I feel like this is missing a really important factor: how likely are guests to use airbnb again after staying at a listing?
A listing could look great online and receive a lot of bookings (so high LTV), but ultimately drive users away from the platform.
A certain ad platform I worked on cared a lot about this - offensive ads could get you to quit the site altogether. You might want to count every ad as positive for the company since you make money, but some might actually be negative expected value! As a side note, I think this is a really undermeasured problem. There are many sites I won't use because the ads are so overwhelming or are often offensive.
> A listing could look great online and receive a lot of bookings (so high LTV), but ultimately drive users away from the platform.
I am precisely this kind of churned customer. I have personally booked maybe 3 AirBNB stays, and stayed with family in them on other occasions. The units I pick are always well-reviewed.
But in the cities I've stayed in (LA, SF, Rome), the price is really no cheaper than a hotel, and the quality is extremely variable. You have to really carefully read those 5-star guest reviews to read between the lines.
And you feel pressured not to leave a negative review, as that would negatively impact your ability to book in the future, since the hosts (I have heard) can see your average review score.
My impression has been that AirBNB's customers are actually the hosts. You, the guest, are an expendable commodity. You will use AirBNB until you have a severe enough problem, and experience them siding with the host over you. Then you'll be churned permanently, and by force if you do a chargeback.
If I were going to disrupt AirBNB, I'd offer hosts a better percentage with the requirement that the experience is standardized and high-quality. There would be an in-unit noise & vibration sensor, reporting directly in the app. 24 hour check-in and check-out. A minimum set of amenities, minimum WiFi speed. The bedding would be standard. Cleaning fee standard. Every unit subject to a surprise multi-point inspection at least once per year. Essentially, make it no worse than an average hotel, and maybe some units as good or better than high end hotels.
> If I were going to disrupt AirBNB, I'd offer hosts a better percentage with the requirement that the experience is standardized and high-quality.
I've noticed more and more apartment rentals appearing on booking.com. I haven't used any of them but I wonder what the tradeoffs are. My impression is overall booking.com is more guest-friendly as their userbase has grown from people staying at hotels, who expect stuff like being able to cancel and complain about cleanliness.
From my experience booking.com is the most guest hostile platform I’ve experienced to the point I try to actively avoid it. I travel A LOT and can book anything from 20 - 40 stays per jaunt. Whenever I have encountered a problem on booking it has always been met with ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ tough shit energy.
I remember one specific incident when a hotel had purposefully put me in a noisy room (I saw a sheet on the reception desk labelling it as ‘ruidosas’ which means noisy in Spanish). I took a video of it against the receptionists will and ensured I got the logo of the hotel in as well. When I reported to booking they essentially told me to jog on.
On the contrary, anytime I’ve had an issue with Airbnb they have sided with me and provided a refund/assisted me with finding better accommodation.
This isn’t a ‘you book more with us thing’, either. I have substantially more bookings on booking due to the prevalence in Asia but they literally could not care less
I'm Booking.com's Genius Level 3, so perhaps this only applies to frequent users, but I've been refunded in full for a booking after the date of the booking without even giving the reason for the refund request.
I've shifted 100% away from AirBnb and to Booking and am still able to book whole apartments/houses. It used to be AirBnb=houses/apts, Booking=hotels. Now Booking covers both, is usually cheaper (especially considering the cleaning fees AirBnb listings usually charge), and has good customer support (in my experience).
> My impression has been that AirBNB's customers are actually the hosts
Yes for sure. Avg # of transactions per host dwarfs avg # of transactions per guest. Same with revenue. A frustrated host who pulls a unit (often, multiple units) off the platform is much more detrimental than an individual customer leaving the platform.
This could also be played the other way around if the customers are completely churned. (ie: airbnb will lose a full unit with XX bookings but can also loose XX customers multiplied by XX Life Time Value).
The duty cycle (number of business days per year) is less than 1% for typical guests but around 100% for a sizeable chuck of hosts, and in the 20-80% range for a lot of the rest.
Hence I expect the host LTV to be a couple of orders of magnitude greater to that of guests.
If you want standardized professional places to stay while you travel, why not just stay in a hotel? When I go to a hotel (and we travel a lot), I know I’m getting a standard level of service and if not - especially with a chain hotel like one franchised by Hyatt, Hilton, Marriott etc - I can complain to someone at corporate and get a refund and book somewhere else, usually it doesn’t even tags that. Just talk to the front desk. They don’t care if you get a refund - it’s not their money.
