Unbundling Airbnb
peterfabor.com
peterfabor.com
I think a lot of straight folks don't understand the mental calculus that goes through a gay person's mind when they travel. I'm at the stage of my life where when I go on vacation, I want to relax and feel at ease. Why would I spend money to go someplace where I may feel unwelcome, or worse, unsafe? For example, there are a few Caribbean nations that are beautiful, but notoriously unwelcoming to gays. Jamaica can have someone else's money.
In an Airbnb, I don't think I've ever felt unsafe, but I'd also rather not feel unwelcome. I don't want to have to worry about some last minute thing coming up making the place unavailable if I mention my partner. With MisterBnB I know I never have to worry about that, and I know my sexuality won't rise to the level of anyone even caring. Even if that's true 80 percent of the time on Airbnb, I just don't want to have to deal with that 20 percent chance of having a bad experience.
I think that's the thing that a lot of (not all) average white straight able-bodied cis-gendered people dismiss. Every slight, every rejection, even if it's not blatant it's in your head: I'm being treated differently not because of what I say or do, but because of who I am. On a good day you might forget for a little while, but you let your guard down for a little and there it is again. It's inescapable and you have to build resiliency in every aspect of your life to not get crushed by it.
The flip side is also sad but ultimately useful, I know to avoid shops that proudly display the Trump, Let's Go Brandon, Blue Lives Matter, Confederate Flag, Don't Tread on Me, the one weird flag that's like fuck Biden but written with guns, or honestly the American flag. And look, I completely agree with the stance "those don't necessarily imply homophobia," you can hate Biden and love the gays, you can love America and the gays, plenty of my conservative friends do, but the kind of person who flies the flags at their home or business is on a whole different level.
Sometimes you'll be ok temporarily in those spaces until one of their friends/family shows up who's not and it becomes a problem. Generally, you don't have to wait that long.
> or honestly the American flag
this is especially disheartening. As a child of an immigrant family, one of the first things I'm going to do when I buy a house is proudly fly an American flag. I love our country and there are many reasons to be proud of it and its flag, and they're the reasons so many people want to immigrate here in the first place
YOUR comment is contributing to the toxic division. You're witnessed someone sharing their world and what they do to feel safe - and you're telling them its wrong and they should stop. Maybe you can listen to them instead, understand that certain people live in a different reality than you. You should try to see what you can do to make the environment around you welcoming to others who may have different experiences than you. It is not their responsibility to throw their safety and wellbeing away because you don't like that people view some symbol of yours negatively.
> As a child of an immigrant family, one of the first things I'm going to do when I buy a house is proudly fly an American flag. I love our country and there are many reasons to be proud of it
I am an American born here, and I grew up with an American flag on my house. I would never move away, and I'm proud to live in America, one of the greatest nations the world has seen - if not the greatest. There are many reasons to be proud of it, yes.
Does it have problems though? Yes. It is NOT a perfect place. Not everyone here feels equally safe and respected. America has long a history of division. Slavery, JimCrow, Red-lining, the aids crisis, etc. Strong histories of division that are unfortunate and real and have long-lasting implications even today. Please realize that many people exist in a reality that does not show love equally to all. it is not a place where all men are created equal, and not a place where all men live equal - although that is a lofty and noble goal America has repeated for generations. The parent comment shared symbols that raise the odds that he (she?) won't be treated equally. They're identifying symptoms of the disease of inequity, not contributing to it.
Yeah, including me, thanks for trying to shut my opinion down too. It's laughable how people like you, who act so high and mighty about giving underprivileged people a voice, only want to do so when the underprivileged are saying what you want them to.
> They're identifying symptoms of the disease of inequity, not contributing to it.
I disagree. I claim they are contributing to it. Your opinion does not factor into my opinion, and I hope people like you can see how you're just exploiting the plight of others to serve your own views, rather than sincerely trying to help give them all a platform.
Maybe putting one on your house is OK, but the more fanatic you seem, the more on alert I am. Most normal people I meet just use it on 4th of July or something, but if you are draping yourself, your business, your car in it, then I assume you have a higher likelihood of being tribal for a tribe I am not part of.
And my experience is the people who fly the flag the most are the first to cheat on taxes and try to take advantage of others in society (especially not in their tribe), and then use that “patriotism” as a veil to hide behind.
