Once or twice a year, my friends and I do a "Friend Getaway" where we rent an Airbnb and all communally nerd out. Magic, D&D, videogames, tabletop stuff, etc. It's a great time. We look forward to it every year.

Unfortunately, our experience with Airbnbs has progressively gotten worse over time (not that it was ever great), with this past weekend being our worst ever. We ended up leaving early and escalated a complaint with the platform (not that I actually think that will do anything, which is one of the problems with Airbnb in the first place).

Unfortunately, we're kind of stuck with going with an Airbnb (or similar, like VRBO) if we want to keep doing this because they're the only thing that give us what we want: private common spaces.

The reason we get an Airbnb in the first place isn't for the destination or the attractions around it. It's so we can all hang out together in the living room and dining room, and cook group meals in the kitchen. We retire to the beds to sleep, but 90% of our waking time is spent grouping ourselves up in the common areas by interest.

If we could stay at a hotel and rent out a living room, dining room, and kitchen for the group, we absolutely would. Ever since Airbnbs became a thing, I was hoping hotels would move a little bit in the direction of offering similar setups, but it feels like at most you can simply get a regular hotel room with a kitchenette. They're not really conducive to groups at all.

To me, there's currently a huge gap between what hotels offer and what Airbnb offers, and if you want the latter, you have to put up with a lot of awfulness that's just sort of embedded into their business model.

I don't really have a point in posting this other than to highlight that and hope that it starts some discussion. I'm also hoping that someone tells me that I'm completely wrong and that there are hotels out there that actually do offer Airbnb-like stays/facilities and I just don't know about them.

I work remotely for a US tech start-up, and my work is flying me out for our company kickoff in Santa Barbara at the end of February. Because I want to spend as little time in Berlin February weather as possible and I want to meet up with some local(-ish) relatives, I'm flying in a week earlier than necessary. As a result, however, I'm going to have some free time to fill.

The biggest thing is that I'm going to have to find and pay for my own lodging while I'm there until the work event starts and I can check into the hotel my company booked. So if anyone has any personal experience with some cheap-but-not-sketchy lodging options in LA or Santa Barbara, I especially welcome that. I'm flying into LAX so I'm able to stay there before going down to Santa Barbara for the actual work event if it's cheaper or there's more to do there (which I kinda assume is the case on both counts, idk).

I've heard LA is generally pretty expensive. I'm not a huge party animal by any means, but I figure I should do more when I'm there than sitting in my hotel reading (especially if I want to kick the jetlag before all the work stuff starts). So I'd also love any recommendations for cheap but interesting stuff to do while I'm there. My cursory Google searches have turned up a bunch of Hollywood tourist type stuff and recommendations for outdoorsy activities like hiking, neither of which is my speed. But surely there's gotta be some interesting stuff for a nerdy introvert to check out!

I'm also a very food-motivated traveler, so any particular restaurant recommendations for while I'm there are very welcome -- especially stuff that's hard for me to find in Germany. Latin American food is especially high on my list ofc, and I'm also on the lookout for good wing places, since I know both of those things are very hard to find at home in Berlin. But I also welcome other recommendations, especially stuff that isn't gonna come up in a quick google search. Or authentic Chinese food (even though I'm not going to SF, I learned how to say 洛杉矶 in Chinese class back in the day so LA's gotta have at least somthing 😅). I'm also a coffee person, so I'd love to know about any particular standout local coffee shops (even though I'm sure there's way more than I could try in even a month in a city the size of LA).