- Airbnb stock tumbled 14% in one day after the company predicted slowing demand.
- Some former Airbnb diehards say they now prefer the consistency of hotels.
- Airbnb said it might increase travelers’ ability to book hotel rooms through Airbnb.
Airbnb doesn’t protect the tenant enough.
I’ve been charged for a locksmith because the instructions state “leave the key on the table” but the dumbass landlord doesn’t have a spare key.
I only find it helpful for renting homes during group trips. Otherwise I’ll always go to a hotel.
Similarly, I will always use cabs in NYC, never an Uber.
Good.
Good.
Double plus good.
Double plus good.
Airbnb is a fine example of a sort of variation on enshittification.
The way it works is a new company with a new and notably cost-effective way of doing things comes along and is unsurprisingly wildly successful. And then, inevitably, that leads to them hiring a whole raft of executive parasites who all have to be paid obscene salaries for doing nothing of any real value, which means the company needs to raise prices and cut back on services in order to generate more profit to pay those salaries. And meanwhile, the new executives, with nothing of any note that they actually need to or even can do, but with a need to create some illusion that they’re necessary, have pointless meetings in which they propose and wrangle about and eventually approve and implement new policies and new plans that are generally awful.
And pretty quickly and not coincidentally the new company ends up at least as bloated, mismanaged, overpriced and under-performing as the companies they so recently replaced.
See also: Uber, DoorDash and the entire streaming industry.
While you got the effects correct, you got the process wrong.
The way it works is a new company with a new and notably cost-effective way of doing things comes along and is unsurprisingly wildly successful.
The business model isn’t based on cost effectiveness. Most of these companies work at a loss for a long time, providing artificially low prices in order to gain market share and push existing players out. This is isn’t new. It’s called dumping. Irs just been a bit obscured by buzzwords like “new technology” and “disruption.”
And then, inevitably, that leads to them hiring a whole raft of executive parasites who all have to be paid obscene salaries for doing nothing of any real value, which means the company needs to raise prices and cut back on services in order to generate more profit to pay those salaries.
These executives aren’t hired to do nothing and collect high salaries. Their salaries aren’t what drives the price increases. The major shareholders who spent their money to sustain the company so far want to get return on that money. They install executives with this one goal - maximize profit - so they can get this return. This is what drives the hiring of sociopaths who drive prices up in order to increase profits at all costs. This is what drives hiring such people in all public corporations. You got the effects right but the reasons aren’t to do with shit execs and their salaries. It’s all to do with major shareholders search for growing profits. Everything else follows from there. This is important to understand in order to point the finger in the right direction. Misdirecting people’s substantiated anger with the system has been a perennial tool used to prolong profit maximization for as long as possible.
I’d also like to point out that the underlying model may well be unsustainable in the way that it is offered at the start. Who benefits when a for-profit company operates at a loss? We, the customers, do. We get low prices and customer-friendly practices that are genuinely enjoyable. That business can’t operate in that way indefinitely, as the early investors are not funding it as an act of charity.
Eventually, the bill comes due. The shareholders have funded the company on the premise that, after losing lots of money on customer acquisition, it can restructure and monetize those customers and recoup their investment, hopefully with a lucrative return when they decide to capitalize their holdings and find a new company with which to repeat the process.
There is absolutely no reason not to enjoy the perks of the early stage of the customer acquisition process; the shareholders are subsidizing your product at no cost to you. But we shouldn’t be surprised when the shareholders stop subsidizing and start squeezing their formerly pampered customers in the hopes of getting their money back (and more, of course).
This doesn’t excuse unethical or abusive practices, but it does mean that, even without them, the experience of those early days probably wasn’t going to last forever.
There is absolutely no reason not to enjoy the perks of the early stage of the customer acquisition process;
I can think of one reason. Depriving the existing industry from revenue leading to its demise which ensures the new entrant can raise their prices higher than the preexisting status quo. This is the other part of the equation that makes dumping work. Of course we can’t expect most people to choose to pay more but if people were able to resist that, the strategy wouldn’t work.
There is absolutely no reason not to enjoy the perks of the early stage of the customer acquisition process; the shareholders are subsidizing your product at no cost to you.
At the individual level, sure. Even for things like streaming services it isn’t a net negative to take advantage of those ‘introductory’ prices.
But a lot of these businesses that operate at an obvious loss are undercutting currently existing business practices that are probably more cost efficient than these new businesses. Like restaurants that used to take care of their own delivery were undercut by malicious pricing from door dash and uber eats only to wind up in a situation where they would have to start from scratch again or pay the outrageous extortion fees to DD and UE.
I avoided both DD and UE because I knew it would not be sustainably long term. It was obvious they were maliciously undercutting competition. Same with uber and lyft and all the other ride share businesses, although at least they got some reform going on the taxi side.
The thing about Airbnb and Uber is that their model is renting out other people’s stuff. A hotel has to do the capital investment to actually build a hotel, a taxi company has to invest in cars and a taxi medallion. They just had to build and maintain a website and use other people’s capital. The only reason they spend billions is in executive compensation and short term subsidising of prices to gain market share.
I won’t use them again. It’s morally questionable to support that business model during a global housing crisis.
The whole point of AirBnB was that they were cheaper than hotels, but you had to clean yourself.
Now it’s just as much as hotels with shittier service.
TBF, almost all of this applies to VRBO too.
I’ve never used it, but I’ve been told VRBO is just a more expensive AirBnB. Does that hold up in your experience?
My experience is that VRBO is supposed to be more scrutinized than Air B&B and you always get the whole property.
Lately they are demanding a $500 cleaning fee and also demanding that you do the laundry, take out the trash, and do the dishes.
