They had it originally and when they removed it is when I stopped using them. Like every other fucking “Uber of” tech company, they couldn’t compete with the traditional thing they were trying to “disrupt” once the VC money dried up, and tried to cover for that with deception. Fuck them, I’ll just book a hotel.

Corpos gonna corpo… Avoid them as much as possible that’s the one of the few effective ways peasants got left to fight the parasite. Goverment, courts and media are always shiling for the corpos and their owners at pleb expense.

This 100%.
AirBnB used to be cheaper than a hotel. Then it got so easy to tack on fees and ridiculous requirements that you’re basically paying more than a hotel to housekeep your own room. Mix in lots of shady hosts and most of the time I’d rather just stay at the Hilton for the same price.

It can still be useful as a novelty, like book a party house somewhere or as easily cheaper way to house an awful lot of people. But for the most part, I’ll pass.

Gross. I didn’t know that. I do occasionally use AirBnB. I’m aware of their impact on the rental market, so I favor hotels most of the time. But there have been a few occasions in recent years where I was traveling in a larger group and an AirBnB made more sense. But no more of that.

I looked in to this a little, and Joe Gebbia is no longer the CEO, but he is still on the board. Still a good enough reason to boycott.

hotels/hostels?

Airbnb turns potential living space into hotel space and thereby helps driving up housing prices. The whole concept is inherently problematic.

Booking.com they also have private hosts on their platform

HomeExchange looks good and is European.

It naturally lacks the depth of listings that Airbnb does but will grow if people use them

VRBO. Idk if it’s European.

Getting a rocket to the sun is easy. Getting it back is the hard part. Since you dont need the rocket to make it back, it sounds like you’re all set for operation “beam em up”.

It means there’s not enough construction. If apartments were used as hotels, then more construction would offset increase in prices

I think it shouldnt be on the consumers but on the lawmaker. Tax airbnbs like real bnbs or like hotels or there are many other levers that can be pulled to make it less profitable than renting to locals

It was a nice concept in the 2010a when it was like an advanced version of Couchsurfing or a digital version of a homestay. Then of course it became an unsustainable business model and went to dogs when it became a money making scheme for finance bros to buy up housing and charge 4-star hotel prices.

While Air B&B has done irreperable harm to the housing market, I’m not 100% convinced it should be banned. I propose if a house operates as an enterprise, it be taxed according to commercial rates, not residential. It would go a long way to resolving the inequities.

This. They help destroy housing markets.

partially right, but its usually the corporate real estate companies doing this, they buy up the HOUSES and just air bnb, or rent them forever, without even selling any of the houses.

Yep instead of lowering rent because your unit is unaffordable you just buy up and rent them all out creating housing scarcity and prices will increase right up until the point ppl can’t afford to vacation anymore… Which is pretty much now anyway. Queue up all the BS stories. “Millennials/zoomers don’t ‘want’ to vacation anymore”

The Snake is going to eat it’s tail.

Where I feel like they have a suitable place is for vacation rentals. Like when I was a kid our family would rent a house at the beach for a week as our summer vacation. The beach we’d go to had several real estate companies that would manage the rentals and published little booklets every year with the listings. The houses were privately owned, though, so as Airbnb and especially VRBO came along this gave the homeowners another option that was perhaps less expensive than the agencies. These are houses in a vacation area, though, generally not taking away housing from locals. This also was traditionally a family that owned one extra house for family getaways and trying to rent it out when they weren’t using it, not investors creating “hotel” chains. Setting up what is effectively a hotel in a residential area and cutting off housing from people who need it should be an obvious problem yet many people don’t recognize it.

don’t forget the rudeness of some people. they behave like the whole building is a hotel and they can do whatever they damn well please.

If it were up to me, I would obliterate this concept. Hotels are for holidays, not people’s houses where everyone brings along their holiday brains and are being generally disrespectful towards the communities.

yeah I get things like its the only option yet somehow people traveled and found a place to stay before it existed.

Originally, they did fill a niche. If you have a big group of people, a hotel breaks the group up into rooms. Airbnb lets you have one place all to yourself.

Nowadays it’s gone to shit with low quality spaces, hotels listing themselves on Airbnb, stuff like that. I hope there’s a middle ground.

i don’t think people need to justify Airbnb’s, it’s a great alternative to a hotel for many reasons including those you listed. What needs to be addressed is the damage the shareholders who are running the company are doing to society. let’s not give them too much credit about this choice: they are still sucking up homes from homeowners and removing money from the middle class. they only made this change because someone realized it will make them more money.

Exactly!

I have young kids, and airbnbs offer a lot that hotels don’t, and they don’t have the crap I hate about hotels (housekeeping, sketchy parking lot, etc).

Surely we can find a solution where you and I can get what we want, while residents get what they want.

booking.com

Richard Wolf had a very good take on all of these Silicon Valley “disruptors”. It’s basically been the neoliberal US american MO for the past quarter century:

Step 1: get a bunch VC money by promising the moon

Step 2: “disrupt” by undercutting the established moon due to lack of regulation. Even though it’s an inferior product, it’s VC subsidised, so it’s cheaper than the established businesses.

Step 3: due to lack of regulation, your business drives established operators to bankruptcy. This is basically dumping but the regulation hasn’t caught up.

Step 4: become the monopoly and suck as much money as possible from your customers to generate “shareholder value”

I’ve been the weird one in my friend group because I’ve refused to use Airbnb. Why would I want a less guaranteed place to stay that doesn’t have amenities and now costs more?

hotels have been cheaper and better for a while now

Strongly disagree. Here’s stuff I hate about hotels:

• housekeeping - just leave me alone and clean up when I leave
• rarely have separate bedrooms - I have young kids, so we can’t use the room once they go to sleep
• parking lot is a crime magnet
• more expensive for larger groups - we often travel w/ friends, so there’s often 10 or so of us
• minimal included entertainment - usually just TV and maybe pool; airbnbs often have kids toys, private hot tub, etc

Airbnbs are essentially the inverse of all of that.

We occasionally go to hotels, but if we can find an airbnb that’s a similar price for the scale we need, we go for that every time.

We always see prices after tax in the EU

Unfortunately, Canada too. Very annoying.

Feeding on the simple minded and ensuring the feeling of taxes is like the devil.

Booking is also pretty scummy. There was a blog post a few years ago from a hotel that always showed up as sold out, even it had plenty empty rooms. In the end it was a “feature” where other hotels could “promote” their business in a city so it would show up first, but the competition would also be listed as unavailable to force visitors into the promoted business. The other thing is that booking will show “only one room left” to pressure you into booking right now, but what ot actually means is that a hotel might only allocate 20 of 100 rooms to booking, and still has 81 free rooms if you call them directly.

Hotels have always been better in my experience.

Unless you want something like a fishing cabin on a river, but even then I’ve started to look at resorts because after all the fees, they work out to the same price as an airBNB.