https://archive.is/yYdut

Maybe I'm in the minority but I've generally had very good -- or at least, "good as I expected" -- experiences at AirBnbs, even recently. Sometimes I've stayed with rich friends who book nice places, and the experience is, as expected, very nice. Many other times I have stayed at bottom-of-the-barrel places, which were, as expected, bottom of the barrel flophouses. But tolerably so, and true to the advertisement (funny how they all have that exact same fake black leather futon though).

People say hotels are as cheap, but they never have the same amenities, and the location in town is often worse. An AirBnb with a kitchen is essentially $20-30 cheaper per day than a hotel without one. Add to that laundry, more privacy, and other perks and it's not really a fair comparison. It does seem like there are more hotel resellers and leasing companies using it as a stopgap between tenants, which I understand, but hate.

I get why they want to be an "everything app" (rich people have more money to spend on "experiences"), but other commenters are spot-on regarding the dangers of taking their eye off the ball. Seems like a better use of company attention would be to really boost and reward the genuine hosts that put their heart into it, and at least put in a modest amount of friction to slow down the corporate resellers with barebones apartments in half-remodeled buildings.

Airbnb made the same mistake Google did: They screwed up their core service. I used to be a steady ABB customer but now hotels are almost always cheaper, offer better service, and are more predictable.

Not to mention that hotel websites are typically easier to navigate and contain a lot less React-sludge that makes every click take forever to respond.

> Chesky figured that Airbnb’s experience in attractively displaying homes, vetting hosts, and responding to crises could make it more trustworthy than competitors and therefore the go-to option for virtually anything.

Online reviews are totally broken. I recently spent a week at an Airbnb in the Gold Coast, Australia. The property was rated 5* but was tired and worn. The photos must have been 5 years old before a soul set foot in the place.

I rated it 3*. Shortly after, I got a phone call from the owner. He had my number because I'd had to call him because one of the two toilets in a five-bedroom 14-guest 'villa' was blocked. As in, overflowing with fecal matter blocked.

He essentially tried to bribe me to raise my review. I refused. The house is currently listed as 4.9* with those same photos. A preposterous exaggeration of its quality.

Airbnb is a giant example of what happens when you go too far into thinking you can solve real world issues with software UI.

Or run a hospitality business without doing any real hospitality.

Yes, a marketplace is a dream business from a profitability perspective, but it’s too easy to forget the marketplace is not the actual product that people come to the marketplace for.

It doesn’t matter if you have 5000 overpaid developers building the slickest software, the end product is not the Airbnb software, it’s the actual hospitality experience.

Have had some insanely bad experiences with AirBNB and swore them off forever.

People listing mcmansions they cant sell in a state of disrepair, lies about amenities and internet. Had to relocate several people repeatedly in the middle of the pandemic lockdown and it took months for the refunds to process.

Had another host try to pressure me into a cash deal and then claim damages to extract fees when I turned it down. After supplying their text messages and proof that the place was fine I had to wait 18 months for a refund and was locked out of renting a safer place.

I can't imagine trusting them for anything else. I now exclusively use craigslist and other sites that allow you to directly deal with property owners and have been really impressed.

I used to be a big defender of AirBnB due to the many amazing experiences I've had with them over the years. But since then I've had several experiences that matched the negative feedback I had been hearing from other people, especially with US-based rentals, and now I'm a skeptic at best.

The CEO knows exactly what the problem is because he spells it out in the article...

> Chesky explains that historically, people used Airbnb only once or twice a year, so its design had to be exceptionally simple.

It's true! I've probably averaged no more than 1-2 AirBnB stays per year for a lot of years. But the average host is probably handling 50+ guests per year. That means the host is the AirBnB customer, not me. I'm about as important to them as their cleaning service. The hosts and the execs are all just trying to make some money, and my dumb ass is in their way asking for extra towels and late checkout. Hotels are essentially just as hostile, except they are good at it. And since the cost savings have essentially disappeared I'm inclined to go with the pros and only look at AirBnB when the location or context give me some reason to choose the complicated option.

In addition to stuff people are saying about AirBnB reviews in other comments, as far as I can tell there is no way to leave a review or otherwise provide public feedback in cases where the host cancels the booking before you get there. This seems to grossly incentivize scamming.

