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Comment by whymsicalburito | Hacker News Reader

This offering looks nice, but half the bullet items listed as benefits were things that I already thought were guaranteed by AirBnB... This seems like an excuse to lower their standards on non-Plus listings.

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It's what you expect, but it costs them money to verify these expectations.

I'd guess this is about saying "we've verified this" .

But then again, they don't seem to make any hard commitment as a result of said inspection, something like "everything is verified in person so if something is missing/wrong we book you in the nearest five star hotel for free", only a vague promise about a more trained customer support agent if something goes wrong. Does not seem very reassuring honestly.

I'd argue it's about not saying "we've found a way increase the margin on our services"

Agreed, don’t know why we should suddenly pay more for something we once expected for free.

A lot of people stay in hotels because there is a certain consistency even if they are more expensive and less nice usually. Airbnb Plus is a way to make sure Airbnb is as consistent as possible to compete. If you want the cheapest possible room, you can just get a normal Airbnb and not pay slightly more for someone to check that there is an extra toothbrush and a bottle of wine when you check in

I have no idea if this new tier will actually result in a consistent curated list of places to stay. However, to the degree it does, I would absolutely consider using it to a greater degree than Airbnb today.

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