Airbnb asks people to donate money to landlords, backlash ensues | Hacker News Reader

Airbnb asks people to donate money to landlords, backlash ensues

sfgate.com

255 pointskoolba187 comments

This was really short sighted given Airbnb have claimed since the beginning to regulators, local authorities and the public that they exist only to provide a platform for people to rent out their spare rooms when it's convenient for them. Their core claim is that they are not a hotel company, which is how they manage to skirt so many hotel regulations. Built into these claims is the assumption that the owners of the properties offered on the platform can afford to keep them without renting then out full time, since it's supposed to be their primary home.

In reality, Airbnb is a glorified hotel room broker but with added facilitation of discrimination, normalisation of the charging of extra fees such as for "cleaning" (how have hotels managed to get by since time immemorial without charging one!?), rating obfuscation and a huge negative impact on local rental prices with landlords assembling empires of dozens of Airbnb properties. The fact Airbnb were so tone deaf to all this, asking the public to offset the losses made by landlords in times like these is really incredible.

Not disagreeing with you except about the cleaning fee. Hotels usually clean every room every day and have an on-site cleaning staff. The marginal cost to clean one room is pretty low, and it happens every day while you’re there, so it’s baked into the price. On Airbnb, typically your place is cleaned once after you leave whether you stayed one night or two weeks, and it’s more expensive than just cleaning a hotel room, so it’s a separate charge, as it should be.

...which is baked into their room rates? It’s predatory to advertise a lower rate and then inflate it after the fact with all kinds of tacked on fees. People (rightfully) go nuts at hotels that try to do this.

What is being inflated after the fact? When you book on Airbnb it shows you all the fees including cleaning fee before you book...

Go look at an Airbnb listing, it will be advertised at a lower, per night rate, but when you go to book, it can jump up as much as 50% with tacked on fees. Hotels don’t do this.

I just went on the site and looked at an advertised $80 per night listing. On booking it became $137, with the $40 cleaning and $17 service fees. That’s a $137 room not an $80 one and I doubt it costs $40 to clean it.

Hotels absolutely do this. Most egregiously in Las Vegas with 'resort fees', but try to book any hotel and you will get charged more than the advertised price due to 'taxes and fees'.

I always just prepay through third party sites like Expedia and never have this issue. Sometimes the the advertised rate is for a smaller room than I need, but I’ve learned to check that and the difference is rarely on the order of Airbnb’s fee/price inflation.

This doesn't happen in Europe. I assume we have consumer protections against this the same way as with flight prices.

Maybe it only applies to users from Europe but when I try to book a hotel room in Europe right now it happens.

airbnb makes a lot more sense for long term stays. I'm a nomad and hop between cities and countries so I book for a minimum of two weeks with a norm of one to two months.

The one time Cleaning fee is minimal compared to the total cost and I would not be able to afford my lifestyle if hotels were my only option.

Hotels do this all the time. Resort fees. Taxes. Surcharges. Amenities.

Only airlines publish full fares and that’s because of a federal law. I remember back in the day when it wasn’t the case and you had to click through to the final pricing page to do any serious fare comparison.

No hotel I've ever stayed at has done this. At least not the big names. At most you'll get a different price for halfboard/fullboard. And a price bump for an extra bed.

Also, in my encounters, resort fees are in lieu of being a boarder. The resorts by me, Miami Beach, charge visitors for access to the pools and spas, not their guests.

Go to hotels.com or any other hotel aggregator. Look at any hotel in New York City or Hawaii. Almost every hotel does this and all of the major chains do this.

Many hotels have started charging resort/amenity fees for guests as well. Traditionally commissions were only calculated on base room rate, so making up a mandatory fee and shifting some of the rate over acted as a super handy "tax dodge", artificially lowering the commission owed to all their booking partners. The same applies to pre-negotiated corporate and event-block rates – they can win business with an artificially low price, then pad the actual margin of stays via an ambiguously defined and undisclosed but "industry standard" destination/resort/amenity/urban fee.

Between that too-easy-to-pass-up profit optimization, and the marketing benefits of deceptively low list price, it's become pretty pervasive. And isn't limited to actual resorts – I've had bog-standard business hotels in the suburbs tack on a $30/night non-waivable "destination fee". Luckily it got to a ridiculous level recently, triggering a lot of media backlash and class action lawsuits last year[1][2].

It's also losing effectiveness, as things like online booking websites start displaying all-inclusive pricing and renegotiate their commission structures to be inclusive of mandatory, non-governmental fees. Between that, all the negative sentiment, the spate of lawsuits and legislation its triggered, the fees are hopefully on their way out.

[1] http://killresortfees.com/

[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/07/resort-fees-being-addressed-...

This is actually not the case in the UK. If you put in dates, then it will add the fees then average them over the days and show you a day price which includes the fees. Though as others have commented, this may well be EU-specific.

It actually doesn’t always. If Airbnb doesn’t support your local taxes system, you will have to submit a request for payment to your guest for more money. For instance in Hawaii until a few months ago, there was no way to add the 14% hotel tax to the listing. We had to put a note in the description that said they would be charged an extra 14% after booking. I think many hosts simple don’t charge/pay the hotel tax because of the friction it adds to the transaction. We could ad it in the nightly rate, but then a service fee will be paid on it from the guest and the host.

Oh please. That's a complete excuse. One is more than capable of rending out the room then keeping price/1.14 for themselves. These fine print notes for taxes were such malarky.