I reserved an AirBnB months ahead of time to see the eclipse in Dallas last year, and the host canceled it the day before I was to arrive, with no communication (even when I tried to message them). I got a refund, but that's pretty cold comfort. Without any disincentive to do this, it's pretty easy for hosts to screw people over.

I never book AirBnB's because they refuse to address the core issues of privacy within the homes - such as owners installing hidden cameras. So many private videos are shared from AirBnB's and yet they do nothing about it - simply because they're just the glorified middlemen here and don't have actual staff who physically vet their locations. This is why hotels rule are preferred. IF I book a room in Hilton, I know full well knowing I will receive a guaranteed comfort level. An AirBnB's host's mood determins if I will enter their property or will be stranded in the middle of the road (been there, done that). And I would much rather talk to someone at a reception than type out an email hoping I get a reply.

What needs consideration are the people that live near the places that are rented out for Airbnb or Booking. It destroys the social fabric by injecting a rotation of strangers into the community, sometimes those strangers are also very problematic by e.g. throwing loud parties. On top of that it drives up the prices pushing out normal people out of the better parts of the city.

Airbnb is, in my opinion, one of the companies with the biggest negative societal impact.

Airbnb complementary destroyed some great places and rural cities around the world, because of them:

- Food/Restaurant prices go up

- Food/Restaurant quality goes down

- Real estate price goes up

- Dirtiness goes up

- Bugs and other animals thrive

- Quality of shops goes down, everything is disposable

- Quality of building/materials goes down, why install a wooden window if it's for an airbnb?

You could argue that it's not because of Airbnb but because of tourism, but I don't think so, Hotels are heavily regulated, they have strict cleaning rules, max occupancy and are built to host a certain amount of people, mass tourism wouldn't be possible without Airbnb.

Half the airbnbs I try to book these days turn out to be resellers of un booked hotel rooms. Try to book, get a message from “host” just checking availability… silence for three days then sorry, not free … it’s a deeply flawed experience and Airbnb need to get a lot better at policing their platform

A nugget in this that seemed significant:

Quote

“I don’t know if I want to call it a social network, because of the stigma associated with it,” says Ari Balogh, Airbnb’s CTO. So they employ a fuzzier term. “We think of it as a connection platform,” he says. “You’re going to see us build a lot more stuff on top of it, although we’re not an advertising system, thank goodness.” (My own observation is that any for-profit company that can host advertising will, but whatever.)

End quote

Launching a communications tool in 2025 that isn't one of the two overly trod spaces (the advertising-hyperengagement loop of instagram, etc. or the people-you-already-know of whatsapp) is a genuine moonshot in a way that "what if airbnb but for manicures" isn't, and it's something that an incumbent like Airbnb could do that would be impractical for anyone else.

They should have launched services for hosts instead. Airbnbers interface with cleaning / repairpeople, not masseuses. They could even expand to construction and interior design as so many people are building and converting airbnbs. They could take advantage of their synergies there.

They are bringing more "amateur professionals" along with the hosts by adding all those services. this is a big, unruly crowd of half-assed servicepeople

As someone living in a condo in a pretty touristic place: fuck Airbnb; or maybe fuck the local government that allows Airbnb to advertise properties that don't have (because they can't have) a license to operate.

> but whenever they needed to find a portrait photographer, a personal trainer, or someone to cook their meals

Oh, the disconnect. Your average person rarely hires services like this, maybe a handful of times over a lifetime.

I love ABNB and I hope they can find a long-term business that works. Their original promise was so interesting and exciting…but reality has kind of caught up.

They’re kind of like Uber, in that way. But where Uber has become faceless and quiet, Airbnb wants to be a leader, and I respect that. Certainly there’s lots of cool things that _could_ happen with experiences, and I hope they do.

With lodging, they have the risk of people finding a listing off-platform and paying cash, but because lodging is such a key aspect of a trip, people are often willing to pay the premium to have everything vetted/supported by Airbnb.

With personal services, they're risking having that problem at a lot bigger scale: are you willing to pay your barber or masseuse 18% extra to cover Airbnb's commission? I suspect a lot of people would use Airbnb to find a reputable provider, and then make contact off-platform.

I am baffled that every time the Airbnb issues come up, there is a plethora of "just book hotels" comments. The use cases are, or can be, wildly different.

