Comment by pizzafeelsright | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pizzafeelsright | Hacker News Reader

pizzafeelsright

Throwing house parties in Airbnb rentals violates the platform’s policies, yet remains a common issue for hosts. “We’ve used machine learning techniques to look at the last billion and a half guest arrivals and see which yielded a party and which didn’t,” Chesky says. “If you try to do this through a human eye, you might not notice any patterns, but AI can look through over a billion data points, find a lot of similarities and create a rule set.

My readings suggest there are human hosts that cancel based upon the high likelihood of undesired guests for reasons not allowed by the platform.

Unless there is a way to guarantee that a full refund is given to the guest (plus 10% for every day before 48-72 hours) I am not interested.

If I was a host - I would like to know that someone would be responsible - apart from "home owners insurance" for any damages resulting from a party.

I personally have never used the service. I do not intend to either because I know at the hotels I do not have to take out the trash or get the last minute cancellation.

For larger groups and families I have used other services where I can communicate directly with the owner. I fail to see the use of a middle-man that has no direct interest beyond service fees.

I've arrived at a hotel to discover that they are over booked and they don't have a room for me. Sure they put me in a taxi/Uber to another hotel, but not the one that I booked, not where I wanted to be, no recourse other than suck it up. This isn't only an Airbnb problem

I'm sure it happens (especially with smaller/cheaper properies) but haven't had this problem with hotels/B&Bs over many hundreds of nights over the past decade.

Where? I have never encountered this over several hundred of hotel stays?

Based on the many dozens of hotels and Airbnbs I’ve stayed in, this is a much bigger problem for Airbnb.

I've had this happen exactly once in I don't know how many hundreds of nights of hotel stays. Yes, it can happen, but it's incredibly rare and not something I worry about.

Something similar happened to me at the Luxor in Las Vegas a few years ago. The only reason anyone would want to stay at that hotel is because of the pyramid, and I specifically booked a room in the pyramid, before which I didn't even know they also had some plain towers next to it. I go to check in, and they inform me that I'm staying in one of the plain towers. When I told them I was only staying there because of the pyramid, they informed me that "we put people in the towers all the time, you're lucky because sometimes we don't even have any rooms at all and send people to another property." And that was the last time I will ever stay at the Luxor.

TL;DR: Fuck the Luxor in Las Vegas.

On Airbnb you do communicate directly with the owner? Or maybe directly means something different to you.

Also, I've stayed in many, and only rarely been asked to take out the rubbish. Also...not a big deal.

Phone number. Personal email.

When you confirm an airbnb reservation, you get the host's phone number. One caveat: As long as the host is actually a person and not a property management company.

If someone messages me and asks for my phone number to discuss a possible stay, I'd be happy to provide it.

I'm an airbnb (super)host.

> For larger groups and families I have used other services where I can communicate directly with the owner

Which are those services and how do they differ from Airbnb?

We almost exclusively use VRBO in the US. We’ve rented places in San Diego every year, and many years places around Arizona for the past 7 or 8 years.

In general, we’ve found VRBO cheaper than Airbnb. In fact we only used them for the first time this year because we went to another country and Airbnb seemed like the best option. Airbnb’s chat interface seemed better than anything VRBO offers, but other than that the experience wasn’t significantly different.

We’ve only had one issue that I can recall. An owner ghosted us on our way to San Francisco and we had to scramble to find a place on our way there (we had a few days as we visited Sequoia and Yosemite). Not having the place we expected in the city meant we had to drive into town to do touristy things when we expected to have our car in a secure garage. Of course our car then got broken into, which is exactly why we wanted a place with secure parking in walking distance to the touristy stuff.

Same with zero problems.

One host asked us to let us know when we would arrive. I didn't respond as it wasn't any of their business and after check in.

Incredible attitude.

Really? I have looked on VRBO several times and never found anything close to what I could find on ABnB, perhaps it is the location or price range I was looking at wasn't as popular on VRBO. I suppose I will have to check them out again some time.

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