Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

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...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com