I am not a particular fan of Airbnb--nobody is a fan of real estate agents, they are intermediaries that provide a service, facilitate discovery, etc.--but I am currently staying in an apartment I booked on Airbnb, and I am spending $2k a month for it. Decent space, a kitchen I can use, space for my clothes, a washing machine, a big fridge. If I had to book a hotel room, I would spend at least $8k a month for it.

“Book a hotel room” sounds like when a former university instructor told a student to "just install Linux" when they had some authorization issues on their Windows computer. The use cases are different.

Reading this article felt like reading an ad.

Just seeing the number of different ways people have typed the name in this thread reminds me that "Airbnb" has got to be the ugliest, most confusing, and least riffable name of any startup to achieve unicorn status. I would guess it has cost them something.

Unlike others, I have only had good experiences with Airbnb, both as a host and as a guest. The platform has improved a lot in the past couple of years -- many small quality-of-life improvements for non-professional hosts to make things easier to manage, such as automatic pricing, automatic blocking of days to avoid back-to-back bookings (if you need it), instant booking but only for guests that match your criteria, templated instruction messages to guests, etc. etc. Customer support has been decent too, though I have also heard the horror stories. It's too bad they feel the need to turn it into an everything app, I can only imagine how great the platform could be if they just decided to be the very best short rental platform. For one, they could ditch Jony Ive's reworking of the review process in favor of something that actually solves the issue with rating inflation and differences in how people rate.

maybe they should admit they are not special anymore and expand into other large markets like hotels? I don't even care anymore, I just use Google Maps or Booking, whether it's a "property" on Booking or a hotel, each one has it's pros and cons, I choose whatever feels right at the moment from what seems to be an exhaustive list of both. Properties can be more fun and better for larger groups, hotels are cleaned and don't have annoying "house rules" like washing the dishes etc, or chasing the owner if the lock doesn't work. I don't know how many travelers still stick exclusively to properties anymore.

I have an airbnb experience and just hired 2 people. Airbnb decided to pause my experience for no reason. Tried hitting up their support but they didn't provide a reason for the pause and a date when it would be resumed. This is why you never rely on one customer channel

The "Experiences" thing sounds like Groupon. What killed Groupon was that Groupon wanted too big a cut, and the service providers dropped out. This trick only works if you reach oligopoly levels, so providers have to sign up or go broke. AirBnB is there in short-stay housing. Doordash/Uber are there in food delivery. Doordash/Lyft are there in gig rides, but might not survive Waymo. Amazon is there in e-commerce, but it took decades.

Can AirBnB find a second niche they can start to take over?

I'm surprised they're not launching with more coverage. I just spot-checked what was available in NYC - it's a handful of unappealing tours. Some categories, like massage, are totally empty.

Are they abandoning NYC as a market since rentals are restricted there, or did they just not put enough effort into recruiting before launch?

To me this transition seems much more obvious for something like Uber:

Manage rides -> manage deliveries -> manage booking with places that are already in network -> expand bookings from restaurants to other services -> expand bookings to hotels -> vacation homes.

But honestly going the other way around isn’t that crazy.

I lived next to an AirBnB in Toronto, guests partying until 4am on a Wednesday.

Owner of the unit did nothing and as did AirBnB.

Luckily it was only a few nights a year - there's no mechanism to eject a guest like this. They create new accounts if they are banned from the platform.

I have used airbnb before across many countries, but now its more of uncertainties. Cleanliness, having urself to take trash etc etc. High cleaning fees, collecting key from a lockbox etc. Especially when traveling with kids.

booking.com also offers apartments too, and has far better pay upon arrival and pay nothing right now features.

Airbnb is brilliant in concept. It's finding value where there used to be essentially waste.

BUT then came the growing pains caused by investors and speculators. Both of which clashed with governments who were manipulating their housing markets.

This isnt a place you want your business competing; the governments will come take you out.

Toronto for example, airbnbs can only be your principal residence. You have to register and license. there's a 4% airbnb tax.

This wipes out the investors and speculators. toronto's housing pricing is down 5% across the board. There's now people selling and losing ~$400,000. We're at record highs for number of units unsold. # of Sales are down 20%

There has to be a correction, but how that doesnt pop the housing bubbles, i dunno. doesnt help that toronto's unemployment is at 10% which is worse than the financial crisis. Toronto's also losing their film industry shortly. Auto industry is suspended if not moving.

