Last I went to look at Airbnb as an option to stay somewhere, the "cleaning fee" would send the cost of the room way beyond that of a traditional hotel room. While I'm not opposed to this fee, the...
Last I went to look at Airbnb as an option to stay somewhere, the "cleaning fee" would send the cost of the room way beyond that of a traditional hotel room. While I'm not opposed to this fee, the heights I've seen the fee reach has really turned me off to the option of using them.
Plus as someone else mentioned, it's an incredibly disruptive service to local communities who could actually live in the housing being used for this.
The business model of AirBnB is ultimately doomed, at least on any scale it has previously operated at. Its original pitch made sense. Rent quirky hideaways in odd locations, rent rooms in...
Exemplary
The business model of AirBnB is ultimately doomed, at least on any scale it has previously operated at. Its original pitch made sense. Rent quirky hideaways in odd locations, rent rooms in peoples' homes, or rent their homes while owners are away themselves traveling. In other words, not competing against traditional hotels. A hotel doesn't compete against a literal cabin in the woods somewhere, and that's the kind of thing AirBnB would be great for. Someone renting out a spare room or renting their entire place while they're away also doesn't directly compete with hotels. Either can be done just for some spare cash, or in the case of the rented room, some spare cash and a chance to meet new interesting people. Are you a retiree looking for something interesting to spice things up? Try your hand at being a short-term BnB operator and rent out a spare bedroom a few weekends a year.
And if that's all AirBnB tried to cater to, they could have built a modest but quite sustainable business model. If you just want a room to stay while in a city, you go for an ordinary hotel. If you want something in a weird location or a nontraditional stay, go for AirBnB. Add to this a few other cases, like people wanting to rent entire houses on the beach, that sort of thing.
Because here is the ultimate problem. Standard apartments turned into AirBnB rentals can never be competitive long term with hotels. A small time landlord who owns a dozen condos across a city and rents them on AirBnB can never be competitive with a hotel. That landlord will simply never have the economies of scale a big hotel does. A big hotel can hire regular cleaning staff, and that staff can efficiently clean rooms by going one after another down a hallway. They can do laundry in big commercial laundry machines. They can buy everything they need in absurdly cheap bulk quantities. They can even recycle half-used bars of soap. A hotel is a large industrial operation; AirBnBs are small scale affairs.
As long as they kept to the weird margins of the hospitality industry, this wouldn't have been a problem. Someone renting out their condo while they're away is just doing it for some extra cash, they can afford to price their property cheaper than hotels. A cabin in the woods or a quaint cottage built on a quirky alpaca farm aren't competing with big hotels operating with huge economies of scale.
But the thing is, there is simply a very finite supply of quirky off-grid rentals and people wanting to rent out their homes while they're away. Past a certain point, the only way to expand is to get landlords to start offering their regular apartments on AirBnB, or to get small time landlords to buy up condos and do the same. These kinds of properties have to compete directly against hotels, and they will never be cost competitive against them. Such landlords need to make this a profitable long term business; they're not doing it just for spare cash. This is their livelihood. There's a reason most landlords stick to year-length leases, or monthly at the shortest. Too short a rental term, and you start competing against hotels, whose economies of scale they can't match.
So how did AirBnB get all these landlords to agree to put their units up as short term rentals? They pulled the classic Silicon Valley bait-and-switch. The same con Uber and Doordash pulled. Use venture capital to subsidize the growth of the business. Then, once everyone is hooked, start turning the screws. As they were growing, AirBnB massively subsidized rentals. They kept their fees artificially low and even directly subsidized the rental prices, offering landlords more generous terms than they could ever afford to sustainably do. They may have even directly subsidized listings, paying a chunk of the tenants' stays. They paid for all of this with billions in venture capital funds, hoping to grow big enough that everyone got hooked on it.
Now, some landlords really did become dependent on AirBnB, and those are the ones they can put the screws on in the short term. But especially in today's red hot real estate market, AirBnB doesn't have much leverage. Someone who bought a dozen condos with the intention of AirBnBing them can just turn them back into apartments or simply sell them. The company just doesn't have much leverage to force rental providers to rent at unsustainably low rates, unlike say Doordash or Uber, which got some people to take that on as their primary job. So they've allowed rentals to tack on all sorts of usurious fees, which is now driving people away from the platform.
