Airbnb to halt all marketing, most hiring as losses mount
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I'm sure they were already in a tight situation financially and this is the nail in the coffin. Personally, I'd be happy to see them go. Seems like an experiment that isn't worth continuing to me.
But one thing I don't hear complained about enough: Having to share your home with AirBnB guests.
We live in a luxury condo in a major metro. A number of the owners in our building are absentee (probably not even in country) and they AirBnB. Nothing like paying a small fortune for a home and facilities and then having to share your pool with a bunch of obnoxious travelers who think they're in a fucking hotel.
We've tried to work with the company that manages our building but it's nearly impossible to stop, short of policing all of the residents. And it's illegal where we live! AirBnB doesn't give a shit. The offending owners (technically our neighbors) don't give a shit.
Honestly, I'd love to see them tank.
Now, it seems to be mainly listing what are essentially unlicensed hotels with rooms spread across an area. Half the time I’ve used it recently I go to the address I was sent, only to realize I’ve missed a message telling me to go to a different address 15 blocks away to obtain the key from a lockbox.
Plus I’ve found they make it difficult to see a map view in some places.
Now I only use Airbnb for renting entire houses (eg for a ski trip). And even for that, I check booking.com first
In many jurisdictions it’s illegal to operate residential properties as hotels for these and other reasons.
I don't know the situation in the OP's country, but I wouldn't assume that filing a lawsuit is always an accessible option in jurisdictions outside the US.
Many countries make it very difficult for the general public to access the court system.
Where I live for example, it is extremely expensive to even begin a lawsuit (multiples of median monthly income), contingent legal fees (i.e. no win, no fee) arrangements are illegal (up to 7 years in prison), and class actions (i.e. multi-party litigation) are not permitted.
However, my HoA was fine-happy and generally useless othwrwise
It's a shame airbnb has basically let professional real estate firms take over and completely trash it with listings that are nothing like what they show.
The last one I stayed at in Florida had a really bad ant problem and the place was filthy. They also had the AC set to turn off after 30 minutes. Keep in mind, it's in Florida and this was middle of summer.
While I'm ranting, why do they let basements or single floors of a shared house count as an 'entire place'? It's really weird to turn up and see you're actually in a basement in the owners house with their kids stomping around upstairs.
Agreed, this is very annoying. Basement apartments shouldn't show up under "entire place". They may be called basement apartments, but it's just a basement with a family upstairs and almost always constant, barely muffled noise. Some listings won't even disclose this until the very bottom of the description, or sometimes not at all, and then I have to dig through reviews to see if anyone has remarked that it's actually a basement.
I've stayed in a lot of Airbnbs, and every basement apartment has been awful in a lot of different ways. Some are even more expensive than full apartments despite same area and similar quality and size. But if you're on a tight budget, the cheapest option between a hostel and hotel room or apartment probably is a basement apartment, so I suppose they're not entirely useless.
Would you describe a room in a hotel as an "entire place" or a "shared space"?
this has gotta be the answer. I have the exact same experiences and feelings as you. I always look for basically the cheapest Airbnb and it ends up cheaper by 2-3x than local hotels and I've never had an uncomfortable stay. What I have had are completely normal rooms in working class homes - which is fine because who the hell cares about enjoying the hotel room when you travel!
My impression is that virtually all of the Airbnb complaints (both from guests and from neighbours) relate to "entire apartment" listings and/or the "private rooms" where the owner isn't on site.
There was once a time when most of the listings were for spare rooms in someone's house/flat, and to me that was kind of the whole point of Airbnb in the first place.
In recent years we run into more and more listings where somebody renting out the entire house, each room to a separate individual. Sometimes it is indistinguishable from the former one before you arrive. If I staying at a "hostel" I want my bathroom and kitchen cleaned every day, but most likely I would just choose a real hostel.
Most places also never looked as advertised: they’re way noisier, dirtier, low quality, and as others have said you have to trek 5 blocks to get and return the key to an automated 7/11 mailbox.
And should you report it to Airbnb, be prepared to stay 45 minutes on the phone every time you call, starting over from scratch because the agents can’t read previous calls notes, to eventually be told that they’ve checked you out, refunded, and good luck finding another place to stay tonight.
I’ll take hotels any day. Fuck Airbnb.
And the last time it was a great place, a bit better than a hotel.
There's nothing wrong with that, of course. I just dislike all their Jobs-esque bullshit about it, pretending they single-handedly "innovated" the platform, which they didn't.
In the days before AirBnB I rented an apartment in Paris for a week and had to wire half the money up front (in EUR, from the USA) and bring the other half in cash on arrival. The apartment was awesome, the host even better and I had no regrets. But it was a hassle, a bit risky, and certainly not something most of my friends and family would have been willing to do.
Getting in the middle of the money may not seem like much of an innovation but from my own experience it was probably one of the more complicated aspects of their platform. Dealing with currencies, escrow, risk management, settlement, chargebacks, etc. is a major undertaking. But it’s what made the model accessible to a lot more hosts and guests.
Also AirBnB innovated in break-ing Craigslist TOS to spam their users in early marketing.
Also, as an owner with two short-term rentals, it has been very challenging for us as well. We are getting cancellation requests for bookings into May and June that are outside of our 90 day cancellation window. Vrbo is pressuring us to allow those guests to cancel, but this isn't easy for people depending on that income. We have been trying to allow cancellations if travel isn't allowed (our units are in Hawaii so incoming travel isn't really allowed right now), but many of the travel bans currently in place are for 30 days.
Work was paying, but don't really like spending other people's money, and what a terrible service.
