The $10m OMG Fund
airbnb.com
airbnb.com
They've reduced useful search filters like 'has a desk' and there is no filter for 'not a tent or van' which is increasingly common. Some areas (Hawaii) contain vans as the majority of their listings. But no filters against them.
Their direction reminds me of the progress of Netflix to be less searchable and more about content they want to push. I guess it works out in the a/b tests but likely misses the forest for the trees.
A tip: use airbnb.com.au instead of .com as you'll get the real full price in the searches as they must comply with Australian law. This works all over the world.
Painful.
The same with google: google search is going down the drain but google search income is up.
This is exactly the kind of thing that tends to enable competitors in normal markets, but on the internet monopolies are propped up by all kinds of tricks and then you can make moves like this without expecting to be punished.
Assuming you’d want to work data-driven, what would be a better approach to figure out what works and doesn’t? Or is it a conscious decision to capitalize on the short-term at the expense of the long-term?
e.g.: Putting emojis in your notification texts increases engagement… until it kills your engagement entirely.
No amount of short-term testing will discover [*the cause of] a long-term decline, if the long term response of the system of customer/product/company is swamped by an opposing reaction in the short term.
The only real way to deal with this is to run these types of A/B tests “forever”, which is not desired. Which is why I’m very much wondering, what is the appropriate way to deal with this?
The population is already changing long term for reasons outside of our control. If for instance, other companies are adding the emojis and people are tired of emojis that will affect the performance of our experiments.
It is by no means perfect, but at least it offers a way to get feedback (given enough users, not annoyed enough :)
They are probably trying to push back against the commodisation of AirBnB stays. In the last few years they seem to have become extremely standardised, within a certain price range and star rating you know almost exactly what you'll be getting in terms of service, cleanliness and outfitting of the apartment. I like it a lot as a cheaper alternative to hotels for longer stays! But perhaps lower margin than littering the countryside with wacky constructions.
Maybe those two things are related, AirBnB searching a nieche to occupy with more "exotic" options. After all, hotels didn't go away, did they?
I am not deeply sold on this idea as a whole, but it seems like having a very low-maintenance van has its advantages right now compared to a hotel room which has probably sat empty for the majority of the last few years. As you say, it seems unlikely that airBNB is explicitly pushing them at the expense of other listings; more likely, it just is a consequence of the world we live in.
[1]https://prtimes.jp/main/html/rd/p/000000586.000030117.html (Detailing a niche hotel where you get to pretend to operate a main tokyo train line and be woken up by the same device train conductors use)
I just checked a bunch of normal boutique hotels and their listing inspire much more confidence and are actually cheaper. At this point I have no idea what Airbnb offers that hotels don't do better.
If you look at hiltons on booking.com and booking at hilton.com you'll see different prices, until you go through the hilton.com process and select non-refundable/non-cancelable rates, then they're the same rate, expect if you book via booking.com you don't get any points with the hotel chain.
As a business? They avoid tons of regulations there for zoning, public safety, etc. That leads to higher profit margins.
To a consumer? I'm not 100% sure anymore. Except some places where hotels are booked through AirBnB to gain better access to customers
For solo travel tho, I'd rather book a hotel sight unseen than use airbnb, since too many people try to make their couch in the corner look like a nice private room in the listing.
The information is there, but there's no way to limit your searches to only those properties, so you're forced to open up all that seem interesting and scroll through the listing just to see.
Airbnb is just frustrating from start to finish.
edit not the Four Seasons with a door on Market Street, the sign I saw was closer to the Moscone Center..
Currently on a 2.5wk trip around Europe, only two nights of which are in a proper hotel. I previously had great and unique experiences with Airbnb, but lately, I'm paying what's probably more than a hotel, and the experiences have been... Awkward and sometimes kinda skeezy. The one thing I really want is a convenient washer to do laundry, which almost every Airbnb I've stayed in has. Not so much in hotels.
I once got bedbugs at a hostel in Argentina. They were kind (?) enough to refund my money, but then I was left uncomfortably itchy and roomless. Plus I was freaked out that there might be bedbugs in my clothes and backpack. I bought some detergent and booked a room at the Hilton, put every belonging I had in the tub and filled it up. I've wondered at times what kind of gross stuff happens in hotels, but on this night, I was the gross one.
not surprising, companies like Uber and AirBNB were initially cheaper because they were basically ignoring most laws and getting away with it, plus subsidizing cost with VC money. Now they are being forced to pay for compliance and taxes, and trying to turn a profit, costs go up. Plus their renters don't have the economies of scale compared to traditional hotels, so it makes sense they will be more expensive
One good friend of mine was a member of a Welsh group in the 80s whose name I don't know (but maybe someone on HN does know) who literally burned down the vacation houses of English people. I always think of that every time I'm woken up too early, which is almost every single day. I live in a $500k house and Airbnb has wrecked my daily peace and my neighborhood. Sure if I were smart and also an asshole I'd just put my own place up on Airbnb and fuck off myself. Part of me just believes it would be fucked up to do that to my other neighbors, and part of me doesn't want to accept that as the world we have to live in.
> One good friend of mine was a member of a Welsh group in the 80s whose name I don't know (but maybe someone on HN does know) who literally burned down the vacation houses of English people. I always think of that every time I'm woken up too early, which is almost every single day.
> I live in a $500k house and Airbnb has wrecked my daily peace and my neighborhood.
Wow, this one is an odd comment. An actual nimby praising terrorism.
Not In My Back Yard
I didn't know but DDG did:
Meibion Glyndŵr: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meibion_Glynd%C5%B5r
Thanks for the reference!
What steps have you taken to try to prevent yourself from hearing them shout, "Housekeeping," at 8AM and waking up early every day?