Same thing with all the other signals Spivak mentioned.
An example is that many even quite left leaning people in the US (but also other countries) often start criticism of US politics with "I love my country, I believe it's the best country in the world..." how is that not nationalistic? You literally are saying you find all other countries inferior. Also what does it mean to love your country? It's completely abstract, do you love the people (I assume you certainly don't love every one), do you love the politics? What concrete thing do you love?
Maybe I'm colored by growing up in Germany during a time when (for very good reason) patriotism was frowned upon because we saw what it lead to. Maybe it's because I've lived in 4 countries now and I feel much more like a world citizen (even though I liked living in some countries more than others), but I find the concept of patriotism just doesn't lead to anything positive.
A Nationalist already thinks it's the best country in the world, and considers any criticism to be traitorous. They think being born there makes them superior to everyone else in the world, and doesn't want the country to be dirtied by immigrants.
However, for me there is an important difference: nationalism is always “I support my nation because it is mine” whereas patriotism (can be) “I like my nation because of stuff it is actually good at”.
There’s certainly an overlap, and not just because of cognitive biases, but the latter doesn’t need to denigrate other nations when saying ones’ own nation is good.
If I said "I like Germany because it is comprised of the superior Germanic race" that would be nationalism, but under your definition it would be patriotism.
If you're saying that this is not within your definition, then I think your usage of "good" in your definition is question begging.
I would count “I like Elbonia because we have the best mud farmers in the world” as patriotism. It may be untrue (which is a separate issue), and it may be chosen post-hoc as the only way to stand out (ditto), but it doesn’t imply other nations are no good at farming mud.
I would count your quoted example as nationalism for the same reason I would describe "I like men’s football because it is comprised of the superior male race" as sexism, while I would say that “I like men’s football more than women’s because I sexually fantasise about men and not women”, isn’t.
You are absolutely colored by that. Germany has one of the worst identity complexes in the world because of nazis. It's understandable when the modern-day personification of evil came to power thanks to German nationalism, but it is definitely an outlier when it comes to national pride. In contrast, look at what non-western countries like India or Korea are like: unabashedly patriotic, which is great for them
It's all signaling & identification, so if you don't want people seeing a Thin Blue Line flag & going "maybe that's not somewhere I want to be", talk with the thin-blue-line people & get them to stop doing the things that make some people want to avoid them.
Eh, don't really like this concept as a general principle. 'Pattern-matching' can often just be discrimination.
FWIW, I think it is fine to make inferences based on what flags people are flying and avoid overly patriotic people.
> if you don't want people seeing a predominantly black neighborhood & going "maybe that's not somewhere I want to be", talk with the people living in black neighborhoods & get them to stop doing the things that make some people want to avoid them.
Do you still think there's nothing wrong with prejudice, or in your words, pattern-matching?
I don’t know what the right way to address this because it’s become extremely common to not organize under explicit banners but instead make your membership known by not subtle dog whistles to maintain, again, not subtle plausible deniability. Like everyone does it! I could fill your screen with just the liberal/left/blue whistles I know about. This will always suck for the people who aren’t announcing their membership but the alternative is being ignorant to the groups de facto organizing.
Sure, but how do you know what tribes a person identifies with, if multiple groups use the same signals? How do you know an american flag means a proud racist or a proud immigrant (remember citizenship ceremonies are often huge accomplishments that immigrants deeply cherish). How do you know certain clothing styles mean somebody is a proud gang member or just a regular person who's a proud fan of hip hop culture? That's the point of my criticism. I personally am all for taking caution based on prejudice. I'm against people who are only okay with it if it's prejudice against people they dislike, but raise a fuss if people have prejudice against people they like.
And besides, I specified 'signaling & identification'. I may have missed where people were being born with thin-blue-line flags as birthmarks.
On the other hand, maybe you've got a point. I should be able to walk into any gun shop in the country with a "John Brown was justified, Sherman didn't go far enough" t-shirt & not see so much as a dirty look.
What, we are supposed to ignore obvious and true signals that exist in the real world?
It just felt like the place would be loudly and proudly nationalistic and as an alien, I would be more welcome elsewhere.
Canadians proudly do the same, FWIW.