[1] https://www.delta.com/us/en/advisories/coronavirus-travel/ca...
Can't speak to Booking or Hotels.com, I always book directly to not get hosed when changes are necessary.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
We'll be living with the repercussions of Coronavirus for many, many years. Shutting down the economy was just one of many ways the virus could have done its monetary damage.
Forget a rainy day fund, we’re $23+ trillion in debt with $100+ trillion in future obligations.
Also on the plus side: at this point money is construct and it doesn’t much matter how much debt you’re in, provided there is not too much money to be inflationary (not gonna happen in a depression) and there isn’t so little that liquidity dries up and there’s a panic to withdraw what’s there. So... queue the magic money machine for a bit until we can get this sorted.
They just got a lot smaller, and tax revenues with them.
In 2008, the economy 'woke up' and realized that it was based on a huge amount of false data. Imagine if every home in America was not worth the stated value. That's a lot.
If we can move past coronavirus and get most people back to work, most economic interests will believe there's no reason we can't get back to the 'good times' quickly. It will be a bull ride. Companies will want to expand rapidly and there will be common agreement about that.
So yes, there will be some dominos to pick up and some crazy problems with government debt - but if China is able to 'make stuff' most people are able to travel etc. then I feel it will be a 'v-shaped' recovery. Much quicker than 2008.
This all depends on if restaurants, hotels, airlines, factories are able to get back moving again.
Demand is not going to bounce back. People will rightfully be apprehensive of increasing spending and will want to build up a personal cushion.
Tons of office workers who do little more than keep each other busy will be laid off and not find meaningful new work. This will cascade through their personal economies (spending patterns, defaulting on mortgages, etc).
a) People were confident before, they will again. Business 'demand' will be back, and consumer appetite for travel, food will shoot back I think.
b) "Tons of office workers who do little more than keep each other busy" basically you're implying that companies know they have terrible inefficiencies, and used the coronavirus to dump their 'bad staff' and effectively won't re-hire. I'm not so sure companies are very good at determining who's crap and who's not nor are they good at fixing their processes. They will start hiring, thinking they're hiring 'better' but really they're just hiring back the same bag of workers.
Before the coronavirus, unemployment was crazy low. Historically. The Fed actually was going to raise rates but noticed people coming back into the economy as they had stopped looking for jobs previously. Companies were literally starting to train people again (!) they were so desperate.
I think we're going to get back to it fairly quickly.
My prediction is several months of funny money zany economy, during which time we edge back to work. The coronavirus will hang over everything for 18 months and still kill a lot of people and keep doctors buys, but the economy will start moving. In 2 years we are in full recovery, almost back to previous employment levels. Stocks are not back yet but who cares.
There will be a long term reckoning with the sizeable debt and garbage on the Fed's balance sheet but that won't stop the underlying economy from moving.
The thing I fear the most is a huge second wave, particularly in poorer countries. So far they have been spared.
For the majority, that's never happened before a probably won't happen ever.
Edit: Looks like @dang has replied and un-blocked it: https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=22708065&goto=item%3Fi...
The only inconvenience is usually the key hand-off, but private places usually have lock boxes these days, and shared ones have people living there.
The secret is never staying in airbnb-s that look like they are run like a hotel.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/garybarker/2020/02/21/the-airbn...
They just marched in and started setting up illegal mini-hotels. When this blows up I'd love to know how that came to pass. Did every mayor in every big city really just decide not to act? There has to have been carrots and sticks here.
This is like saying "Apple was lauded as the best company last week. But a meteor hitting earth today completely wipe out human and apple. What a really amazing turnaround"
When we laud a company, it, of course, doesn't include an extraordinary pandemic.
There are lots of properties with 0 reviews, and I see that multiple properties are managed probably by the same management company. It's just a sad situation when a nice owner of a nice apartment hires a bad management company, and AirBnB can't solve this situation, as I would love to stay in that place, but I'm scared of the hidden problems.
Their customer support is hopeless, I've lost money on two stays where I wouldn't get a refund because the listing was inaccurate (smelly and bad hygeine).
They have to learn from Amazon. I know Amazon has terrible practices for it's workers but as a customer, I can't think of any online company that comes as close to their customer obsession. I can buy anything with prime label, its delivered quickly and I can return it if I am not happy for any reason.
This is what I want from AirBnB. A very generous refund policy, and transparency in its listing + pricing.
That's kinda normal even for the various hotel booking sites/chains. They almost universally display the average pre-tax/fees price per night. The issue is that taxes and resort fees (which are in of themself very, very bullshitty) frequently make up a meaningful portion of the total cost (double digit percentages) so you still get sticker shock when you click through and get to the checkout screen.
Taxes are additional but not vendor specific.
I'd argue that most hotels in major metro areas now have resort fees.
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But yes I do agree that hotels don't have cleaning fees nor service charges.
Maybe that's Nextdoor or Craigslist. But those aren't sufficiently local to reach only the 100 or so people who live in your apartment building.
Judging from the downvotes, this isn't a need that resonates with many people. But it does seem that this new situation would be a little more tolerable if people actually could communicate with the person who lives down the hall. Yet right now it's not safe to introduce yourself (at least I wouldn't open the door if someone knocked; I'd just talk through the window, which wouldn't make those introductions very comfortable).
Edit: looked up Peerspace. That's more formal. This is more like "anyone mind if I do a videoconference in your living room for 30 minutes? My kids are doing their schoolwork and we don't have a place to move them" and broadcasting it to just the couple hundred people who live in your building. Same idea but residential for WFH rather than B2B.