They built a fundamentally unsustainable business model. If they had kept to the fringes of the market and never tried to compete directly with hotels, they could have made a nice, modest, sustainable platform. Instead they got greedy, decided they needed unlimited growth and needed to rule the world, and their greed will cost them everything. They grew the platform by subsidizing the whole thing with billions in VC funds, and they never had any viable long term plan for how they could compete with hotels.
Ten years from now, I think we will still have AirBnB, and it will actually be back to the quirky getaways and spare-room rentals the platform was initially pitched as. However, it won't be operated by the current leaders or owned by the current shareholders. The existing bloated corpse will finally go bankrupt, the shareholders will be wiped out, and the name sold in bankruptcy. Someone with two brain cells to rub together, capable of realistic financial planning, someone not assuming infinite greed and growth, will buy the name from the bankruptcy and build a modest sustainable business off of it.
The landlords short term renting out their places via airbnb aren't directly competing with Hotels though, they're competing with long-term renters of their own apartment. As long as turning your...
The landlords short term renting out their places via airbnb aren't directly competing with Hotels though, they're competing with long-term renters of their own apartment. As long as turning your apartment into a hotel room is more profitable than having someone stay in it on a permanent basis, airbnb will continue to see landlords sign up to it.
I know nothing about this sort of landlording or even regular property ownership (I helped my dad manage one property, which I also lived in, but he never owned multiple properties and this was...
I know nothing about this sort of landlording or even regular property ownership (I helped my dad manage one property, which I also lived in, but he never owned multiple properties and this was all back in pre-2008), buuuuuut I'm gonna talk anywaaaaays - So if the removal of subsidies has lead to the LLs raising their prices above what hotels can offer for the same level of amenities, and this is now leading to a drop in people willing to AirBnB, isn't that making the whole thing less profitable for the LLs? Some may be slow to react because they are gamblers looking to get back the high of the old big wins, but if you find your property empty more often than not you either have to lower your prices, up your amenities, or get out of the game by renting long-term or selling.
But your not realizing that an AirBnB can make more money than a rental quite easily. They don't need 100% uptime to match rental prices. As little as a week of bnb can match rental prices. So...
But your not realizing that an AirBnB can make more money than a rental quite easily. They don't need 100% uptime to match rental prices. As little as a week of bnb can match rental prices. So yes, sales are down but as long as they're up enough to beat out rental rates, then AirBnB is still the choice. Some landlords will give up if the profit difference is too slim to fuss over the additional management headaches, but others will stick it out for the chance at a big month.
Civil engineering specifically, PhD student in civil engineering and wood science of all things. So I don't claim any specific knowledge of finance or economics. This is just based on general...
Civil engineering specifically, PhD student in civil engineering and wood science of all things. So I don't claim any specific knowledge of finance or economics. This is just based on general knowledge. Though I would refer you this article here.
I’ve found AirBnb to be a good pick when I’m traveling with a medium/large group of people, it’s typically cheaper (and nicer!) to book a 2-3 bedroom house for 6 people than it is to book 2 or 3...
I’ve found AirBnb to be a good pick when I’m traveling with a medium/large group of people, it’s typically cheaper (and nicer!) to book a 2-3 bedroom house for 6 people than it is to book 2 or 3 hotel rooms, plus you get the benefit of common areas being private and probably a kitchen. If you’re staying more than 3 days, the cleaning fee is also less of a problem.
But for traveling alone or for short stays I always go with hotels. They’re far more predictable, usually cheaper, and generally just a better experience.
Yeah Airbnb still wins for groups, no one wants to hang out in a small hotel room with 8 people all day. Big houses rock for groups 4< and they usually aren't too expensive if you get enough...
Yeah Airbnb still wins for groups, no one wants to hang out in a small hotel room with 8 people all day. Big houses rock for groups 4< and they usually aren't too expensive if you get enough people to split the bill
I mean, I am unhappy enough with AirBNB as a cause for higher housing prices in touristy areas that I choose to boycott them full stop. It seems like the market is sending a signal that AirBNB got...
