. the rest is just keeping things tidy and not leave chaos behind.
You can still do that. The host just can't require you to do that - especially after charging a mandatory cleaning fee.
I mostly stopped using AirBnB due to the impact of their existence and lobbying on cities and affordable housing, but after my final few stays I was ready to quit over the huge fees, the fact those fees were hidden when searching, and the absurd rules BS.
I do favors and chores for friends & family, or at a hostel where you pay nothing & get nothing and everyone has to diy, not for someone who charges me money.
The new rules already clearly and explicitly describe leaving things "in a civilized way". No one is suggesting it's ok to destroy a place.
I found some hair in my Mariott bed sheets. I didn't think it was a big deal but decided to see if I could get fresh sheets. The hotel changed it at 9pm within 10 minutes. Offered me points. Apologized profusely.
What do you think would have been my experience at Airbnb?
Hopefully "no hair in an unclean bed" but I guess everyone's expectations are just at rock bottom these days to the point that we think this is an example to compare things with?
If you cannot accept that a hair was on a bed sheet and it was fixed promptly when reported, I cannot even imagine what your hotel bills look like. Every hotel room I've been to at $100-$2000 per night have had some issue I would consider beyond a hair on a bed sheet.
Should that Marriott have used their time machine to retroactively keep the hair out of the bedsheets? They did what they could in the moment, because they realized that it was a fuckup.
My extended family rents a beach cottage for one week (saturday-saturday or sunday-sunday) every summer at a family oriented beach in North Carolina. We have done this at the same beach since the early 90s. There are local vacation rental agencies that have offered one week rentals with various packages of linens under similar terms and seasonal pricing for decades. Over the last few years, fewer and fewer houses are available directly from these rental companies and more and more are only listed on Airbnb or VRBO, with nightly pricing that is much higher than the weekly pricing from the local rental agencies.
The vacation rental companies offer very consistent cleaning services and local contacts for any issues with the house, and were relatively cheap because they were typically able to fill these houses with weeklong rentals all summer.
With Airbnb and VRBO, sometimes they are just a marketplace for the exact same rental companies that already existed, under the same terms and conditions, but a higher nightly price, and sometimes they are far less professional operations, and it's not easy to tell which is which when you are initially paying.
Last summer we rented a house directly through a vacation rental company that was also listed on VRBO for a third of the nightly price it was listed on VRBO for. We're dreading the day when the only option left is VRBO.
We did the same with a vacation rental in Hawaii this year. The properties in the neighborhood are owned by individual investors as vacation rentals, but they ultimately contract with a handful of full-service vacation rental agencies. Seeking out the agencies’ websites was worth a 25% discount over renting the same property on AirBnB.
Exact same setup here though I realize I didn't quite state it directly, the cottages are owned by individuals but all rented out through the agencies.
We got a much steeper discount, I'm assuming because we were solidly in shoulder season (a couple weeks after kids return to school in North Carolina, and during hurricane season), which the vacation rental company accounts for in their seasonal pricing, but VRBO didn't seem to. At this beach in particular, it is a summer vacation for families and you get a steep drop in prices if you don't have to schedule around school holidays, but VRBO didn't price that in in the same way that the local companies do.
All holiday rental platforms charge somewhere between 17-22%. Responsibility of a platform is zero. As a guest all you can do if something goes wrong is to shorten the stay after hanging 1 hour on the customer service phone line. Everyone would be better off with some local message boards and visitors taking few extra steps to find holiday rental.
It's sad in a way because this is Airbnb finally abandoning its original "make money by renting out your couch" premise. The handful of remaining small-time hosts offering their actual residence are probably going to leave after these changes, and professionally managed short-term rental properties are going to complete their takeover.
Sorry but AirBnB was used for exploiting Berlin rents for years. Lots of ppl renting 5+ apartments and blocking them from locals who needed places to stay. The mother of an acquaintance had to move out of Berlin into Brandenburg bc she couldn’t get a normal rental contract anymore after a lifetime in the city. She was low income on disability retirement.
They’re a two-sided marketplace where the parties are incentivized to be adversarial. Every renter want to pay less / get money back, every landlord wants to minimize cost and stick renters with extra costs.
There’s a reason municipalities have landlord/tenant laws, and Airbnb’s whole thing was offering hotel-like services at sub-hotel pricing, without hitting landlord/tenant.
They’ve arbitraged themselves out of existence (but not before making a nice profit for Airbnb shareholders).
Maybe it's a regional issue. I have over 150 stays in my account (digital nomad for the last 10 years), and I've not once had any unreasonable charge or conflict with a host.
Not only that, a cleaning crew that I'm explicitly paying for via the cleaning fee. It was ridiculous, and I'm sure it drove a lot of people to choose hotels over an equivalent Airbnb.
Same. I have consistently left feedback that even the idea of such policies makes me choose airbnb less. Haven’t used them in several years now due to the possibility.
Thing is, the cleaning fee is "just" a fixed fee that goes down, as a proportion of your total bill, the longer you stay. Not really a bad deal.
People would have accepted this principle just fine if they just put it in the damn total price shown, so you could do a fair comparison between your lodging options.
They could have structured their reservations system the same as say, Hilton does - when you book 5 nights, and the nights vary in price due to demand, say it's $100, $100, $200, $100, $100, they just show "$120 per night (avg)".
Instead AirBNB thought they could get cute and pretend that this fixed part of the charge is not part of the price at all, it's this one separate purpose. Well, of course people are going to expect that if they're literally paying $200 for a cleaning crew (a cleaning that will take maybe 90 minutes max and cost the owner far less than $200), why the F can't they take the trash out? They did this to themselves.
I've been an Airbnb host for the last 3 years. We've never expected guests to do any cleaning or washing of dishes (although it's always appreciated when they do!) We charge a small cleaning fee to cover the costs of cleaning our studio which only takes an hour. We also have maintained a really high rating over the last few years (currently at 4.96). I would hope that other rentals that have ridiculous rules and high cleaning fees would suffer from average ratings?
The market is more complicated than that, unfortunately. Some properties can sustain high ratings on their other strengths (e.g. location, decor, view, heritage) regardless of the host rules and the clientele that's interested in them. There's also a problem with the rental market getting very thin for some locations and property types (e.g. 3+ bedrooms), so ratings effectively stop mattering.
As a personal example, I once stayed at a place that charged a $150 cleaning fee, but also required dishes + taking the trash out and down the street, which wasn't known until we opened the door. And of course there was a threat that failure to do so would incur a fee. Also a bit of ceiling plaster fell on my wife during the night. Still had a fantastic rating because it was a castle and I'd stay there again if someone else paid.
Out of curiosity, why is the cleaning fee not included into the rental rate? Is it required to be listed separately or does that simplify accounting somehow?
Maybe to encourage longer stays? The cleaning fee is paid once per stay, not once per night. I get why it is a separate charge, since they aren't cleaning the place daily (like a hotel), only at the end of your stay.
For us, we charge the same cleaning fee whether you stay for 1 night or 7 nights. So I don't know how we can incorporate that into the nightly fee without either over-charging or under-charging for cleaning. Having it listed separately keeps it consistent and clear to guests.
That was entirely on Airbnb for presenting it that way. Hosts would enter in their per-reservation cleaning cost so it could be integrated into the price paid by guests, but Airbnb stubbornly itemized it on the checkout page for years. I believe they finally did away with it (in favor of building into the nightly rate) about a year ago.
It's interesting how Airbnb has diverged from its original vibe of "staying at somebody's house." When I "stay at somebody's house" I wash the dishes, take out the trash, etc. Essentially, leave it as I found it, if not a bit better. I also expect "somebody's house" to be cleaner than a hotel.
Granted, Airbnb has taken on the hotel industry, and so I'm not surprised that their rules have evolved.
You do those things when you’re staying at a friend or family member’s place. But your friends and family aren’t charging you hundreds of dollars a night, plus a $250 cleaning fee.
It’s not just Airbnb the company that moved away from it, it’s the Airbnb hosts that moved away from it as soon as opportunists started becoming mega landlords renting out ikea-furnished party houses. It hasn’t been the original “person with a spare room for a weekend” Airbnb in a long, long time.
In Tacoma, a "party house" suffered an arson attack recently. The theory/rumors, etc., are that it was a neighbor, pissed off with the constant noise, traffic, etc. The home is right by the Narrows bridge, views, etc., and rentable.
The other part of the theory is since it is owned by a former NFL player (and a Seahawk, at that), that local police were reluctant to rock the boat too much. Neighbors got frustrated, and well, maybe?
I also expect "somebody's house" to be cleaner than a hotel.
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Why would you expect that someone’s entire house is cleaner than a small hotel room that professional crews clean every single day?
Not sure what it’s like elsewhere but at least in Australia it’s not objectively cheaper to use airbnb than a hotel. So if you’re paying the same rate, you don’t expect to have to follow a bunch of extra rules that wouldn’t apply to the other
I recently used airbnb quite a bit in Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick and found quite a bit of that old vibe, ranging from a spare room in a young brother & sister's house, to more suite-style accomodation. I was very happy with all my stays, specifically the hosts who balanced privacy with friendly helpfulness.
Staying with my family and friends and helping with common household chores, the same as I would be doing at my own home, is a completely different thing than paying $150-350 a night to some rando.
These things are banned because they became the Amazon equivalent of low balling rates and tacking on shipping fees.
The relationship to homliness really has nothing to do with this. Your friends never charged you to stay then charge 4x that because you left some trash.
I agree about how one should conduct themselves in someone else's home, but is it really that interesting how they progressed as a technology company? To me it seems like the tried and true formula of enshittification. It's the startup playbook.
I've used Airbnb probably 4x/year for the last 10 years, and I've never run into the problem described. How is it that I'm avoiding this without trying?
You arrive at the Airbnb. You look at the cleaning rules. If do the dishes is still on the house guide you complain to Airbnb support, get your money back, get a different Airbnb, probably comped, and the original Airbnb's host gets suspended until they prove they're not still doing that. Hosts that don't want to continue being hosts aren't affected, but then they can't continue the policy. Assuming that people contact Airbnb support, that is.
