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Comment by srmarm | Hacker News Reader

Airbnb was amazing to start with, I stayed with some many interesting people and in interesting places. It's a shame that it's now so commoditised.

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Lot's of experiences are amazing and wonderful when very few people do it, but they morph into something different when the masses come in. National parks. A rustic cafe in an old town. A picknick along a river bank. High signal internet forums. Venice. Zhangjiajie. Driving cars.

I don't know if any solution exists. It seems to me that the only way to preserve the original experience is via some sort of exclusiveness, which immediately provokes a backlash. Especially exclusions based on money.

I don't think it's the number of people by itself. It's when it's becomes an established business that people have to start optimizing for low cost, max profit and fighting to get to the top of listings. Then the general niceness and interestingness goes away.

I mean yes, but for some things also the number of people by itself, surely? I can imagine having to queue to go up Mount Everest takes away some of the charm, for example.

Crowds, wait times, littering etc. Large numbers can ruin a lot of things.

In the case of CouchSurfing, it kept being genuine for a number of years despite and even thanks to the large user base. What destroyed the community is greed that lead to implementing incentives that go against what made the experience wonderful.

Air travel was great in the early days.

Air travel is still great if you fly first class, which if I remember correctly, is exactly as expensive as air travel was in the good old days.

Not since 9/11 , the security theatre is still very painful, even in first. I'm sure it's much more comfortable if you're flying general aviation, but that's still way more expensive than commercial ever was, even in the 60s

Air travel via private jet is better than the early days though.

Yes, that’s what I said: general aviation == “private jets”

I was trying to make a tongue in cheek comment about life getting better for those at the top and worse for the middle.

I don't have an arab complexion, but TSA has never been that much of a hassle for me. Is it really that bad for you? I just have to take my belt and shoes off and take my laptop out. There are lines, but it usually doesn't take me more than 20 minutes to get through.

I guess you got lucky by travelling domestic only in the US. 3 Hour lines at Heathrow passport control are not uncommon. US border agents can and will deny entry for to foreigners for any or no reason. Had a rifle raised and pointed at me while bag was searched in Sri Lanka.

And no liquids, and repeat this hassle at 50% of the airports you stopover (depending on how lazy they were when designing the “safe” zones and terminals)

Actually, I don't mind air travel being shitty, given its environmental impact.

Let those who damage the planet for fun or for profit suffer! >:)

"Nobody goes there any more, it's too crowded" - Yogi Bera

Yeah, but from the perspective of people actually trying to live in these places it's a cancer on the city.

I personally know several people previously living in Amsterdam that left the city or parts of it simply because their day-to-day lives were getting disrupted by tourists taking over residential neighborhoods. They create a lot of noise, get drunk and high, vomit in the porches, leave trash everywhere etc.

A city should be for people that live there, not a theme park for those looking for a rush.

For a while, I lived in an apartment complex that also rented out rooms on AirBnB. There was nothing in the lease allowing short-term subletting, and so I foolishly assumed that the complex avoided catering to short-term leases entirely. When you hear heavy stomping and noise directly above you, there's a huge difference in knowing who it is, and that they're likely to be receptive to stopping by the next day to ask for quiet. When it's a series of hotel guests, there's no reason for them to listen to you, nor would it have any impact on the next people to live there.

We have a friend who owns a single bungalow in a row of five in the Liberties area of Dublin. That's where Guinness is and a load of new distilleries, it's becoming a "cool" area.

The other four bungalows are owned by a single owner who rents them out as AirBnB's. This had made our friends life a nightmare. Stag and hen parties, teenagers booking them for parties, people returning home from an evening out drunk and trying to get in to her house by mistake. Also, the local parking has been messed up as well.

The worst thing is that when they are empty the street is really eerie. Also, the landlord keeps the keys to the houses in combination lock boxes bolted to the walls just outside the front door of each property. He'll give renters the code so they can retrieve the keys when they arrive. Local teenagers have been known to spend the time needed to crack the code and then let themselves in to the property and raise havoc.

She has reported the problems to the local council many times, but they just don't seem to care. Reports to AirBnB, unsurprisingly, go nowhere. When she has approached the owner to complain his response was to offer to buy her out, which is a bit cheeky as that has been her family home for three generations.

Being surrounded by so many AirBnBs can really have a negative effect on your life.

What I really liked in the early days is that there was more interaction with the host, because you often rented a room in their place or a part of the appartment, while they were still living there. Lot's of interesting conversation. Nowadays it's just business for a lot of hosts, they don't even bother welcoming you and put the key in a keysafe.

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