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.
Ask around
All right. Do you know any for any European country?
Yes. Adriatic.hr is good for Croatia.
But that requires effort on my part!
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
I can’t find a place to rent, but oh boy! look at all these temp stay airbnbs owned by vacation companies, my bad guess I should own a house.
Why should you get to use that desirable space 100% of the time instead of many different people being able to enjoy it?
Dropped a /s?
Dang so all I have to do to scam is have another WhatsApp account and send myself threatening messages 😯
Turn your chicken coop into a 5 star Airbnb listing with one simple trick!
Praxis would be to weaponize this and get your room comped while your staying at the Airbnb by having the host threaten you while your in the room. Karen’s have taught me to fight these fuckers at their own games just for the trill
Sorry brainstorming
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.
Which is why reddit has been a target for gorilla marketing campaigns for a while now. I only trust review sites that I follow now
now we can’t even us reddit anymore
Also at a hotel: “It smells like smoke.” “Let me take you conveniently to another identical room for free.”
Or any problem, really. I once had to move rooms twice because the AC wasn’t working. In an Airbnb, you’re boned
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 🙂
The pay isn’t great (even in upper management, unless you are at corporate), but working in hospitality does have its advantages. It does make travel planning a lot easier.
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.
Good gods how can you afford to go on so many vacations? :o
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 😅
Oh, 5 hours? Wow, yeah, sorry about that. I sometimes forget just how more compact everything is over in Europe compared to the US (or at least the Midwest in the US). Over here, driving for 45-60 min is pretty common for a commute. If one goes on an away-from-home vacation over here, it’s usually for far longer of a distance than 5 hours’ worth. (Not that I can afford that. Lol. 😅)
(Note: I just realized this may come across as making fun of you or sounding superior. Neither of these were intended if so.)
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.
Oh yeah, English is very widely spoken in Portugal, mainly the younger generation but a good part of 40s to 50 year old people do have a good enough grasp of it. Older than that usually French is the main 2nd language and English is very basic to none.
You’re welcome back anytime! Portugal is a great place to retire, not to work though :p
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.
How do you even combat that ?
The community must pass laws to protect occupancy expectations.
I hate all the “fuck Airbnb” hate when it isn’t coupled with “fuck my local council, etc” because they are the real enemy, they and their buddies are all in cahoots
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.
Enforcing is unfortunately really difficult because the incentives are too strong. We have rules here which are meant to prevent AirBnB and similar by limiting the number of nights any domestic property can be let in a year. So all the hosts just jump from site to site and change the descriptions slightly to get around it. And it’s so brazen. They use the same photos and everything. The really organised ones have whole buildings and when you book they’re non-specific about the unit you get, so it’s very difficult to actually track which ones are rented at any point, particularly when the enforcement teams are so underfunded.
See, this is why we need to divert over-bloated policing budgets to proper civil servants.
Like any business, they should be subject to audit and inspection at any time.
Eliminate zoning and other regulations that make it impossible to build sufficient housing supply.
At it’s core, this is the root cause of the housing crisis. We do not have enough supply. The amount of Airbnb’s that exist is extremely miniscule and the targeting of Airbnbs is an intentional distraction tactic.
Depending on the source, 1% to 0.2% of all dwellings are listed for short-term rental in the US. That’s crazy small and has very little impact on housing prices overall.
The fact of the matter is that Single Family Homes are an incredible luxury that our parents and grandparents were able to enjoy when the country had half as many people as it does now. It is no longer sustainable to expect a SFH in the US, and the American public continuing to cling to that dream and restrictive zoning practices are really what is driving up prices.
If you want an affordable house you will need to move to a rural area where land and labor are cheap. If you want to live near any reasonably sized city, you better be upper middle class to even think about buying a SFH.
I totally agree. More housing would be built if we were to just fix our broken zoning regulations and building approval processes but everyone is obsessed with banning Airbnb.
…Or actually enforce zoning and regulations that ban short term rentals in residential areas? Most Air B&B’s in America are already illegal, real estate interests just have a ton of sway in local governments.
Why would you want to ban short term rentals when you could instead build more housing supply? Short term rentals bring in tons of money not only to property owners, but to the local area at large. Housing isn’t a zero sum game where in order to have short term rentals, long term rental supply must go down. Zoning laws make it impossible to build high density housing and approvals for large building projects are subject to the whims of the local planning board or city council rather than concrete laws and requirements. If we were to fix zoning regulations and improve approval processes, you could have plenty of housing supply for both short term rentals and long term, and the community would be better off.
That is a cool handle sir
Thank you! Anyone can change their display name in the website and use fancy text!
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.
I’ve never had this kind of bad experience with Airbnb
Also Airbnb tends to kill communities by making it way too expensive for people to actually live there and sleeping in a complete stranger’s house does not sound too safe.
What’s the difference between renting a house on Airbnb and tearing said house to build a hotel?
I mean, 8 lots with 8 houses can sleep what…like 30-40 people max?
On that same space you can build a 5 story hotel with 80 rooms that sleep up to 4 each. That’s a vast increase in density and a much more efficient use of space.
I’m generalizing of course, but this is the gist.