I mean, I am unhappy enough with AirBNB as a cause for higher housing prices in touristy areas that I choose to boycott them full stop.
It seems like the market is sending a signal that AirBNB got cocky or complacent. But I'm not sorry that they are not finding it as easy to be profitable.
Airbnb is working in a difficult area. Source: I used to work for one of the biggest OTAs. While there are Kayak, Trivago, Orbitz, Vrbo, Agoda, HotelTonight, etc., there are only three OTAs behind...
Airbnb is working in a difficult area.
Source: I used to work for one of the biggest OTAs. While there are Kayak, Trivago, Orbitz, Vrbo, Agoda, HotelTonight, etc., there are only three OTAs behind all of these websites: Expedia, Booking, and Airbnb. They own the 'inventory'. All their subsidiaries, from my understanding, more or less use their inventories.
(There are some Chinese OTAs but they have very limited presence outside of China.)
On average, they make ~15% commission per reservation. Airbnb is a bit different in that it splits its fees between hosts and guests: it charges 3% commission to hosts and then a 5–20% service fee to guests. From what I hear and read, it too averages around ~15% from reservations. So that's not really out of line for the industry.
It's a hyper competitive, high-touch industry, so all these OTAs employ and rely on their own customer support agents, often in North American or European countries, who speak excellent English, German, French, Spanish, etc. instead of outsourcing customer support to India or the Philippines. Operating customer support in HCOL countries is, well, expensive, but they do it because good customer service (and thus brand) is one of the primary differentiators in an industry where prices are cutthroat.
Now, I suspect that Airbnb's customer support costs are significantly higher than the industry average because there is massively more variability in quality in its inventory. Guests who show up in a ratty Airbnb will demand to be rebooked, and rightfully so. Private homes can vary a lot. Hotels have much less variability in quality. They're usually quite consistent, and guests often can expect what to get. In addition, hotel managers can usually handle most customer support issues. OTA support agents usually step in when, say, a hotel overbooks and the guest needs a place to stay pronto.
Also, with the professionalization and nature of Airbnbing, there are certain costs that Airbnb and their hosts cannot compete on, like cleaning. Hiring a cleaner to drive to and service a private home is inherently much less scalable than having an in-house cleaner move between rooms in a hotel building.
Inventory for these guys varies by territory. Some have Asia, some Europe, some NAmerica. They all share within their owner groups, but their in house inventory and pricing is usually region...
Inventory for these guys varies by territory. Some have Asia, some Europe, some NAmerica. They all share within their owner groups, but their in house inventory and pricing is usually region specific. They aren't just different frontends to the same db.
I work for one too, so I'm super biased, but I usually find Airbnb's are pieces of shit unless I pay a lot for the nice ones. Hotels here are cheep though and provide good services, breakfast buffets, pools, cleaning, people who answer questions, rooms that don't stink. You have to get down into the sub $10 a night rate to stop getting those benefits here.
Last time I was in the us, hotel room costs were insane enough I get why people don't use them. $100/night was a shithole. $200 was got us a place that set out a box of donughnuts in the morning if you were fast enough to make it.
I've often found netizens blaming two factors above all else for rising housing prices namely AirBNB and Migrants. But honestly, that's very much like blaming only demand side factors for rising...
I am unhappy enough with AirBNB as a cause for higher housing prices in touristy areas that I choose to boycott them full stop.
I've often found netizens blaming two factors above all else for rising housing prices namely AirBNB and Migrants.
But honestly, that's very much like blaming only demand side factors for rising prices in a market, why not also look at supply side for a change? Is there a real estate price cartel in your area which is controlling rental and plot prices (there often is in many countries)? Also, why isn't more land being explored for housing projects like city suburbs and newer cities and towns? This is something you might want to take up with your country's legislators too.
Idk if building more suburbs is really the answer. Especially the way we've built suburbs in the US for the last 50-70 yrs. Feel like rezoning for more multifamily homes, with fewer height...
Idk if building more suburbs is really the answer. Especially the way we've built suburbs in the US for the last 50-70 yrs.