Uninstalled my AirBNB because of 2 resolution issues with hosts that were not in my favor despite me providing all documentation and (damning) evidence.

The reason I should have uninstalled it much longer is because it's toxic for rent prices. I now pay more for hotels and sleep well.

I got rid of Uber for the same reason.

Airbnb is generally fine but I would never probably use it again if I could. They have very high fees and zero support when something goes wrong. I now pretty much prefer hotels, the price is the sane but the service is not comparable. At least for shorter stays

Turning Airbnb into an "everything app" feels... conflicted. The platform's core strength was always about trusting strangers in a very specific context

Sorry, but what in gods name is this passage:

> Despite never meeting Jobs, “I feel like I know him deeply, professionally, in a way that few people ever did

As opposed to all the people that did actually met him, or worked for him?

This is such a painfully gushing puff piece and this sentence is peak cringe that just makes the man sound mentally ill.

I find that the Airbnb fees are too high for what you get, which often boils down to the contact information of the renter. For some regions in Europe, I actually prefer again local vacation rental agencies, which have similar fees but much more service. Of course, their websites are often not great, but describing your requirements via phone or email gives great options.

It amazes me that companies like AirBnB get huge valuations and user bases when the fundamental feature of searching for listings is phenomenally atrocious.

- Paginated results that reset and call an API for new results when the map is moved (even to a subset of the initial call such as in a zoom).

- Inability to change pagination size.

- Inability to hide listings you aren't interested in.

- Map only displaying listings on the current page, which change dramatically per page.

- Page changes (the thing you do more of than comparing options), take way too long.

Maybe it's a real-estate website related issue as the two main property sites in Australia (Domain and RealEstate) as also garbage. I have a feeling it's also designed this way to prevent scraping.

Can someone at AirBnB please sort these basic QoL things out.

Airbnb host here. A couple months ago we found a bug where Airbnb allowed two different guests to book the same night. Absolute madness ensued.

The worst part is we had their support on the line for hours. And he told that they didn't even have a way to escalate technical issues. His job was to stall on the phone and be yelled at until hosts gave up.

Unfortunately it's just the latest example of awful experiences with the company. As a host you are liable for everything. The only way to get them to hold up their end of the bargain is small claims court. They collect their fees for doing nearly nothing for either party.

You will not find a way to contact any individual at Airbnb. It's an impressively seamless anti-human design. They have built a wall and kicked down the ladder.

    reinvention of Airbnb

AirBnB provides an amazing service, the ability to painlessly book hotels that feel like houses.

I guarantee you they are not going to be the next Apple or Microsoft, they're instead just going to dilute the value of their core business chasing things that aren't going to work, instead of focusing on their core service, and then in so many years time they will become irrelevant rather than inevitable.

The article repeatedly cites “2 billion users” of Airbnb. That isn’t true, right? From casual Googling, I’ve seen is 5 million hosts and 1.5b stays—which is nowhere near 2b users (alltime, MAU, or otherwise).

I seriously don't understand why anyone would use Airbnbs when serviced apartments exist

Only time it makes sense is if you're traveling with a large group of people

I'm a digital nomad.

One luggage, no permanent home, been fifteen years.

I used to use AirBnB all the time.

They gradually become more and more, well, "large company".

I used to still look at AirBnB (until very recently, when one of the founders joined DOGE), but I saw that their fee continually rose over time, and became like 10% or 15%, and there's in many places (Paris, Amsterdam, New York, London...) no meaningful listings (which is due to State bans).

I was in Paris last couple of months. There was nothing viable on AirBnB, unless you wanted to pay several thousand a month. There was a set of listings which I concluded was a scam, the same very dodgy letting agency, who had lots of apartments, all with no ratings, but very bad reviews on-line elsewhere. I think they were continually deleting and remaking their lets on AirBnB, to get rid of negative reviews.

AirBnB itself (and here we see "large company") became unreliable as a service, in that I never knew, when I came to us it, if log-in would still work.

I recall the first time log-in failed for no obvious reason, and the and the only option was "email support and we'll contact you in a few days" - and I was looking to move in about two weeks time, and had of course no reason to have confidence in the boilerplate estimate of "few days".