AirBnBs are often booked in high season when finding alternative last-minute cheap accommodation is extremely challenging (you can see a story about this in this very discussion). So, already at your stage "you complain to Airbnb support, get your money back, get a different Airbnb", the traveler's holiday is ruined, and the host being removed from the platform is cold comfort.
You arrive at the Airbnb. You look at the cleaning rules found on a piece of paper on the table but nowhere in the Airbnb description. You don't do the dishes and the host complains to Airbnb. You complain to Airbnb as well. Host is compensated for damages, while your inquires are ignored.
I'm certain that I've stayed in an AirBnB or two that had a rule book and chores, but I never read them. I'm a fairly tidy person and generally clean as I go, but I don't go out of my way to clean dishes or take out the trash unless it really needs it. I also don't leave reviews of places I stay, nor do I read the reviews left for me.
I stay in Airbnbs for about 3 months at a time (traveling abroad for a couple of years) and treat them as a leased apartment. I buy supplies for the place and clean it like it's my own. And when I leave, I generally leave it as clean as I found it.
I think this move will be more taxing for hosts who have long-term guests as this will allow guests to treat their property more as a hotel with room service.
If I had places that would ask for a copy of my ID before giving me access codes to enter the place but wasn't mentioned on the listing. Also listed there was a kitchen but there weren't any plates or glasses... They charged $10 for bed linen etc. Also wasn't mentioned in the listing. AirBnB can be really annoying. Often they aren't cheaper than apart-hotels.
i wish they would ban additional “rules” in the check in/out instructions. all rules should be up front before booking or after booking with free 24 cancellation or something.
I don’t seem to have had all of the negative experiences that others here are reporting. Most of the recent places I have stayed have been clean and recently renovated. Usually the same or maybe slightly cheaper than a hotel room.
I once had to corner a guy trying to cut himself with a broken piece of mirror before he jumped off a second story balcony into the pool at a multi airbnb complex in Mexico. He'd taken some drugs and had a bad reaction and lost his mind. Cops picked him up running down the street.
I welcome this move to ban host rules that detract from the experience.
I've used Airbnbs for group trips only. The past few years, I have been leaning towards hotels for trips. But the newer hotels with the "open concept" bathrooms are not great for sharing a room with a friend. As a consumer, these changes puts Airbnb back in favor for me.
I am using airbnb only for family vacations in summer for 7+ days minimum, they offer way better prices than local hotels plus I can cook or dine at home (which you can't really do in hotel, so I don't get people complaining here about doing dishes and comparing it to hotel experience) without wasting time/money on restaurants (plus there are not really hotels in locations I prefer).
I try to leave airbnb in exact same condition as it was upon our arrival (obviously I am not washing sheets). After reading comments here I feel weird or is this difference between Americans and Europeans? Do HN readers like to live like pigs to stay in mess and leave mess after themselves?
edit: I checked my airbnb receipts and I see everywhere only Airbnb service fee, there is no extra cleaning fee on any of them, if they charged extra money for some cleaning fee maybe my approach would be different
1. Just like all the add-on charges with air travel like having a checked bag or choosing a seat, a lot of negative experiences come from consumers making decisions solely based on price. This creates an incentive to leave things out to have a lower sticker price. Hotels with non-optional "resort" fees, cruises, and car rental all operate on this model.
The specific issue with Airbnb is the supposed lower cost comes for hiding costs like cleaning. Cleaning is expensive when you start talking about an apartment let alone a house. This is built in to the hotel price (minus tips, which are minor). Also, hotels avoid having the potential for a lot of cleaning (eg a full kitchen).
You might stay in an Airbnb and never use the kitchen, existing totally on eating out. Or you might cook a full Thanksgiving dinner for 20 people and use every dish and appliance in there. How are you meant to handle this when the cleaning cost could be $100 or $1000?
2. Airbnb like oh so many "tech" companies profits by pushing the negative externalities of their business onto people who didn't consent. The most notable negative externality is running an illegal hotel in a residential neighborhood. Hotels have staff, fire codes, licensing and inspections. Some random house does not.
Another is that the house owner never has to suffer from disruptive behavior from guests who may never return. I really think more places should restrict Airbnb to ADUs only when the owner is on-site.
Also, the evidence that Airbnb has driven up rents is undeniable at this point with more than a decade of evidence.
At the same time, hosts clearly profit off of unreasonable charges, like charging $300-500 to "clean" a studio apartment that might only take an hour. It's a bit like landlords stealing security deposits. It's particularly egregious when you're given a random list of tasks you must do, such as stripping sheets and starting wash cycles, etc.
Intermediation businesses are generally bad. The only way to increase profits at a certain point is by cutting costs and raising prices. The other parties want to avoid the middleman charges and go direct. It's why all these businesses like finding cleaners, tutors, etc all only go so far because people go off-platform.
Enshitification at its best. I've used Airbnb almost since inception, but the degradation of offering quality has been so noticeable that I totally quit using this two years ago. Last time the host did not only ask me to do all house chores, and still charge a cleaning fee, but wasn't going to provide bed sheets without an extra fee (W(ho)TF thinks I'm renting and possibly coming with my own sheets), but didn't have the room officially ready until 5pm, and had me out at 10am. F*k this "industry"
These are all self-inflicted wounds by AirBnB. I have used AirBnB a few times in the past, but these days opt for a hotel instead if I can.
They could take user feedback seriously, but chose not to. Case in point: we booked a place in Hawaii. We (2 people) arrived the day of, tired as heck from the beach activities. Place looked fine, except for the crumbs of food in the nooks and crannies of the kitchen. No big deal. We crashed almost right away, too tired to do anything else. An hour later, my wife jumped up, claiming some insect was walking on her legs. I turned on the lights sleepily, and lo and behold, there were cockroaches on the ceiling, scurrying about (and one had fallen and landed on my wife's legs). In the middle of the night, I contacted AirBnB help. They wanted proof. So I took a video and sent it, along with photos. Finally around 2AM they agreed that we should get out of there. We packed up and left for the beach, to wait things out.
My first reaction was: I should leave a review telling people about the roaches. But guess what? AirBnB cancelled our reservation, so there was no way to rate the place or leave a review! They did refund me, but we wasted a day trying to catch up on the lost sleep.
After that experience, I stopped booking AirBnBs if I could help it. They (and VRBO) are a last resort for me (no pun intended).
There seems to be the same by symmetrical issue going on as well. where guests who lie without proof can leave a retaliatory review when not getting a refund. For problems that never existed of course.
It happens to host with hundreds of spectacular reviews.
We stayed in one last week in Seoul, only because hotels are prohibitively expensive. (We book last minute.)
On leaving, the host offered us a discount on future bookings if we left a 5-star review. This 'beg for a 5-star' practice is common in every Asian business. We got it from a Hilton in Vietnam. (It's probably global. Our recent experience happens to be in Asia.)
In fairness, hotel ratings are the same. My SOP now is to ignore all 5-star ratings. Simply don't read them. Instead, sort by lowest and that gives you the true measure of a place.
My experience in Japan is quite the opposite. A good place gets 3 stars because it's up to expectations, while any perceived slight from staff can easily get that down to 2 stars. Reviews of 4 stars or more from locals tend to correspond to some special experience.
I got this once when visiting an airport lounge in Asia. Like beyond begging, the person asked for a review and wanted to stand there until I finished it.
I rated a place 3-star overall after a subpar experience. The review stood for some time, but has since been edited to a 5-star, presumably at the request of a host. Totally broken indeed.
They really are. Across every platform. Ratings are 90% cheating of one kind or another. There's just no way to have people leave honest feedback that isn't subject to begging by the parties whose KPIs those ratings are, or prone to lying/exaggeration/sabotage by people with an axe to grind :(
You really take your chances with AirBnb. I have so many stories where I got burned by Airbnb. As a customer they are pretty lousy about handling snafus. From Airbnb’s perspective they are a marketplace so their users and both the buyers and sellers. These two groups interests naturally conflict. They need to balance this tension and they don’t want to burn the renter who make the platform work. That said they do a lousy job of building trust. You can never be sure a listing will have what you think it will and Airbnb does very little to investigate what a property offers. Having a kitchen and decent WiFi is nice, but hotels win in terms of reliability and service and often price.
You hit the nail on the head with the problem. It’s not actually that interesting of a problem, it’s classic incentive misalignment. Airbnb is going to continue to not give a fuck as long as it makes them money. And why wouldn’t they? It’s the American way
I'd argue that it is that interesting of a problem because it gives outsiders (us) insight into AirBnB's marketplace dynamics.
It has long been obvious that many scammy hosts exist on the platform, and it ought to be easy to detect such hosts if they bother to try. Yet, that never happened until now.
So what changed? I would bet that until now they have always worried about having enough inventory to sell, and that now they are noticing they have too much inventory. That changes the dynamics from "be extra nice to those who bring the inventory, and even tolerate a little fraud from them" to "be extra nice to those bringing the dollars".
I do wonder if this is an early sign of a coming recession.
Airbnb has the incentive to not tank their marketplace and they seem to be slowly responding to the increasingly negative sentiment to their brand. I somewhat suspect that their leadership lives in a bubble that insulates them from how lousy their brand is these days. I’m sure they have thought of lots of things but these would all cost money and require them to admit that their product is basically seen as a sketchy black market with a lot of sleazy behavior.
Yeah it’s not really an interesting problem, it’s basically how America works these days. Will it affect shareholder bottom line? If so, then we care. If not, we don’t. Pretty simple. America creates stuff that encourages this behavior and then acts all surprised pikachu when all of the beautiful incentives that were set up play out exactly as expected. The beatings will continue until morale improves
While AirBnB might be bad, my mom booked a place using Agoda. It was a NIGHTMARE. Admittedly this was in Egypt, but the unit was filthy and seemed to be owned by a company in the UAE.
If it was just the filth, it could be like any other terrible experience, but this mid-rise was standing next to the rubble of a razed building beside it and there was literally an open gas pipe hanging upright two floors down with people smoking above. The doorman who showed us the unit seemed unconcerned and it was nearly impossible to get our money back until we literally threatened to sue Agoda. We had sent them all our evidence (we took pictures) and even had the doorman talk to them on the phone and it was still like pulling teeth to get them to refund us.