Airbnb “hosts” treat it like their “home” and are emotionally invested in what should be a business transaction.
This isn’t to mention how many hosts are running an illegal AirBnb.
> If I were going to disrupt AirBNB, I'd offer hosts a better percentage with the requirement that the experience is standardized and high-quality.
This is an interesting idea, but it puts the quality level way above what I want to pay for. Hotels are anti-septic and cold. I like staying in an apartment that feels like someone actually lives there. I don't mind a few dust-bunnies under the couch, nor a little dirt behind the toilet. It's even better when the kitchen is fully stocked, including a selection of non-perishable food (think cooking oil, salt, pepper, maybe a bag of ground coffee and a box of pasta.) Sure, the sheets and towels should be freshly laundered, but beyond that, I don't want much.
AirBNB allowed me to pay less to get a more human-feeling space. Hotels are like McDonalds, they are designed for the regular customer who wants to get that Hilton-feeling, regardless of if they are in Wichita or Cairo. I want to feel like I'm in Cairo, and if that means that I'm in a mud brick house with a single bathroom, no A/C, and no daily housekeeping that's great! AirBNB opened those worlds to us as travelers, in a way that hotel chains never did.
I think that's more common in other parts of the world. (i.e. getting places that people actually live in).In Europe most/all of the apartments I've stayed in are basically business apartments (more or less).
You don't feel that someone lives there because nobody actually lives there. It's like a long term rental apartment that in best case scenario someone is using as a savings/investment vehicle but on short term. "Worst case" it's part of an apart-hotel.
When I travel as part of a large group(i.e. more than 3 people) a short term apartment is great because we need a big affordable space (i.e. someone may sleep on the couch and we don't want the hotel "greetings & house keeping" experience) but nevertheless I don't want or expect a dirty place in any way, shape or form be it in Cairo or somewhere else. I'm pretty sure there are people living in less than sanitary conditions all over the world including Western Europe and the U.S. That doesn't mean I have interest in experiencing that kind of "living/sleeping".
All that being said I've stopped using Airbnb years ago. It seems a broken system. For short term rentals/apartments Booking.com is the only sane choice(IMHO).
It's not so much for a Hilton-like feeling. In most cases, it's because I'm looking for a predictable place to stay with, often, a 24 hour desk. I just don't care about the room most of the time so long as it's clean and comfortable. I'm generally not traveling for the purpose of staying in a hotel room. I do stay in more traditional B&Bs/inns though very rarely somewhere that's solely an Airbnb.
> In Europe most/all of the apartments I've stayed in are basically business apartments (more or less). It's like a long term rental apartment that in best case scenario someone is using as a savings/investment vehicle but on short term.
If that the only thing AirBNB offered, I would have much less interest.
> I'm pretty sure there are people living in less than sanitary conditions all over the world including Western Europe and the U.S. That doesn't mean I have interest in experiencing that kind of "living/sleeping".
Thankfully, AirBNB doesn't have to be all things to all people. As long as there are enough people like me to keep them afloat, they can provide a product that I am happy with, and you can stay at hotels that are immaculately clean.
I do hate the way that many AirBNB hosts have made hosting a business, and would fully support a limit on the number of listings per host. People renting out a space in their house, or a vacation rental in a vacation destination that they also stay in too is fine. People buying 3 or more apartments to rent them out (taking them off the long-term rental market) is terrible, and should be prohibited.
I just randomly looked at hotels.com for hotels in Cairo and I saw name brand hotels from American brands like Hilton for around $120 a night. Even high end hotels like the Waldorf are $284 a night (I don’t care about fancy hotels personally). Why would I stay in a dirty Airbnb?
Not that I would ever use a third party booking site like hotels.com either…
I want the place I stay at to be run professionally and it to be I give them money and they give me a clean place to stay without having to worry about my ratings, discrimination, etc.
Especially in another country where I don’t know the language and after taking a long flight. I wouldn’t want to take the chance on an AirBnb.
* Desire to have an experience and living environment I can't get at home.
* Desire to have living space beyond 2 beds and a bathroom crammed into the smallest available space.
* Indifference to dirt or wear and tear.
