Hacker News Reader

Comment by nostromo | Hacker News Reader

To your point, Airbnb bucks the trend you identified by making travel more affordable and accessible. It's also far and away the most successful company listed.

View on HN

More accessible, maybe (unless you're black [0])

More affordable, no. In my recent travels to NYC and SF, I was always able to get a hotel room via HotelTonight or Hotwire cheaper than an AirBnB unit. I know its not always an apples-to-apples comparison but even for just a private room (not an entire home), an AirBnB in SF is $100+/night.[1]

All that to say, I think you're wrong.

[0] https://medium.com/stay-woke/i-read-about-this-phenomenon-of...

[1] I randomly checked Dec 18-20 in SF. Hotwire has a 4-star room for $91/night. Most AirBnB private rooms are the same or higher.

I travel a lot (including in SF and NYC) and you're objectively wrong. I prefer hotels to AirBnB, but still almost always go with AirBnB because it's significantly cheaper.

For your suggested dates of Dec 18-20 I found literally dozens of AirBnBs for <$80/night. [0] All I can conclude is that you're straight up lying. It's trivially easier to find AirBnBs which are cheaper than hotels.

[0] https://www.airbnb.com/s/San-Francisco--CA--United-States?gu...

Yeah, I have so much incentive to straight up lie. The average for the link you have is $108/night. That's above several hotels in my search. Also, most of these AirBnB listings only allow 1 person. Every hotel room will support 2 people and most will allow 4 (if you can get 2 beds).

Take that for what its worth. If I'm objectively wrong or a liar to you, cool.

You're comparing the average to the minimum. That's deceptive and unfair.

The average hotel room in SF costs hundreds of dollars a night. [0] So the average hotel is much more expensive than the average AirBnB.

Likewise, I showed countless examples of AirBnBs which have a lower price than the cheapest hotel you could find.

If both the average and the minimum for AirBnB is much lower than for hotels, we can safely conclude that AirBnB is substantially cheaper.

As a frequent traveler, I know that to be a fact. I would love if hotels were cheaper than AirBnB (I prefer them), but it's objectively not true.

[0] http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/morning_call/2015/07...

airbnb is a much, much more economical option while traveling over hotels when booking in advance for a couple. it was even cheaper than a private room in a hostels in berlin.

source: traveling for 1.5 years using airbnb, hotels, hostels.

I agree that in some markets the airbnb prices are close cheap hotels. From my experience, I used to use Airbnb in Paris (France) and for the past 2 years, I ended up in an hotel, since it was cheaper. Now, hotels pricing is way more flexible when it comes to react to low demand. Airbnb hosts, do not adjust as well or as quickly to the seasonal (even week day vs. weekend) nature of hospitality. Airbnb is not always the cheaper option vs. hotels.

When you have a large group (like 6+ people) renting a house outright via airbnb is usually better. It also lets you hang out together in a living room. Also you have more location flexibility.

Private room airbnb is probably not the best deal.

If you're renting a large place, I would highly suggest shopping on AirBnB then trying to find the contact information of the owner and hitting them up directly. Large places usually have their own websites and you can save a ton of money since the fee AirBnB charges is a percentage of the total cost (although AirBnB reduces risk).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com