Airbnb is largely incentivized not to report at all, at least in the short term (Q3 earnings call coming up, we need everyone in the support staff to "improve" their numbers).
Airbnb is clearly in the money-extraction phase of the VC-funded b2c cycle, it's not like we haven't seen this before. This turd is usually served with a side of "acquiring every potential competitor", so that the con can go on for as long as possible.
I've been decreasingly satisfied with airbnb (no horror stories). I think I've done roughly a 50-50 split between them and hotels, depending on the area. It's not exactly hard to switch back to hotels either, airbnb which now has premium prices really only makes sense if the service is premium too. Peace of mind is a huge factor for vacations.
I love Airbnb and have booked dozens of stays through them.
I listened in on the earnings call yesterday and heard lots of good things. But as a prospective investor my main concern is how they plan to deal with increasing circumvention of the platform.
There's professional short-term property management services in every market now, and they don't want to give Airbnb a cut.
I am literally typing this comment from a cabin that I discovered on Airbnb but booked direct to save money. The listing contained text inviting you to visit their website to book direct and avoid fees.
I've also re-booked properties I've stayed at in the past by contacting hosts directly, and received offers from hosts via Airbnb message to book outside of Airbnb for a discount.
So a major problem for Airbnb is that they don't really own the relationship between hosts and guests.
I'm not very surprised, most of the travel industry is getting hit hard. On a side note, I had a very bad experience with Airbnb. I found out, because it happened to me, that they remove negative reviews of hosts. I lot of the rating on their site are goosed.
Well, this certainly makes me want to never book an AirBnB again. You'd think AirBnB would be more alarmed about the reputational and consequent business hit of this sort of thing. Maybe they will be after this article?
AirBnB used to be a great option compared to hotels. This gap is probably reversed at this point and hotels are becoming once again the preferred choice for many. AirBnB's disadvantages are mostly about very high price on per-night basis, high cleaning fees and many (often unreasonable) requirements from the hosts. Mostly regarding cleanliness upon departure.
That being said I think from my personal experience that there is a bigger problem with the service. I got a very bad experience from a relatively new all-5-star host. The host lied to us and AirBnB, tried to get more than $1000 for various claims and so on. At the end AirBnB did a very poor job at mediating the claim. Then I wrote a review. I tried to be as objective as possible. AirBnB simply deleted the review. They didn't ask us to correct anything or anything. They straight out deleted it.
I believe that by doing so AirBnB is misleading both guests and their investors. This creates an impression that the service is better than it actually is. That is likely inflating their stock price. I personally believe that there should be a class action lawsuit or Hindenburg research paper about this for them to do anything about this.
I'm a power user of Airbnb. I have never disliked a service as much that I pay continue to pay for other than LinkedIn. Both of these are because I have/had little choice. What it all comes down to is getting a shitting experience and paying a premium for it.
I have a 30+ day stay that had been booked close to 6 months in advanced canceled 7 days before my stay because the user sold their house. Airbnb said they would help me find a new comparable place. What they meant was they would send me a $200 gift card and say tough shit that all the comparable houses are booked already.
I hope they get regulated hard. Maybe someday they will start giving a shit about their users too.
My team develops a platform (data.rabbu.com) thats based in large part on Airbnb data and I swear its kind of ridiculous how much hate Airbnb gets on social media. Like for one thing - compared to the other options Airbnb is doing WAY more for both hosts and guests. Try to get someone on the line at VRBO or Booking.com that cares one iota about any issues you have. Everything else is anecdotal. I think having a bad experience when you're on vacation is like 10x worse than anything else. So any bad experience with an Airbnb gets amplified and whenever people get a chance they'll go blue in the face telling you about the time some shady host tried to put them on ice and harvest their organs. Cleaning fees going up? Guess what - cleaning sucks, and the hospitality industry got completely gutted by Covid. So maybe they're not trying to rip you off, maybe they can't find anyone to clean for the price everyone stills expects based on pre-Covid travel.
Maybe your market is different, but Airbnb is hardly a monopoly on either short term housing or vacation rentals these days. The entire travel booking industry has caught up.
Similarly to the OP, both my wife and I had to pull teeth for weeks to get the full refunds we were entitled to after booking airbnb units. We both had dozens of stays and 5 star reviews under our belts prior to those experiences, dating back through 2013. In my case, it was a unit that the host admitted was infested with rats prior to arrival. In my wife’s, it was a unit that didn’t remotely match the photos of the listing.
At this point it’s my very last resort for booking any kind of stay, which is to say I’ve effectively sworn off the service. Since then, I’ve had no trouble finding vacation rentals elsewhere. For $900, yeah, I’d chargeback in a snap.
I wonder how much of that profit is 'stolen' from hosts and guests through poor customer service?
There are multiple occasions that I've booked an Airbnb only to find the house doesn't exist and the host's phone number is no longer connected, yet somehow Airbnb won't issue a refund without lots of hassle.
Possibly 5% of my bookings on Airbnb have turned out to be fraudulent in some way which disadvantages me financially and leaves Airbnb with more money in their pockets. If I'm not unique, that's a big contributor to the company bottom line!
TBH I haven't used AirBNB in a long time (too many small hassles + one big bad experience), so it's hard for me to say at this point.
I do know that similar systems (Uber, at least) have had issues with leaky reviews leading to retaliation. It's hard to implement a system like that, especially when your users have safety, money, and comfort on the line.