Thankfully, no one is saying that AirBNB should replace name brand hotels, in the same way that no one thinks that every hotel should be a Motel 6. AirBNB/VRBO is just another segment of the industry, and those people who want to stay in an AirBNB can, just as people who want a Hilton can without affecting those people who want to stay in the Ritz-Carlton. This is the beauty of the market!
> Hotels are like McDonalds, they are designed for the regular customer who wants to get that Hilton-feeling, regardless of if they are in Wichita or Cairo.
Stop staying at chain hotels. There are plenty of hotels out there that are what you're looking for, and have an actual business to engage with in case of issues instead of some anonymous lister on AirBNB.
> Stop staying at chain hotels. There are plenty of hotels out there that are what you're looking for, and have an actual business to engage with in case of issues instead of some anonymous lister on AirBNB.
That has not been my experience. It is very hard to find a robust selection of hotels in a major city that has a living room and kitchen. Even when you do, in a part of the city you want to stay in, they are often tiny kitchens, with limited kitchen equipment, and where the cabinets are completely cleared of every food item after every guest. These places also have very antiseptic, uncomfortable furnishings. They are night and day different from staying in most AirBNBs.
> My impression has been that AirBNB's customers are actually the hosts.
Fwiw, I listened to an interview with Brian a couple of years back where he said that, internally and strategically, they call hosts “partners” and guests “customers.” Which makes sense to me.
Many people try this. I think Sonder was most recent but they pivoted. Blueground will do corporate apartments short term. I think these aren’t effective against Airbnb customers tbh. It’s not a perfect platform but the others are not as good because availability is key.
>And you feel pressured not to leave a negative review, as that would negatively impact your ability to book in the future, since the hosts (I have heard) can see your average review score.
Source?
I did a quick search and couldn't find anything to confirm this. Various airbnb screenshots geared towards hosts also don't show anything about guests' average rating.[1]
An interesting distinction is between staying at a listing vs booking it. I booked an AirBnB in Texas for the eclipse last year. The booking was made months ahead of time. Minutes before I left for the airport, the host canceled with no communication and didn't respond to messages. I got a refund, but I wasn't able to leave a review because the stay hadn't begun.
I had only used AirBnB once or twice before and was leery of it, but after this experience I'm unlikely to use it again. The inability to review the host in such a situation is pretty much a dealbreaker. (Note that I want to review the host --- not the property, but the person who decided to cancel the booking at the last minute.)
We had an experience not as bad as that, but cancelling on us a week or two before we were due to fly (and had booked everything else). They wanted US to cancel, but I saw no advantage to us in doing so. I assume it was to maintain some reputation on their side. We declined.
No model is perfect, but some are useful. Their "baseline LTV" looks at the sum of listings on their platform (plus other features), then tries to forecast the next 365 days — so this should indirectly capture people coming and going. I think their cannibalization model is quite clever as well.
Going deeper with modeling users might yield some tighter estimates, but I imagine this gets estimates far closer than some simple accounting formula, and likely helpful for budgeting a year out — but it would have been nice to have seen some performance metrics.
I also think the cannibalization model is clever. The baseline model is however a bit underwhelming,
as bookings can be misleading by themselves - you have cancellations, impressions,
and so forth. For example if you only look at bookings in next 365 days, new listings will be penalized. But as you said no model is perfect :-)
AirBnBs are as expensive as hotels now, except you have to clean it yourself and deal with an often insane host and their random rules. I am back to hotels and resorts all the time now, you at least know what you’re going to get.
In the case of Airbnb, wouldn't that show up in the listing's reviews, requests for refunds, etc. and ultimately drive down the listing's LTV? Nobody leaves reviews on an ad, and I imagine that very few users report inappropriate ads, so you can only measure that indirectly. But if somebody books an Airbnb and has a bad experience, they are much more likely to give you direct feedback about it.
I think it could show up in those other places, but probably isn't fully captured?
Imagine an airbnb that's great for most guests but absolutely terrible for 1 in every 5, so bad that they quit airbnb. Maybe it's next to a music venue, so every once in a while it's very loud.
It's possible it could maintain a decent average star rating and LTV as described in the article but actually have negative (real) lifetime value for airbnb if the 1 in five that they lose would have spent a lot of money on the platform otherwise.
Bad reviews are often moderated away and refund requests are stonewalled (and few people know about chargebacks so that isn't factored in). It is easier for the platform to acquire guests than hosts, so the platform takes the side of hosts.
