Airbnb’s CEO spent 6 months living in his rentals and found the core problem | Hacker News Reader

Airbnb’s CEO spent 6 months living in his rentals and found the core problem

finance.yahoo.com

36 pointsalex_young67 comments

AirBnB used to be a great option compared to hotels. This gap is probably reversed at this point and hotels are becoming once again the preferred choice for many. AirBnB's disadvantages are mostly about very high price on per-night basis, high cleaning fees and many (often unreasonable) requirements from the hosts. Mostly regarding cleanliness upon departure.

That being said I think from my personal experience that there is a bigger problem with the service. I got a very bad experience from a relatively new all-5-star host. The host lied to us and AirBnB, tried to get more than $1000 for various claims and so on. At the end AirBnB did a very poor job at mediating the claim. Then I wrote a review. I tried to be as objective as possible. AirBnB simply deleted the review. They didn't ask us to correct anything or anything. They straight out deleted it.

I believe that by doing so AirBnB is misleading both guests and their investors. This creates an impression that the service is better than it actually is. That is likely inflating their stock price. I personally believe that there should be a class action lawsuit or Hindenburg research paper about this for them to do anything about this.

I wonder if this is mostly a US problem. I've been staying exclusively in Airbnbs around Africa/Asia for the last 2 years (usually a month at a time) and have never had any of these problems. The prices were always _significantly_ cheaper than trying to stay a hotel suite or any other option. The only thing cheaper were long term rentals, but they are harder to find/organize, especially as a foreigner.

I never had any cleaning requirements. I didn't trash any places, but I didn't leave them spotless. Sometimes, if I was in a rush I wouldn't have time to take the trash out before leaving. I never had any complaints from hosts, and most of my reviews claim that I am extremely tidy/clean guest.

My biggest issue with Airbnb is that the filtering/search doesn't work well. There isn't a penalty for "lying" (stretching the truth?) about certain things. Too many people put "Dedicated workspace" despite having no dedicated workspace. Some people are too honest and don't put "dedicated workspace" despite having what I would consider a great dedicated workspace.

It means I have to manually sit and look through the pictures to figure out if I'd have anywhere to work or not. I know a lot of people like to work from cafe's, but personally I hate doing that.

You can barely even figure out how many beds there really are without donning your detective hat

My experience was from Spain.

I got scammed to pay for things that were run down in the Airbnb the same way.

Host had a white couch with a delicate fabric in a rental beach vacation rental, already a bad decision.

I get there and we all comment on what a pity it was they picked that color because it had a record of every little spill on it. Not even coffee, just water or drinks, multiple spots. But we moved on and enjoyed our stay.

When we left we got a terrible “do not rent” super dramatic review with pictures that were trying to Make it seem like we left a mess and stained the couch. The pictures were a chip on the floor, a torn trash bag trying to make it seem like we left it like that inside, you could tell they went to the trash bin outside to take the picture, the trash bins in the bathrooms with stuff in them (isn’t that what they are there for?), etc

They wanted $800!

Anyway I reply saying that the couch was like that and that the trash cans are there to have trash in them. Airbnb mediation made us pay half like they were doing us a favor, and left the bad review in our profile so now we can’t rent anywhere.

I’m back to hotels.

I do cycling trips with my 10 year old son, we need a simple and cheap solution to spend a night in a different place every day. The requirements are: two beds or big double bed, cheap and breakfast included if possible.

I never found anything on Airbnb to satisfy my needs, an hotel was always the cheaper and easier option. I'm always checking Airbnb as it has rooms in small towns along our way that would make our trip easier.

The very few places on Airbnb cheaper than the hotel usually required a 10-20km detour. And I'm not even counting the extra steps needed which make Airbnb a bad choice, like the message to convince your host to accept your booking, the need to communicate with him about your arrival time, analysing the photos to figure out if you have one or two beds, the house rules about cleaning etc..

It's simple(and I'm not arguing against you, just adding further).

Hotels were cfated to fill a niche. Airbnb added "by a computer" after the essentially.

So many things they bypasswd were solved issues, or non issues.

The actual value add core, is so slender, that only the absolute breathless could have had something to market.

Fyi I have used their services greater than 10 times, and frankly, I would have been served better by using a hotel, each time.

Airbnb is good for its original raison d'etre: spare bedrooms. When it's whole units you're operating a (probably un- or poorly-regulated) hotel and competing against professionals.

With groups they're still somewhat unbeatable.

Usually the price of hotel rooms scales roughly linearly with the number of people you have with you.

With 6-8 people airbnb is almost always less than half the price of a hotel. And you can cook together, which often adds to the savings, as well as having a common room to hang out in the evening.

Hotels are usually not that nice to hang out in.

I use Airbnb for booking holiday home, that's unbeatable indeed and we can cook.

Places like Pigeon Forge, TN have condos/hotels where you can cook as a mini extended stay.