To add insult to injury the place was more expensive than nearby hotels and I just checked and the place is still listed (we went a year ago)!
Prices for higher-end lake homes/cabins/vacation homes etc., for AirBnB and VRBO are roughly equivalent where I live. This is pretty much the only kind of AirBNB I'll consider, and it is usually more about the the location of the home (on a lake, near skiing, etc) and it being large enough to split amongst others. Also many are managed by property management companies and list across multiple platforms. If I can track down the company I'll directly contact to see if there are cheaper rates.
IMO this is basically the only category of AirBnb that's worth considering and it doesn't seem like a big growth area.
The property management companies are great - you can even haggle with them. I love how clearly they identify themselves on both AirBNB and VRBO. You just have to be willing to give up the (false) security of booking through AirBNB.
I've had a similar experience. Everything looked okay until I found rat droppings, and not just a few either. Customer support was insisting on minimizing it, though I got a refund too. I know it doesn't happen all the time, but when it does it sours everything and reminds you that you are taking a gamble.
Toward the tail end of the pandemic, well after vaccines and the average person even remotely cared about it, I stayed in a small studio apartment.
The cleaning fee was $200.
The host gave me a list of at least 30 things I needed to do, including vacuum the floors & washing all the dishes and returning them to their exact initial positions - along with photos of where everything should go, exactly, along with a list of fines as high as $100 PER ITEM for each infraction the cleaning crew could find.
I have never stayed in an AirBNB since outside of hosting a large group, and I never will again.
They've banned this now.
What about all the hosts using AI to pretend guests trashed their place?
No thanks.
Hotels are just fine. I hope all these get-rich-quick scumbag AirBNB speculators get wiped out by high interest rates and lose every penny they have so that people who actually need housing can afford it, and people who actually know how to run a hospitality business can keep doing that correctly.
I tend to agree, nothing of value would be lost if AirBNB disappeared tomorrow. Vacation rentals have always existed anyway, and the cheesy operations that do nothing but rent out each of the bedrooms in a random house in Daly City are just converting normal rental homes to mediocre hotel rooms, a service literally no one was asking for. Enough normal hotel rooms already exist.
The AirBnb model just fell apart with bad customer experiences. Customers want something closer to a hotel experience. The moment Airbnb started letting hosts treat guests like children doing chores they lost a huge chunk of the market.
It’s ultimately an issue of consistency. If I book with a name brand hotel I have some comfort knowing they have corporate standards that tend to be enforced consistently across properties. If a Hilton, Marriott etc hotel has issues it tends to get dealt with quickly because those brands know consistency is their brand. In extreme cases they will kick hotels out of their brand. That randomly named hotel that used to be a brand name was likely kicked out of the portfolio for compliance issues.
With an AirBnb it’s a total crapshoot. Sometimes it’s totally fine, other times you’d end up in the dirty lair of a psychopath.
Several years ago, I had to take a very early flight so wanted to stay near the airport. I rented an Airbnb VERY cheaply. This was a room within an apartment of an old lady who was renting his son's (gone to university) bedroom.
It was a great experience, very kind, comfy and she even made me breakfast.
But nowadays, prices are crazy. A hotel room is usually only 10% higher (if higher). And I have also been victim of last minute cancelations.
If the room is unavailable, the hotel makes it its problem. But in the case of AirBnB, they make it YOUR problem. So that's worth 10% or more for me now. After they ruined a new year's eve vacation.
I no longer rent Airbnb. I might try if they hardened host's rules and gave me a cancelation guarantee of 'we will put you in the closest hotel if necessary ' . Kind of like car rentals: if the car is unavailable, we give you a better one.
I wonder if the bloom is coming off the Airbnb rose (probably not, because these kinds of things are always made a big deal of in tech forums but the company in question usually sees their revenue go up and up).
For me personally I only ever use Airbnb's now for big trips with at least 3-4 bedrooms needed. These types of Airbnbs usually have more professional management in any case. But otherwise I think Airbnb just offers a poor value:
1. For a long time Airbnbs skirted hotel taxes and other fees. Those days are long gone, so I often find Airbnbs to be just as expensive or more than hotels when you factor in cleaning and other fees.
2. Like this article points out, quality control and rules can be all over the map, and people are sick of it. With a hotel you usually know what you're getting, with an Airbnb it's always a crapshoot.
3. A huge benefit with a hotel is that if something goes wrong you can almost always be moved to another room, sometimes a different hotel. With Airbnb, while they may help you rebook it's much more fraught and you don't know what the next place will be.
So for me I use hotels for most stays now, though I am curious about house swapping for longer overseas trips. I have friends that have raved about it so it just seems like a better option.
I've never been a host but I can't see why this would be a problem that AirBnB should make a call on. I've travelled to places where they have different social norms and visitors should adapt to local culture.
Oddly this will probably let prices be raised, even though there's a cleaner usually there right after..
Most guests of AirBNB like clean homes, and usually tidy up pretty well themselves. Maybe there's a way to incentivize those who choose to, or want to and offer a discount if they want it.
Airbnb drives up the rents of residential neighborhoods to benefit rich travelers. YC needs to stop investing in these morally questionable businesses.
They were making guests wash dishes? That would've been a real problem.
My maid service will not wash dishes. They need me to clear the sink every time before they arrive. It's often a point of contention, because I leave dirty dishes quite often, and I simply forget what needs to be done. I don't have a problem with doing it for them, I just forget.
But I believe that the reason they will not wash my dishes is because of food safety. In a commercial kitchen, even the dishwasher needs to hold a Food Handler's card or certificate. The sanitizing of dishes and utensils is serious business. If they're not clean enough to eat from, you could be passing foodborne illness.
I would never want to stay at a place that didn't professionally wash its dishes. I've never stayed with AirBNB and I plan to keep it that way. Thankfully, the hotel industry is still a quite viable business, and hotels have staff, insurance, and regulation on their side, even now. I recently had a "staycation" in a 98-year-old classic hotel, and it was so wonderful, worry-free, and pleasant, and cost-effective. I am thankful that they are still operating like that.
A maid service does not require a Food Handler's card to wash dishes. They won't do it by default because they can charge more if they offer it as an addon.
They literally will not do it at all. They refuse, and they will make me pick up the dishes and move them out of the sink.
Yes, if it were an add-on service, they would ask me for permission and then go ahead and charge me for the service. That is something they do with cleaning the oven and such other things. They simply will not wash dishes at all, period, full stop.
It's got to the point now, where if I forgot and left dishes in the sink, I will take them out and hide them somewhere, like the fridge, before the team arrives at my door. And then, hopefully I do not forget to retrieve them and properly clean them immediately.
AirBnb is camping. I have been travel camping with and without people for 50 years. The longer you camp the better the experience. Almost all of the first 25 years involved a tent (or bivy sack), and maybe a camp kitchen. Then you surface again, happy minded, into a world where people travel but they expect everyone touching their utensils or even maybe food(?) have a "Food Handler's card or certificate". Whatever that is. Back into the bush.
When I rent a shore house for a week on the east coast (direct from owner rental, not Airbnb), it’s been customary for at least 30 years to clean the house and wash the dishes you use for the next people. We would usually wash them anyway when we arrived because I’m crazy.
When we had little kids we used disposable plates because we didn’t want to break the plates in the house. I don’t do Airbnb but disposable plates might be one way if you needed to stay in a short term rental.
I think that AirBnB just feels much more annoying because of the fee structures. Yes, renting private homes at a lake cabin, shore house, timeshare or ski lodge have their own customs. AirBnB feels much worse (to me) because you select $200 a night, and end up paying $400 after all of the fees. So it used to make it difficult to search for places in your price range because of all the absurd fees piled on top most of which is cleaning. Then you have to clean yourself via a list of chores they give you, then you could be fined by them. All the while a massive corporation makes a ton of money simply matchmaking. It is much different when you are paying it forward in a small community. I didn't articulate it well, but for me the feeling is entirely different. Less that you participate in a community and culture and more that you are disposable labor for what is increasingly a luxury experience typically provided by a rich landlord.
Oh yeah. I toss the sheets in the washer the moment I get up on the day I'm leaving, and transfer them to the dryer (or clothesline) on my way out the door. So there's no chance of the cleaning crew "cleaning" the bed by just making it. As a favor to the next renter.
Potentially unpopular opinion: The renting of short term residential property should be taxed at 15% of revenue. Digital advertising should be taxed at 20% of revenue.
"Airbnb" is a label that represents a massive range of situations. Different guests, different properties, different expectations.
I'm a host, I've had hundreds of stays over several years, and I have stellar reviews. It's a large house so there's a $250 cleaning fee. I ask guests to start the dishwasher and take their trash to the dumpster at the end of the street.
I'd say I have two types of guests. The first type is the 99% - they are friendly, grateful, and make the whole thing worthwhile. People who ask for recommendations on the area, leave a nice note in our guest book, and are grateful and respectful of our home. They never complain about taking care of a few things before they leave, and often ask what else they can do. It's honestly a source of positivity for everyone involved to have them stay in our home.
I can count on a single hand the number of times I've had the second type of guest. Exploitative people who have it out for us the second they check in and won't be satisfied until they've extracted money and apologies. As a host, I have literally zero recourse against these people. The system is set up to let them behave this way, and they make me more cautious and my home more expensive for everyone else.
Getting to my point - everyone comes to conversations about Airbnb with an enraged, polarized point of view. It's still a thriving platform with absolutely everything in a single place. The homes range from bare bones crash pads and neglected side projects to true luxury experiences. The guests range from people you are happy to have met to true predators.
Unfortunately, Airbnb and Vrbo have created an absolute race to the bottom. As a host I have next to zero ability to screen who stays with us, and I'm basically at the mercy of bad actors. They extract huge fees and are unhelpful to me and barely helpful to my guests. They introduce ham-fisted rules like this every few months and are revenue optimizing themselves off a cliff.
This is a market that could benefit from more choice.
As a host, I feel like this issue is mostly just ragebait for TikTok. Same for the cleaning fee complaints (which has been gone for over a year but you still see ppl talking about it). There are absolutely bad hosts out there (I've dealt with it as a guest myself), but most hosts are totally fine and the guest review system absolutely works to filter out egregious behavior.