That’s a pretty harsh response given that we went through lots of work to inform our Airbnb guests about the tax and provide local municipalities their hotel tax. It’s hurtful to here that called an excuse. Do you have rentals? Are you familiar with what the hotel tax can and cannot be applied to? We’ve been asking Airbnb for to natively support hotel tax in HI for years. Vrbo supported hotel tax from the beginning. You can’t just add 1.14 to the total and call it good. The taxes isn’t on the cleaning fee or service fee from Airbnb. They need to be separate. Are you implying that we preferred something unethical, but we had no choice for HI taxes. Most states had been supported for a while, but not all.

Are you saying that the law requires you to advertise the minus-tax amount? You can't work out what the hotel tax would be and include it in the price?

I understand that showing prices without the sales tax is commonplace in the USA. I find that practice quite dodgy and "everyone does it" is a poor excuse.

you actually can’t just multiply the total by the tax rate. typically only non-negotiatable items can have the hotel tax, so mid-stay cleanings, early/late check ins, and other charges cannot be taxed.

For condos rentals through realtors cleaning fees are often a norm - although they often have a baseline level of cleanliness where you don't have to pay a surcharge if it is to a certain standard such as all of the dishes either cleaned and put away or in the dishwasher cleaning while you check out and all trash cans emptied.

That sort of thing is a legitimate reason for a separate fee. I guess pedantically it is "non-baked in unconditional cleaning fees" essentially.

I personally would rather hotels separate a per cleaning fee and allow me to choose not to have it done every day.

Lucky for you, hotels don’t clean every day anymore because of covid. They didn’t drop prices though. In fact Marriott added a new covid cleaning fee!

Some places will clean every 4 days, some won’t clean at all during your stay. I suspect this may be the new normal, even post-covid.

The last hotel I stayed in did not clean during your stay, and also left the room vacant for 24 hours after checkout before they allowed the cleaning staff into the room. I don’t know if the regulations required that, but I was pretty happy for the cleaning staff that their health was being looked after.

What does that change for the hotel at the end of the day? Cleaning a room that's been dirty for a week is the same (if not more) effort than cleaning it every day, considering they can't just hire staff for one day of the week.

I think there's two things missing here. One is that not everyone leaves on the same day, so cleaning would still be distributed throughout the week. Secondly. They could still require something like once every 3 days. My room is always spotless when I stay, I don't understand how cleaning it for most people would take much longer.

I've stayed in a few hotels that gave drink coupons or other perks for skipping cleaning during your stay. I greatly prefer that as well.

Extended Stay America cleans rooms once or twice a week while you are staying there, you can ask for fresh linens and toiletries at the front desk. But it’s a budget hotel, you get what you pay for.

Although, many hotels have managed to wedge a mandatory “resort fee” into the final bill (and I’d like to see this nationally prohibited).

Resort fees are annoying especially when someone else prepaid your hotel bill but you are still asked to pay extra on checkin, even when it provide no resort amenities and is obviously just a business hotel.

> Not disagreeing with you except about the cleaning fee.

Having different fees is fine. What is troublesome is that AirBNB doesn't immediately show the total price (including all surcharges). I think recently they finally were forced to do that in the EU (before that I used a browser addon). That the initial price includes all the additional surcharges has been mandatory for quite a while due to companies using this to trick customers (e.g. advertising 200 EUR for renting 1 week; practically you need to pay 700 EUR).

Note that various companies still try to skirt that bit (surcharges only shown at a later stage). E.g. mandatory "booking fees" and so on.

Hotels are as bad about this or worse. At least the cleaning fee is only paid once for the booking. Lots of hotels now charge nightly resort or destination fees. There is no excuse for that not being part of the nightly rate.

I fully agree with most criticisms, but fees for the final cleaning of the room (usually only once per 1 or 2 week stay) are oftentimes separate from the room (or apartment) price, but they have to be advertised

When you searched Airbnb for prices they wouldn't include cleaning or additional services. For my first few years using Airbnb, this wasn't a problem, but then folks began hacking the search algorithm and charging huge cleaning fees to get included in more searches. You'd select a place for $500 and find it was $700 when checking out. I started going back to hotels cause they were cheaper than Airbnb.

This sounds like very much the same class of problem as "absurd shipping fees on eBay". When the fees are not actually guaranteed to go to the thing they purport to go into, but are just ways of moving money into line items the sorting algorithms don't see, I think it amounts to false advertising.

thank you for the clarification, I really thought it was normal business practice (which it can be), but this sounds much more like a scam

”You'd select a place for $500 and find it was $700 when checking out”

Noticed that too lately. It’s become pretty difficult to search for something by price because a lot of places almost double the price after cleaning fees.

I have somewhat of a 'not in my backyard' opinion of Airbnb. I have admittedly used the service multiple times, but since I moved into a new house I've changed my view on the business model.

Our neighbour Airbnbs multiple rooms in his house full time. He barely has parking for 3 cars, 2 cars if you don't want to be boxed in. However he rents out room for 6 people. He constantly has business moving through his house, occasionally his guests encroach on our driveway which is adjacent to his.

The city has not been able to catch up with the modern world and has no policy or licensing for Airbnb style businesses.

The pandemic has had zero impact on his ability to rent out rooms, it's always full.

TLDNR: I wish I had a neighbour and not a business next to me in a residentially zoned street.

/rant

In my country the city is playing catchup on policy level.

Currently you can only allow 30 days of AirBnB for a property.

Over here the demand for AirBnB is pretty much non existant now, though. The Coronavirus lockdown has put an end to all travel and tourism for now. Many properties are now returning to normal, long term rental units.

Have you looked into reporting a zoning violation? The operation may violate existing laws relating to rental permitting or commercial use.

We've called the city and consulted with a friend who worked in planning. Basically they said they have no structure of vetting and dealing with Airbnb. I don't think it's even on their agenda.