There are neighbourhoods where nearly every single house has a flagpole with the American flag in it. In my ~4km x 4km area where I walk my dog regularly, I can think of one house that has a Canadian flag—and that’s the Kwakwaka’wakw design (https://www.canadiannativeflag.ca).
There are occasional flag decals, but many of them are also Pride variants of the Canadian flag.
I see more Canadian flag decals on businesses (but usually in a group of decals, including pride flag decals, city decals, etc.) or maple leaf accents to business logos, in part because there is some signalling going on that "we are a Canadian-owned business" (even if it isn’t really true anymore, like Tim Hortons). I rarely see Canadian businesses flying a flag or mounting a flag in store.
Canadians often have Canadian flag patches or decals on luggage &c. when travelling so that it’s a signal that ”we aren’t American” because we often get confused with Americans and treated poorly because the Ugly American Tourist stereotype exists, with reason.
There’s likely to be a bit of a drop in flag flying because the signals have been sent by Canada’s white nationalists that the flag is theirs given their raucous and obnoxious displays in Coutts and Ottawa, which has left an even bigger distaste for overt nationalistic displays than Canadians usually show. (We are proud of being Canadian, but we’re not obnoxiously patriotic most of the time, and we are mostly disdainful of outright nationalists.)
There’s one other point: it is seen as downright unAmerican for a politician to not be wearing an American flag pin on their lapel. The Canadian equivalent is not wearing one of those crappy disposable Legion poppies in early November (we’ve seriously had politicians called out for wearing an enamelled poppy).
Personally, I care less about what I mean when I write and more about how people might read my writing.
Huh, that’s kinda surprising. I’m not American, but always had the impression that Americans used the American flag like the British use CCTV cameras — putting them everywhere essentially decoratively, because everyone else does, even in situations where they don’t add anything.
(I absolutely understand the problem with the Confederate flag: that’s much weirder than say the English (i.e. not U.K.) flag, which itself seems to only be used in the two contexts of football and nationalism).
No, not all X are Y, but if I'm going to have to spend time and effort to figure out if this X is Y when I could just not, I'm going to choose not. That's just easier for me.
For example, I miss a "good table" option on AirBnB.
I have to manually discard over 90% of the listings after looking at the images because there is no table suitable for work. That is so time-consuming.
It's not that I want to work at home all the time, but still I need a proper table to put my laptop on. A proper chair and a monitor would be golden of course.
And there are a bunch of additional things I do manually too. For example reading the reviews. Meanwhile, I am pretty good at predicting the quality of a place by reading the reviews. The stars are somewhat of an indication. But not reliable at all. I had really bad stays at places that got 100 reviews and an average of 4.7 stars. Hosts have too much influence on this metric.
Here are two examples of positive signals that help me find nice places:
1) How long the reviews are.
Hosts can remove bad reviews. And they can manipulate their guests into writing 5-star reviews. But they cannot really manipulate them to write long, enthusiastic reviews with many details.
2) How many of the reviews say "I have stayed at many AirBnBs and this one was one of the best".
This is something I usually write when I particularly liked a place. And it turned out a good signal to find nice places.
I often wonder if one could build a business by creating a site that lists a small subset of AirBnBs that are manually vetted like this. I already wrote my own web based tool to organize and sort AirBnBs that I am interested in. So it would not be a lot of work to make these lists public.
Why are you still using airbnb?
Like the person you responded to I also spend a great deal of time searching for suitable long term stays. I think there is a large gap in the market for reliable brands/services with solid customer service (which AirBnB lacks) and amenities for modern longer term tech travelers (desks (ideally standup), fast wifi, kitchens, suitable space for 2 to work separately, washer/dryer, etc). If I could just look in a city and say “oh there’s a X there around an area I want to visit, I’ll just book that” it would be oh so nice.
If I want something different or fun, or a place that's shared so I can talk to people, I'll use airbnb.
Airbnbs also tend to be cheaper for longer stays (more than 4 nights).
The type of standardized hotel room you describe sounds like the small rooms that are made to sleep during the night and leave during the day. Not for "living" in a foreign city.
I believe Candlewood Suites is the same, but less "upscale."
The sofa mattresses are terrible though.
Of course, large families are the exception not the rule nowadays.
Personally I don’t have a large family and the inconsistently with Airbnb means we don’t use it often at all.
s/AirBnB/lodging --> A travel agency?
