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Comment by ianpurton | Hacker News Reader

I have mixed success with AirBnB as a traveller. I would say 80% of my requests to stay in a place are either ignored or rejected. I'm mainly talking about hosts from the UK.

In the end I just stay in Hotels, it's less hassle, often cheaper.

As for Cuba, very surprised if they have 1000 properties available. Getting internet access in Cuba is pretty much impossible.

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Wow, that's surprising, I've been an AirBnB guest about 10 times and generally had a very good experience. I've had 100% response rate and only once had a problem - which was that the host had a problem with the utilities in the flat and had to cancel my booking a few days before. Annoying, but understandable and well communicated.

Perhaps it's worth looking at your photo and description to see if they can be improved, and also filtering your choices based on the host's reputation and description.

Not sure if a hosts reputation is affected by them ignoring requests.

Problem is, if I need a room I need to know quick if it's available or not.

You can see the host's response rate and typical response time on the accommodation page.

And some accommodation will have a "lightning" symbol which means you can book instantly without any waiting for communication required.

Yeah, this is why I've been leaning towards regular hotels more and more. You can see dates of availability, and confirmation is instant. With Expedia, I always have that stress factor of "are they going to say yes or no?" and often times I end up placing several inquiries just to cover my bases.

I agree - though there are a lot of airbnb hosts these days who do automatic confirmation. Like hotels, if you booked it, you got it, basically.

Does this mean you typically request same or next day bookings? From my experience, most AirBnB hosts are wary of doing anything last second as they typically need to plan ahead to accommodate a guest.

I had great success in Italy with very short notice bookings (a day or two ahead of time). Most of the places we stayed were set up to be full time rentals, which may make that more feasible.

I've had better luck with AirBnB booking way in advance. If you want something a month from now it's usually no problem, and even a week in advance is often ok. But if you want a room tomorrow, acceptance rates are very low, and hotels end up much easier.

Yeah AirBnB hasn't really taken off here in the UK as it has elsewhere. Not sure if that's a cultural thing (letting your home out to strangers) or something else. Like you said, much better to stay at a hotel or B & B if travelling to the UK

It does seem to depend on the country. I've had great success/response so far in Western Europe (France, Belgium) but my attempts to book something in Greece were met mostly with rejections. It seemed to me that they don't bother to update their calender, rather they use the Airbnb platform in a limited way: to put out an advertisement. This makes it impossible to search for vacancies quickly, you still need to contact every single host to ask if you can stay.

On the plus side, my best Airbnb experiences were in Greece, there were some fantastic hosts (and houses).

Thats interesting. I always thought bed & breakfast was a British "invention". The b&b's (in Scotland) I've stayed at have always been a pleasure, complete with toast and jam. Edit: sorry - didn't read your last paragraph about about b&b. But I would've thought b&b would be in the same market as airbnb?

But almost no actual "B&B"s are using airbnb, in my experience at least. The vast majority are spare rooms being let (or in some cases converted living rooms etc just to try and cope with london rents).

I spent about 4 months "between homes" and Airbnb got me through most of it. It's a hugely mixed experience, but in many ways I'm glad I did it.

I've had very good success with AirBnB as a traveler, both for advance-notice and short-notice bookings. We traveled around Italy for two weeks and mostly booked places a day or two in advance, with hardly any trouble.

Have you linked your Facebook profile, or similar? I've had great success in London using AirBnB, and know friends that have used it in plenty of rural settings.

Entire Place, Private Room, Shared Room or a mix?

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