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Comment by nostromo | Hacker News Reader

A night at a hotel is so much more expensive than a night at an apartment. That arbitrageurs would find and exploit this loophole seems obvious in retrospect. This invisible hand is pushing up the cost of an apartment, and down the cost of a hotel room.

People talk a lot about the downsides of Airbnb on HN, but there's also a big upside -- increased mobility. When I was 20 I would have loved a worldwide leaseless exchange for furnished apartments, both short-term and long.

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That arbitrageurs would find and exploit this loophole seems obvious in retrospect. This invisible hand is pushing up the cost of an apartment, and down the cost of a hotel room.

What we need now is software that can find apartments for rent and people looking for a place to stay, offer to rent the apartment for a bit less than the owner wants and offer to rent it to the people for a bit more than they're looking to pay, pocketing the difference and doing this hundreds of times per second. This will provide "liquidity" and make the AirBnB market "more efficient".

You joke, but nothing makes the landlord or the renter accept those offers. They can simply leave the original offer on airbnb and wait to get matched with a willing counterparty for the price they want.

In my experience, of looking around hotels in Europe and Australia, there have always been better value hotels than airbnb apartments. All the Airbnb places were not cheap at all, and were going for the more expensive crowd. They were mostly out of the way, whereas we got some great hotels in the city.

I've had the same experience in major American cities - hotels being cheaper than AirBnB - but only when looking at full apartment rentals on AirBnB. You can (obviously) usually rent a couch cheaper than a hotel room, but that's not really comparing apples to apples.

That being said, both AirBnB and hotels make it difficult to compare their prices "apples to apples" as hotels tend not to include taxes and service fees in their posted prices / AirBnB tends not to include cleaning fees (last time I checked)

Not to be snarky but havnt hostels provided this in the past? When I graduated highschool I traveled around Europe and stayed in hostels for less than $20 per night. Far cheaper then typical airbnb rates.

I don't want to stay in the same place as creepy old dudes and shitfaced teenagers.

I've stayed in plenty of hostels where this isn't a problem.

I've stayed in multiple apartments where it was never a problem and, by design, won't be.

Yeah shit-faced teenagers, old people, drunks and people who have sex on couches, beds, or god-knows would never stay in an apartment.

Plastic couch cover not included.

You've missed my point, which is that I don't have to share the apartment. I can rent the whole thing.

A hotel room is not quite as good because a lot of people seem to think that "On Holiday" is secret dickhead code for "Be As Loud As You Like". Certainly, more such people than in a regular apartment block.

Of course, the trouble with AirBnb is that it means all the people who think that "On Holiday" is secret dickhead code for "Be As Loud As You Like" do end up in regular apartment blocks. There may not be so many of them as in a hotel, but the actual residents have to deal with them all year.

^^ That was my point as well. I didn't miss your point, Jacque; I just thought it was ridiculous. I've never seen HN comments continue this long; good job.

I don't disagree. But I was talking about my perspective, as a traveller.

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