Edit: at least that was the situation a couple of years ago. A host below now reports that the situation has changed and they take the side of the guests; however, either way it's open to abuse no matter which side they take.
The issue is that in a marketplace where both sides can be dishonest, the only way to ensure quality is to do spot checks by trusted actors (aka company employees) where the penalties for failing such a check are dissuasive enough that it becomes more profitable to play by the rules.
This is similar to how law enforcement is supposed to operate - the reason the penalty for theft (for example) is more than merely returning the stolen items is that since law enforcement can't observe everyone all at once, the penalty needs to be enough of a deterrent to make the bad behavior unprofitable overall, to discourage it even in cases where law enforcement isn't there to witness it and enforce said law.
Good point and it affects far more than just Airbnb. I'm sure some companies internal ROI for app notifications is universally positive... but when you send me 10 app notifications a week for a product or service I only purchase occasionally, I'm uninstalling the app. Obviously I'm in the minority because the app still has millions of users but hopefully others have turned notifications off.
I basically uninstall all apps between two uses of them: Uber, AirBnb. Even the bank, I have a problem with the mandatory confirmation-on-phone for the yearly stock options plan I use. Wouldn’t want a thieve to see that app.
I think it's pretty hard to attribute bad stays to stoppage of the service though unless they use reviews in a model which is probably the best data they have to predict this.
I haven't booked an Airbnb in years, whether it be due to having hotel points to redeem or someone else in my party booking on their account or just the price differences in that specific city I am going to. I'm not averse to the service but my account is basically dormant
I had this experience years ago. The first place I ever rented in had Wi-Fi that didn’t work and after about a week the water stopped working. I cancelled my booking through support and the owner called me 3 or 4 times on WhatsApp and then left me a bad review. The second place had a shower that didn’t drain and the washing machine flooded the apartment one evening. The third place had black mold growing out of the kitchen ceiling. I tried to get them to waive the cleaning fee over it, but the owner claimed he had told me about it already and refused to do anything. When I left, he told me he had written me a good review and expected one in return. I pointed out that he had done nothing to remedy the mold issue and then posted my own review, and found that in his review he had accused me of bringing prostitutes and drugs into the apartment (which I did not).
It was nominally cheaper to travel this way, but for my next trip I’ll be staying in hotels.
> There are many sites I won't use because the ads are so overwhelming or are often offensive.
I hate to sound like the “Do people still watch TV? I haven’t owned a TV in 20 years.” Guy. But why are you seeing ads on the web? Don’t you use an ad blocker?
I used to use one but when I started working on ads it felt hypocritical. I want to support the sites that I use, especially those that don't paywall content. I don't work on ads anymore but have stuck with it.
Airbnb’s original promise was magical, thrilling, interesting - get to stay in unusual places that are full of charm and possibility.
But that promise was broken for me when Commaleta played back the video of her front door camera and counted that we had 10 people walk in her door, not eight. She proceeded to accuse us of throwing a party, when we absolutely did not, and tried to charge us $1000 extra dollars.
At that point, I decided that Airbnb’s hosts were too much of a wildcard in most travel situations.
By the way, the story above is from 10 years ago and I will never forget her name for the rest of my life…she turned what should’ve been a relaxing, beautiful week into a miserable arbitration process. It’s hard for ABNB to succeed long term when one experience like that can ruin everything.
Many hosts consider anyone entering the unit , even just for lunch or dinner, to count against the listing "max", and accuse you of having a party. and some are quite big brotherish about monitoring.
Last month a first time host confabulated $1200 of maintenance charges. Having left the property already, I was in no position to produce evidence that they were fake. Arbitration was hopeless, I canceled my card and won't be using Airbnb again.
Funnily enough I went through something similar 3 weeks ago at an Airbnb in France.
The host retaliated because we had the audacity to tell her that the place was unclean when we checked in. She claimed 2000$ of fabricated damage and as you Airbnb sided with the host initially.
It's only because I lost 3 hours of my time with support and took a thousands of screenshot from our Messages that I got them to drop that charge.
I also issued a Chargeback with my credit card for the dirty place.
But yeah, this is done for me as well. I had 20+ stays but I will never , absolutely never use them again. My time is worth something and this Airbnb destroyed our holiday and took way too much of my time to handle.
had the same experience with a wildcard host that went absolutely full lying during our stay just because we told her that the place was not really clean.
