The CEO of Airbnb wants you to charge less for your house
businessinsider.com
businessinsider.com
We're booking a trip at the moment and finding in many locations we're better off booking a hotel - they're often cheaper, closer to public transport, we can leave bags at reception etc.
Being able to book an Airbnb where people have reviewed the cleanliness and see pictures of the actual room is invaluable. For $30 a night (after fees) I have many nice apartments and small houses with kitchens and living areas to choose from. Higher end hotels with similar standards are either not available or closer to $100.
My mom runs her house as an Airbnb now. She puts a ton of work into the turnovers. So it's a similar amount of work whether guests stay for 2 nights or 7 nights. So yeah, it can be expensive and maybe it pushes people to do longer stays, but that actually makes sense for whole rentals.
But when you're searching for something, you just don't want the price to double once you get to the checkout page.
I wish they also had more options for just a place to crash for a night, like in a spare bedroom.
Hotels are certainly nicer for many cases. But Airbnb is worth it in some cases still.
couchsurfing was a great option once upon a time. the customary 'fee' of paying the host for their takeout or dinner and drinks for the night was really worth it.
i guess this informal custom has gone the way of hitch-hiking?
These people were not trying to pay a mortgage and professional housekeepers and turn a profit. They were just trying to recover some sunk costs.
If you look at hotels vs. apartments or houses, the maintanence and cleaning costs of residential housing are very high because you don’t have the economies of scale you need. The hotel cleaners push their cart down the hall 20 feet while the airbnb cleaners drive all over town, and that’s just one of the many ways hotels are more efficient.
- Used to be very personal/unique. You’d stay in someone’s house while they were camping/whatever for the weekend, they’d meet you to handover keys, give you tips about the area, etc. Now it’s just some landlord with 17 properties that you never see
- You almost always have to go to some random storefront far from the apartment to pick up the keys
- When things go wrong, there’s no front desk to help you out. For example, I stayed at an Airbnb with very sketchy wiring, power went out in a snow storm and the place became freezing cold, took a full day before the host would do anything
- Hosts often try sketchy things, like making you pay off platform damage deposits
- Not only are there no cleaners, if you don’t clean to their satisfaction, they charge you extra
- Hotels offer so many things that Airbnbs generally don’t: late checkout, watch your bags, gym, pool, etc.
- And yeah, it’s very, very often more expensive than a hotel
I also don’t like that it’s contributing to making longterm rental markets worse worldwide, by eating up already scarce rental properties. I’m very, very bearish on Airbnb longterm.
And having to sneak out the guiltily because you know everyone else in the apartment block hates the owner for turning their apartment into an Airbnb without their consent.
What's not to like?
Does Airbnb truly get enough fraud that it's worth doing things this ridiculous?
Now tons of places use it.
The privacy policy I read for plaid is interesting in that it would allow for things like monitoring my balances and velocity of cash flow and then selling that data, at least to plaid partners, which is pretty much everyone.
I cynically think the push to “authenticate” with these financial deep inspection tools is to be able to identify more lucrative customers.
I do have a zero dollar checking account that I give out and just push cash into to pay bills that I can use. The biggest risk of losing those account credentials is to mess up bill pay or to have them apply for credit or something.
Hosts always act surprised when you tell them about the issues, but there's no recompense for a person who finds themselves in yet another mildewy house.
But, in general, I'll take the predictability of hotels. And, as someone else mentioned, if you don't have a car, hotel features like being able to leave your bag at reception can be really useful. Yes, you can sometimes find luggage storage (rare in most places) or take advantage of some hotel's luggage storage but again you're getting into friction.
Now that every blue collar worker is following this method, there are too many renters on Airbnb and they’ve essentially priced themselves out of business.
I know a few people who rented from an owner and sub-leased to long term renters (traveling nurses, tech consultants) and they’re hurting lately because there’s too much competition. They don’t want to lower prices because they are already on the hook for rent to the owner and they don’t want to lower their profit. So it’s this “who blinks first” situation or renters breaking leases because their Airbnb model doesn’t work anymore.
I followed this process for almost a year but had to break lease for unrelated reasons.
Is it a $100B business at 5% interest rates and slower travel going forward? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
[1] https://archive.ph/2020.12.13-031305/https://www.nytimes.com...
Now demand exceeds supply, hosts have less incentive to provide transparent pricing since their listings are more likely to be quickly booked due to the scarcity of available properties.
But, it's only when there's an oversupply of listings that competition among hosts intensifies, prompting them to adopt transparent pricing as a competitive advantage to attract potential guests.
Prices for scarce resources should naturally go up, and down if there is lots of competition. If someone is charging too much, they won't sell as much as someone who sets a reasonable price. If hotels are cheaper, then hotels will outperform Airbnb.
I still don't see why you need to ask anyone to lower their prices. The market will force them to lower their prices... or it won't if the price is set properly.
Unless I'm missing something that prevents the market from doing what markets do. Which was why I asked the question.
For markets to operate efficiently and quickly adjust prices based on supply and demand, you need transparent pricing. He is suggesting people actually compare local prices when setting their own.
What is not working, is people are not comparing all prices or they are not available. When they do, they won't rent at Air BnB. This will be his loss, when hotels claw back patronage from bullshitting Air BnBs.
You're not hearing the argument. It's not my argument. It's the way markets are meant to operate. You don't need to ask anyone to check local prices. If people have something they want to sell, they will sell it at the proper price. If they set the wrong price, it will not sell.
So, in this case, they will get instant feedback that they've done something wrong, because their rental units, will not be rented. They will make no money from them. They will be compelled to lower their prices if they want to rent them. You don't need to ask them to do anything, they will discover for themselves, the market will force them to realize their mistake.
What i'm asking is why is the market insufficient in this case? Why is it not working?
But your argument is making me think it works fine, it's just not producing the results that some people would rather see.
As they have down here in Australia, by forcing some central price discovery for things like fuel and electricity.
Why do you oppose big business making more money off of you? ;)
Like offer a platnium tier where to sign up you can't make guests clean up the house themselves or sign any ridiculous additional contracts?
First time I’ve seen this, I’m sure there will be some excuse, but I find it hard to believe that’s a coincidence.
The problem with this sort of observation is that certain data points leap out at you (I don't mean you personally, but all of us) because of your priors. (For example, you're much more likely to notice something that you disagree with or dislike.) They then appear to have a lot more significance than they would if you had noticed all the equivalent data points equally. Past explanations in case helpful: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que....
As for Airbnb, the HN threads have been predominantly negative for many years, as anyone can verify with a minute or two on HN Search.