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Comment by Gigachad | Hacker News Reader

Shouldn’t it expected that a hotel would be able to provide a better service considering they are doing it in bulk and specialise in it. Vs a bunch of individual untrained hosts.

Seems more like Airbnb ran out of money to burn and hotels lifted their game.

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I think it's mostly the fact that AirBnB stopped being outside the law. Once municipalities started regulating them, hosts started paying taxes etc.. they lost the price edge.

In corporate lingo, I think their “core business” is any vacation rental? Partnering with hotels could perhaps have been a viable path for them to grow that and still fit with their business acumen. But I use other platforms for that service now.

What kind of partnership with hotels could they have made that would have set them apart from the dozen options I already have for booking hotels?

There's no need to be super different. AirBnB has a huge userbase, cashflow, reputation, etc... they ought to provide a good search and booking service to users. (And there's all the potential for adding more and more upsell points and value-added services. From flights, insurance, car rental, local activities, museum and national park tickets to ... whatever they are now fucking around with, like fitness and food.)

No, AirBnB just became much more expensive. And it's disguised as processing fees, cleaning fees, etc.

So if I ever take the risk of getting an Airbnb instead of a hotel, then I know the next time I book I'll pay cash directly with the host because it will be that much cheaper.

It's like uber: the bait and switch to a service that becomes less good and more expensive is costing them because the competition survived the first wave.

Also, the regulations caught up with them.

Basically, they wanted to win by scummy means, like a lot of American startup that calls doing illegal or immoral stuff "growth hacks".

Still worked well, they are a leader, but not enough to kill the game, and now they have to fight.

Good.

> ...the next time I book I'll pay cash directly with the host because it will be that much cheaper.

This probably won't work for you. It specifically violates Airbnb's TOS to attempt this, and Airbnb scans all messages between you and the host to ensure that you are not attempting this.

As for arranging it with a F2F conversation with the host, it's been years since I've rented an Airbnb and met a host F2F. That doesn't happen much any more.

The next ones I'll do it and I know it will work because I've been doing it regularly for years. I always get the personal phone number of the host, AirBnB can't do jack about it.

In fact, it's not legal for AirBnB to prevent it in my country.

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