There's also quite a big perception bias towards guests when it comes to discourse about Airbnbs. As a host I have to deal with so many unbelievably disgusting and disrespectful people renting my places on a regular basis, but nobody is ever talking about that. Social media would have you believe all guests are victimized angels and hosts are greedy and evil. I would love to see some of these people host and find out what it's really like. If you've worked in retail or hospitality you know.
Airbnb has actually gotten extremely sensitive about this perception the last couple years. They've changed a lot of policies to bend over backwards for guests to avoid the PR. Any guest you see complaining online about a recent experience should be taken with a _large_ grain of salt because Airbnb very rarely sides with hosts anymore and it likely means the guest did something very egregious to get penalized.
I travel for work a lot and was forced to use airbnb by my former company.
Nothing about this is ragebait. Clean after yourself was the norm, cleaning fees often a full days cost or more, and I had bookings that I never checked into make claims about stains or damage!
Most hosts were bad by hotel standards. I will never use one on my own volition.
You realize the cleaning fee is entirely psychological right? If it were always part of the nightly rate (it has been for over a year) nobody would be talking about it. This is getting at my point about rage bait - you’re complaining about stuff that isn’t even around anymore.
That use case is absolutely better suited to hotels btw. I’ve stayed in many cheap Airbnbs while traveling myself and didn’t have that experience myself.
I find it so odd to claim that explaining my prior experience is "ragebait". It's what I experienced over 100s of stays, consistently.
That's only _part_ of what I experienced though. I stopped using the service by my own volition. They have changed some rules since, but those fees and rules were not the tipping point. The decline in service, misadvertising of spaces, poor customer service and general decline in value stop me from continuing to use AirBnB.
I've been forced into an AirBnB recently, and it was the same nonsense. I could not pull into the driveway because the curb was incorrectly built. Host argued with me that it was fine, drove over and couldn't get their OWN car into it. Then they claimed they hadn't been to the property "in months" and "since the work was done"????? They told me I could park at a nearby grocery store and walk over, but they wouldn't be refunding me. AirBnB sided with them. I logged everything with photos (including the hosts car unable to get into the driveway), screenshots and had my company file a chargeback.
Doesn't even make it into my top 50 worst experiences. Total joke.
I'm talking about the cleaning fee specifically being part of ragebait. You are paying for the cleaning service and whatever operating costs an Airbnb or hotel has otherwise they wouldn't be in business. Whether they put "Cleaning Fee" on the checkout page or not is arbitrary and a total psychological effect, that's it. Hotels were doing the same thing with "Resort Fee" or whatever else they have. It's a ploy to show you a lower price on the search page, get you to the checkout screen, and shrug past the hidden costs once you've already committed to buying. It doesn't change the final price you ultimately paid, just how its presented. And yeah it's a shitty practice and I'm glad its been going away.
I don't know where you are using Airbnb, but seems statistically odd that 100s of stays have been miserable for you. If it were that bad for everyone nobody would be using it and yet Airbnb is still growing YoY. Pretty much everyone I know (including myself) has maybe 1-2 bad experiences over dozens of stays. And sure some stays are "fine" and not exceptional, but that's true of anything. Hotels are not necessary much more reliable these days either - I've had to leave more hotels in the last 2 years over broken/missing amenities, smells, dilapated rooms, etc than I ever have Airbnbs honestly. Many don't do daily room cleaning any more. It doesn't really line up with the rosy view of hotels that proliferates on here and they have far fewer excuses with dedicated staff, spare rooms, etc.
How is asking the cleaning company to run the dishwasher and take out the garbage “bending over backwards?” I’ve paid the fee to do the minimum amount of cleaning necessary.
I had two hosts cancel on me (last minute, both times around Christmas) and haven't dared to use Airbnb since (it was very inconvenient to find alternate accommodation last minute, to say the least.)
I understand that there can be exceptional circumstances. However, I've stayed in more hotels by a factor of at least 25, and this has never happened once. In fact, any minor inconvenience at a hotel is usually remedied promptly, and user reviews generally feel accurate.
Airbnb wouldn't share any information about why the host was allowed to cancel (I understand there may be privacy concerns, but I'm left wondering if they simply found a better paying private offer, given it was for the holiday season and booked well in advance). In one case I found an alternative in the same building, so there was no widespread issue.
Those two are enough to put me off Airbnb forever. I just don't want the additional stress of wondering whether I'll receive a last minute cancellation, even if they're exceedingly rare.
This has also happened to me twice. In both cases, it was when we got a good price booking well in advance for a known-busy season, and the cancellation was last minute and left us totally screwed because there were no alternative accommodations available within our budget.
In both cases, Airbnb would only offer us a refund plus maybe like 10%. They would not make any effort to rebook us at an equivalent property.
My theory is that because Airbnb does not sufficiently penalize hosts for these sort of late cancellations, hosts are incentivized to cancel cheap bookings to get a more expensive booking on another platform if prices meaningfully increase.
Yeah, the ability for hosts to cancel on a whim and the couple of cases where racist hosts canceled in the middle of the night kinda put me off trying them. I know exactly what I'm getting in a hotel.
What did they do that was racist?
It’s pretty well known some hosts cancel if your profile picture shows you with to much melanin to be wanted
> cancel on me (last minute, both times around Christmas
I don't think it ever makes sense for an AirBnB host to honor early reservation for holidays. The price they lock you in advance is just their stoploss, while the actual market closer to the date provides an almost guaranteed upside. Bonus points if they collect your payment in advance: free credit!
Yeah with a hotel I can book 2 months in advance and not have to think about it.
Airbnb hosts are not expected to have professionalism.
> they simply found a better paying private offer, given it was for the holiday season and booked well in advance
This happened to me on booking.com, twice. The host didn't allow prepayment, and when the payment time arrived, they cancelled saying there is a problem with the credit card. I tried to contact them but they didn't respond. Booking.com didn't care. From that time on I generally prefer hotels than private apartments.
I've only had two instances where a hotel was unable to accommodate my reservation. The first time, they booked me in an room at the nearest hotel with space, which happened to be a competitor and an upgraded room. The second time, the hotel booked me into the largest room they had available, which happened to be their Presidential suite. (I booked through my credit card's "The Edit" program.)
I've had several AirBnb hosts cancel. Airbnb provided an alternative option the first time but the second time did not. Luckily my credit card's travel insurance treated it like a hotel booking and was able to secure a reservation at a nearby hotel. And that was the last time I used AirBnB.
Contrarian view here but honestly I can't imagine not cleaning up after yourself by default. Of course I am not saying that I do a deep clean at every place I stay but if I'm staying in an AirBNB the very least I do is to leave the place in a civilised way. For example, if I use kitchen utensils I either clean them or put in the dishwasher when available. I seriously never understood people that just leave completely dirty things behind, especially when they are travelling with their kids.
There's a difference between putting dishes in the dishwasher and doing the dishes. I'm glad to put trash in the trash can. I'm not willing to take the trash down two flights of stairs and find the right dumpster. I'm willing to put my sheets in the washing machine. I'm not willing to do the laundry.
My issue is the double dipping. You want me to clean? Fine, waive the cleaning fee. You don’t get to charge me the fucking cleaning fee and also ask me to clean. Pick one
> There's a difference between putting dishes in the dishwasher and doing the dishes.
I'm not seeing it. If there isn't a dishwasher then you do the dishes.
I'm not a fan of Airbnb but I agree with the GP that you should clean up after yourself in this respect (cleaning dishes that you have used).
Airbnb charges a cleaning fee.
Fine, let's say I do it. Why is there still an exorbitant "cleaning fee"?
>Why is there still an exorbitant "cleaning fee"
Are you serious? I do the dishes and take out trash/recycling (and other regular cleaning work) as an obvious matter of course to not live in a total stinky shithole. But also once a month we pay for a real service to do a serious cleaning that gets into all the corners and under furniture and ceiling and descaling in the bathroom (hard water) etc etc, which my SO wants kept up with and I think that's reasonable. Between kids, pets, guests and so on more accumulates in a house then trivial regular clean up deals with. They're not the same thing; everyone is expected to do their dishes and contribute to taking out the trash or other chores, but not necessarily to putting on heavier duty protective kit and dealing with bathroom tile or oven accumulation. And obviously there's a fee for that (and putting it off to 2-4 months isn't actually necessarily helpful if it ends up meaning each cleaning takes much longer and thus costs more).
Not having used in forever nor ever run an AirBnB, I will say that yes, I can see it being annoying to get charged if you were just there overnight and caused no issues. And I strongly think that anything which is part of standard practice after every single visit should also be part of the upfront price not a "fee". Extra fees should only be for unique things, like someone actually creating a big mess that takes extra time. But I also think basic humanity that takes a few minutes is different from something that takes an hour and extra equipment. If you leave a sink full of dirty dishes or trash laying around that's disrespectful, gross, will get worse much more quickly then dust bunnies. I'd be ok with dinging someone for that. Cleaners aren't lesser people servants, they're specialist professionals there to help not be maids to spoiled brats. A hotel room (or BnB) mini kitchen isn't a full service restaurant. If you want that level of help that to me feels reasonable to say is extra.
There is a difference between paying and forcing someone to do it. The later might kill you.
no, fuck that, they charge a cleaning fee.
In Finland, summer cottage rental self-cleaning (and bringing your own towels and bedding) is common - with an additional fee if you don't want to do it yourself.
It really brings down the price of a single night or weekend stay when you're just using the bed and bathroom and cleaning is a 10 minute job.
I think the hassle lies in uncertainty. Different hosts have different stands on house chores. One may expect me to simply put dishes in the dishwasher, while another may expect me to wash and dry all their bedsheets. Many people would rather just get out of this worry all together.
The problem is that the cleaning fee is how many hosts gain additional profit. They self clean and add chores.
I know hosts that do this.
The guide for guest behavior is pretty much good guest guidelines like ensuring no trash is left out.
Its past time airbnb standardize the experience here more.
I can see both sides of the issue, that is, hosts protecting themselves (to an extent) from dirty guests. I've seen once the huge pile of dishes in a shared stay, and it wasn't nice.