After that, I put up my own HTTPS proxy, which I now use whenever I use AirBnB, to avoid AirBnB when I log in suspending my account, which I then have to have support fix, which of course means the account cannot be used until support get back to me, and assuming they actually do unblock the account, and given how variable support is, this is not a given.

I also recall one episode about ten years ago where I had to phone support. It was a three hour long screaming nightmare of hell and madness, which was eventually resolved by dint of the new process AirBnB had imposed on users (something about ID and account photos, IIRC) actually not working properly, so in the end it turned out Support (some poor Indian woman working from home) and I were able to circumvent the problem.

I've also been reading people write about AirBnB blocking their valid negative reviews on spurious grounds. That undermines all reviews on all properties; you're looking at reviews wondering if there were valid bad reviews you're not seeing because AirBnB has been blocking them.

To summarize, fees are now rather high, when it comes to Support my response is Jesus please God anything but Support, I had to backdoor my own HTTPS traffic to use the service, I'm now uncertain about the veracity of reviews, and no viable apartments in quite a lot of locations.

So, for me, AirBnB was great, but now it's really not.

Then, recently, one of the founders (his role now is only on the board) came out as pro-MAGA and joined DOGE, and that was the end of AirBnB for me.

The one and critical thing AirBnB got right was building into their platform the expectation owners would offer discounts for stays over a week, or over a month.

I don't see this on other platforms, and it makes pricing on other platforms crazy. If I come and stay for three months, I expect a discount for giving full occupancy over that time. If you don't offer that, you're off the menu.

its about consistency to me. if you have a lot of time to kill on potential issues then sure. stopped using abnb when i traveled once and the AC was broken/leaking b/c the host thought i wouldn't mind it, then asked if i would be fine waiting 1-2 days while a repair guy came to fix it. thankfully the host was apologetic and worked with me and airbnb to get the refund, but i still had to book a hotel elsewhere.

with some chain hotel at least i know what to relatively expect in terms of service and amenities and have someone to complain to to make it right.

Basic problem with Airbnb is that you’re dealing with small proprietors and the quality and value can be pretty inconsistent. Airbnb has relied on reviews to enforce this but what I’ve found is that “hosts” usually wait to file a review of me as a guest until I file my review. So there’s a disincentive to leave a mixed review.

Additionally there’s a creep factor in the number of cameras on the property. Hotels have lots of cameras but you don’t get the same sense that you’re being policed. I realize some of this is necessary but it can still be off-putting; usually everyone in the rental comments on the cameras.

Airbnb could normalize the value by enforcing standards and capping certain unreasonable charges in particular cleaning fees. A uniform cancellation policy would also help.

Additionally there are no rewards for booking Airbnb and no perks at all for repeat customers.

I’ve moved from Airbnb to Marriot and I get 4pm late check out, upgrades to suites, free breakfast, priority booking etc… and I don’t have to take the garbage out, bundle up sheets, do the dishes, etc…

I've never really liked AirBnB, and my experience this year has confirmed my feelings.

On two separate occasions this year I've had issues with them.

First, my wife had booked a lodge in the lakes with lots of outdoor space for us to go with the kids and hopefully see the stars, and give them room to roam outdoors; for months our children had been looking forward to it, and a mere 4 days before, the host contacted us saying they'd have to cancel because the power was out; clearly bullshit, no apology, they'd obviously gotten a better price elsewhere because it just happened the weather was looking better than expected that weekend; and I don't see how it would take 4 days to get the power back on; it wasn't remote.

On a separate occasion, 2 friends and I had booked an AirBnB in Wales to attend a wedding together in the area, the host cancelled days later because they'd accidentally double booked; we booked another, they cancelled, no excuse; half a dozen cancellations later, we currently have a booking, and we'll find out in a couple of weeks how that goes.

I don't have the time or the patience for this kind of game-playing bullshit from hosts, and I certainly don't like disappointing my children; I would choose a hotel at a higher cost but they're not always able to provide the experience you're aiming for; it's not always just a room to stay in.

We've used AirBnB in other parts of the world without issues, but we'd usually book those for a few days into a trip, and start with a hotel, so you're not arriving somewhere and immediately have problems when something goes wrong.

