For these trips we stay exclusively in AirBnBs. They are much cheaper, much more comfortable, they have room for our kids to play, and we get access to a kitchen so we can have relatively cheap home cooked meals rather than eating out 3x a day.

That's not to say we haven't had bad experiences. Once we had a combination of thin walls/floors, a downstairs neighbor who was very sensitive to noise, and a one year old who didn't yet know how to tiptoe (we did our best and didn't get any more complaints after the first, but it was a fairly uncomfortable thing to have to worry about). We've stayed in not-great neighborhoods. One kitchen looked fine in pictures but didn't have knives or cutting boards or a single unbroken pot, which made the "cooking at home" options less appealing. The variance of quality in AirBNBs is much higher than that of hotels.

But even with these negative experiences, we're still staying in AirBNBs because it's still much, much better than the alternatives. Declaring that no value is produced by AirBNB or similar companies might be emotionally satisfying, but it's not true.

Of course, when the hotel rate is within $50-$100 of the AirBNB room, I'll happily pay the additional upcharge for the convenience and consistency of a hotel. And if I'm traveling in particularly unfamiliar terrain, I'll pay even more just so I can talk to the concierge and enjoy the security that the hotel offers.

AirBNB and competitors like Vacasa are a good thing. AirBNB's practice of making it impossible to ask an open-ended question, however, is braindead, and unless they fix those kinds of issues, the business will be deservedly overtaken by better followers.