I’m not paying more money to get no-breakfast, and have to do chores, and have a 15% chance of crazy owner, and a non-zero chance of it being a scam, and have AirBNB corporate give me the run around.
they should be paying hotel taxes.
AirBnb is just a pain in the ass that hardly saves you money anymore. It’s often the same.
You want nice clean sheets, fresh linens, and nice amenities that go with it? Get a hotel.
You just absolutely have to have a home or flat vibe? Well be ready to do apartment laundry, sweep and vacuumvand make the beds and clean all the dishes and only enter and exit between these hours because the keypad doesn’t recognize you otherwise…
Greedy fucks ruined AirBnB because the company encouraged it and let them do so. And then fucked over the guests too many times. And now I’d rather stay in a reliable location than deal with the absolute hassle of their company or their company’s shitty clients.
Good riddance.
Yep, this 100%. I travel a lot for work and have probably stayed in 100 airbnbs over the years, but these days I ask the company not to bother and to book hotels instead. It’s gone from a platform to get a nice home away from home, to a place to get gouged by rude hosts while staying in a barracks with the sparsest of IKEA finishings. They’ve done it to themselves by encouraging shitty host behavior and having zero consequences for bad guest experiences.
The couple really great AirBnB stays I’ve had were for family reunions. So larger than even extended stay hotels are really made for. And they were run by companies, not individual people.
These have always existed though. AirBnB isn’t an app listing, but offers nothing to that equation. Cabin and event space rentals have been a thing for decades. You don’t see Wedding Venues needing AirBnb you know?
It still has one specific usecase where I find it better - when you need more than 2 beds. We use it when on holiday with my friends because usually getting an Airbnb with 3-4 beds is way cheaper than hotel rooms.
But in pretty much all other cases… yep, would much rather have a hotel. Last time I had a host who took electric meter readings and charged you for the electricity… luckily it was negligible since the oven was broken.
I was solely airbnb for years, down to literally nothing now. Won’t even search the site anymore. Many reasons articulated by others, but just a pure garbage company and garbage “homeowners” who are mostly just vc conglomerates and bs fronts now - last time I looked, I saw a listing that was overpriced, but I was going to do it out of last minute need…
Host was named Miranda and showed profile pic of a smiling younger women. Listing text was written in her voice. I had a specific question that I sent and received an odd, cold form response, not in her same tone. Then looked and saw that Miranda owned most every property in this beachfront area? She looked pretty young, but okay, good for you. Looked further and found that “Miranda” was actually just the name of a property management group. That wasn’t her in the profile picture, she didn’t exist. She wasn’t going to answer my question, she didn’t give a shit, because she was… not.
Fuck you in your stupid greedy faces, hotels will do.
Hotels are pretty nice. They come to make up your room, they have a nice person at the front desk to help you out with any issues, and they will usually have a breakfast option or at least some free coffee.
Airbnb has a lot of potential downsides: from cleaning and fees to broken stuff and hidden cameras. I’ve been in a few situations that have been weird to put it mildly.
Sometimes weird can be fun, but if I just want a clean bed and a reliable experience, I go to the hotel these days
Some hotels have hidden cameras too, assuming they havent been found yet
Nature of the business means that’s a higher risk activity. Customers can’t get access back to the same room, employees work in rotation and owners aren’t physical present.
Never stayed in one and I never plan to.
Airbnb was great when it all began, but now it’s overrun by corporate vultures that buy up housing and turn it into illicit hotels. Not to even mention, it costs about the same as a hotel these days and I’ve never stayed in a hotel that gives you a chore list.
Like every other company lol. I remember when Uber and Lyft were so much cheaper, too. It’s why I don’t want gamepass to take over all gaming, or streaming to take over all physical video media. It always starts out nice, but eventually…
THANK YOU for seeing the writing on the wall. I keep reminding people of this.
Gamepass is unbeatable value. But if you give it market share you better believe after they jack the price a few more times, games willvstop providing a disc at all and just be “Gamepass exclusive” in the sense youvcan only subscribe to it, not buy it.
We are already here, for a decade now, The Crew players can’t play their game anymore, and they paid for it.
True. Gamepass just takes that much further I think. Gasoline on the fire so to speak.
That’s odd. Do people not want to pay hotel prices and a “cleaning fee” and also clean up the place before they leave? Or is it like they want to show up and the room they booked actually exists?
Goddamn millennials are so unreasonable.
Yes exactly. Hosts got greedy, Airbnb let them, and this is the result.
They could fix it pretty easily but the host would hate it.
- Make the price that is displayed by default inclusive of all fees and charges, except taxes. So that stupid cleaning fee makes your property go down in the list.
-Make the listing page clearly indicate whether or not the guest is required to perform chores. Make the filter aware of certain chores and allow a guest to screen out listings that require those. IE, ‘strip bed’, ‘do laundry’, ‘take out garbage’, ‘cleaning tasks’, ‘other’, etc. and have a really easy button at the top ‘filter out listings with chores’.
If I’m paying half the price of a hotel then I don’t mind having to throw the sheets in the laundry. If I’m paying more than a hotel plus a cleaning fee, I want to be on vacation and act like it.
Why shouldn’t taxes be displayed?
Taxes are not displayed anywhere else, so if Airbnb starts including taxes in their listing they will be at a competitive disadvantage as their pricing would become apples to oranges versus hotels in the wrong direction.
Almost nowhere in the US includes taxes in the advertised price.
Americans are used to mentally adding taxes to the price
They should be displayed.
To add to this, in the U.S. the price on the shelf should be the actual price after tax. It’s so weird seeing the price and knowing it’s not actually the price.
No, people like to find out that there’s a fucking rooster farm across the road and that you have to park 3 miles away. It’s all part of the adventure.
I have zero interest in an Airbnb. Too many options for fuckery.