She went full damage on us as a revenge. Trying to charge us 2000$ for fabricated damage. Airbnb Support tried to stand on her side asking us if we "had proof we didn't do it". I was on holiday. I didn't think about taking every single object in high definition picture.
We had to spend 3+ hours on the phone and by message to have Airbnb "drop" that 2000$ charge.
Never again. Not worth the time. Airbnb is great when it goes well. But you have too many bad hosts that ruin it for everyone. And when it goes bad it goes really bad.
> A deep dive on the framework that lets us identify the most valuable listings for our guests.
An opening article lie! For our hosts would be much more appropriate. Why does a guest care about how many nights a place is going to sell in the next few months?
This assumes value for guests is how much money the property they stay at makes, when it obviously isn't that.
In New York the website recently updated to do this, presumably because they were forced to. They had a whole banner announcing it.
I'm Australian and moved to New York recently-ish. It was one of those classic anti-consumer disappointments one experiences moving to the states. Glad they fixed it.
That's one thing, annoying but possible to work with.
What I'm talking about is Dynamic Pricing. Had to look up what really happens: The host sets a rate-range, and Airbnb first gives the low price and then as you click around in the area they notice you're more interested so they increase it towards the high end of the price range (possibly also time of day and such signals?). Then I guess there's a slow cooldown.
Like how a good haggle is made to give you a friendly relationship with the seller, this seems specifically designed to make people hate Airbnb and swear to never use it again.
Insane that they allow that. Maybe it's an option the host can set on the listing?
Booking, as far as I know, straight up doesn't allow hosts to cancel. Recently, a host sent me a message begging me to cancel my booking because they really couldn't be there to receive me.
Hosts can cancel, but they are subject to their cancelation penalties (according to the level they've chosen for guests) plus there is an automatic "review" added stating that "This host cancelled a booking X days in advance". Unless X is very big, I run away from those listings.
Airbnb hosts are penalised if they cancel - they get downrated - so it's not something that hosts generally want to do. Far better if they can persuade a guest to cancel
Booking.com is awful. Anyone can make a listing on Booking.com for places that don't exist. Airbnb at least makes an effort to verify the building is real.
The last trip to Brasil I had problems with AirBnB - both incorrect listings (e.g. wrong location) and listings that weren't actually available.
I've used booking.com around the world and I can't recall any serious problem. When dealing with an issue, AirBnB error flow often sucks and booking is mostly fine.
When AirBnB works out great, you can find some real magic, but when it fails it really sucks.
I've found booking.com is usually more hotel-like and professional (e.g. contactable and reliable).
I still use both but I'm careful to choose depending on perceived risks.
Their hyper aggressive marketing strategy is already telling. Their website randomly pops up when you search and book the flight already. Spanish holiday rental owners don't even advertise anywhere else afraid of booking.com price match policy, but are insolent enough to collect full photo of guests' id document and install cameras inside apartment. Booking is the only place to book holiday rental in Europe and I hate using their service.
Mega-tangent: As a host, I feel compelled to rant about Airbnb whenever they come up in a discussion.
The last 2 years they have _really_ moved to squeeze the hosts. The customer service has been demolished and they seem to have taken a stance of "the guest is always right". I've spent countless hours going through their customer service as a super host, so I know I have a decent amount of anecdata.
My suspicion is that they found themselves with more supply than demand, so they are "improving the guest experience" at the expense of the hosts. Since they are a quasi-monopoly (depends on the market) it makes sense for them to prune supply in exchange for better guest experience, a full market approach makes less sense since they make money in proportion to the total amount of money transacted (which as a monopoly it can optimize for in the way a free market can't).
But I think this will blowback sooner or later. The biggest value for an Airbnb guest is the review system that allows you to have some degree of certainty of what you are getting. The biggest value for a host is the massive global audience. But guests and hosts, pay a steep fee (17%!) for this. For well-reviewed, long-living stays (like mine :)), paying 17% is way too much to access this audience: the listing already has an online record that provides that quality assurance for the guest, and the host could spend that money on advertising.
So that's what many of us are doing, moving to PMS + paid advertising / SEO to diversify on distribution channels. I think there's an opportunity for capturing that semi-pro host market and bundling them in a similar offering that 1) doesn't squeeze them, 2) offers a proper PMS software, and 3) charges a flat fee instead of a variable rate.
PMS as in Pantone Matching System or Premenstrual Syndrome?