People make noise, that's the way things go. I'm not saying it's pleasant - that pressure washer sure pissed me the fuck off, almost irrationally so, so I completely understand where OP is coming from. But what I read in OP's post is that they don't like someone yelling, "Housekeeping!" at 8AM. If that's legitimately the only thing that regularly wakes them up early, then there are plenty of ways to prevent yourself from hearing it.
Edit: Please do not take this as a defense of AirBNB whatsoever - in point of fact, I agree with the general sentiment that they make life difficult for neighbors. That said, there's nuance here, and I'd just like to know more about OP's situation, because what they described doesn't sound anywhere near as bad as other AirBNB horror stories.
The (absent) owner does take some efforts to prevent loud groups, and to inform the guests to respect the neighbors by not playing loud music, etc, and mostly that's adhered to. Because of that, there's developed a kind of detente where I don't want to aggravate them or get into a neighbor war over nits like "Housekeeping", when really it's the totality of it that takes a toll on my sleep and my nerves.
The problem is I don't like getting into conflict with neighbors, or making trouble for people. I try to be considerate even if I feel like they're not doing the same.
Hotels are also cheaper nowadays by the time you account for hidden fees.
After my last 3 attempts went bad, I'm done with AirBNB.
Sure, it has the irritating design patterns telling you that 3 people have looked this room in the last hour to try to encourage you to rush a decision, but manages to be still more honest in displaying the actual amount you pay per night rather than an amount plus 14% fees...
I booked an apartment in Dublin with "Johnny", but upon paying for the booking, discovered it was a company called "City Break Apartments Limited" who required a large deposit upon check-in.
Nowhere in the advert was any indication the host was a company.
Basically they said: "we can't refund you until you give the host a fair opportunity to address the issues, so get back to us in 24 hours if the host hasn't done anything". When the host failed to do anything and we re-contacted airbnb, they said that the period of validity for us to file a complaint and get a refund had expired, and they would not do anything to help us.
My wife and I fought this, HARD. One of the few times I've basically seen red while trying to sort out a simple issue like this. The host was contacted by airbnb and was livid, and became extremely hostile and unfriendly to us in communications. We ended up getting a hotel nearby and working out the whole thing through travel insurance. Honestly, fuck airbnb.
This isn't normal? Unfortunately I've used Airbnb twice and this was my experience both times. Put it down partially to someone else booking it and probably being a bit cheap but yeah I'm just gonna use hotels haha. At least you can point issues out to them in person.
For me Airbnb has a reputation of being the place landlords list the shitholes they can't rent to people normally
Since airbnb is a marketplace, it pays to look at host ratings and reviews, or just filter by superhost. If you pick somebody with 2 reviews that just opened, you have to be aware it's a gamble. It's not necessarily a mistake, depending on context, but a gamble.
in the same time both of them disrupted their fields and really improved the service and price of hotels/taxies.
Unfortunately, Airbnb wasn't satisfied with my story because I couldn't prove that it smelled like mold -- yes, they actually wanted me to prove the presence of mold over email. They also weren't satisfied with the cleaning person's story, or the dozen photos I sent of the place being in shambles. They not only refused to help me find another place, but refused to refund me, as well. They didn't just steal $4,500, they forced me to spend my entire first day finding other lodging at premium last-minute prices during Salesforce Week.
My choices were to cancel the whole trip and head home, or spend another $6,500 at the damn W, of all places. I decided to stay thinking it would end up only being an extra $2,000 after the Airbnb refund, which was a mistake, because they never refunded me and brazenly told me to bring them to small claims court. But after travel expenses and attorney fees, I would have only ended up getting a few hundred dollars back.
So, Airbnb effectively screwed me out of $11,000 and their representatives seemed genuinely happy about doing it. I honestly don't recall a single apology from anyone at any point.
Of the 6 others, 3 of them are being used permanantly for AirBnB's, in direct conflict with the Leasehold agreement, which explictly states that the accommodation cannot be used for short-term, hotel-esque businesses and directly against the law (London requires that a flat not be used for more than X days per year). These are operated by a company that manages 10s to 100s of them in the area
Having complained to the building management, they simply don't care/don't do anything. It's on my todo list to take it up with the council/lawyer up against the building management, but I just don't have the time. It seems like AirBnB has just completely outsourced the fraud elements as "not their problem".
Will never use an AirBnB again, and will aggressively advise against it for friends & family.
None of this "OMG Fund" money will be going to improving the core experience the main cohort of users; it is however broadening their marketing to higher-end properties and higher-paying visitors.
Off topic, but any interesting destinations that had reasonable AirBNB's that you want to share? :)
I plan to do something similar this year, hopefully.. wondering where to go, though.
Central/Eastern Europe is my personal favourite. Krakow, Poland (amazing). Belgrade, Zagreb, Kotor Montenegro.
My friends and I are in the early stages of planning a back packing trip.
less than 20% of the global population has ever been on a plane, AirBNB has always been targeted towards the 1% of the population that can afford to throw money away on leisure travel
There is a clear difference however between the $25k for 5 days kind of stays they are constantly promoting on their homepage, compared to their bread and butter apartments scattered across cities.
If you have a good enough idea to win and the desire to manage it, getting a loan seems like a better choice.
Using that $10 Million to house some of the homeless and other people their company displaces.
This is it folks, "The Society of the Spectacle" in all its' glory!
There were no A/B tests that caused them to take this product direction.
There is no quantitative model of any kind that points to this as the revenue maximizing approach.
They are trying to differentiate themselves from hotels as much as possible to create long term brand equity.
This is the opposite of what many posters are suggesting. It may or may not succeed but it’s not driven by short term thinking as many are claiming here.
I never did couchsurfing, so maybe I have a too uninformed opinion of it, but it seems like a great idea.