Have you tried talking to your neighbour about the issue or adding a small A4 print saying "No Parking"?

Using AirBnB sometimes doesn't automatically make you a NIMBY, IMO. If an ordinary family of four stays in a secluded single family home for a weekend, that's not really the incarnation of AirBnB that many people have a problem with. It's the modern flophouse in the middle of a regular neighborhood that is really driving problems.

Their cars partly block your driveway? Do they make a lot of noise? What are the other impacts on you?

Cars do not block our driveway, they just take up space. This happens especially when the owner does not plow snow on his driveway. Guests basically cannot park on his driveway.

Noise is not a problem, fortunately.

What needs to happen is to realize this before your neighbour started his Airbnb business.

And how exactly do you do that when an existing neighbour can start his business after the fact?

By putting oneself in other people's shoes.

I don't really see how this bothers you. If they're parking on your driveway, just call a tow truck. If they're on the street, you're SOL unless you can pitch the city to make your street "residential parking only" with decals (but this is no different from your neighbour just owning 8 cars and street parking them).

I'd have to put up a sign notifying cars will be towed. I simply don't want to have to deal with the problem. Why should I have to deal with this in a residential neighbourhood where my expectation is to have an actual neighbour who understands his property line?

Putting the onus on me to deal with his guests is a problem that bothers me in of itself.

If you had the same situation I am sure you'd grow tired of it pretty quick.

Is this fundamentally different than your next door neighbor replacing their SFH with a 4 story apartment building? One could say Airbnb rentals are based on want and traditional rental housing is based on need, but the residents of the theoretical apartment building don’t “need” to live on your street.

> Is this fundamentally different than your next door neighbor replacing their SFH with a 4 story apartment building?

Yes, with actual long-term neighbours I only have to tell them once where the property line is and how to deal with trash pickup. Also there is zoning and bylaws regulating multiple occupancy homes, and I can look that up before purchasing my house.

I think the important distinction is the side effects of having a neighbor that rents out on AirBnB. In your case it's "occasionally his guests encroach on our driveway which is adjacent to his" which I think is unacceptable. I have rented ~10 AirBnB's with friends over the years and in every case we either flew into the location and used Uber/Lyft to get around or carpooled there resulting in us only using the allowed number of parking spaces.

A family or group of people occupying a residence that would be occupied by a similarly size group is not a problem in my mind. It's only when there is noise at all hours, trash left around the property or on yours, or parking in your parking area that I would really start to mind.

Maybe that's easy for me to say as someone who doesn't (that I know of) live near someone who rents out on AirBnB. That said, I do live next to 1 house that has ~6 (I honestly can't be sure) people that live there (all adults) and on the other side have a house that is often vacant and the owners have their parents live there sometimes I think and none of that bothers me. That's mainly because they keep to themselves, don't make lots of noise, leave trash laying around, or take up extra parking. So knowing all that I don't think I'd mind an AirBnB as long as all those factors didn't change.

I'd like an actual neighbour, not rotating guests who never get to know you. Half the year the owner lives in abroad and when he's gone the guests don't know how to put trash out, don't plow snow, don't know where to park etc.

It's these small things that chip away at the otherwise close-nit neighbourhood.

Have a chat with the owner and failing that see if you can setup a clamping company and do a deal with one to clamp anybody that encroaches on your property. May as well make some money from it.

Already spoken to him. He has converted an out building into another dwelling and promised he would not add more guests. He deceived us by saying he wouldn't, and then moved into his outbuilding and freed up space in the house. Up to 10 guests can now stay at his house.

Does anyone know of an alternative to Airbnb that's somewhat more ethical/sustainable? I strongly dislike hotels and I've really enjoyed the home feeling of some Airbnbs I've stayed at. If there was some alternative that didn't promote the rental property culture that'd be great.

You might try VRBO.

What makes VRBO more ethical/sustainable than AirBNB?

I don’t know that it is, but it is an alternative.

> how have hotels managed to get by since time immemorial without charging one!?

Because I suppose hotels have to actually clean their rooms well, so the housekeeping expense is probably a significant fraction of the daily charge. But Airbnbs definition of cleaning is at best changing the sheets (if you're lucky) and make sure that there are no streaks in the toilet. So they charge a pittance and get away with it.

It's a truly end-of-capitalism† move to shift the risk burden of property ownership from the center to the periphery. I guess McDonalds does this too with its franchises, but this is so much more pure: you own the property, you figure out all the property management work, and AirBnB takes the cut. McDonalds at least sends its franchises frozen hamburgers. AirBnB is just pure toll-bridge-as-a-service.

† Not sure if capitalism will actually end any time soon, but stuff like this is what makes radicals try their best to end it.

> Not sure if capitalism will actually end any time soon

It can't because any change or evolution keeps the name.

The only way to end it would be to revert back to a pre-capitalist economy that's not been retroactively deemed one (either by fans or detractors).

Yes, people call China “capitalist” now, but I don’t think that’s a very good label for what they’re doing. It’s a bad label because the category is not well defined.

Agree with all.

"Airbnb is a glorified hotel room broker but with..."

Still want phrasing which is more critical. Something along the lines of profiting from cheating.

Hotel regulations are by and large rent-seeking behavior (irony?). For example, OTA's have created several rules that only exist to protect their profits. Hotels have to have the same price on all listing websites including their own, so it doesn't matter if one OTA charges 40% as their cut. You're not allowed to bake their overhead into your bottom line.

Despite the wild-west nature of vacation rentals like this, people often prefer it over traditional hotels. Maybe it's the free market saying all this regulation meant to entrench the incumbents has hit its critical mass.

Eh, hotels have "resort fees" now. Same scam.