AirBNB can be equally frustrating for users as well.
Recently ended up at night in a new city in northern Japan where the host told me the listing was at a different address, where I found nothing, and got only radio silence from the host.
Every hotel room in town was occupied that night.
Airbnb support, seemingly in far away India, told me to try contacting the host, and that was that.
Also recently stayed at a place with a dog that shat inside due to the owner not taking them out; due to politeness no one had complained in the reviews.
Also Airbnb lists one price but when booking it always ends up being way more with more fees added.
I’m using hotels.com with a filter for “has kitchen” these days, which was the only reason I used Airbnb in the first place
PMS - Property Management System, aka what actual hotels use to manage room inventory, bookings, etc.
IMO most of the things that people like about AirBnB vs hotels is downstream of the failed experiment of urban planning. If we want hotel operators willing to "spend" floorspace on kitchens and other niceties, then legal floorspace can't be scarce or special, but most of the current planning regime is oriented around enforcing limits on floorspace. Ditto for having options of places to stay that aren't tourist traps or commercial areas.
I suppose hotels can have a few rooms with kitchens but I'm guessing a vanishingly few people care about kitchens when traveling outside of maybe a microwave and a small refrigerator. AirBnB that are larger (e.g. houses) can also be nice for groups but that's more outside of cities than in a city center. Hotels tend to optimize for the 90% case.
Where I'm staying at the moment is a "serviced apartment" and does have a couple burners but that's unusual and I mostly stay here because I like the location in London.
A large fraction of families traveling value the kitchens (leftovers, kid breakfasts, not having to eat restaurant food for every meal, when all the kids want is Kraft Mac&Cheese, etc.) and the common living spaces (kids go to bed early). I hate traveling with my family and being stuck in a hotel room (or two!). When I'm traveling alone or with just adults, I can be out all day and only use my hotel room for sleeping, but with a diverse set of ages traveling, we often hang out in the living room while someone naps, or my kids will be done with touristing by 3pm and we need somewhere to be until dinnertime.
You see this in vacation destinations like Hawaii and Ski towns; there is a significant fraction of accommodations that are Condos, because you need a place to hang. AirBNB brought that to urban areas by sub-letting apartments, when hotel operators only provided maximally-dense sleeping-focused options; multi-bedroom hotel rooms with living rooms and kitchens largely did not exist in major city centers.
This is the primary reason I use Airbnb and it's equivalents. My typical traveling party is 4 adults, 3 kids, and 1-2 dogs most of those people have a preference to cook rather than eat out. Accommodating that in a hotel is a disaster unless you get an ultra low price of a double suite or something.
That's really the sweet spot for Airbnb (and Vrbo). Very few conventional hotels accommodate large groups well. If you're just trying to save a few bucks as a couple or solo traveler I'm not sure it usually pencils out given other tradeoffs.
If it truly is a minority preference, then we need a way to square that with all the people saying they book AirBnB's instead of hotels because of the kitchens. :)
The people who don't need kitchens and just book hotels don't say anything because their needs are met.
There are also some hotels with kitchens. Usually they have 'Suites' in their name. I stay at one most holiday seasons, we go and visit my folks and want to have a place where my family can cook without taking over my parents' kitchen.
I've stayed places with vrbo, which is pretty similar to airbnb, but older. It's most convenient IMHO if you want more than two bedrooms for a group with shared space, or you're going somewhere without many hotels.
> There are also some hotels with kitchens. Usually they have 'Suites' in their name. I stay at one most holiday seasons, we go and visit my folks and want to have a place where my family can cook without taking over my parents' kitchen.
These are okay, but they still have the antiseptic, overly-clean feeling of a space optimized for housekeeping. They will usually have a small couch or two, and maybe a table for 4. I have never seen one with a full dining room with table for 6; a fully stocked kitchen that includes non-perishable food staples, or any outdoor space. These things are common in AirBNB rentals, often at the same or similar price to nearby hotels.
AirBNB and VRBO absolutely opened a new market of accommodations compared to what was available before. These options may or may not be for the previous commenters, but it's silly to state universally that you can or should stay in a hotel instead. It's like saying "I love to ride my bike", and the reply being "you know you could ride a scooter to your destination, or drive a car."
I don't see anyone arguing that you shouldn't stay in an Airbnb or Vrbo. But a lot of us with more routine needs just want to plan to be able to checkin at any time, leave our luggage for a late departure, have a fairly predictable experience, etc. for our typical hotel stay.
