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Comment by dumbfounder | Hacker News Reader

Agreed. Where do you want to be, in a hotel around a bunch of strangers? Or in a house where you can keep distance from other families? We tried to rent a house down south (SC, GA, FL) where we could have a pool and our kids could swim, but most states have no short term rental orders in effect. As soon as those lift I think you will see certain properties bounce back. No hotels for us until this thing clears up.

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This makes sense, but honestly I thought about post-COVID airbnb and my trust of hosts or other guests - and that trust is pretty dang low.

The fact that anyone hosting an airbnb may be more likely to be one of those reckless "open up America" folks is more likely than a properly organized hotel chain that can enforce cleanliness and social distance.

It's sad - I can't foresee staying anywhere other than my home anytime in the medium term.

I totally agree with you. I think for the foreseeable future, people will be very risk averse. Going with a larger organization that is regulated, likely has more standards in place for safety, better training, etc. will be a natural choice for people.

A similar example that I've seen recently is the restaurant industry. I have been trying to support a local restaurant that switched to take-out. They really are trying, and I'm rooting for them, but... I've seen an employee almost use her mouth to pull the cap off a pen for a customer to sign their credit card receipt. I've been at the takeout window paying for my order while they called up another customer to come sign a credit card receipt - obviously negating any distancing we were observing in line.

Contrast that to Burger King, which I stopped at the other day on the way home from buying groceries. Their contactless drive thru game is much better, I'm sure because they have people in an office dedicated to creating new procedures, training staff, etc.

When things open back up, expect to see lots of hotels advertising and touting all of the cleaning precautions they are taking, new checkin procedures, etc. Airbnb will not be able to offer any of those assurances.

Kind of a tangent, but the fact that signing credit card receipts is still a thing during this pandemic is absurd. Doing this was useless enough during normal times.

I don't actually know the reason, but it does seem like small businesses are more likely to require signatures than chains. Why is that?

It probably has everything to do with fees from credit card processors.

A "card checked & signed" transaction has a lower fraudulence rating so has a lower fee associated.

What's the most surprising is that contactless payment isn't being pushed as a safety priority.

I've been going along the learning curve with Apple Pay, who has it, what state the the phone have to be in for it to work, learning not to press the glyph the UI presents me but instead press the actual fingerprint sensor. At some places they will be putting the terminal out towards my window so our hands are coming within a foot of each other. Once the terminal was afixed to a shelf within reach of the car window. The terminal has buttons and a card slot so it can't be behind glass for chipped credit cards, but I wonder if for NFC it could be.

Yes they will. Simple option which is Airbnb contracts with a local professional cleaner and every rental in that area provide an extra cleaning service if you want to pay for it.

I think you need to verify the property has good cleanliness scores and verify up front that they will in fact take the proper steps to clean the house. Yes, a bit more trust, but I think overall the likelihood of transmission will be less because you are "around" fewer people. My strategy would only go somewhere for a few weeks or more, I wouldn't be going to Airbnb's for a night here and there. And I would go into the property and spend an hour or so wiping down surfaces before the family enters.

Also, maybe use something like this? https://www.safespaceco.com/product/safespace-disinfectant-g... Does anyone know if these things are effective?

>Agreed. Where do you want to be, in a hotel around a bunch of strangers?

Personally in a hotel because I at least know that the hotel is going to be cleaned.

A hotel being cleaned is a person you don't know entering your room every day and breathing all over everything. I'd much rather a single house where you can do a deep clean yourself on the day you move in and then be sure nobody except yourselves have entered the house until you've left.

Same here. What if Airbnb has option where you pay extra for a deep clean before you check-in from approved vendors?

Do you trust that the housekeeper who gets paid $15/hour and prob cleans 50 rooms a shift is really going to clean your place throughly? Also the amount of traffic in the hotel, the check-in counter, the people in the elevator, the room service food that has gone through multiple sets of hands....yeah sure this is safer.

I rather have an Airbnb that does remote check-in. Once there I will do my own cleaning and not worry about unknown traffic in my place for rest of the stay. In addition I can buy my own groceries therefore reducing another vector point of transmission.

Seems like a better proposition then the hotel IMHO if you really are scared of getting infected.

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