> Built into these claims is the assumption that the owners of the properties offered on the platform can afford to keep them without renting then out full time, since it's supposed to be their primary home.

It's not because they are supposed to be able to afford it that you didn't assumed you would get that revenue.

We do pet sitting, we don't need that revenue, in fact, we would nearly do it for the cost (food and cat litter) if the platform allowed it, simply because we like having pets, but can't afford the long-term responsibility of owning one right now (it's also incredibly rewarding to allow people to know their cats are well taken care of during their travel). For obvious reason, that revenue wen't down to nearly 0 during the pandemic. We don't need that cash, but it did change our plans quite a bit, because we expected that revenue. In our case it wasn't too bad, but I have no doubt it can be worst for others (I can easily see people that paid for renovations expecting to keep getting that revenue).

That's also completely ignoring the fact that it's not only the loss of revenue from Airbnb that can be the issue. The pandemic had impact much greater than Airbnb. It's not because someone didn't even expected any revenue from Airbnb, that they aren't in need right now.

You don't want to help someone? Don't, I'm not either right now, can't afford that, but that doesn't means there isn't people in needs and that you will never want to help them. Airbnb added that feature on their platform... that's all...

> (how have hotels managed to get by since time immemorial without charging one!?)

Hotel staff aren't paid? You pay the fee, it's just not itemized...

Would it be better if it weren't itemized? The total cost is shown before clicking on any offer... it wouldn't change a thing to hide it better.

Cleaning fee is actually a discount on longer stays. Hotels offer such discounts too.

This seems counter-productive. Housing costs are up because of AirBnB. I’m not thrilled, but that’s the market. The market needs to reprice. Folks who bet on the market would get rich if the bet paid off. Let them sell their places, and someone else can rent them out in the future.

Call me callous but I don’t feel the need to bail out someone who charged me $500/night on a place with a $3000 monthly payment. I entered the transaction freely, and the transaction is over.

Housing costs are not up because of Airbnb, they are up because of government regulation. If we wanted housing to cost to buy a house in the US to be $100k average, we could do it almost overnight by lifting regulations unrelated to safety. With existing automation tech (produce like industry instead of custom each time) we could get it to $50k. In 10 years we could make housing affordable if we had the societal will.

I think you can make many arguments that being more expensive is worth it (more free parking is an example of what is included in the price of a home today), but there is no technical reason homes cannot be very inexpensive. You can also argue it's a "feature not a bug" from existing homeowners, who work to reduce supply (zoning, NIMBY, etc).

> Housing costs are not up because of Airbnb

I think they are partially. In London, rents have decreased 25%-50% since COVID. Part of that will be reduced demand. But I have also seen a lot of rooms advertised for long-term rental that were previously Airbnbs.

We could certainly ameliorate this by building more houses. But here in the UK we're a lot more limited by available land space than you are in the US. And while there is limited supply it makes sense to prioritise making primary dwellings affordable over profit making for landlords.

>> Housing costs are not up because of Airbnb

>I think they are partially.

You're mistaking housing costs with prices. Housing costs are the input prices of components that entrepreneurs accept or reject to produce housing.

Such as: * price materials producers demand for their products (concrete, wood, electrical wire etc) * the labor prices, labor sellers demand (Carpenters, iron workers, etc) * the prices land owners demand to either keep land undeveloped or developed * the prices state agents demand to abstain from interfering with home building.

Consumption can't drive up a producer's input costs. Consumers may abstain from purchasing from a producer unless the producer meets different inputs ("I demand you only buy the labor of architects who live near me and not people far away").

"housing costs" can also refer to the cost to the consumer in order to obtain housing. I think everyone in this thread is talking about what you refer to as "prices" rather than what you refer to as "costs".

Depends on the zone. A lot of EU cities are having problems with AirBnB hosts buying up property, driving prices up and people out of their neighborhoods. In my city, once the pandemic started a lot of new apartments were up for renting long-term, and the most likely explanation is that these were tourism renters trying to cover losses due to tourism.

There’s already a massive industry around manufactured homes. Trailer homes are at the bottom end and “normal” looking ones at the top end. They cost about the same if not less than what you quoted. Most places I’ve seen them are rural areas.

Zoning and NIMBY issues are mainly a West coast problem. The South, Midwest, Southwest, and a good part of the Northeast are not even close to the West coast.

Housing costs are up in low price areas. For example, I stayed in Kiev for a month because I can work anywhere. Did the same thing in Vilnius and other low cost cities. Digital nomads and vacationers from countries with high standards of living are pushing up property prices around the world.

> Housing costs are not up because of Airbnb, they are up because of government regulation.

[citation needed]

I could have been more precise and said “in part due to AirBnB.” AirBnB increased the demand for housing (from investors) without increasing supply. So home ownership costs go up. Conversely they do increase the rental supply.

I concur with you that zoning and regulations definitely impact the supply quite a bit. (Mostly reducing supply)

I live in a city where tourism is a huge part of the economy. Since AirBnBs took off, our hotel occupancy dropped off massively, and rents have gone up. Much of our government revenue depends on hotel taxes, which obviously not collected on AirBnBs.

Yes, we can build more residential properties (and we are), but I think it's a bit naive to assume that tourists leaving hotels vacant, and staying in livable housing instead wouldn't drive up rents for locals in the short term.

You know who's still paying their rent on time?

The government.

The section 8 landlords are enjoying some serious schadenfreude right now because even though they only cash small checks once a month they're the only ones still cashing checks at all.

Short term rentals have an effective monthly rent far in excess of the normal monthly rent for equivalent accommodations. With this payoff comes risk. The money source can dry up on you much faster. I have no more sympathy for people who went all in on AirBNB than I do for people who went all in on day trading.