Help, guidance, recommendations, curation were MOSTLY off the table. They are and were of course exceptions. But in the end, quality selection IS a new proposition.
Many agents did curate trips (or sell packages), too. In the best case, if your trip went sideways, they could also assist in rebooking/other options.
Recently saw a little project from Czech Republic curating cottages with workspace: https://pracujvprirode.cz/
Yes and this is so frustrating to me that I'm going to force myself to use hotels more.
What people don't understand is how one manipulates information not from what one says that's false, but in what one omits.
We know for a fact it's easy for a host to remove bad reviews. Take a look at the AirBNB subreddit, which is run by hosts. They actively tell each other how to get rid of reviews. Biggest tip: find something in the review that is 'not something the host has control over'. Boom, success, the entire thing is silently canned, and the writer will never get notified.
I got burned a lot with crappy experiences the last few years. My biggest issue was unexpected noise never mentioned in 20 reviews. One apartment had a bedroom attached to the top floor of an elevator shaft, making clanking noises. Another had THREE restaurant courtyards literally in the yard.
Caveat emptor with AirBNB, because you won't get to leave early and get a refund, whereas hotels are often negotiable.
So, I built a Chrome extension called Offie that helps other remote workers using Airbnb view info about Wifi and workspaces from the search page:
https://www.offie.co/chrome-extension
After launching the Chrome extension we realized that to actually solve these problems will require a managed marketplace where all properties are vetted to have fast, reliable Wifi and high-quality workspaces.
We're working on launching an MVP marketplace for that in Austin, TX by mid-May. We've got a waitlist on the site to be notified when we launch if interested!
One red flag I always look for is a stream of comments mentioning only "good location" and nothing else.
You say that, and I believe you mean it, but that could actually be a good sign. Example: I'm looking for a place to stay that is close to the beach. I need the location to be good - if the interior of the BnB is bad, that isn't a big deal.
Additionally, my definition of "close to the beach" is unusual. There are plenty of places "10 minutes away", but we need to read the reviews and look at maps for public access. I have a lot of small children, and my wife and I are mapping out how far a walk it would take to "get sandy"
What I found useful is this Chrome plugin that automatically searches in reviews keywords like "wifi": https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/roamer-airbnb-inte...
Curating Airbnb listings ideal for work (desk, office chair, good internet) in interesting travel destination can be actually a good MVP. Something like crowdsourced (and cheaper) version of https://wander.com/
1. If I set a filter, use it! As it is, it will show results matching filters first, but then also shows those that don't, and it's not obvious enough
2. When hosts have claimed to have amenities they don't have, and when hosts don't properly set what amenities they do have - makes it difficult to use filters to find what you actually want
1. X is a must-have; and
2. X, Y and Z are all on my wish list so I want to see the most matches first.
Even Google is kind of awkward with this. It used to be you could add + to a term (before the Google+ boondoggle). Now you have to quote things.
Other sites will do so for specific criteria. Take a real estate portal: the bedroom numbers will be absolute but it may include surrounding areas to what you specify. Or there may be an option to turn that off.
It is frustrating but I can see why sites err on the side of caution by treating it as a ranking suggestion vs a hard requirement.
A couple questions:
Why wouldn't Airbnb build this vetting process as a feature of their service if/when you're successful?
Once you've reached scale, what would make your service more valuable than Airbnb's attempt at copying it?
I absolutely dread having to go through the airbnb search. Just a better (lag-free) interface would already go a long way. The map is just awful. A neater way to search through listings would be nice.
Maybe something like nitter (for twitter), but for airbnb.
Certainly worth a try.
The tough question is the business model of the whole thing.
Sometimes I will look for that before even looking at the pictures.
That part isn't true. Airbnb doesn't allow hosts to remove negative reviews.
I used to Airbnb my place, which was well reviewed. I had one negative review from a problematic guest that I felt was unfair, and when I contacted Airbnb to have it reviewed, they were very explicit about not removing reviews regardless of the situation.
I have mentioned elsewhere in the thread that this actually worked out as my best ever stay. OK, I got lucky that time.
Actual upscale bnb? Gîtes de France.
I’m coming with 20-30 friends -> gîtes pour groupes, you’ll get an industrial kitchen and dormitories.