Feel like rezoning for more multifamily homes, with fewer height restrictions in current areas would be better. Like I live in the city right now (pop 500k, metro ~2.2mil), but the area I live in is mainly single family residential. I live in one of the few apartments in this section of town. This is a photo from my balcony; this could be some small suburb or small town in the middle of nowhere, not 10mi south of downtown. Why not increase density here, first?
The thread was about AirBNB. I'm well aware of other factors causing housing shortages. But especially in mountain tourist towns, where space and land are at a premium, AirBNB took existing...
The thread was about AirBNB. I'm well aware of other factors causing housing shortages.
But especially in mountain tourist towns, where space and land are at a premium, AirBNB took existing housing off of the market to the point that the workers that make those towns run have trouble living there.
Yeah.... we used to do airbnb a lot, but have now switched to hotels half the time. The cleaning fees got ridiculous. In one instance, we paid a cleaning fee but part of the check out process was...
Yeah.... we used to do airbnb a lot, but have now switched to hotels half the time. The cleaning fees got ridiculous. In one instance, we paid a cleaning fee but part of the check out process was to take out the trash. Then what is the cleaning fee for? I got really mad about that and just switched to hotels when I could...smh
I feel strongly that the cleaning fee should dishes, trash and laundry. Yeah guests should pick up garbage around the home they stay in, but once it gets to cleaning the place like your grandma’s...
I feel strongly that the cleaning fee should dishes, trash and laundry. Yeah guests should pick up garbage around the home they stay in, but once it gets to cleaning the place like your grandma’s visiting and you’re still paying for it, why bother?
Yeah, the fees get really stupid, I don't mind doing some chores on the way out the door as long as they're not too obnoxious but stop charging me 200+ bucks in bullshit fees like cleaning,...
Yeah, the fees get really stupid, I don't mind doing some chores on the way out the door as long as they're not too obnoxious but stop charging me 200+ bucks in bullshit fees like cleaning, service, etc.
By mid-September, when he [CEO Brian Chesky] rolled out a handful of site improvements, it seemed as if Chesky had found himself in a Catch-22, caught between the conflicting demands of guests and hosts. Top of mind among them: Guests want to spend less money and be guaranteed a better product, while hosts are worried about potential declines in bookings and their bottom lines.
“We need to get our house in order,” he says. “We need to make sure the listings are great, we’re providing great customer service and we’re affordable. And I’ve told our team that we can get back to creating new and exciting things once we’ve fixed that foundation.”
“Our system,” says Chesky—referring to the disruptive tech platform where “adventurous travelers” could buy and sell products (in this case, rooms or homes), process secure payments and leave reviews—“was designed for a much smaller company which grew like crazy.”
“To use a precise metaphor, it’s kind of like we never fully built the foundation. Like, we had a house and it had four pillars when we needed to have 10.”
Math aside, there are three core pillars Chesky says would add up to “a really great service”: affordable prices, reliability and proper customer support when things go wrong. But retrofitting a large house isn’t easy. “The bigger you are, the more effort it takes to increase quality,” Chesky says. “And that’s what we’ve been really focused on.”
Chesky walks a delicate tightrope as he tries to motivate profit-hungry hosts by encouraging (some of) them to shrink their margins.
I don't have a subscription to read this, but I'm curious what he plans to do. It's not necessarily a problem with their platform, it's a problem with their hosts who charge too much so that it's...
I don't have a subscription to read this, but I'm curious what he plans to do. It's not necessarily a problem with their platform, it's a problem with their hosts who charge too much so that it's cheaper to just stay in a hotel. They did take a step in the right direction when they started allowing you to list prices with fees included, so you can at least look at the total cost without getting baited into a cheap listing with an insane cleaning fee.
As someone that lives in a building with multiple Airbnb units it drives me crazy, these people are shredding our community apart and flipping units where familes used to live into temporary...
As someone that lives in a building with multiple Airbnb units it drives me crazy, these people are shredding our community apart and flipping units where familes used to live into temporary housing for people who dont give a damn about this building and the people who actually live here. I used to have neighbors, now there's no one.
