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Comment by WhompingWindows | Hacker News Reader

Hotels are more reliable and organized, but I prefer AirBnB in general. I like feeling a part of the neighborhood or city, I like the home-y vibe of most AirBnBs. Hotels in contrast are a bit sterile and cookie-cutter, for obvious reasons, and some may prefer this vibe. Different strokes for different folks.

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> I like feeling a part of the neighborhood or city,

As long as you know that you're getting those cute feelings at the expense of contributing to screwing everyone that actually lives there (who isn't a landlord) by contributing to a market that creates a situation ever more hostile and unaffordable to renters.

Converting hotels to apartment buildings would also lower costs for renters. Staying in a hotel has exactly the same effect (the hotel would not exist and might be an apartment building if there was no demand for hotels, just like airbnbs might be rented traditionally if there was no demand for airbnb)

Except hotels don't drain the existing supply like AirBnB does. Hotels are built to be hotels, not to be rented to locals. AirBnBs were built to be homes for residences of the area...and instead are being rented to locals, thus draining the existing supply that's already there, which hotels don't do.

Seconding the last reply: hotels are a single, vertical property (ergo: does not take up a ton of real estate), dedicated to travelers in cities who need accommodations. They are built into the city planning for the most part to allow people to visit the town. It also supports the local economy by providing transient business to local businesses.

I don't think you thought your reply through before typing it out.

Clearly Airbnb is, even with the best of intentions, harming local economies by making housing unaffordable and/or unavailable to locals and has been documented over the past decade[0]. It's only recently (last few years) that cities have even caught up to tech like Abnb so for years they were and active drain on the local economy by dodging taxes and regulations[1]. It does NOT support the local economy in the same way as hotels and its benefits don't seem to out weigh its costs to the local economy[2].

[0] https://hbr.org/2019/04/research-when-airbnb-listings-in-a-c...

[1] https://curs.unc.edu/2015/03/26/a-roadmap-to-regulating-airb...

[2] https://www.epi.org/publication/the-economic-costs-and-benef...

Have you thought about how the things you like out of AirBnB come at the expense of those things for actual residents of the city? Each home that's in AirBnB is one that's not on the long term market for locals, pushing them further and further out for tourists' convenience.

By the same logic, every hotel is a big building that's not an apartment building. But travelers have to stay somewhere...

> By the same logic, every hotel is a big building that's not an apartment building.

Many times Hotels are located in areas that are zoned commercial and not residential.

So no, hotels really are not competing with housing the way AirBnb is.

OK, but apartment buildings can be in areas that are zoned commercial too...

(Unless they're zoned exclusively commercial - but I don't know how common that is.)

If locals really cared about affordable housing, they would loosen up those zoning laws because that is the real reason most areas don't have affordable housing, not Airbnb.

No, because hotels don't remove existing supply from the market like AirBnB does. Nor at the rate that AirBnB is. It's not like the AirBnB owners are just making all newly built houses into AirBnB, they're actively lowering the supply already in the area, which hotels don't do.

>Hotels are more reliable and organized

I'll often stay in B&Bs in less urban areas, but especially for urban business travel, the hotel is not really a big part of my experience and I just want to keep things simple, maybe have a place to leave my luggage after I check out, a usually 24 hour desk, etc.

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