Hacker News Reader

Comment by TeMPOraL | Hacker News Reader

> the hotel cabal.

"Hotel cabal" is bullshit. Slightly less bullshit than Uber's "taxi mafia", but still a steaming pile of bovine excrement.

AirBnB is a multinational corporation. It's displacing not just large hotel chains, but also all the local legal forms of short-term accommodation - small hotels, hostels, motels, BnBs, etc.

It really bewilders me that people have fallen for the same reality-inverting marketing propaganda not once, but twice. AirBnB and Uber aren't underdogs fighting cabals, they're SV-money-pumped cabals fighting small local businesses.

View on HN

If you can’t see the harm in a few companies owning the vast majority of hotel rooms (under many brands) then I don’t know how we can have a productive discussion about this.

Having personally made “status” in the various hotel cabal loyalty programs, and having used AirBnb/VRBO/HomeAway/etc... many many times as well. I say with confidence that the hotel chains have negative externalities that exceed those of the various short term rental sites. I’ll go so far as saying the hotel cabal is a net negative.

> If you can’t see the harm in a few companies owning the vast majority of hotel rooms (under many brands) then I don’t know how we can have a productive discussion about this.

I can see harm in it. But the solution isn't enabling yet another single company to expand and capture even more of the hospitality market.

> I say with confidence that the hotel chains have negative externalities that exceed those of the various short term rental sites.

Name three.

1. Profits are not retained by the local community

2. Wages are low

3. Architectural blight/reduces walk-ability

AirBnb (of whom I’ve been very critical in the past)

1. Encourages property ownership and wealth building amongst the middle class

2. Enables the middle class to extract the maximum value from their assets

3. Offers a better product at a lower price

4. Keeps profits local

Everyone assumes the hotels are complying with all local statues and are behaving in good faith just because they pay occupancy taxes and carry insurance. Bizarre.

Local city councils can and do enact laws for short term rentals and the short term rental companies have whole departments of developers who program those laws into the system. If those laws are not being followed then the justice department should do its job.

Yeah, I absolutely can see how someone who pays (sometimes living) wage to lots of people, pays taxes, obeys the law, and generally does not push costs on bystanders would be an evil cabal in the VC-fueled SV bubble!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com