Stayed at an Airbnb last year where I left a ~4 star review taking off one star because of excessive noise from the bus stop outside (otherwise positive). Couple months later I get an email saying my review was removed for violating Airbnb policy. Had to contact support where they told me the host had submitted (fake) WhatsApp screenshots of me asking them for money to post a positive review and so they removed my review. No matter what I said customer support refused to reinstate my review. The most alarming thing is that they removed my review without any input from me. Interestingly, the property had added additional co-hosts where that property was their only property after my stay. Presumably these are fake profiles they used to file the dispute so it wouldn’t impact their main account.
In any case, I am never staying at an AirBnb again. Be aware that any rating on AirBnb can be easily manipulated by the host.
Also if you have status at a hotel, perks like room upgrades and late checkout are invaluable.
Value proposition isn’t there anymore either, airbnbs used to be super affordable but now match the price of hotels and if they don’t are in inconvenient locations.
Not to mention the impact it has on local housing supply and pricing.
Pricing is still relevant, at least in Europe (from my experience). I’ve done a lot of low-budget traveling with small groups of students in France this year, and AirBnB was (unfortunately) consistently and significantly less expensive than hotels.
Also, many hotels don’t give you access to a kitchen, which really sucks if you don’t want to spend money eating out every day.
There are probably better local websites in the countries you’re going to if you want apartments. I don’t know any in France, but they have them in other countries. Ask around. Vacation destinations are literally all apartments for rent by tourists.
Unfortunately, the pricing still makes sense for larger groups of people.
There are far too many of these leeches taking up valuable housing in the most desirable part of my city
Why should you get to use that desirable space 100% of the time instead of many different people being able to enjoy it?
Be aware that any rating on AirBnb can be easily manipulated by the host.
This is the same reason that Yelp is bullshit. And Amazon reviews. And pretty much any reviews you can find online. It’s why people used the reddit search flag. Everything is gamed and manipulated. People suck.
Dang so all I have to do to scam is have another WhatsApp account and send myself threatening messages 😯
Also at a hotel: “It smells like smoke.” “Let me take you conveniently to another identical room for free.”
They only reason I started using hotels again is because my fiance gets good deals and they usually upgrade us because she works in the industry 🙂
AirBNB is only good if it is an extremely unique/convenient location and there are no hotels reasonably nearby. Otherwise Hotel absolutely > AirBNB
225 a night hotel would be a freaking dream. Most hotels cost 100 a night. I agree a cabin in the woods our somewhere else special.
But landlords are putting up ordinary homes up and people actually rent them. More money then sense.
My problem is that people talk as if these are the only options.
There are other services, like VRBO, that do the same thing and usually have the same properties. AirBNB is garbage now, so just use an alternative that doesn’t have the same bad policies and high fees.
Agreed. If I’m going on vacation I avoid cities as much as possible and want to be in the middle of nowhere in nature. That means no hotels for 10s of kilometers, but there’s usually at least one person renting out a room or something similar. I’ve also never experienced any of the things in this meme in places like that, but that could also be because it’s an American thing, which wouldn’t surprise me.
AirBNB was great when it first started out. It was basically people renting out a room in their home for a night or two, for far cheaper costs than hotels and in areas where a hotel wasn’t as readily available. It was a good way for those folks to make some cash on the side and helped the traveler find convenient low cost housing for a couple nights
Unfortunately companies and people decided they could buy up properties and start a business selling out rooms, prices skyrocketed and it no longer became worth it. I just stick to hotels now (or hostels if I ever decide to backpack through Europe or something)
The last few times I’ve used AirBNB it’s been a pretty much like borrowing someones home.
For one we were travelling in Portugal and stayed in this old portugese lady’s home in a small village along the coast. Really sweet lady, but a bit of a language barrier as she struggled with both english and spanish.
Next weekend me and some friends are renting a whole 4 bedroom summer house in southern Norway to use as a base for a weekend of diving.
But in general I’ve grown tired of the concept, and the scarcity it brings to the housing market in some cities is predatory.
I’m Portuguese, Airbnb “crappy clean before you leave” and 600$ fees haven’t caught up yet luckily. Last time I used a Airbnb was in 2016, rented a room on S. Miguel (main Azorean Island) for a fair price.
Since then I mostly just book hotels wherever I go, be it Europe or abroad. In Europe, because it’s just easier, often times cheaper, more flexible check-in/check-out and doesn’t have the language barrier like you said. And abroad because I just don’t feel as comfortable and it’s expensive
It was honestly quite nice. We could communicate decently enough, and I believe it was her kids who handled the booking. Was down by Vila Nova de Milfontes, super nice and calm place, would definitely want to go back one day.
Portugal was in 2019 and this years is just a 5 hour drive from where I live. The Norwegian krone (NOK) is pretty weak right now, so we decides to not go abroad this year and save money for an upcoming mortgage. I’m doing well, but we’re by no means in a financial position to do multiple vacations a year 😅
Yeah and I apologize, I was talking in a very US specific context and I should have specified that (the hostel comment kind of muddled it as well). I haven’t tried airbnb abroad, and I’m glad it’s more reasonable over in Portugal and Norway at least so i’ll check it out if or when I decide to head that way. Just venting some general frustration using it in the US in my recent experiences.
I’m just here to say fuck air bnb. Ban that shit for it’s contribution to the housing crisis.
In my neighborhood, half the houses are AirBnBs… Because we’re close to tourist destinations. 4 of my 5 neighbors are AirBnBs.
Enforce zoning regulations and apply rental laws or hotel regulations to Air BnBs. If you make them actually follow the rules, it suddenly becomes vastly less profitable.
Eliminate zoning and other regulations that make it impossible to build sufficient housing supply.
If you can’t do it from your instance page, open a tab on your browser and search for a font replacer. After you find one, type in what you want, pick a font, copy it, and then paste it to your screen name on your instance under your settings.
There are a lot of options :)
Some letters from some fronts may not properly show up on certain themes, though.
The housing crisis is caused by property taxes being too low, particularly on land values. Banning small rentals won’t work because they’ll continue to extract rent under longer-term leases.
We already have plenty of houses. Increase taxes and their market values will drop.
The housing crisis is caused by many things.
Ban the ownership of single family residential properties by corporations. I don’t see a world where it makes sense for houses to be owned by companies.
This is a big one, and I’d add in an aggressive tax for owning multiple properties. Make single land ownership ~70% of what it currently is, and each additional property increases all your property tax by 300%. Couple that with getting rid of idiotic exemptions (seriously…I have a friend with parents that owned more than a hundred different properties in a semi-rural area [one that was going to become suburban soon] and paid nearly no taxes because they plunked a few cows onto each one until the development companies paid the big moolah for them) and there would be plenty of homes for everyone. Last report I remember said we had more than enough empty homes sitting around to house every homeless person multiple times over.
What would you say the housing crisis is? I’m viewing it not as a shortage, just that that market prices are too high.
Not that I strongly disagree with your suggestion, but taxes that raise money have an advantage over bans that cost money.
Many leading economist argue for land value tax only as a way to incentivize the most efficient use for our most valuable resource. If land tax was used instead of property tax, a multi-acre plot in a dense urban would be taxed just as much a multi-story apartment building that takes up the same amount of space.
See the Strongtowns article on the subject. https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2019/3/8/if-the-land-tax-is-such-a-good-idea-why-isnt-it-being-implemented
