Ask HN: Is anyone else bearish on the future of Airbnb? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is anyone else bearish on the future of Airbnb?

16 pointskashnote18 comments

I used to love Airbnb and went out of my way to book through them whenever possible. Over the years, the quality of the places, the experiences, and overall value dropped significantly for me (not to mention the prices skyrocketing). So, I exclusively booked hotels for about 2 years — until today.

And… same experience. I paid more than I would for a hotel in hopes of getting a unique experience, but ended up getting broken furniture, an unresponsive host, unclean sheets, and other minor inconveniences.

Does anyone else think that Airbnb might be doomed if this keeps up? Or maybe I’ve just gotten unlucky.

P.S. I will say that Airbnb Experiences is pretty great. But I’m not sure how big of a revenue stream that is for them compared to accommodations.

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Airbnb could kill it if they offered an insurance to book you a hotel if the appartment is no good.

My fear in using Airbnb is prebooking in locations that sell out (skiing for example) so that if the landlord cancels or the place is bad you are stuck having paid all the other costs and there is no where else to stay or it is insanely expensive.

AirBNB landlord are probably more ordinary people with lives, not professional hospitality operators so I get a bit nervous.

Exactly, I booked somewhere for a concert in November for April.

The place recently cancelled, looks like they sold the place and it was on the market and they were simply using it as an Airbnb in the meantime, now everywhere is booked or way more expensive.

Booked another AirBnb but it seems a little sketchy, so having to find a hotel to book as a back up and wait for more reviews and cancel whatever one is not the best option at the time.

The problem is you can trust a hotel, you can't trust an airbnb, although they are much nicer.

As a solo traveller (mostly in europe) Airbnb isn't that cheap anymore. I still use it because, the booking experience is far superior to any hotel or aggregator website. But the price and the risk are making that decision harder and harder.

Plus I hate what Airbnb did to my city and I loath using it.

>Plus I hate what Airbnb did to my city

I'm curious, what negative impact did it have?

AirBNB essentially made it easier to operate shadow hotels that are not bound to the same rules and regulations as real hotels. For a long time you could even get away with not paying taxes on your rentals since Airbnb was not cooperating with local governments.

At the same time, low interest rates made it possible for individuals to leverage up on real estate and suck up valuable housing supply from precisely the kind of places that needs it the most - popular cities where tourists like to go. Cheaper rooms also added to the boom of tourism by making it possible for more tourists to travel to said cities.

I see this as a regulatory failure. Airbnb's objective was to move fast and break things, and they broke the social contract and allowed people to sidestep the process required to become a hotel.

1- A lot of landlords switched to renting with "student" contracts, only valid from September to May, so they can Airbnb the summer season. This made it very difficult to find any long-term decent rental.

2- Rent prices have skyrocketed, as landlords prefer to rent by night and have lower occupancy, than rent for a long term.

3- Buildings with apartments that are meant for Airbnb lose a sense of community as you can't trust the people you see in the common areas.

Yep, I just use Booking.com now, much cheaper and higher quality usually.

The problem with services such as Uber and Airbnb is that the providers adjust the pricing and the level of service to those of established alternatives. Uber and AirBnB are as expensive as Taxis and hotels, without some of the same benefits.

I don't think you can be bearish on account of the price. The price is set by supply and demand dynamics. If people were choosing hotels over Airbnbs then hosts would have to reduce prices to compete.

I was a power user of Airbnb 10 years ago and used it frequently while working remote. My experience with Airbnb has always been good. I can only assume a lot of the issues people report come from over optimising for price. If you're a little less price sensitive and look at reviews then you can find great places quite easily.

For me though it's not about price. Airbnb offers a different product to a hotel. Hotels are great for short city breaks, but for longer stays (especially if I'm going to be working) Airbnb offers a superior product.

That said, these days I love finding small B&Bs over both hotels and Airbnbs. Hosts are great, rooms are always clean, and breakfast is included for an affordable price.

It should just die. It is one of the biggest causes of gentrification in the cities.

I dislike airbnb so much that I would pay money to make them fail faster.

It used to be great, now it's awful. The cleaning fees are inexcusable and the effect they have on search, making it unusable, is even more inexcusable. Our politicians are awful for not stepping in and forcing airbnb to knock off the poor behavior.

I love the idea of on demand rental of a fully furnished apartment, but the state of airbnb now is just worse than a hotel.

I had a couple quite fantastic experiences in the past, but now they are just awful. I don't even look at them as an option anymore.

I would tolerate 90% of the crap they do, the bad hosts, and the general lack of trust if they allowed searching by total cost/days, but cleaning fees being greater than the per night rate and therefore not part of the cost make it unusable.

It's very expensive whenever I look up. Sure, the apartments/rooms are quite nice and hype and well decorated, but that doesn't compensate the price (nor the fact that anything can go wrong I would be left without accomodation in the last second).

From my experience, Aribnb is still a decent option in Europe. I've never used them in Asia because prices are always significantly higher than hotels, which also offer much higher standards.

Five years ago I noticed all the things you saw and decided to go back to hotels. With hotel chains it’s a consistent experience. With Airbnb it was gambling.

Bigger Pockets created a lot of portfolio renters on Airbnb and created a cult for others to mimic. I briefly had a rental I was sub-leasing from a landlord and in turn renting it out to traveling nurses. Imagine many people doing this with multiple units to sub lease.

tbh I doubt the odd poor experience will kill it. A lot of their experiences are very good. I'm less convinced by their valuation being in excess of distribution players that have more markets, more tech and lot more lockin though. Ultimately AirBNBs moat is only a good brand, and their core market is people that will switch for the same standard of place at a lower price...

(and whenever I've seen AirBNB properties on other platforms, it's been cheaper to book with the other platform)

Whenever I travel, AirBNBs are still much cheaper than comparable hotels.

I have the same experience. A 3 bedroom villa with swimming pool compares in price to a room in a 4 star hotel (Canary Islands, Spain).

I suspect it varies greatly between geographies.

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