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Comment by animex | Hacker News Reader

It's crazy how hidden fees quickly blow up a $99 property to $328... $159 cleaning fee? $60 mysterious service charge? I just go with Hotels...much more consistent experience.

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Agreed. I stopped using the service when I realized the prices listed don't reflect what you're actually paying. A price may look great until you read the fine print and see that you'll be paying $100 more. If they had transparent pricing I doubt as many people would use the platform. There is also a more reliable source of reviews for most hotels. You could stay at a descent rated host on AirBnb and then go look at the reviews and see things like... "Dirty bathrooms and the bed was soiled. 5 out of 5 for the authentic homely experience."

AirBnB makes that worse by refusing to show you the full cost for the trip - so the prices it displays are actually meaningless.

Booking.com has many dark patterns but at least it allows you to actually display and sort by full price!

Hotels for short term or travelling alone.

Airbnb for long term and for families.

It's also good to figure out how to negotiate with locals. I was recently in Macedonia. I was looking at one listing for an apartment that was around 1000 euros/month for 3 months on Airbnb. My friend, a local, was able to find & contact the owner directly. The owner's price for my friend was 300 euros/month.

A place I stayed just a week ago in Fiji is listed for $1500 a day while we got same place randomly for $400… That said Fiji is still recovering from Covid - in places like Hawaii you’d struggle to get anything!

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