I think it's not a big issue for people who clean up after themselves daily, but on the other hand, sparing those last 10 minutes on the checkout morning... ;)
They're usually charging you over 100 for a cleaning fee and pitch them selves like a hotel stay.
I think if homes were presented as a home, not a residential hotel, along with lower prices, cleaning would be perceived differently.
I would never be expected to clean my dishes after ordering room service in a hotel. The price of an AirBNB would have to be much cheaper than a hotel in order for me to do my own cleaning. And in my city at least, it never was.
but you are paying extra for the room service. the price pf washing is included in that. when i bring my own food then i totally expect to clean the dishes i use from the host myself.
And most AirBnBs charge cleaning fees. So if you’re not paying for “cleaning” what exactly is it?
ok, yes, it depends how high the cleaning fee is. and i would also consider what is normal usage.
for example if i spend a several days or longer in a place and instead of washing and reusing dishes as i would at home, i never wash any dishes but use up all the available dishes instead then i would not consider that normal.
dirty dishes also contain leftover food which can rot, or dry up, making it hard to clean, etc, you don't want to leave that stuff out for to long.
bed sheets on the other hand i wouldn't wash unless i am there long enough that i want to reuse them myself. the rest is just keeping things tidy and not leave chaos behind.
Yeah but what if they dont?
I have been using the platform for about a decade and have never once seen an Airbnb without cleaning fees
Short term rentals universally include a cleaning fee.
What’s that ridiculous cleaning fee for then?
You can still do that. The host just can't require you to do that - especially after charging a mandatory cleaning fee.
I mostly stopped using AirBnB due to the impact of their existence and lobbying on cities and affordable housing, but after my final few stays I was ready to quit over the huge fees, the fact those fees were hidden when searching, and the absurd rules BS.
I do favors and chores for friends & family, or at a hostel where you pay nothing & get nothing and everyone has to diy, not for someone who charges me money.
The new rules already clearly and explicitly describe leaving things "in a civilized way". No one is suggesting it's ok to destroy a place.
> at a hostel where you pay nothing
Which hostels are these? Because all the ones around me cost €50-€80 a night for the privilege of sleeping in a room with twelve strangers.
I found some hair in my Mariott bed sheets. I didn't think it was a big deal but decided to see if I could get fresh sheets. The hotel changed it at 9pm within 10 minutes. Offered me points. Apologized profusely.
What do you think would have been my experience at Airbnb?
Easy. I can tell you.
Host isn't available. There might or might not be extras. Wash the dirty sheet yourself. Wait until cleaning can come by next day.
Hotels win every time.
Hopefully "no hair in an unclean bed" but I guess everyone's expectations are just at rock bottom these days to the point that we think this is an example to compare things with?
If you cannot accept that a hair was on a bed sheet and it was fixed promptly when reported, I cannot even imagine what your hotel bills look like. Every hotel room I've been to at $100-$2000 per night have had some issue I would consider beyond a hair on a bed sheet.
Should that Marriott have used their time machine to retroactively keep the hair out of the bedsheets? They did what they could in the moment, because they realized that it was a fuckup.
I stopped using AirBnB altogether because of the rediculous cleaning rules and fees. Probably not going back but at least they're addressing it.
Market share has been falling, quick, listen to what the customers have been saying for a decade!
Is it falling really? Would love to see some evidence.
My extended family rents a beach cottage for one week (saturday-saturday or sunday-sunday) every summer at a family oriented beach in North Carolina. We have done this at the same beach since the early 90s. There are local vacation rental agencies that have offered one week rentals with various packages of linens under similar terms and seasonal pricing for decades. Over the last few years, fewer and fewer houses are available directly from these rental companies and more and more are only listed on Airbnb or VRBO, with nightly pricing that is much higher than the weekly pricing from the local rental agencies.
The vacation rental companies offer very consistent cleaning services and local contacts for any issues with the house, and were relatively cheap because they were typically able to fill these houses with weeklong rentals all summer.
With Airbnb and VRBO, sometimes they are just a marketplace for the exact same rental companies that already existed, under the same terms and conditions, but a higher nightly price, and sometimes they are far less professional operations, and it's not easy to tell which is which when you are initially paying.
Last summer we rented a house directly through a vacation rental company that was also listed on VRBO for a third of the nightly price it was listed on VRBO for. We're dreading the day when the only option left is VRBO.
We did the same with a vacation rental in Hawaii this year. The properties in the neighborhood are owned by individual investors as vacation rentals, but they ultimately contract with a handful of full-service vacation rental agencies. Seeking out the agencies’ websites was worth a 25% discount over renting the same property on AirBnB.
Exact same setup here though I realize I didn't quite state it directly, the cottages are owned by individuals but all rented out through the agencies.
We got a much steeper discount, I'm assuming because we were solidly in shoulder season (a couple weeks after kids return to school in North Carolina, and during hurricane season), which the vacation rental company accounts for in their seasonal pricing, but VRBO didn't seem to. At this beach in particular, it is a summer vacation for families and you get a steep drop in prices if you don't have to schedule around school holidays, but VRBO didn't price that in in the same way that the local companies do.
Yes, for those without children to schedule around, vacationing just before or after other people’s children’s school vacations is the primary trick.
It’s absolutely insane how much you have to pay for all the advertising, network effects, and exposure these platforms grant you.
Would be so much better if every region just started their own again and you just looked up property managers in the yellow pages haha
All holiday rental platforms charge somewhere between 17-22%. Responsibility of a platform is zero. As a guest all you can do if something goes wrong is to shorten the stay after hanging 1 hour on the customer service phone line. Everyone would be better off with some local message boards and visitors taking few extra steps to find holiday rental.
It's sad in a way because this is Airbnb finally abandoning its original "make money by renting out your couch" premise. The handful of remaining small-time hosts offering their actual residence are probably going to leave after these changes, and professionally managed short-term rental properties are going to complete their takeover.
Sorry but AirBnB was used for exploiting Berlin rents for years. Lots of ppl renting 5+ apartments and blocking them from locals who needed places to stay. The mother of an acquaintance had to move out of Berlin into Brandenburg bc she couldn’t get a normal rental contract anymore after a lifetime in the city. She was low income on disability retirement.
There’s also been documented cases of owners using AI edited images to claim guests damage. Airbnb has a systemic cultural issue.
They’re a two-sided marketplace where the parties are incentivized to be adversarial. Every renter want to pay less / get money back, every landlord wants to minimize cost and stick renters with extra costs.
There’s a reason municipalities have landlord/tenant laws, and Airbnb’s whole thing was offering hotel-like services at sub-hotel pricing, without hitting landlord/tenant.
They’ve arbitraged themselves out of existence (but not before making a nice profit for Airbnb shareholders).
Maybe it's a regional issue. I have over 150 stays in my account (digital nomad for the last 10 years), and I've not once had any unreasonable charge or conflict with a host.
Ride sharing apps too. Taxi drivers defrauding with fake pictures of vomit etc
Any service with terms basically that say "we have the right to charge your card whatever we like for whatever reason " will eventually abuse it
See also: car rental
Thank god.
Call me lazy but I’ve always wondered why I need to take out the trash when a cleaning crew was coming in 10 minutes after I checked out.
Not only that, a cleaning crew that I'm explicitly paying for via the cleaning fee. It was ridiculous, and I'm sure it drove a lot of people to choose hotels over an equivalent Airbnb.
Same. I have consistently left feedback that even the idea of such policies makes me choose airbnb less. Haven’t used them in several years now due to the possibility.
Thing is, the cleaning fee is "just" a fixed fee that goes down, as a proportion of your total bill, the longer you stay. Not really a bad deal.
People would have accepted this principle just fine if they just put it in the damn total price shown, so you could do a fair comparison between your lodging options.
They could have structured their reservations system the same as say, Hilton does - when you book 5 nights, and the nights vary in price due to demand, say it's $100, $100, $200, $100, $100, they just show "$120 per night (avg)".
Instead AirBNB thought they could get cute and pretend that this fixed part of the charge is not part of the price at all, it's this one separate purpose. Well, of course people are going to expect that if they're literally paying $200 for a cleaning crew (a cleaning that will take maybe 90 minutes max and cost the owner far less than $200), why the F can't they take the trash out? They did this to themselves.
I've been an Airbnb host for the last 3 years. We've never expected guests to do any cleaning or washing of dishes (although it's always appreciated when they do!) We charge a small cleaning fee to cover the costs of cleaning our studio which only takes an hour. We also have maintained a really high rating over the last few years (currently at 4.96). I would hope that other rentals that have ridiculous rules and high cleaning fees would suffer from average ratings?
The market is more complicated than that, unfortunately. Some properties can sustain high ratings on their other strengths (e.g. location, decor, view, heritage) regardless of the host rules and the clientele that's interested in them. There's also a problem with the rental market getting very thin for some locations and property types (e.g. 3+ bedrooms), so ratings effectively stop mattering.
As a personal example, I once stayed at a place that charged a $150 cleaning fee, but also required dishes + taking the trash out and down the street, which wasn't known until we opened the door. And of course there was a threat that failure to do so would incur a fee. Also a bit of ceiling plaster fell on my wife during the night. Still had a fantastic rating because it was a castle and I'd stay there again if someone else paid.
Out of curiosity, why is the cleaning fee not included into the rental rate? Is it required to be listed separately or does that simplify accounting somehow?
Maybe to encourage longer stays? The cleaning fee is paid once per stay, not once per night. I get why it is a separate charge, since they aren't cleaning the place daily (like a hotel), only at the end of your stay.
It is a dark pattern causing the advertised rate to be lower so the listing will get included in more filters etc.
[edit] I checked and they changed this in April of 2025, as of then the fee is rolled up in the advertised rate.
For us, we charge the same cleaning fee whether you stay for 1 night or 7 nights. So I don't know how we can incorporate that into the nightly fee without either over-charging or under-charging for cleaning. Having it listed separately keeps it consistent and clear to guests.
That was entirely on Airbnb for presenting it that way. Hosts would enter in their per-reservation cleaning cost so it could be integrated into the price paid by guests, but Airbnb stubbornly itemized it on the checkout page for years. I believe they finally did away with it (in favor of building into the nightly rate) about a year ago.
