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Comment by eric_b | Hacker News Reader

AirBnB started out as a great service for travelers. The quality of the lodging and the prices were, in the beginning, lower than hotels, and had nicer amenities. Over the years it has gotten worse, to the point hotels are almost always a better bet in most locales if you value cleanliness or convenience. Not to mention the negative effects AirBnB has had on the local economies it operates in.

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.

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I hate using AirBnB. We used it once during an extended stay in Milan and the apartment was horribly dusty (I have allergies), the maid practically worthless and the "host" in no way matched the persona presented on the site (a pleasant looking woman vs the angry man we actually talked to).

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.

I used to enjoy using airbnb, it was normally good value but slightly less convenient than a hotel because you’d have to arrange a meeting time to get keys.

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

> 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.

In many jurisdictions it’s illegal to operate residential properties as hotels for these and other reasons.

So what? If AirBnB or the property owners are not held accountable, the law doesn't matter.

The person you're replying said it was illegal there, too.

You could file a lawsuit no? I don't get this "nearly impossible to stop" thing. Granted, I don't live there and I share many of your misgivings about the terribleness of what Airbnb does to home prices etc. But it seems like people who are negatively effected tend to just shrug their shoulders while being shat on. If you want the owners to stop their illegal activity, then you have to make it painful for them economically.

>I don't get this "nearly impossible to stop" thing

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.

In the US it's likewise a relatively expensive and time consuming process for what amounts to a nuisance in the pool and common areas. Without any ongoing enforcement mechanism or ability to show damages in excess of the price of a permanent AirBnB home - the AirBnB host is likely to simply pay any fines and carry on.

If it puts you at ease at all, rather than not being mentioned enough, that actually seems to be one of the most common complaints about Airbnb.

In my condo, AirBnB & general bad renters was enforced by HoA fines.

However, my HoA was fine-happy and generally useless othwrwise

What's does the board of your building think? Bylaws of my condo do not allow airbnb.

I've been turned off of Airbnb due to the reviews being completely untrustworthy and hosts that put cameras up to 'make sure only the guests listed enter' - aka spying on guests. It's also really awkward when a listing just says "cameras in common areas". Well does that mean the living room? Dining room?

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.

>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.

> 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.

Would you describe a room in a hotel as an "entire place" or a "shared space"?

Hotels are different from apartments and homes. Everything in a hotel, is by default, 'entire place'. Apartments and homes can be 'shared' or 'entire place', with the latter meaning you have the whole place to yourself. If the lister is an apartment owner, it means you have the whole apartment. A basement is not an 'entire place', unless the lister is just and only just the basement owner, which in most jurisdictions is a technicality that would not pass.

Airbnb markets it as you have access to the entire property as in an entire house. If you’re traveling with a family this is ideal but really hard to filter out if they let all sorts of apartments show up as an entire house. I believe they have or had a filter for apartments but honestly their search is really hard to get exactly what you’re looking for. The other thing you see is “entire home” actually being a bungalow in someone’s backyard.

A hotel is like renting an entire apartment in a purpose-built building. A floor in a house is usually a retrofit with none of the soundproofing a typical hotel has.

I can't figure out why people keep saying these things. I've had dozens of stays at Airbnbs and they've (almost) all been wonderful. I strongly prefer them to hotels, find them more comfortable, and they're cheaper. Perhaps you all stay only in 5 star hotels? Or perhaps Airbnbs are dramatically different in different parts of the world. My experience literally could not be more different than the complaints that always show up here.

>Perhaps you all stay only in 5 star hotels?

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!

> completely normal rooms in working class homes

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.

Me and my girlfriend like to travel. Sometimes we just like to go away for the weekend (flights are cheap in the EU). Airbnb was a perfect choice. It was cheap, we can meet some locals in their house and get genuine tips only locals know. Once we stayed in Malmö. The flat was a little bit messy, there were two little (under 10) children in the flat, so it was noisy. In the kitchen there where breadcrumbs everywhere. We still very much enjoyed our stay because the place was cozy our hosts were friendly. This was our "worst" experience when we stayed in a spare room.

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.

Wow not a lot of love for AirBnB here. I've had the opposite experience, traveling with a baby or sometimes with my parents - I've found it a MUCH better experience to book an entire apartment for my holidays instead of individual hotel rooms. Works out a lot cheaper and gives us a far better travel experience with access to a kitchen, and a living room to relax in.

Aren’t there a bunch of hotel brands that provide this?

Yes, Residence/Homewood/Staybridge /Candlewood/etc.

The biggest plus AirBnB tends to give over hotels is having your own kitchen, and not having to rely on restaurants. In my experience many hotels are essentially just a room with a bed and some uncomfortable furniture; not a great place to be for a week IMHO.

Except that in Airbnb speak, „fully stocked kitchen“ usually means a half empty humidity caked jar of spice a previous guest left behind, two cracked plates and one fork, and hotplates.

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.

I can't live a month or two in a hotel, it is just too expensive, while I have done it with AirBnB.

And the last time it was a great place, a bit better than a hotel.

What? I always book AirBnB. For personal travel and business travel. It is always cheaper - like 100% of the time. And I get an entire apartment instead of a scrappy small hotel room.

Didn't AirBnB start as a sort of organized couch surfing? Same way Uber was for people who were taking the same trips to carpool.

AirBnB essentially just copied Couchsurfing and added money to it, pretending it was a new innovative "disruptive" idea (although the platform has since evolved a bit).

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.

VRBO was around before AirBnB as well. In my opinion, one of the key things AirBnB did early to distinguish their service was handle the money.

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.

Guests do fine on VRBO. Airbnb made it easier for hosts to run their "business" and to break the law, which increased supply for guests.

Also AirBnB innovated in break-ing Craigslist TOS to spam their users in early marketing.

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