Those things existed long before the internet.
Taxis existed before Uber; but it was the app (handling location, real-time updates, and seamless payment) that changed things.
I disagree - the game changer vs previous minicab offerings is the centralisation. Instead of ringing 4 companies and being given different waiting times by each etc, a single source tells me (initially, before the inevitable split into lyft et al) what the next available cab time is.
In the same way that early netflix felt like a game changer because I had loads of stuff in one place. A lot of the utility drains away as soon as competition appears again and you're back where you started.
Yeah, it's not perfect, and some bad actors abuse the rating system: "the driver wants me to wear a mask? I'll report him for unsafe driving" was one that I heard before.
But ultimately, knowing there's a record of whose car I went into makes me feel safer than riding with an unvetted driver that no one else knows I'm with.
I have friends who lived next to one for a while, and the noise at all hours of the night from guests who don't care because they'll be gone in a week was awful. Likewise, I currently live in a city where the housing supply doubled once AirBnBs were put back onto the long-term rental market during the pandemic. It's also a city with one of the worst housing crises in Europe.
AirBnB directly harms the local people of a city, often causing rents to raise, rowdy neighbors who don't give a damn about quiet time, and forcing actual locals out of the city so tourists can feel "at home". Not to mention AirBnBs are not considered in urban planning the way hotels are, since they mostly exist in areas that are planned for residential (for, y'know, the residents of the city) use. It has nothing to do with xenophobia. Tourists are welcome, but can stay in hotels and stop taking up the housing supply of the areas they visit.
I'm not sure that Airbnb is the actual problem here, for me it was the host's expectation that people will just throw money at them whilst all they have to do is provide the location. The one half-decent place I stayed was, ironically, the only option without a hundred or so glowing reviews.
Alternatives to Airbnb exist for every niche and, in my opinion, you generally have a good idea of what you are going to get from the outset rather than with Airbnb where it is always a gamble - regardless of how much money you are willing to spend.
Bob only needs to convince one person to stay at a time. That's it. And then it's relatively easy money. Especially considering that while the lodger is staying, you don't have to do hardly anything. You spend a couple of hours cleaning up after they leave, and that's it.
Hotels need to convince everyone to stay. True, while they can eat the cost of one or two lodgers, they can't become known as a place with bad lodging. Hotels have operating costs in the millions. They have staff, they're turning over rooms daily, cleaning every room daily, industrial HVAC, a bar, a restaurant (or two), sometimes a tiny convenience store, concierge services.
Hotels are invested in you having an acceptable stay.
Not going to lie, when travelling, I tend to gravitate towards national chains for lodging. While I'll never find the true wonders of the whatever of living like a local or what people claim AirBnB provides, I'll never have a truly shitty lodging experience either. It's one of the areas where I'm not looking to have an adventure.
I've never had a perfect-five-star Airbnb experience either, but all my reviews have been very positive.
Airbnb guests and hosts need to get good reviews so there is an incentive to give better than real reviews in both ways.
One of the best ways to read reviews is looking for what reviews don't mention. Like no reviews mentioning the place is quiet or clean or having comfortable beds.
I would say I've had better experiences at Airbnbs attended by the property owner (like people who rent their extra room), than those attended by a co host or a subletting company. These are easier to find in non touristic destinations.
There's those that "game" the pictures so it looks nice and colorful, but have bad quality furniture and cheap dollar store everything. Those are better to avoid
My favorite are Sun & Co (https://sun-and-co.com/) and Sende (https://www.sende.co/)
It might make sense if you just need a place to crash after a long day of traveling, but it's not a way to live.
You just described living in a major city. Thats my life in my apartment in <Major West Coast City>.
I imagine it coming with a concierge app so you can add or remove stuff and the push of a button.
Look at it objectively: two people have to be able to make a profit off of you in this arrangement (the owner and their realtor) and both of those margins will be pretty fat since neither of them is a long-term employee of the other, like you'd see in an apartment complex with an on-site manager.
Real estate agents are always on the landowner's side. Just accept this and the whole system will make more sense (this goes for buying or selling a house too).
Whether or not that is true is of course a matter of opinion, but as I'm not in the business of spending upwards of $1k a night on accomodation, I don't think I'm the target audience and thus in no position to make that judgement.