Because this way they can lie to you and offer low rates to pull you in until you go to check out.
Airbnb includes the cleaning fee (and other fees) in the advertised price. I just checked our own listing and it shows the total cost.
For a very long time they didn't. They still don't by default in the US, only in certain jurisdictions.
In some locales, it is included
It's interesting how Airbnb has diverged from its original vibe of "staying at somebody's house." When I "stay at somebody's house" I wash the dishes, take out the trash, etc. Essentially, leave it as I found it, if not a bit better. I also expect "somebody's house" to be cleaner than a hotel.
Granted, Airbnb has taken on the hotel industry, and so I'm not surprised that their rules have evolved.
You do those things when you’re staying at a friend or family member’s place. But your friends and family aren’t charging you hundreds of dollars a night, plus a $250 cleaning fee.
It’s not just Airbnb the company that moved away from it, it’s the Airbnb hosts that moved away from it as soon as opportunists started becoming mega landlords renting out ikea-furnished party houses. It hasn’t been the original “person with a spare room for a weekend” Airbnb in a long, long time.
In Tacoma, a "party house" suffered an arson attack recently. The theory/rumors, etc., are that it was a neighbor, pissed off with the constant noise, traffic, etc. The home is right by the Narrows bridge, views, etc., and rentable.
The other part of the theory is since it is owned by a former NFL player (and a Seahawk, at that), that local police were reluctant to rock the boat too much. Neighbors got frustrated, and well, maybe?
I also expect "somebody's house" to be cleaner than a hotel. — Why would you expect that someone’s entire house is cleaner than a small hotel room that professional crews clean every single day?
Not sure what it’s like elsewhere but at least in Australia it’s not objectively cheaper to use airbnb than a hotel. So if you’re paying the same rate, you don’t expect to have to follow a bunch of extra rules that wouldn’t apply to the other
I recently used airbnb quite a bit in Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick and found quite a bit of that old vibe, ranging from a spare room in a young brother & sister's house, to more suite-style accomodation. I was very happy with all my stays, specifically the hosts who balanced privacy with friendly helpfulness.
Staying with my family and friends and helping with common household chores, the same as I would be doing at my own home, is a completely different thing than paying $150-350 a night to some rando.
These things are banned because they became the Amazon equivalent of low balling rates and tacking on shipping fees.
The relationship to homliness really has nothing to do with this. Your friends never charged you to stay then charge 4x that because you left some trash.
I agree about how one should conduct themselves in someone else's home, but is it really that interesting how they progressed as a technology company? To me it seems like the tried and true formula of enshittification. It's the startup playbook.
You went by a "vibe" they wanted you to believe instead of the fact that you pay hotel rates to stay at these houses?
I thought the point was (at least initially) that you’re not paying hotel rates
The only way I ever saw a savings was by getting a lesser experience in terms of location, amenities, privacy, predictability, etc.
I find you get more space & amenities for the same price, but it's not much - if any - cheaper.
...and you believed that it was ?
I've used Airbnb probably 4x/year for the last 10 years, and I've never run into the problem described. How is it that I'm avoiding this without trying?
I wonder whether the majority of hosts would even care to abide by the rules.
The ones requiring the most absurd cleaning procedures are the ones most likely to ignore the rules and continue their policy.
You arrive at the Airbnb. You look at the cleaning rules. If do the dishes is still on the house guide you complain to Airbnb support, get your money back, get a different Airbnb, probably comped, and the original Airbnb's host gets suspended until they prove they're not still doing that. Hosts that don't want to continue being hosts aren't affected, but then they can't continue the policy. Assuming that people contact Airbnb support, that is.
AirBnBs are often booked in high season when finding alternative last-minute cheap accommodation is extremely challenging (you can see a story about this in this very discussion). So, already at your stage "you complain to Airbnb support, get your money back, get a different Airbnb", the traveler's holiday is ruined, and the host being removed from the platform is cold comfort.
No.
You arrive at the Airbnb. You look at the cleaning rules found on a piece of paper on the table but nowhere in the Airbnb description. You don't do the dishes and the host complains to Airbnb. You complain to Airbnb as well. Host is compensated for damages, while your inquires are ignored.
I’d rather use Booking because I didn’t have to worry about doing chores for the hosts. It was a much better experience.
I'm certain that I've stayed in an AirBnB or two that had a rule book and chores, but I never read them. I'm a fairly tidy person and generally clean as I go, but I don't go out of my way to clean dishes or take out the trash unless it really needs it. I also don't leave reviews of places I stay, nor do I read the reviews left for me.
For longer stays this makes no sense - 6 weeks in a tiny house without doing dishes or taking out the trash?
I stay in Airbnbs for about 3 months at a time (traveling abroad for a couple of years) and treat them as a leased apartment. I buy supplies for the place and clean it like it's my own. And when I leave, I generally leave it as clean as I found it.
I think this move will be more taxing for hosts who have long-term guests as this will allow guests to treat their property more as a hotel with room service.
Hotels have housekeeping, sometimes daily. If Airbnb wants to purport that it's equivalent then it needs to act like one.
If I had places that would ask for a copy of my ID before giving me access codes to enter the place but wasn't mentioned on the listing. Also listed there was a kitchen but there weren't any plates or glasses... They charged $10 for bed linen etc. Also wasn't mentioned in the listing. AirBnB can be really annoying. Often they aren't cheaper than apart-hotels.
i wish they would ban additional “rules” in the check in/out instructions. all rules should be up front before booking or after booking with free 24 cancellation or something.
I don’t seem to have had all of the negative experiences that others here are reporting. Most of the recent places I have stayed have been clean and recently renovated. Usually the same or maybe slightly cheaper than a hotel room.
From AirBNB https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/4168 (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50188512)
I once had to corner a guy trying to cut himself with a broken piece of mirror before he jumped off a second story balcony into the pool at a multi airbnb complex in Mexico. He'd taken some drugs and had a bad reaction and lost his mind. Cops picked him up running down the street.
I welcome this move to ban host rules that detract from the experience.
What does your anecdote have to do with this rule change? People take drugs and jump off the balconies at hotels too.
It's such a funny non sequitur to read, I could imagine the entire story.
I've used Airbnbs for group trips only. The past few years, I have been leaning towards hotels for trips. But the newer hotels with the "open concept" bathrooms are not great for sharing a room with a friend. As a consumer, these changes puts Airbnb back in favor for me.
I am using airbnb only for family vacations in summer for 7+ days minimum, they offer way better prices than local hotels plus I can cook or dine at home (which you can't really do in hotel, so I don't get people complaining here about doing dishes and comparing it to hotel experience) without wasting time/money on restaurants (plus there are not really hotels in locations I prefer).
I try to leave airbnb in exact same condition as it was upon our arrival (obviously I am not washing sheets). After reading comments here I feel weird or is this difference between Americans and Europeans? Do HN readers like to live like pigs to stay in mess and leave mess after themselves?
edit: I checked my airbnb receipts and I see everywhere only Airbnb service fee, there is no extra cleaning fee on any of them, if they charged extra money for some cleaning fee maybe my approach would be different
I always much prefer a real hotel to AirBNB.
Airbnb illustrates two points really well:
1. Just like all the add-on charges with air travel like having a checked bag or choosing a seat, a lot of negative experiences come from consumers making decisions solely based on price. This creates an incentive to leave things out to have a lower sticker price. Hotels with non-optional "resort" fees, cruises, and car rental all operate on this model.
The specific issue with Airbnb is the supposed lower cost comes for hiding costs like cleaning. Cleaning is expensive when you start talking about an apartment let alone a house. This is built in to the hotel price (minus tips, which are minor). Also, hotels avoid having the potential for a lot of cleaning (eg a full kitchen).
You might stay in an Airbnb and never use the kitchen, existing totally on eating out. Or you might cook a full Thanksgiving dinner for 20 people and use every dish and appliance in there. How are you meant to handle this when the cleaning cost could be $100 or $1000?
2. Airbnb like oh so many "tech" companies profits by pushing the negative externalities of their business onto people who didn't consent. The most notable negative externality is running an illegal hotel in a residential neighborhood. Hotels have staff, fire codes, licensing and inspections. Some random house does not.
Another is that the house owner never has to suffer from disruptive behavior from guests who may never return. I really think more places should restrict Airbnb to ADUs only when the owner is on-site.
Also, the evidence that Airbnb has driven up rents is undeniable at this point with more than a decade of evidence.
At the same time, hosts clearly profit off of unreasonable charges, like charging $300-500 to "clean" a studio apartment that might only take an hour. It's a bit like landlords stealing security deposits. It's particularly egregious when you're given a random list of tasks you must do, such as stripping sheets and starting wash cycles, etc.
Intermediation businesses are generally bad. The only way to increase profits at a certain point is by cutting costs and raising prices. The other parties want to avoid the middleman charges and go direct. It's why all these businesses like finding cleaners, tutors, etc all only go so far because people go off-platform.
Enshitification at its best. I've used Airbnb almost since inception, but the degradation of offering quality has been so noticeable that I totally quit using this two years ago. Last time the host did not only ask me to do all house chores, and still charge a cleaning fee, but wasn't going to provide bed sheets without an extra fee (W(ho)TF thinks I'm renting and possibly coming with my own sheets), but didn't have the room officially ready until 5pm, and had me out at 10am. F*k this "industry"
Nickle and diming, thats the new MAGA.
These are all self-inflicted wounds by AirBnB. I have used AirBnB a few times in the past, but these days opt for a hotel instead if I can.
They could take user feedback seriously, but chose not to. Case in point: we booked a place in Hawaii. We (2 people) arrived the day of, tired as heck from the beach activities. Place looked fine, except for the crumbs of food in the nooks and crannies of the kitchen. No big deal. We crashed almost right away, too tired to do anything else. An hour later, my wife jumped up, claiming some insect was walking on her legs. I turned on the lights sleepily, and lo and behold, there were cockroaches on the ceiling, scurrying about (and one had fallen and landed on my wife's legs). In the middle of the night, I contacted AirBnB help. They wanted proof. So I took a video and sent it, along with photos. Finally around 2AM they agreed that we should get out of there. We packed up and left for the beach, to wait things out.