This has been kept secret for years. Landlords that know what they are doing go after those section 8 contracts. Most people wouldn't be able to recognize a section 8 renter if they were standing right in front of them.

My old apartment, complete with modern amenities, had section 8 renters. It was targeted towards young professionals. But new construction made it 100% ADA-compliant. Which is perfect for wheelchair bound social security-disability check receivers. According to the property manager, "no problem with section, unlike you, they always pay rent on time!"

This this this. Most Section 8 renters are elderly or disabled, nothing like the stereotypes.

Section 8 is a fantastic program that deserves more credit for avoiding the issues that plague the Projects.

I would prefer a world in which we didn't call some people griping on twitter "news".

Two popular HN pieces have recently touched on how journalists and newspapers give twitter too much weight:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23833267

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23827073

All I'm seeing in this article is a few people trying to get that dopamine rush of engagement by dunking on "landlords" (not that all AirBnB hosts are landlords, some are just folks renting an extra room out), and sfgate happily obliging them.

Airbnbs are, by definition, short term rentals that don’t follow the rules imposed on the hotel industry, so how are they not landlords? Apparently one third of their hosts own 25 or more units, which I imagine is quite a bit more than the average small-time landlord.

"some are just folks renting an extra room out"

That's a landlord.

I think I should have said "full-time" or "professional" landlord. I had thought that the word had a connotation of it being a full-time gig, but I was wrong.

At least the tweet I saw on the article had thousands of likes. I've seen some articles where a person said something on Twitter and there's 12 likes and the writer is trying to make it sound like a trend.

Consider this one a features story. No so much need to follow an assembling crowd and seeing what they're griping about in person anymore, trending will show it.

Fact of the matter is that momentarily twitter reflects general public discourse and has to be engaged with. Not to say that the whole public discourses through twitter, but that it generally reflects public discourse. As in, even the broadcast segments that are watched by technophobic grandparents show it on screen, reference it, and then talk about it.

Being a regular customer in a very hot market (Dublin) I can attest that most of the places I've been to were grossly overpriced and let's not speak about the quality.

Back in the fat cows era (up until a few months ago) it seemed that Airbnb was synonymous to "if you have a spare doghouse in a hot overpriced market then you can make very good money out of it". Not to mention how airbnb was contributing to such markets to get even more overpriced by causing shortages.

And now they are urging customers to sponsor hosts...

Yup. Definitely someone there must have lost it entirely.

They must be so disconnected that they feel their hosts and guests are actually having a meaningful connection. Most of my Airbnb interactions don't go beyond the exchange of keys (or not even that with the key boxes).

I have no sympathy for landlords or Airbnb, they are just going to have to deal with the market like everyone else.

Not only does one actually meet one's host much rarely these days compared to AirBnB's early years, but the cases where one indeed interacts with the host are often pretty tiresome, think lonely elderly people who just keep talking after you have tried to make it clear that you are tired and want to be alone. Sadly, this doesn't get mentioned much in reviews for fear of upsetting the host or the forced-positivity corporation that is AirBnB, so it is very hard to avoid these awkward encounters completely.

I know your comment is for the majority but I have had meaningful connections with my hosts. Some I am still in touch years later.

If the host reached out to me on their own, I would probably help them. But to have Airbnb guilt trip people into donating is beyond me as well.

I think we are mistaking Airbnb for couchsurf.

Even in the cases when I met my hosts the transaction was 100% monetary one. Not one of them, ever, offered me to stay some more free of charge - just because we got along well. And I did get along well with all of them. On the contrary, I have slept on the floor at a friends house a few nights because some of these hosts hanged me at the last moment (e.g. when they realized that my flight was coming in too late for them).

Don't take me wrong. I'm not venting here. It took me a while to realize it myself, that Airbnb is not couchsurfing. It is a market. And a hard one at that. That's fine by me but donations are not part of such markets.

It is possible to have a decent caring relationship on top of a commercial one. I have restaurant owners who I have a really warm relationship with. I know about their family, they enquire about mine. They will not give me a free meal and neither do I expect one. Same with some shops that I frequent.

Airbnb is certainly a market. So are restaurants. You do see people supporting their local restaurants in this crisis don't you?

> Airbnb is certainly a market. So are restaurants. You do see people supporting their local restaurants in this crisis don't you?

Yes, people are patrons of restaurants, because restaurants are still providing food.

If it lets it's not overpriced.

We often make value judgements on these things but the reality is that as long as someone is willing to pay it is not 'overpriced'.

If it lets if it's not overpriced it doesn't need support when it doesn't let.

If you were a "regular customer", the places were not "overpriced".

It’s amazing to me that Airbnb tells people that it’s up to them to determine if their contributions are tax deductible. Why would they even write this? Hosts on Airbnb are for-profit enterprises. I’ve never heard or a registered non-profit running Airbnb rentals. What are they thinking?

I was baffled by this too. Maybe in the initial testing people saw this and this question came up? Probably very few people overall know how this stuff works.

Or maybe their lawyers told them to write that it's not tax deductible and then a marketing person wrote this.

I wonder if AirBnB knows how delusional they are about their own product?

They originally pitched it on a social message – stay with other people who enjoy travelling like you, sometimes you'll rent a room from someone, other times you'll rent out your room. Everyone cares about making this a great community.

However this is far from what they've become – most rooms/properties are full-time AirBnB rooms, many managed by management companies trying to skim as much profit as they can, and rented out by professional short-term landlords who clearly don't care about the community.

In the former product, I can imagine having a connection to some hosts, I can imagine emailing them to see if I could book a floating credit for some nights next year or tipping a fair bit more on a booking.