That's what I'm looking for: a cheap bedroom at someone's place for a night in the middle of nowhere, it used to be their core business.

I never found one, so we plan our trip to stop in big towns to get an hotel.

> an hotel

'hotel' gets a hard 'h', so it's "a hotel" btw

Is it inconceivable that folks might come from places where the H in hotel is silent?

not inconceivable, but i would figure more likely to be a holdover from a first language other than english

Getting into weeds nobody needs to, I'd probably not think anything about someone saying "an 'otel". As in I wouldn't even notice.

That's exactly my issue. Thanks to the previous fellow, I now know the rule and will remember it.

Could be cockney.

you're right i just looked it up in 'websters unabridged english' and it's right there

Thanks

It was always "an hotel" when I was at school. That was standard British English at least up until the 1970s/80s, no doubt derived from the fact that "hotel" is/was a loanword from French, where the "h" remains silent. Nowadays it's a somewhat archaic form that only posh older people would say, but it's certainly not incorrect.

whats a good british english dictionary?

The _full_ Oxford English Dictionary (aka 'OED') - multiple volumes with detailed entries of each word.

Eg: the third entry for 'Hotel' (n)

    3.3 A house for the entertainment of strangers and travellers, an inn; esp. one that is, or claims to be, of a superior kind. 

    1765 Smollett Trav. xxxix. (1766) II. 235 The expence of living at an hotel is enormous.

    1775 Ash, Hostel, an inn, an hotel.

    1776 R. King in Life & Corr. (1894) I. 20 By a Gentlemen who lately came out of Boston I was informed that they have two bake houses constantly employed in baking for their hotels.

    1783 Let. in H. Arnot Hist. Edinburgh App. 512 In 1763 there was no such place as an Hotel: the word indeed was not known, or only intelligible to French scholars.

    1806–7 J. Beresford Miseries Hum. Life (1826) xiv. i, Groping your way to the inn—(I beg pardon—hotel).

    1817 Walker, Hostel, Hotel, a genteel inn: this word is now universally pronounced and written without the s.

    1834 Medwin Angler in Wales II. 118, I‥returned slowly‥to my hotel.

contains notes on prior printed usages of the word through time.

Yeah the original premise was great.

When it started being an industry, that's when it started going wrong. Ruining city centers with stag parties in residential buildings. Inflating house prices. It's why we can't have nice things :(

That is awesome. Is your son on his own bike or are you on a tandem? How much time in the saddle per day is that?

We have our bikes and we travel around 70 to 100km a day. Last weekend we did 77km the first day, 95km the second day. This equates to 6-8 hours on the saddle. He found a passion for it and he keeps asking me to do such trips. What's helping also is that we live in a place with a lot of bike infrastructure, so we are always secure.

Your 10yo does 70km+ bike trips???? That’s incredible! Also makes me feel less than stellar about my own bike rides :P

I'm not a fit person (at least 20kg overweight) but I have strong legs which help me a lot. It seems my son inherited my legs, he powers through without complaining.

I think next year I'll try a week long 700km trip with him, I would like to follow the Rhine River up to the sea.

I hear the Moselle river valley is nice for bike tours, though not quite as long.

Hotels have also improved. Things like not needing to queue up to check in and get a room key (because now it appears automatically on your phone) are great, and make the Airbnb system of “I’ll meet you at the apartment at 2:30 unless I get held up at work or traffic is bad, in which case you’ll wait indefinitely” seem archaic.

We tried out Ibis Budget hotel last weekend. When I booked it I thought it's going to be crap, but 70€ a night with 2 breakfast was too good a deal.

It turned out great actually, it's a no thrill experience but it has all you need. There barely any employee there, you check-in using a computer at the entrance.

So yeah I agree that hotels improved

Ibis (and the rest of the Accor group) always seem solid. Budget, but done well. Unlike Travelodge.

Agreed, I've never been disappointed in Accor hotels ( Mercure and Ibis mostly)

Ibis is already the budget brand of accor group though. Ibis budget is very budget. Plastic bathrooms, often bunk beds etc.

Was that Paris?? Here in Spain you get a lot more than Ibis Budget for 70€ :)

It depends massively on the local condition where you live, I guess. AirBNB just deliver the service. It's hardly their fault if not enough people signed up in your area.

My typical experience in small towns where I live is that there is no hotel, or it's way out of town and clearly aimed at passing motorists. The same town might have 20+ AirBNBs, a mix of shared and exclusive. So that's where I stay.

My complaint is not about the number of host, it is mostly about their price which is not competitive when comparing with hotels.

Try Warmshowers. You'd be staying with real people.

Didn't know about this, thanks I'll have a look!

https://welcometomygarden.org/ is pucking up, slowly expanding from Benelux. A great option, unknown to many

The article title is a lot of clickbait, but the core user-need driven approach to building features should resonate with most builder audiences on this site. Honestly, I'm really not sure what the product team was doing if they weren't noticing these issues coming up over and over and over again in user feedback. Anyone who stays in Airbnbs 10 times will encounter at least one or two of these core issues across their stays (crazy cleaning fees, additional contracts needing to be signed after booking, weird and extensive checkout steps).