My first reaction was: I should leave a review telling people about the roaches. But guess what? AirBnB cancelled our reservation, so there was no way to rate the place or leave a review! They did refund me, but we wasted a day trying to catch up on the lost sleep.
After that experience, I stopped booking AirBnBs if I could help it. They (and VRBO) are a last resort for me (no pun intended).
There seems to be the same by symmetrical issue going on as well. where guests who lie without proof can leave a retaliatory review when not getting a refund. For problems that never existed of course.
It happens to host with hundreds of spectacular reviews.
That's why Airbnb likes to get proofs.
We stayed in one last week in Seoul, only because hotels are prohibitively expensive. (We book last minute.)
On leaving, the host offered us a discount on future bookings if we left a 5-star review. This 'beg for a 5-star' practice is common in every Asian business. We got it from a Hilton in Vietnam. (It's probably global. Our recent experience happens to be in Asia.)
In fairness, hotel ratings are the same. My SOP now is to ignore all 5-star ratings. Simply don't read them. Instead, sort by lowest and that gives you the true measure of a place.
Ratings are totally broken.
My experience in Japan is quite the opposite. A good place gets 3 stars because it's up to expectations, while any perceived slight from staff can easily get that down to 2 stars. Reviews of 4 stars or more from locals tend to correspond to some special experience.
Yes! Great point. Japan seems to be the only place where people actually rate sensibly.
Which, of course it is. There's a reason we're going back there, again, next week.
I got this once when visiting an airport lounge in Asia. Like beyond begging, the person asked for a review and wanted to stand there until I finished it.
I rated a place 3-star overall after a subpar experience. The review stood for some time, but has since been edited to a 5-star, presumably at the request of a host. Totally broken indeed.
They really are. Across every platform. Ratings are 90% cheating of one kind or another. There's just no way to have people leave honest feedback that isn't subject to begging by the parties whose KPIs those ratings are, or prone to lying/exaggeration/sabotage by people with an axe to grind :(
You really take your chances with AirBnb. I have so many stories where I got burned by Airbnb. As a customer they are pretty lousy about handling snafus. From Airbnb’s perspective they are a marketplace so their users and both the buyers and sellers. These two groups interests naturally conflict. They need to balance this tension and they don’t want to burn the renter who make the platform work. That said they do a lousy job of building trust. You can never be sure a listing will have what you think it will and Airbnb does very little to investigate what a property offers. Having a kitchen and decent WiFi is nice, but hotels win in terms of reliability and service and often price.
You hit the nail on the head with the problem. It’s not actually that interesting of a problem, it’s classic incentive misalignment. Airbnb is going to continue to not give a fuck as long as it makes them money. And why wouldn’t they? It’s the American way
I'd argue that it is that interesting of a problem because it gives outsiders (us) insight into AirBnB's marketplace dynamics.
It has long been obvious that many scammy hosts exist on the platform, and it ought to be easy to detect such hosts if they bother to try. Yet, that never happened until now.
So what changed? I would bet that until now they have always worried about having enough inventory to sell, and that now they are noticing they have too much inventory. That changes the dynamics from "be extra nice to those who bring the inventory, and even tolerate a little fraud from them" to "be extra nice to those bringing the dollars".
I do wonder if this is an early sign of a coming recession.
Airbnb has the incentive to not tank their marketplace and they seem to be slowly responding to the increasingly negative sentiment to their brand. I somewhat suspect that their leadership lives in a bubble that insulates them from how lousy their brand is these days. I’m sure they have thought of lots of things but these would all cost money and require them to admit that their product is basically seen as a sketchy black market with a lot of sleazy behavior.
Yeah it’s not really an interesting problem, it’s basically how America works these days. Will it affect shareholder bottom line? If so, then we care. If not, we don’t. Pretty simple. America creates stuff that encourages this behavior and then acts all surprised pikachu when all of the beautiful incentives that were set up play out exactly as expected. The beatings will continue until morale improves
While AirBnB might be bad, my mom booked a place using Agoda. It was a NIGHTMARE. Admittedly this was in Egypt, but the unit was filthy and seemed to be owned by a company in the UAE.
If it was just the filth, it could be like any other terrible experience, but this mid-rise was standing next to the rubble of a razed building beside it and there was literally an open gas pipe hanging upright two floors down with people smoking above. The doorman who showed us the unit seemed unconcerned and it was nearly impossible to get our money back until we literally threatened to sue Agoda. We had sent them all our evidence (we took pictures) and even had the doorman talk to them on the phone and it was still like pulling teeth to get them to refund us.
To add insult to injury the place was more expensive than nearby hotels and I just checked and the place is still listed (we went a year ago)!
Prices for higher-end lake homes/cabins/vacation homes etc., for AirBnB and VRBO are roughly equivalent where I live. This is pretty much the only kind of AirBNB I'll consider, and it is usually more about the the location of the home (on a lake, near skiing, etc) and it being large enough to split amongst others. Also many are managed by property management companies and list across multiple platforms. If I can track down the company I'll directly contact to see if there are cheaper rates.
IMO this is basically the only category of AirBnb that's worth considering and it doesn't seem like a big growth area.
The property management companies are great - you can even haggle with them. I love how clearly they identify themselves on both AirBNB and VRBO. You just have to be willing to give up the (false) security of booking through AirBNB.
This was intentional. Airbnb removes or prevents as many low ratings as they can: https://x.com/levelsio/status/2107088849163665717
I've had a similar experience. Everything looked okay until I found rat droppings, and not just a few either. Customer support was insisting on minimizing it, though I got a refund too. I know it doesn't happen all the time, but when it does it sours everything and reminds you that you are taking a gamble.
I used to stay in AirBNBs all the time.
Toward the tail end of the pandemic, well after vaccines and the average person even remotely cared about it, I stayed in a small studio apartment.
The cleaning fee was $200.
The host gave me a list of at least 30 things I needed to do, including vacuum the floors & washing all the dishes and returning them to their exact initial positions - along with photos of where everything should go, exactly, along with a list of fines as high as $100 PER ITEM for each infraction the cleaning crew could find.
I have never stayed in an AirBNB since outside of hosting a large group, and I never will again.
They've banned this now.
What about all the hosts using AI to pretend guests trashed their place?
No thanks.
Hotels are just fine. I hope all these get-rich-quick scumbag AirBNB speculators get wiped out by high interest rates and lose every penny they have so that people who actually need housing can afford it, and people who actually know how to run a hospitality business can keep doing that correctly.
I tend to agree, nothing of value would be lost if AirBNB disappeared tomorrow. Vacation rentals have always existed anyway, and the cheesy operations that do nothing but rent out each of the bedrooms in a random house in Daly City are just converting normal rental homes to mediocre hotel rooms, a service literally no one was asking for. Enough normal hotel rooms already exist.
WHY ?
Why did you even try the place in the first place ?
https://archive.is/SLOVG
The AirBnb model just fell apart with bad customer experiences. Customers want something closer to a hotel experience. The moment Airbnb started letting hosts treat guests like children doing chores they lost a huge chunk of the market.
It’s ultimately an issue of consistency. If I book with a name brand hotel I have some comfort knowing they have corporate standards that tend to be enforced consistently across properties. If a Hilton, Marriott etc hotel has issues it tends to get dealt with quickly because those brands know consistency is their brand. In extreme cases they will kick hotels out of their brand. That randomly named hotel that used to be a brand name was likely kicked out of the portfolio for compliance issues.
With an AirBnb it’s a total crapshoot. Sometimes it’s totally fine, other times you’d end up in the dirty lair of a psychopath.
For me, it depended on the price.
Several years ago, I had to take a very early flight so wanted to stay near the airport. I rented an Airbnb VERY cheaply. This was a room within an apartment of an old lady who was renting his son's (gone to university) bedroom.
It was a great experience, very kind, comfy and she even made me breakfast.
But nowadays, prices are crazy. A hotel room is usually only 10% higher (if higher). And I have also been victim of last minute cancelations.
If the room is unavailable, the hotel makes it its problem. But in the case of AirBnB, they make it YOUR problem. So that's worth 10% or more for me now. After they ruined a new year's eve vacation.
I no longer rent Airbnb. I might try if they hardened host's rules and gave me a cancelation guarantee of 'we will put you in the closest hotel if necessary ' . Kind of like car rentals: if the car is unavailable, we give you a better one.
I mean, some customers want the hostel experience, too.
The problem is a lot of AirBnB hosts want to offer the hostel experience for hotel prices.
I wonder if the bloom is coming off the Airbnb rose (probably not, because these kinds of things are always made a big deal of in tech forums but the company in question usually sees their revenue go up and up).
For me personally I only ever use Airbnb's now for big trips with at least 3-4 bedrooms needed. These types of Airbnbs usually have more professional management in any case. But otherwise I think Airbnb just offers a poor value:
1. For a long time Airbnbs skirted hotel taxes and other fees. Those days are long gone, so I often find Airbnbs to be just as expensive or more than hotels when you factor in cleaning and other fees.
2. Like this article points out, quality control and rules can be all over the map, and people are sick of it. With a hotel you usually know what you're getting, with an Airbnb it's always a crapshoot.
3. A huge benefit with a hotel is that if something goes wrong you can almost always be moved to another room, sometimes a different hotel. With Airbnb, while they may help you rebook it's much more fraught and you don't know what the next place will be.
So for me I use hotels for most stays now, though I am curious about house swapping for longer overseas trips. I have friends that have raved about it so it just seems like a better option.
A classic race to the bottom. Both sides have bad actors, and that's why we can't have nice things.
I've never been a host but I can't see why this would be a problem that AirBnB should make a call on. I've travelled to places where they have different social norms and visitors should adapt to local culture.
Oddly this will probably let prices be raised, even though there's a cleaner usually there right after..
Most guests of AirBNB like clean homes, and usually tidy up pretty well themselves. Maybe there's a way to incentivize those who choose to, or want to and offer a discount if they want it.
Airbnb drives up the rents of residential neighborhoods to benefit rich travelers. YC needs to stop investing in these morally questionable businesses.