But that's not AirBnB. I've not stayed in a single place like that. Surely AirBnB must know what their product actually is? Does that mean this communication is just gaslighting customers into thinking they're something different?

I got prompted to donate to a host I stayed with for a few days and only saw once many-many months ago.

Heck NO! What is their reasoning here!? I have zero emotional connection with that person. Nor do I think they are entitled to my charity.

So don't donate?

I've been in AirBnB hosts where the landlady would make deserts for us and all kinds of stuff, just because she was nice and bored. We enjoyed it very much and I would tip her via AirBnb - she didn't want cash, except once - pre-agreed for multi course meal where she fed a group of 4, and it was pretty much just for the resources.

There was a guy in SF that took me around shown me the city, etc... I enjoyed this too and would tip him.

I have more examples of that.

Then why don't just leave them 50$ in cash if you really want to tip them?

Because this is months/years after the fact and you likely don't live anywhere close to the host.

Why would you donate money to people who are houseowners and up until few months ago were racking in profits by renting?

This is not even charity, it's just pointless.

There are hosts who aren’t abusing AirBnB—they’re just uncommon. When you do get one, you know it. I can see why people would want to tip in those cases, especially if you’re paying significantly less than a nearby hotel for much greater value, and often a personalized experience. But it’s rare.

That doesn’t change the fact that AirBnB has a big problem, and what they’re doing here is tone-deaf. Yeah, tips might make sense sometimes, but fix the problem before you start soliciting tips.

I don't mean the hosts on AirBnB are all bad.

I mean it's insane for a multibillion dollar company passing the hat for homeowners. Both sides aren't charity cases.

While hosts like that do exist, that's surely the exception and not the norm. It used to be like that many years ago, when it was less popular.

Right now it's ripe with places (sometimes entire buildings) dedicated to AirBnB, to the point where they put a dent in the local renting market.

Adding the ability to donate is not a neutral decision and affects everyone using the platform whether they "donate" or not. I use quotes because we usually reserve the word "donate" for non-profits and charities.

Not donating is saying just as much to the host as donating.

And maybe that's a good change, but I think it's wrong to say that offering the option only affects those who choose to pay extra.

> Airbnb has lost its fucking head. Why would I donate to my host? I can't even afford one house.

Well, at least it sounds like many of those hosts can't, either.

Other articles of this topic mentioned this titbit:

> The financial situation is especially dire for megahosts, some of whom bought up dozens of properties and built short-term-rental empires that made up their main source of income (about one-third of Airbnb hosts have more than 25 properties, according to the analytics site AirDNA).

https://www.businessinsider.com/airbnb-asking-renters-to-don...

Now where did I put my tiniest violin...

Right? And a 3rd of them? That's a lot of people.. think of all the properties and inflated rents in areas where people could have gotten long term homes.

My rent has doubled in the past four years, largely because or AirBnB's "oh this is just regular housing with a spare rented room", so I have zero sympathy for them.

That's your fault for living in a beautiful Mediterranean city...

How could I have been so foolish!

It's called investing. Investing is another name for risking. Those people risked. Atm they are losing. In future they might gain. Heck, for years before that they were gaining big time.

Unless they have a very strong lobby (such as bankers, etc) they cannot make anyone else pay for their loss. And that's how it's supposed to be.

The attitude of many people towards property is incredible. People expect house prices to rise and rise and somehow think they've been wronged by society/government policy/acts of god if the bubble bursts and they lose money. I've been called out by many ordinarily level headed people for saying that owning property is a risky investment.

It isn't just property but also jobs and industries. Look at the vastly disproportionate amount of tears for coal miners. That feeling seems to apply to any way to make a living that they react hostility to being told is risky. Because everything is an investment and everything is a risk including not taking one.

I suspect it has to do with Calvinism essentially and the religious fixation of work as righteous and a guarantee such that anything going wrong is "bad things happening to good people" and a fundamental sign that things Aren't Right and Someone is to blame.

Actually, quite a few people (including myself) believe there is a vast gulf between doing actual work and making money off of the people doing actual work - aka investing in property (especially to rent it out) or stocks. I have little sympathy for people who get hosed doing the latter, but a great deal for the former.

There's no doubt coal miners have been used nihilistically as a political tool to conjure the aesthetic of being attached to the honest, hard-working underclass. Still they (and other workers who have been displaced) deserve support. It is very easy to diversify investments. Extremely difficult to diversify skills needed for a career.

I'd rather live in a society that held work as righteous rather than idleness. It seems to be a problem currently that we're paying many workers more to stay home than they'd normally make on the job, and their personal attitudes towards work are not enough to overcome this inverse monetary incentive. As Musk put it, the economy is not just a free flowing cornucopia of "stuff" that everyone has to squabble over. You gotta make "stuff".

Coal miners, to switch careers, probably have to uproot their lives, move to another state, and take a much lower paying job. It seems obvious why they'd resent being told to do that. Lucky for me software is going pretty good, but if you told me I had to go install solar panels on a roof in Scottsdale tomorrow I might be upset.

If someone makes less money working than they do on unemployment, the problem isn't that the unemployment payment is too generous, it's that their wages are too low.

"Someone makes less money working than they do on unemployment" isn't enough information to figure out which one is out of whack.

In a pandemic, incentivizing people to stay home instead of working is exactly what we should be doing.

100% this. Buying and renting a property (even just one) is a business venture. It is no more guaranteed to make you a profit than, say, opening a restaurant or starting your own plumbing business. Yet one frequently hears landlords talking as if something must obviously be wrong with the system if they are not making a profit.

