r/travel • u/sokorsognarf • May 08 '23

Question Have you ditched Airbnb and gone back to using hotels?

Remember when Airbnb was new? Such a good idea. Such great value.

Several years on, of course we all know the drawbacks now - both for visitors and for cities themselves.

What increasingly shocks are the prices: often more expensive than hotels, plus you have to clean and tidy up after yourself at the end of your visit.

Are you a formerly loyal Airbnb-user who’s recently gone back to preferring hotels, or is your preference for Airbnb here to stay? And if so, why?

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u/singhal0389 May 08 '23

That is not an end user problem. This needs to be priced in the rental. It is basically restaurant charging you more because your plates were dirtier.

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u/Ab0rtretry May 08 '23

i mean, it's all posted in the listing. don't choose ones that have an exorbitant fee or list of requirements. and other booking sites list the entire charge on the search page.

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u/Dyssomniac May 08 '23

Caveat emptor only works if the marketplace isn't monopolized (as it is by AirBnB) and is regulated (which it isn't at all in many countries).

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u/Ab0rtretry May 08 '23 edited May 09 '23

it's not monopolized, there are plenty of massive sites. booking dot com for example, lists the total price on the search page. vrbo is another.

and you'd absolutely read the description of the rules of someone's house before booking it. if it's a spare room for rent or the whole place. caveat emptor always applies. this is an emotional reaction to not liking a shit business.

imagine complaining that you shouldn't have to read the well-organized information of what you're purchasing.

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u/Dyssomniac May 09 '23

It is absolutely monopolized. Booking.com is not remotely close to the same size of homeshare market as AirBnB, same with Vrbo (which is much better for vacation home rental).

Imagine defending a billion-dollar-company that is actively destroying the cultural fabric of cities, driving up rents around the developed world, and actively lobbying against regulations that would prevent AirBnB horror stories so whiny tourists can LARP living there.

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u/Ab0rtretry May 09 '23 edited May 09 '23

that's not what monopoly means. "homeshares" an airbnb are a tiny selection of the availability and usage and was not the conversation at all. i just booked an entire 2.5wk northern italy/southern france elopement using booking and vrbo with prices,availability and selection in the thousands of properties and no less in number than airbnb.

Imagine defending

LOL this entire rant... how the hell did you come anywhere near that conclusion? i didn't defend anything.

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u/Dyssomniac May 09 '23

and you'd absolutely read the description of the rules of someone's house before booking it. if it's a spare room for rent or the whole place. caveat emptor always applies. this is an emotional reaction to not liking a shit business.

imagine complaining that you shouldn't have to read the well-organized information of what you're purchasing.

This is a defense, that's what caveat emptor means - the onus of protection is on the consumer to know everything, rather than on the company to not be shitty. That works when you're working with mom-and-pop shops down the street. It doesn't work when you're engaging with a multi-billion dollar multinational corporation.

"homeshares" an airbnb are a tiny selection of the availability and usage and was not the conversation at all.

I misspoke - what I intended to say was AirBnB's shit model is effectively a monopoly on the travel-homestay world. It's rules and regulations set the tone for the market much in the same way that Apple going headphone-jack-less was the signal for everyone else to remove their own.

i just booked an entire 2.5wk northern italy/southern france elopement using booking and vrbo with prices,availability and selection in the thousands of properties and no less in number than airbnb.

Plural of anecdote isn't data, and I guarantee you the VAST majority of these are available on both platforms. Booking.com is significantly more about booking hotel rooms and does the majority of its business there; Vrbo had to be bought out by Expedia and merged into a much larger ecosystem to compete with AirBnB. I think Booking.com is growing as an alternative, but AirBnB is still effectively the master of the non-hotel market.