One country in particular; my wife and I travelled with two friends who were travelling to arrange their wedding in said (European) country, booked two double rooms, we arrive and we knock at the address we're given, since we've been given no further details; the "host" says to come with him; first tries to put us all up in a box room in some lady's house, with two bunk beds with an adjacent toilet that was flooded and pouring in to the room; when we decline, he takes us to another place where an old man was looking to rent a room, he seemed like a nice man, but my wife was uncomfortable because his living area had a window into the shared shower room, no thanks; the old man was quite upset that we'd declined, he probably needed the money and we felt a little guilty about that; after a couple more examples of this wandering around the town with this guy, it had become apparent, he was taking bookings for rooms that didn't exist and trying to put people up in random peoples homes; I suspect he also wasn't paying them near what he was taking for these bookings.

It was a disgrace, and when we became irritated after so much time wondering around with our cases in the heat we suggested we'll book rooms at the Hilton we had passed while wandering and deal with AirBnB after our break, he managed to find us something suitable; both "almost" to the standard we had booked, and both places he had the keys to in his pocket.

We reported it to AirBnB, but they of course did nothing.

Goodbye Airbnb. You will be missed.

Reminds me of a phrase that I heard when Uber was going hard on self-driving vehicles for some reason.

Not even Uber wants to be the Uber of Whatever anymore

For an actual thought… I absolutely love that the era of free money is on pause!

Recently scammed out of $800 in fake maintenance claims by a first time host. Support was beyond useless.

Here is how it should work. When people go on vacation they want an Apple like experience where it all just works. That is what AirBnB needs to sell. The only other person who probably understands this is Richard Branson (and Disney)... call it AirBnB Concierge (or even AirBnB vacations) to blend in the AmEx style angle. It's easy peasy Chesky, make it happen.

Enshittification of Airbnb started long ago. The time seems ripe for more focused alternatives.

Official post: https://news.airbnb.com/airbnb-2025-summer-release/

Airbnb started strong, but it has become a minefield for travelers. Scam listings have exploded -- Airbnb admitted in 2023 that it removed nearly 60,000 fake ones, but that's only a fraction of what slips through. Investigations like one by VICE uncovered organized scams exploiting the platform for years, yet Airbnb has been slow to implement meaningful preventative measures. Meanwhile, pricing has grown increasingly deceptive: hosts tack on hefty cleaning and service fees, often doubling the advertised nightly rate. Although Airbnb recently added an option to show total prices up front, it's not the default, and hidden costs remain a major complaint.

Even more troubling are the widespread privacy violations. Thousands of guests have reported hidden cameras in their rentals -- some even found in bedrooms and bathrooms. Airbnb didn't ban indoor cameras until March 2024, after more than a decade of complaints and several high-profile criminal cases. Combined with fake photos, misleading descriptions, and little accountability for bad hosts, it's clear the trust that once defined the platform has eroded. Airbnb didn't just lose its shine -- it actively neglected the safety and transparency that made it appealing in the first place.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/nationwide-fake-host-scam-on...

Dude if you want to find a nice spot in the woods on the river, secluded, in the middle of no where Airbnb, hipcamp, or camping are your only options.

Airbnb has been trying to push their "experiences" and they are mostly bad. The ones that were recommended to me were either far out of my target city or very nondescript. I hope more cities start to regulate Airbnb out of existence. I was comparing hotels and Airbnbs for a recent trip and found 25 houses that were Airbnbs owned by the same person. Completely absurd.

Explains why ABB recruiters have been filling my inbox with invites to interview.

Note they have a fucking ridiculous interview process of at least _6 rounds_. Absolutely bonkers.

I was tempted to go for it but fortunately have many other companies in my pipeline with much saner interview processes.

Good luck to whoever gets those positions. Seems they pay quite well, but the question is whether ABB push to expand will pay off and become self sustaining.

As bad as they are I'd still want to have them around to keep hotel prices in check

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I am not a chronic traveler but never understood the appeal of airbnb. Most low-mid to midrange chain hotels offer reasonably clean rooms for equivalent (or sometimes cheaper) price than airbnb after fees and I don’t need to play housekeeper either, or worry about weird owners, which seems to me like the whole nice thing about renting a short term place to sleep.

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