Last I went to look at Airbnb as an option to stay somewhere, the "cleaning fee" would send the cost of the room way beyond that of a traditional hotel room. While I'm not opposed to this fee, the heights I've seen the fee reach has really turned me off to the option of using them.
Plus as someone else mentioned, it's an incredibly disruptive service to local communities who could actually live in the housing being used for this.
The business model of AirBnB is ultimately doomed, at least on any scale it has previously operated at. Its original pitch made sense. Rent quirky hideaways in odd locations, rent rooms in peoples' homes, or rent their homes while owners are away themselves traveling. In other words, not competing against traditional hotels. A hotel doesn't compete against a literal cabin in the woods somewhere, and that's the kind of thing AirBnB would be great for. Someone renting out a spare room or renting their entire place while they're away also doesn't directly compete with hotels. Either can be done just for some spare cash, or in the case of the rented room, some spare cash and a chance to meet new interesting people. Are you a retiree looking for something interesting to spice things up? Try your hand at being a short-term BnB operator and rent out a spare bedroom a few weekends a year.
And if that's all AirBnB tried to cater to, they could have built a modest but quite sustainable business model. If you just want a room to stay while in a city, you go for an ordinary hotel. If you want something in a weird location or a nontraditional stay, go for AirBnB. Add to this a few other cases, like people wanting to rent entire houses on the beach, that sort of thing.
Because here is the ultimate problem. Standard apartments turned into AirBnB rentals can never be competitive long term with hotels. A small time landlord who owns a dozen condos across a city and rents them on AirBnB can never be competitive with a hotel. That landlord will simply never have the economies of scale a big hotel does. A big hotel can hire regular cleaning staff, and that staff can efficiently clean rooms by going one after another down a hallway. They can do laundry in big commercial laundry machines. They can buy everything they need in absurdly cheap bulk quantities. They can even recycle half-used bars of soap. A hotel is a large industrial operation; AirBnBs are small scale affairs.
As long as they kept to the weird margins of the hospitality industry, this wouldn't have been a problem. Someone renting out their condo while they're away is just doing it for some extra cash, they can afford to price their property cheaper than hotels. A cabin in the woods or a quaint cottage built on a quirky alpaca farm aren't competing with big hotels operating with huge economies of scale.
But the thing is, there is simply a very finite supply of quirky off-grid rentals and people wanting to rent out their homes while they're away. Past a certain point, the only way to expand is to get landlords to start offering their regular apartments on AirBnB, or to get small time landlords to buy up condos and do the same. These kinds of properties have to compete directly against hotels, and they will never be cost competitive against them. Such landlords need to make this a profitable long term business; they're not doing it just for spare cash. This is their livelihood. There's a reason most landlords stick to year-length leases, or monthly at the shortest. Too short a rental term, and you start competing against hotels, whose economies of scale they can't match.
So how did AirBnB get all these landlords to agree to put their units up as short term rentals? They pulled the classic Silicon Valley bait-and-switch. The same con Uber and Doordash pulled. Use venture capital to subsidize the growth of the business. Then, once everyone is hooked, start turning the screws. As they were growing, AirBnB massively subsidized rentals. They kept their fees artificially low and even directly subsidized the rental prices, offering landlords more generous terms than they could ever afford to sustainably do. They may have even directly subsidized listings, paying a chunk of the tenants' stays. They paid for all of this with billions in venture capital funds, hoping to grow big enough that everyone got hooked on it.
Now, some landlords really did become dependent on AirBnB, and those are the ones they can put the screws on in the short term. But especially in today's red hot real estate market, AirBnB doesn't have much leverage. Someone who bought a dozen condos with the intention of AirBnBing them can just turn them back into apartments or simply sell them. The company just doesn't have much leverage to force rental providers to rent at unsustainably low rates, unlike say Doordash or Uber, which got some people to take that on as their primary job. So they've allowed rentals to tack on all sorts of usurious fees, which is now driving people away from the platform.
They built a fundamentally unsustainable business model. If they had kept to the fringes of the market and never tried to compete directly with hotels, they could have made a nice, modest, sustainable platform. Instead they got greedy, decided they needed unlimited growth and needed to rule the world, and their greed will cost them everything. They grew the platform by subsidizing the whole thing with billions in VC funds, and they never had any viable long term plan for how they could compete with hotels.