I've only heard hate about Airbnb in the last 6 months. Very expensive and very bad experiences all around, almost everybody choosing to go back to hotels. Not sure what change exactly but their reputation seems to be nosediving.
I recently rented an airbnb in France. The place straight up lied about its amenities. But because those lies sent me scrambling for two days to purchase the things rhe space was lacking I didn't report it until my 3rd day ( on a one month stay and I brought it up with the host on the first day)
Airbnbs response: tough luck. You only have 1 day to report if the host lies. After that, it doesn't matter how much they lied, it's your responsibility.
And it's not worth the credit card challenge if you are a frequent traveler because you will get banned from the platform and they have an almost total monopoly on a certain type of property.
Thanks for stranding me in a foreign country where I had no support network airbnb.
Coming from a guest perspective where I've had things go wrong during my stays, Airbnb has been absolutely horrible to deal with. It's literally gambling with your vacation, because if anything goes wrong you can count on Airbnb to take your money and run. Why do we give so much money to what is essentially a middleman that provides almost nothing of value?
I've had plenty of complaints in the past about terrible airbnb hosts, but this seems to me to be clearly motivated to bring more money into AirBNB at the expense of the hosts and neighbors. Just like Paypal made conscious decisions to ignore customer fraud and hold sellers liable for everything, now AirBNB is trying to squeeze more out of the hosts by supporting and enabling bad behavior by guests, removing options for hosts to control or respond to terrible customers. I stopped using AirBNB several years ago, but then I noticed that hotels have copied AirBNB's shitty policies, like the price doubling on the last page due to unexpected fees. They're enshitifying the whole hospitality industry.
"It's a solved problem" does not mean that it never happens. It means it's easily a manageable cost of doing business. Again, ALL rental listing platforms have this issue and they're doing fine.
First, AirBnB will kick hosts off the platform if they find out.
Second, as another commenter mentioned, many customers appreciate the support and guarantees paying through AirBnB gives them. All it takes is one shitty experience or getting scammed for folks to think twice about going off the platform.
Hosts often also get the short end of the stick, and get the similarly non-existent recourse opportunities. The issue is not with either - it's the way AirBnB does its business. Hotels began to seem attractive again also because vacationers don't want to risk their precious time and money. Hotels at least have experience, and the regulators up their ass.
I travel a lot. I've had so many bad experiences with AirBnB. Despite their high fees, it's almost impossible to get their customer support to read any kind of complaint and give an apropos response. Their responses are usually non-sequitur: they don't give an on-topic response to the issue.
I switched to just using Bonvoy/Marriott and staying in hotels. Now I have a high status level (titanium), and they really do anything they can to make me happy. And actually, there is much rarely any issue for me to complain about: mostly they just get things right in the first place. And with high status, they give me room upgrades, free breakfast, late checkout, free nights and points.
Now I only use AirBnB for stays of a month or more.
If you didn't know this already. "Poor" AirBnb here is simply letting customers cancel their stays without even letting hosts know and is then not paying hosts [1].
Note that a lot of these "hosts" are often small guesthouses that barely make rent and now have basically nothing for the next months. Of course you have your fair share of "rent hackers" on AirBnb but beyond that a lot of people run genuine small businesses around the platform and care a lot about their guests.
I love love love AirBNB. I host w/ my apartment in NYC and it's enabled me to travel around the world this year and still have a home base when I need it. I've used AirBNB a lot in those travels.
BUT (there's always a 'but' isn't there). I'm skeptical. On two fronts:
First, it's becoming increasingly difficult to make reservations as a guest in a nice place unless you're planning 4-6 months ahead of time. Some people have the luxury of doing that, many do not. I've just taken reservations for both Xmas and New Year's eve at my place in NYC and it's barely the end of July.
As a guest, this irks me. I spent 3 weeks in London recently, booked the trip about a month in advance, and tried to no avail to find a place on AirBNB -- nada. All the nice places had been snapped up months ago, and the ones that were left were either shady brokers or absolute crap (it makes sense -- I wanted a 3 week booking. If a nice place had even a 1-day booking in that window, the whole place was unavailable). I ended up booking on HomeAway or FlipKey or one of their competitors.
Second, I feel in some sense, the tide is turning the other way on the regulation front. I've been lucky with my place in NYC in that I'm in an AirBNB-friendly building and I've had extremely good luck in getting terrific guests. But the regulatory environment is not AirBNB-friendly and it's getting less so. Several people who used to host in NYC have stopped doing so for fear (irrational or otherwise) of running afoul of the law.
I tried to host w/ my apartment in SF and within 72 hours of posting the listing, I received a very strongly-worded C&D letter from the building's management company staff attorney. They had someone in the office who constantly scanned for listings on AirBNB and came down hard and fast. Others have reported similar stories from HOAs and management companies.
So of course I want nothing but the best for AirBNB - I've a happy customer on both sides. But I don't think it's such a slam dunk as many seem to think it is...
Airbnb is clearly in the money-extraction phase of the VC-funded b2c cycle, it's not like we haven't seen this before. This turd is usually served with a side of "acquiring every potential competitor", so that the con can go on for as long as possible.
I've been decreasingly satisfied with airbnb (no horror stories). I think I've done roughly a 50-50 split between them and hotels, depending on the area. It's not exactly hard to switch back to hotels either, airbnb which now has premium prices really only makes sense if the service is premium too. Peace of mind is a huge factor for vacations.
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