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Comment by CalRobert | Hacker News Reader

For what it's worth, I genuinely like using AirBNB over most hotels due to the service and insights I get from the host. It also tends to feel cozier. Similarly, I used to prefer hostels to hotels for the human interaction, though I've gotten pretty old for that.

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I understand and agree with you w.r.t. hostels vs. hotels, and also feeling too old for that scene. I regularly get the impression that people become less outgoing over time (unless they're already tipsy when you meet them). I feel like when I meet people around my age (late 30s/early 40s) they're already all friended up and will donate no more than polite small talk or mindless automatic chit-chat. The halcyon days of being moulded by new experiences and sharing in a stranger's adventures belong to my son now :)

I can sympathize there. I still like meeting new people, but I have a partner now, which makes it harder. Also, I suppose the conversation has to shift a bit; you can only talk about which countries you've gone to before it seems like you're just having the same chat over and over again.

Also, when you're older and have already spent a decade or more accumulating good friends (one hopes!) the exploration/exploitation equation starts to favour spending more time with old friends than making new ones.

It's about shared negative emotional experiences, of which their are more when one is young e.g. school, leaving home. It follows that if you wish to befriend adults you need to share a rock climbing accident, get stuck together in an airport for 72 hours, or similar.

Well, that means that AirBNB should be charging more that an equivalent hotel room, doesn't it? At least to the market segment that values the same things that you do.

I am wondering how many segments there are in the "accomodations" industry. We have the homely/warm/cozy opinioned root kind of segment CalRobert has exemplified; then we have the dirt-cheap hobo-shelter-minus-stabbing that people on a tight budget seem to value, etc.

Any thoughts.

I would not be surprised if AirBNB has applied their data engineers to the task of identifying these segments; it sounds like a classic unguided ML problem.

To be fair, if more hotels were cozy and made it easier to meet local people I'd be more inclined to go with hotels. They're not _bad_, per se, just kind of sterile.

There are exceptions, of course. I've stayed in small, usually family-run, bnb's in rural Ireland, and Germany's romantic road. These tend to be more charming.

AirBNB does charge market rates for that stuff. They just work out to be cheaper because they don't provide other costly things that many hotels do.

> They just work out to be cheaper because they don't provide other costly things that many hotels do.

Like local hotel taxes.

And insurance premiums, and ADA-compliant housing...

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