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Comment by Glawen | Hacker News Reader

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..

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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'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 :(

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

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!

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.

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