For the last 2-3 years Airbnb has publicly announced a set of improvements on the platform. Yes, these should have been fixed ages ago, but I commend Chesky and the Airbnb team for actually taking action.

Price transparency, visibility of check-out steps beforehand, improvement around single rooms (true OG Air Bed and Breakfast style) are welcome steps and, in my humble opinion, I think Airbnb should continue to pivot away from hotels (standardized boring experiences) and lean into the uniqueness of each room/home.

Those weird fees etc are obvious and likely known by the product team. It's likely they were imposed by the business, not originating with the product team. As such they also couldn't remove them.

Yeah, I mean it’s fine for the CEO to focus on higher-level things if someone below them is aware of the problems and working on them, or making sure that the product decisions are based on the experiencing of using the product… The article seems overly congratulatory.

He could just get coffee with someone who uses AirBnB a lot and they could probably tell him exactly what sucks about it. Maybe even one of his own employees. Lots of engineers use AirBnB, and the AirBnB app apparently has a thousand engineers working on it.

No no, you need to hire consulting firms to get that level of insight my friend

VRBO has some of the same issues and we don’t see articles about them. Airbnb came long after VRBO was in business and VRBO is still striving. Hosts post to both usually. My dad has used VRBO for a number of years and tried Airbnb. Hated the Airbnb platform and has stayed exclusively on VRBO.

I was looking for properties to rent in Italy and VRBO was insanely better than the airbnb prices, data, and options. I was really shocked because I always thought of VRBO as some sort of mostly-luxury option with limited properties available.

It felt like an ad for their new airbnb rooms he talked about.

I also found the core AirBnb problem, negative reviews are deleted, everything is close to 5 stars. So I search for apartments on booking.com instead.

> CEOs face a real risk of operating in a bubble and never seeing the actual world their workers face,” the authors write. “Spending time with the rank and file and with savvy external frontline constituencies is an indispensable way to gain reliable information on what is really going on in the company and in the industry.”

Soo much this. I've seen so many decisions that make work at the front line harder. They mean good they want to achieve a target but often it's a lack of information which worsens the effectiveness of decisions

So basically he never read or heard about any average review or complaint? It is the not the lowest 10%

Airbnb is a bad deal and a bad experience

As a founder, he then could’ve hired any random ceo to do his job

How could he read a bad review when AirBnb systematically deletes them?

This sounds like a PR piece to deflect from issues and complaints people have been having. “Oh look, he has been struggling with those, too”. “The issues are definitely noticed by the CEO now.” And it also throws in an advertisement for some upcoming new features at the end.

There're very few businesses where this sort of dogfooding is viable, Airbnb's domain is such that the dude could effectively work ~24 hours a day with almost no overhead.

> And Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi got behind the wheel and moonlighted as a driver during the pandemic, which led him to "reevaluate every single assumption that we’ve made

I bet he didn't try surviving on Uber pay.

> reevaluate every single assumption

Oh wow, took a whole executive to figure that out /s

> And Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi got behind the wheel and moonlighted as a driver during the pandemic, which led him to "reevaluate every single assumption that we’ve made

Most of those are made with a huge amount of privilege.

If an executive trying the product leads to revelations about many assumptions, doesn’t that actually mean the executive has failed at building a good management team and structure as the principle revelation? Although given that track record, it’s clear that root cause revelation will not register.

So the 'fix' to the insane prices is to offer co-habitation with 'safety features'? How about just going the full distance and share beds while we are at it.

I bet it is super weird to have the CEO come in and demand all sorts of changes because he did the thing that his product team probably should have done themselves.

thats just a re-marketing strategy for private rooms only. That itself didn't sell as well so the've remarketed it to make it sound more appealing.

Some of the changes [he tweeted them] have been great. But i think the price and nuance makes hotels a better and cheaper option. For short stays at least

I released an improved AirBnB search a few months back: https://stay100.app

I can't get the filter for max price to work.

Sometimes price is missing from the AirBnB API for some searches/locales.

Are you able to send me the AirBnB search URL?

“CEOs on average, just 6% of their time is spent with frontline teams and 3% with customers. They spend 72% of their time in meetings.‘

That’s the problem with most businesses right there.

One could argue those 3% and 6% are included in the 72%..

Airbnb search is broken af and full of dark patterns to force feed consumers app preferred listings and/or maximize user ‘engagement’ on app.

Pretty basic options missing from app search: - sort by price. SORT not filter. - search by categories. These are only available in the landing page feed and disappear when you search for a particular place

Another dark pattern: minimum number of nights.

I've never used Airbnb since they screwed me over. If something isn't right they just don't care. I don't trust them at all.

he should do it again.

stopped trusting start ups a long time ago

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