> Utilities: Guests shouldn’t be asked to avoid using a listed amenity like air conditioning, but you can ask them to turn it off when they leave.
Turn it off and come back to a sauna that will take 3 hours to cool down. I'm not doing that.
They were making guests wash dishes? That would've been a real problem.
My maid service will not wash dishes. They need me to clear the sink every time before they arrive. It's often a point of contention, because I leave dirty dishes quite often, and I simply forget what needs to be done. I don't have a problem with doing it for them, I just forget.
But I believe that the reason they will not wash my dishes is because of food safety. In a commercial kitchen, even the dishwasher needs to hold a Food Handler's card or certificate. The sanitizing of dishes and utensils is serious business. If they're not clean enough to eat from, you could be passing foodborne illness.
I would never want to stay at a place that didn't professionally wash its dishes. I've never stayed with AirBNB and I plan to keep it that way. Thankfully, the hotel industry is still a quite viable business, and hotels have staff, insurance, and regulation on their side, even now. I recently had a "staycation" in a 98-year-old classic hotel, and it was so wonderful, worry-free, and pleasant, and cost-effective. I am thankful that they are still operating like that.
A maid service does not require a Food Handler's card to wash dishes. They won't do it by default because they can charge more if they offer it as an addon.
They literally will not do it at all. They refuse, and they will make me pick up the dishes and move them out of the sink.
Yes, if it were an add-on service, they would ask me for permission and then go ahead and charge me for the service. That is something they do with cleaning the oven and such other things. They simply will not wash dishes at all, period, full stop.
It's got to the point now, where if I forgot and left dishes in the sink, I will take them out and hide them somewhere, like the fridge, before the team arrives at my door. And then, hopefully I do not forget to retrieve them and properly clean them immediately.
I don't doubt the effect! I just wanted to point out that a domestic cleaning service does not require a license to do the dishes.
And in fact I have yet to find a maid service that doesn't offer the service. But maybe it depends on state law.
AirBnb is camping. I have been travel camping with and without people for 50 years. The longer you camp the better the experience. Almost all of the first 25 years involved a tent (or bivy sack), and maybe a camp kitchen. Then you surface again, happy minded, into a world where people travel but they expect everyone touching their utensils or even maybe food(?) have a "Food Handler's card or certificate". Whatever that is. Back into the bush.
When I rent a shore house for a week on the east coast (direct from owner rental, not Airbnb), it’s been customary for at least 30 years to clean the house and wash the dishes you use for the next people. We would usually wash them anyway when we arrived because I’m crazy.
When we had little kids we used disposable plates because we didn’t want to break the plates in the house. I don’t do Airbnb but disposable plates might be one way if you needed to stay in a short term rental.
I think that AirBnB just feels much more annoying because of the fee structures. Yes, renting private homes at a lake cabin, shore house, timeshare or ski lodge have their own customs. AirBnB feels much worse (to me) because you select $200 a night, and end up paying $400 after all of the fees. So it used to make it difficult to search for places in your price range because of all the absurd fees piled on top most of which is cleaning. Then you have to clean yourself via a list of chores they give you, then you could be fined by them. All the while a massive corporation makes a ton of money simply matchmaking. It is much different when you are paying it forward in a small community. I didn't articulate it well, but for me the feeling is entirely different. Less that you participate in a community and culture and more that you are disposable labor for what is increasingly a luxury experience typically provided by a rich landlord.
For the last 30 years were they charging a mandatory $150 cleaning fee, even if you're only staying 1 night?
AFAIK, the cleaning fee is determined by the host. They can charge whatever they want.
> We would usually wash them anyway when we arrived because I’m crazy.
We wash the dishes (and sheets, if there is a dryer) when we arrive, and descale the electric kettle and the coffee machine. I guess I'm crazy too.
Oh yeah. I toss the sheets in the washer the moment I get up on the day I'm leaving, and transfer them to the dryer (or clothesline) on my way out the door. So there's no chance of the cleaning crew "cleaning" the bed by just making it. As a favor to the next renter.
Potentially unpopular opinion: The renting of short term residential property should be taxed at 15% of revenue. Digital advertising should be taxed at 20% of revenue.
Why? Who gets the revenue? Local government or national? What are they supposed to spend it on?
"Airbnb" is a label that represents a massive range of situations. Different guests, different properties, different expectations.
I'm a host, I've had hundreds of stays over several years, and I have stellar reviews. It's a large house so there's a $250 cleaning fee. I ask guests to start the dishwasher and take their trash to the dumpster at the end of the street.
I'd say I have two types of guests. The first type is the 99% - they are friendly, grateful, and make the whole thing worthwhile. People who ask for recommendations on the area, leave a nice note in our guest book, and are grateful and respectful of our home. They never complain about taking care of a few things before they leave, and often ask what else they can do. It's honestly a source of positivity for everyone involved to have them stay in our home.
I can count on a single hand the number of times I've had the second type of guest. Exploitative people who have it out for us the second they check in and won't be satisfied until they've extracted money and apologies. As a host, I have literally zero recourse against these people. The system is set up to let them behave this way, and they make me more cautious and my home more expensive for everyone else.
Getting to my point - everyone comes to conversations about Airbnb with an enraged, polarized point of view. It's still a thriving platform with absolutely everything in a single place. The homes range from bare bones crash pads and neglected side projects to true luxury experiences. The guests range from people you are happy to have met to true predators.
Unfortunately, Airbnb and Vrbo have created an absolute race to the bottom. As a host I have next to zero ability to screen who stays with us, and I'm basically at the mercy of bad actors. They extract huge fees and are unhelpful to me and barely helpful to my guests. They introduce ham-fisted rules like this every few months and are revenue optimizing themselves off a cliff.
This is a market that could benefit from more choice.
Isn't your recourse to leave negative reviews of the guests, or not take guests with prior negative reviews?
If I’m paying you 250 bucks, then why do I have to do your cleaning company’s job? This is nonsensical self-checkout-like behavior.
As a host, I feel like this issue is mostly just ragebait for TikTok. Same for the cleaning fee complaints (which has been gone for over a year but you still see ppl talking about it). There are absolutely bad hosts out there (I've dealt with it as a guest myself), but most hosts are totally fine and the guest review system absolutely works to filter out egregious behavior.
There's also quite a big perception bias towards guests when it comes to discourse about Airbnbs. As a host I have to deal with so many unbelievably disgusting and disrespectful people renting my places on a regular basis, but nobody is ever talking about that. Social media would have you believe all guests are victimized angels and hosts are greedy and evil. I would love to see some of these people host and find out what it's really like. If you've worked in retail or hospitality you know.
Airbnb has actually gotten extremely sensitive about this perception the last couple years. They've changed a lot of policies to bend over backwards for guests to avoid the PR. Any guest you see complaining online about a recent experience should be taken with a _large_ grain of salt because Airbnb very rarely sides with hosts anymore and it likely means the guest did something very egregious to get penalized.
I travel for work a lot and was forced to use airbnb by my former company.
Nothing about this is ragebait. Clean after yourself was the norm, cleaning fees often a full days cost or more, and I had bookings that I never checked into make claims about stains or damage!
Most hosts were bad by hotel standards. I will never use one on my own volition.
You realize the cleaning fee is entirely psychological right? If it were always part of the nightly rate (it has been for over a year) nobody would be talking about it. This is getting at my point about rage bait - you’re complaining about stuff that isn’t even around anymore.
That use case is absolutely better suited to hotels btw. I’ve stayed in many cheap Airbnbs while traveling myself and didn’t have that experience myself.
I find it so odd to claim that explaining my prior experience is "ragebait". It's what I experienced over 100s of stays, consistently.
That's only _part_ of what I experienced though. I stopped using the service by my own volition. They have changed some rules since, but those fees and rules were not the tipping point. The decline in service, misadvertising of spaces, poor customer service and general decline in value stop me from continuing to use AirBnB.
I've been forced into an AirBnB recently, and it was the same nonsense. I could not pull into the driveway because the curb was incorrectly built. Host argued with me that it was fine, drove over and couldn't get their OWN car into it. Then they claimed they hadn't been to the property "in months" and "since the work was done"????? They told me I could park at a nearby grocery store and walk over, but they wouldn't be refunding me. AirBnB sided with them. I logged everything with photos (including the hosts car unable to get into the driveway), screenshots and had my company file a chargeback.
Doesn't even make it into my top 50 worst experiences. Total joke.
I'm talking about the cleaning fee specifically being part of ragebait. You are paying for the cleaning service and whatever operating costs an Airbnb or hotel has otherwise they wouldn't be in business. Whether they put "Cleaning Fee" on the checkout page or not is arbitrary and a total psychological effect, that's it. Hotels were doing the same thing with "Resort Fee" or whatever else they have. It's a ploy to show you a lower price on the search page, get you to the checkout screen, and shrug past the hidden costs once you've already committed to buying. It doesn't change the final price you ultimately paid, just how its presented. And yeah it's a shitty practice and I'm glad its been going away.
I don't know where you are using Airbnb, but seems statistically odd that 100s of stays have been miserable for you. If it were that bad for everyone nobody would be using it and yet Airbnb is still growing YoY. Pretty much everyone I know (including myself) has maybe 1-2 bad experiences over dozens of stays. And sure some stays are "fine" and not exceptional, but that's true of anything. Hotels are not necessary much more reliable these days either - I've had to leave more hotels in the last 2 years over broken/missing amenities, smells, dilapated rooms, etc than I ever have Airbnbs honestly. Many don't do daily room cleaning any more. It doesn't really line up with the rosy view of hotels that proliferates on here and they have far fewer excuses with dedicated staff, spare rooms, etc.
It being a ploy means it's more legitimate for people to be mad.
There are far more guests than hosts so it makes sense that the discourse is mostly from the guests’ perspective.
How is asking the cleaning company to run the dishwasher and take out the garbage “bending over backwards?” I’ve paid the fee to do the minimum amount of cleaning necessary.
You are a parasite.
Seriously, why?
Wow edgy!
My family uses Airbnb for every single holiday, has done for more than a decade, and have had a wonderful experience. Thank you airbnb!
Airbnb didnt do anything, they are just a tax.