Ten years from now, I think we will still have AirBnB, and it will actually be back to the quirky getaways and spare-room rentals the platform was initially pitched as. However, it won't be operated by the current leaders or owned by the current shareholders. The existing bloated corpse will finally go bankrupt, the shareholders will be wiped out, and the name sold in bankruptcy. Someone with two brain cells to rub together, capable of realistic financial planning, someone not assuming infinite greed and growth, will buy the name from the bankruptcy and build a modest sustainable business off of it.
The landlords short term renting out their places via airbnb aren't directly competing with Hotels though, they're competing with long-term renters of their own apartment. As long as turning your apartment into a hotel room is more profitable than having someone stay in it on a permanent basis, airbnb will continue to see landlords sign up to it.
I know nothing about this sort of landlording or even regular property ownership (I helped my dad manage one property, which I also lived in, but he never owned multiple properties and this was all back in pre-2008), buuuuuut I'm gonna talk anywaaaaays - So if the removal of subsidies has lead to the LLs raising their prices above what hotels can offer for the same level of amenities, and this is now leading to a drop in people willing to AirBnB, isn't that making the whole thing less profitable for the LLs? Some may be slow to react because they are gamblers looking to get back the high of the old big wins, but if you find your property empty more often than not you either have to lower your prices, up your amenities, or get out of the game by renting long-term or selling.
But your not realizing that an AirBnB can make more money than a rental quite easily. They don't need 100% uptime to match rental prices. As little as a week of bnb can match rental prices. So yes, sales are down but as long as they're up enough to beat out rental rates, then AirBnB is still the choice. Some landlords will give up if the profit difference is too slim to fuss over the additional management headaches, but others will stick it out for the chance at a big month.
Civil engineering specifically, PhD student in civil engineering and wood science of all things. So I don't claim any specific knowledge of finance or economics. This is just based on general knowledge. Though I would refer you this article here.
I’ve found AirBnb to be a good pick when I’m traveling with a medium/large group of people, it’s typically cheaper (and nicer!) to book a 2-3 bedroom house for 6 people than it is to book 2 or 3 hotel rooms, plus you get the benefit of common areas being private and probably a kitchen. If you’re staying more than 3 days, the cleaning fee is also less of a problem.
But for traveling alone or for short stays I always go with hotels. They’re far more predictable, usually cheaper, and generally just a better experience.
Yeah Airbnb still wins for groups, no one wants to hang out in a small hotel room with 8 people all day. Big houses rock for groups 4< and they usually aren't too expensive if you get enough people to split the bill
I mean, I am unhappy enough with AirBNB as a cause for higher housing prices in touristy areas that I choose to boycott them full stop.
It seems like the market is sending a signal that AirBNB got cocky or complacent. But I'm not sorry that they are not finding it as easy to be profitable.
Airbnb is working in a difficult area.
Source: I used to work for one of the biggest OTAs. While there are Kayak, Trivago, Orbitz, Vrbo, Agoda, HotelTonight, etc., there are only three OTAs behind all of these websites: Expedia, Booking, and Airbnb. They own the 'inventory'. All their subsidiaries, from my understanding, more or less use their inventories.
(There are some Chinese OTAs but they have very limited presence outside of China.)
On average, they make ~15% commission per reservation. Airbnb is a bit different in that it splits its fees between hosts and guests: it charges 3% commission to hosts and then a 5–20% service fee to guests. From what I hear and read, it too averages around ~15% from reservations. So that's not really out of line for the industry.
It's a hyper competitive, high-touch industry, so all these OTAs employ and rely on their own customer support agents, often in North American or European countries, who speak excellent English, German, French, Spanish, etc. instead of outsourcing customer support to India or the Philippines. Operating customer support in HCOL countries is, well, expensive, but they do it because good customer service (and thus brand) is one of the primary differentiators in an industry where prices are cutthroat.
