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Comment by ceocoder | Hacker News Reader

There are two reasons I’ve decided to not use Airbnb again - specially when I’m overseas.

1) fear of getting locked out of Airbnb. I stayed in an Airbnb in Dublin in late 2017, place was OK, not too great -cheap ikea bed, cheap ikea couch, heater that was either tundra or Sahara. However getting in to this place required memorizing 8 digit number or having your phone on you. After that stay I genuinely appreciated 24hr staffed front desk where you can get a new key pretty much instantly.

2) a safe for your valuables (passport) and daily house keeping.

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Why not just write the number on a piece of paper?!

Because then they would only have one (completely valid!) criticism.

It is not unthinkable to loose a piece of paper. Front/Night desks exist for a reason in Hotels

because if you get mugged abroad and that piece of paper goes away along with your wallet, you are shit out of luck. A hotel can give you a lot of support in situations when you're stranded abroad. On top of granting you access to the room, they can call people on your behalf, provide a wellfare check in case you've gone missing, etc..

Exactly this, I do try to keep note in my wallet but mistakes happen, wallets/phones get lost/stolen. I like the safety net of having a hotel frontdesk staff that can help out in the worst case scenario. From a personal experience - I got really sick during a trip abroad and frontdesk staff sent someone to a pharmacy to pick-up medicines for me and they were willing to call doctors if needed.

I once got the serious runs in a hotel in India. The hotel staff brought in a doctor.

I was nervous the first time I stayed at an Airbnb and needed to remember a gate code and apartment code (in addition to the complex set of turns required to get to the apartment once you were in the gate), but eventually I realized that I’ve never not got my phone on me and in the absolute worst case I can blow the money on a hotel room for a night until I can get things sorted back out.

Of course in the scenario where you get mugged in a strange city none of that applies and I honestly have no idea what I would do... show up at the embassy and cry on the door until they opened on Monday, probably.

As for a safe for your passport, I guess it depends upon country. In many you’re required to always have valid ID and proof of visa (ie: the stamp in your passport) at all times. Usually those are also the more likely countries for being robbed, so there’s a bit of a catch 22 there.

I had a similar problem with electronic locks, but it's very easy to memorize a 8 digit number with a mnemonic - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mnemonic_major_system

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