Is there some way I could solicit the megahosts for a donation?

Seriously, my rent has nearly doubled because of these megahosts picking up properties all over my city and turning them into flop houses.

This didn't sound right to me, and it looks like they've indeed corrected that line in the article.

> (about one-third of Airbnb properties are owned by hosts who manage at least 25 properties, according to the analytics site AirDNA).

This makes more sense.

s/hosts/speculator/

If you're that leveraged, it simply becomes a gamble which might or might not pay off.

They get to hold on to them for now though, and get to take their sweet time waiting for the process to work itself through the courts, and then get to shuck off most of the debt in bankruptcy (which some can probably avoid personally by incorporation), so that's not too bad.

Really interested in being corrected if I'm wrong about any of the above.

Maybe I should create an Aibnb for Airbnb hosts?

Anecdotally, I know a number of people who started by renting out their basement on Airbnb, and then made so much money off of it that they bought another house, which they pay the mortgage on by renting out the entirety of their original house.

I believe this. I’ve paid $100 a night before to rent a basement converted to a 2bed in-law unit (which was still the most economical option given the number of people/location). $3k/month is nothing to sneeze at

I'm a UK-based host & was mortified to hear they were going to ask guests for tips by default. I rushed to disable the checkbox before any guests got asked. Absolutely 100% what were they smoking.

> In response to the backlash a spokesperson from Airbnb told SFGATE, “during this challenging time we heard from many Airbnb guests who were interested in supporting and reconnecting with past hosts. In the spirit of rekindling connections, we developed a new feature that allows guests to send virtual cards with messages of support and encouragement to hosts who provided excellent hospitality. If they wish, guests have the option to add a voluntary financial contribution.”

I wish journalists would stop rehashing PR bullshit that don't answer the question. I look forward to an article that rephrases the above to something like: "In response to the backlash a spokesperson from Airbnb SFGATE offered a PR line which did not address the question.".

I suspect that a lot of people jumped on the airbnb hype train and thought they could be a landlord of multiple properties and probably got leveraged.

Now they're in trouble as their income dries up.

Interesting theory. How’d you come to that conclusion?

Perhaps poster has read news coverage.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-bargain-with-the-devilbill-co...

I thought it might’ve been this quote from the original article:

> Airbnb has created a mechanism in which you can....donate money to landlords....many of whom have overextended themselves by leveraging multiple properties

It’s a big leap to make but I can see how that would influence their theory.

> Now they're in trouble as their income dries up.

Good.

Darwinism at it's finest.

Serves them right for taking a risk.

It serves them right for driving up rents and housing costs in their cities, which contributes to homelessness.

It's a watered down version of the same schadenfreude people felt when the guys that hoarded warehouses full of N95 masks got burned. They made a large investment and took a risk, but their speculation was at the expense of the wider community, so they shouldn't be surprised when the community had no pity on them when their investment didn't work out.

This tends to happen when you overleverage on a risky asset. Good, housing prices in many markets need a sharp correction for affordability

They can always sell their buildings, meh.

One of the few here it seems who is actually an Airbnb host (a Superhost actually).

For three years, I've managed my grandma's home in Wisconsin as a way to generate income for her and allow the house to stay in the family. It has been our vacation home for four generations and we certainly would have sold it by now if not for Airbnb income during the months of June, August, September each year.

I am trying to earn enough to buy the home and then will continue Airbnb'ing (keeping July for family time) to pay much of the mortgage.

Just an anecdote admittedly, but hopefully one demonstrating that not all hosts are evil landlords, and I would not be surprised if some of our (repeat) annual guests were interested in sending us a card/support because of the relationships we've worked to build and maintain with them.

I can't really understand how you see yourself as 'good' in these circumstances?

Look at it from another perspective. You've got a property sitting empty for most of the year, driving up property values, so you can have a holiday on e a year.

You're making poor use of that property, and you want people to give you money, even though you could sell it? You need Zero help, you are not in a position of needing food, your children hungry, or being kicked out of your home. You create no, or at least negligible, employment for others.

You essentially think people would want to give you money so you can go on holiday next July?

Mostly fair points, but figured I'd clarify a bit.

"You've got a property sitting empty for most of the year, driving up property values, so you can have a jolly holiday."

My grandmother (the homeowner) lives there more than 6 months each year. She spends the rest of her time in a retirement community.

It's a town with <500 people that swells 10x during summer months, there is very low demand besides vacation homes due to lack of nearby schools, healthcare, etc.

We have two maintenance people and one cleaner from the local community that we partner with; it is extremely common to have these "old school" side gigs up there as it is such a vacation-driven community.

Yeah, the truth is usually somewhere in the middle, although here in the UK those sort of holiday homes have become a real blight on our rural communities.

If you want to be super transactional about it, people who like staying at that house over the summer should give him money so that he doesn't sell the house and they can visit again in the future.

If you want to be not super transactional about it, people who having relationships with other people sometimes just help each other out to be nice, and are rewarded for it with reciprocal kindness in the future.

If you have strong relationships with regular annual guests, why bother going through airbnb versus dealing with them directly?

Consolidated platform makes many things easier: guidebook, "welcome to the home" onboarding, auto-remit of state taxes, ability to fill empty weeks, etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Chesky [AirBnB Co Founder] - Net Worth: $4.1billion

Yeah, I'll chip in some extra after working all year for my two weeks in the sun. The fucking entitlement of Silicon Valley is unbelievable.

This to me looks like another form of privatizing profits, and socializing losses [1].

[1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/privatizing-profits-and...

The second order effects are catastrophic too.