Now, I suspect that Airbnb's customer support costs are significantly higher than the industry average because there is massively more variability in quality in its inventory. Guests who show up in a ratty Airbnb will demand to be rebooked, and rightfully so. Private homes can vary a lot. Hotels have much less variability in quality. They're usually quite consistent, and guests often can expect what to get. In addition, hotel managers can usually handle most customer support issues. OTA support agents usually step in when, say, a hotel overbooks and the guest needs a place to stay pronto.
Also, with the professionalization and nature of Airbnbing, there are certain costs that Airbnb and their hosts cannot compete on, like cleaning. Hiring a cleaner to drive to and service a private home is inherently much less scalable than having an in-house cleaner move between rooms in a hotel building.
Inventory for these guys varies by territory. Some have Asia, some Europe, some NAmerica. They all share within their owner groups, but their in house inventory and pricing is usually region specific. They aren't just different frontends to the same db.
I work for one too, so I'm super biased, but I usually find Airbnb's are pieces of shit unless I pay a lot for the nice ones. Hotels here are cheep though and provide good services, breakfast buffets, pools, cleaning, people who answer questions, rooms that don't stink. You have to get down into the sub $10 a night rate to stop getting those benefits here.
Last time I was in the us, hotel room costs were insane enough I get why people don't use them. $100/night was a shithole. $200 was got us a place that set out a box of donughnuts in the morning if you were fast enough to make it.
Sounds like Thailand, or SEA....So Agoda?
OTA = Online Travel Agency? (I looked at wikipedia and that seems the best one to match.)
I've often found netizens blaming two factors above all else for rising housing prices namely AirBNB and Migrants.
But honestly, that's very much like blaming only demand side factors for rising prices in a market, why not also look at supply side for a change? Is there a real estate price cartel in your area which is controlling rental and plot prices (there often is in many countries)? Also, why isn't more land being explored for housing projects like city suburbs and newer cities and towns? This is something you might want to take up with your country's legislators too.
Idk if building more suburbs is really the answer. Especially the way we've built suburbs in the US for the last 50-70 yrs.
Feel like rezoning for more multifamily homes, with fewer height restrictions in current areas would be better. Like I live in the city right now (pop 500k, metro ~2.2mil), but the area I live in is mainly single family residential. I live in one of the few apartments in this section of town. This is a photo from my balcony; this could be some small suburb or small town in the middle of nowhere, not 10mi south of downtown. Why not increase density here, first?
I think @pyeri is saying that we need to build non-suburb housing in existing city suburbs, not that we should build more city suburbs.
The thread was about AirBNB. I'm well aware of other factors causing housing shortages.
But especially in mountain tourist towns, where space and land are at a premium, AirBNB took existing housing off of the market to the point that the workers that make those towns run have trouble living there.
Not everywhere is it easy to simply build more.
Yeah.... we used to do airbnb a lot, but have now switched to hotels half the time. The cleaning fees got ridiculous. In one instance, we paid a cleaning fee but part of the check out process was to take out the trash. Then what is the cleaning fee for? I got really mad about that and just switched to hotels when I could...smh
I feel strongly that the cleaning fee should dishes, trash and laundry. Yeah guests should pick up garbage around the home they stay in, but once it gets to cleaning the place like your grandma’s visiting and you’re still paying for it, why bother?
And it’s something AirBNB has to fix.
This is why I stopped using Airbnb and went back to hotels. I'd rather pay a little bit more than spend my vacation time cleaning.
Yeah, the fees get really stupid, I don't mind doing some chores on the way out the door as long as they're not too obnoxious but stop charging me 200+ bucks in bullshit fees like cleaning, service, etc.
excerpts:
I don't have a subscription to read this, but I'm curious what he plans to do. It's not necessarily a problem with their platform, it's a problem with their hosts who charge too much so that it's cheaper to just stay in a hotel. They did take a step in the right direction when they started allowing you to list prices with fees included, so you can at least look at the total cost without getting baited into a cheap listing with an insane cleaning fee.
Sorry, here is an archive link.
Mirror, for those hit by the paywall:
https://archive.ph/rjnCq
As someone that lives in a building with multiple Airbnb units it drives me crazy, these people are shredding our community apart and flipping units where familes used to live into temporary housing for people who dont give a damn about this building and the people who actually live here. I used to have neighbors, now there's no one.