Think of all the companies that built their entire business model around helping airbnb owners manage their bookings / rental

For examples,hostmaker, which was heavily advertising in London (transport mainly) has gone bankrupt (1). They raised ~24M (2)

(1) https://hostmaker.com/gb/london/ (2) https://angel.co/company/hostmaker/funding

Do you think we should also start donating to them?

Not at all, just adding to the fact that 1) hosts were leveraged and are hurting. 2) entire companies are going bankrupt because their model is based mainly on airbnb demand.

I really wonder how much pressure AirBnB must be feeling from hosts in order to go through with this idea. There's no way that they have done thinking it would not have some downsides. I really would like to know how they calculated that going through with this idea would be a better option than doing nothing.

My thoughts too. But why does Airbnb care? Presumably the landlords will just come back or be replaced, and it’s not like they have shown concern for ethics in a long time.

Yeah exactly. Either they have been incredibly naive by thinking this would be seen as a purely positive gesture, or there is some business angle that we're not seeing.

> But why does Airbnb care?

Maybe they’re taking a cut and their other revenue streams have dried up?

My only thought would be if they collapse it could potentially be actual homeowners that would purchase the house instead of investors ending with less airbnb properties.

AirBNB are hoping for quick reopening and a "V-shaped recovery". They want things to get back to normal as quickly as possible, because the longer the current situation drags on for, the more their business and billions of invested money is at risk. They won't be able to do a quick reopening if 1/4 or 1/2 of the properties they list are being foreclosed on. That process can take multiple years for a property to be occupied again.

Right, so the bit I was missing here is that you're saying the properties won't be quickly re-listed or replaced by other landlords. Thanks.

My guess is that AirBnB is on the verge of collapse and this is one of a few last ditch efforts to keep things going.

If there are no properties or less properties on AirBnB because those properties were foreclosed on then AirBnB seizes to exist.

The expansion of tipping culture has been here for awhile. This particular instance generated outrage, but usually people comply. First it was restaurants because in some states waiters don't even make minimum wage. Then it became almost all restaurants, regardless of whether the employees legally make minimum wage before tips or not. Now it's ride sharing. And food trucks. Anywhere they have Square. As if handing the food through the food truck window is somehow worthy of a tip. Ice cream shops. Food delivery. In addition to exorbitant fees and overpriced items, a tip is still required or the driver is likely not even making money. I can accept this during the pandemic since the driver is risking their life, but outside, every single one of these cases is preposterous.

The underlying issue is that companies are allowed to not pay employees enough and often are allowed to classify employees as contractors. Unless you're easily paying your health insurance out of pocket (premiums, deductible, and out of pocket max), there's no way one should be classified as a contractor. It's absurd to think people making whatever uber offers have control over their lives and their work. It's tiring that these multi-billion dollar companies as refusing to pay living wages and externalizing their pay onto their customers.

Unfortunately, the only recourse is to not tip and this, like so many things, hurts the workers more than their companies. But what else to do? In a society where learned helplessness is the norm and that has no practical way of addressing one's concerns, boycotting remains the only viable action. What am I going to do? Sue? Write my representative? Please. Let's not be delusional. Hopefully if employees suffer enough, they might unionize, and claw back power for themselves. Or these business will go out of business. It's sad, but that's what it seems to take.

If landlords need money, they can always sell their properties. Lowering the cost of living would be the best thing for the average person.

> “during this challenging time we heard from many Airbnb guests who were interested in supporting and reconnecting with past hosts.”

I call BS. No way they implemented this feature because people wanted to give money to past hosts.

Wouldn't it be a better idea to have some CTA for like future booking or booking voucher so the hosts can get money now for a future service? So you know if someone really likes a place and visits it every year can spare a few bucks if they can to freeze it

Honest question, how is this different from just booking in advance?

Presumably because with the current Pandemic, a lot of people don't know when they will travel next, so can't really pick a date to book.

The intent here seems to be to ensure that your favourite family-owned chalet can weather the pandemic without you necessariliy going there any time soon.

Booking in advance requires knowing the dates of travel beforehand, the proposal above does not.

They tried to follow in foot steps of uber eats which asked consumers to donate to restaurants earlier during the lockdown. Airbnb doing the same is definitely not okay, but why there wasnt a similar hue and cry for uber doing it.

ha.. haha.. haaaahahahahahahahahah No but seriously, Airbnb what were you thinking.

I bet they were going to take a cut to keep themselves alive.

is this thread locked?

This is hilarious, and I’m sure will be as popular as paying extra taxes on your return when your state asks to donate because your heart feels it.

I’m surprised airbnb is still around. Hotels have been as expensive or cheaper the past 3 years of booking. Why would anyone pay the same to have to deal with rando stranger creeps at odd hours for check-in is beyond me. Knowing there’s a front desk 24/7 is piece of mind.

So that you can have a kitchen.

I wonder how much of Airbnb is a retread of 2008, where you have people massively over-leveraged on rental properties that they could never afford without constant, growing bookings.

they indeed have lost their mind

I guess AirBNB founders got tired of being interrupted during sushi.

The world as a whole is fucked up real good if a plea to donate is causing so much drama. Or is it that during these times only the crazy get promoted in front?

There are a lot of worthwhile, needy causes, but a for profit business is not one of them. Especially considering the amount of collateral damage airbnb has caused in various markets. If property owners are forced to sell at a loss, so be it. There's a theme here with various industries, such as airlines (save LUV), where they choose to operate with zero piggy bank/ margin for error, and when shit hits the fan they're immediately bankrupt. Fiscal irresponsibility should not be rewarded with handouts, imo. It does rile me a bit to even hear the suggestion that it should.

This is outrage porn, not news. Absolutely pointless article that has nothing to do with technology, at all.

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