The argument was never about what anyone individual should or should not do, it was about the idea that the limitations of the hotel format are more driven by urban planning and local politics - striving to keep buildings as small as possible, concentrating all non-house buildings in small slips of land, etc. - than anything inherent to the hotel format. Hotels and Airbnb’s are great, but both be better if both were legal on 100% of the land in the city, along with apartment buildings and every other form of housing, and without the arbitrary restrictions on size.
Sure tho TBF I wouldn't use the word lax - it implies there's something dangerous or untoward going on and we are choosing to let it slide. :)
Rather since the rules limiting hotel size, locations, quantity etc have nothing to do with safety and everything to do with class, exclusivity, and segregation, we can jettison them confidently without worrying that we are being too lax about anything important :)
And yes, I use Airbnb as a guest as well, but I gauge the risk of having a bad host into the decision making.
We also get all type of horror stories from guests that had a bad experience and found themselves trying to find a last minute place to stay.
The problem is that the Airbnb app heavily disincentivizes "professionalization". They have a small cartel of PMS providers that can actually hit their API. I can't build my own systems on top of their API, I have to go through a middle man or use the their crappy app.
Their app is so incredibly obtuse that it puzzles me how people shower Airbnb as a "great product design company". It's a beautiful app sure, but incredibly clunky. It's like a call center phone menu made into an art piece.
It's a tech assisted operations company, similar to Uber and Lyft.
The key distinction between say United Airlines and gig tech companies is that the latter will aggressively avoid owning physical assets and use tech to be a streamlined middle man in a market that actually requires a lot of operations.
They are a tech company, but in the sense that they get their edge from software not that they sell it.
Surprised to hear this because I had a very weird experience on my last stay. (and it will always be last as I will never stay at an Airbnb again).
Airbnb sided with the Host for some fabricated damages because the host was mad we told them the place was unclean. They put the burden of proof on us to prove we didn't destroy one of the sinks. Absolutely ridiculous.
We had to fight it for 3+ hours on the phone and message and start a chargeback and only then did support drop the fabricated charge.
And to top all of this, Airbnb deleted our bad review from that place (but left the review of the host).
So, never, absolutely never again. Too bad because I was spending 2k+$ on Airbnb before that incident and only got great reviews from other hosts.
AirBnB and Uber both have a dynamic where the host/driver has often taken out a loan and modified their lifestyle to depend on this income, which makes them the easier party to squeeze.
I have a smalltime Airbnb and I feel the same. Their only value is in their marketing distribution and they take 30%+. Their hosting tools could be worse but are not particularly great. Usually things work fine, but they have zero / hostile customer service on the host side on the random exceptional occurence. Hopefully more marketplaces show up
I would love to not use Airbnb as a consumer but there is no real alternative here. I hear a lot of people say that Airbnb is just as expensive as hotels but I just don't see it. I'm looking at traveling and a hotel in the area is $900 to $1200 while Airbnbs are $500 to $800.
> Property Management Systems (PMS) or Hotel Operating System (HOS), under business, terms may be used in real estate, manufacturing, logistics, intellectual property, government, or hospitality accommodation management. They are computerized systems that facilitate the management of properties, personal property, equipment, including maintenance, legalities and personnel all through a single piece of software.
Without landlords, you have no rental properties and everyone who can't afford to purchase their residence outright would have to find another option whatever that might be.
Without landlords we wouldn’t have a chunk of the housing supply held captive as investment, driving costs out of reach for most of the non-HN-reading audience.
> Without landlords we wouldn’t have a chunk of the housing supply held captive as investment, driving costs out of reach for most of the non-HN-reading audience.
That isn't caused by landlords, it's caused by zoning boards.
Suppose you have a city with a growing population. Then you need someone to pay construction companies to build more housing. When the new residents can afford a down payment, they pay the construction company themselves by taking out a mortgage. When they can't, a landlord does it, or else who? The tenant doesn't have a down payment and needs somewhere to live. The somewhere to live doesn't exist unless someone pays the construction company.
The problem only comes when the zoning board stops the construction company from increasing the housing supply. Then a landlord who wants to invest in property has to buy existing property instead of causing more to be created. This is the actual problem.
It doesn't matter if landlords want to fund the creation of lots of new housing by supplying capital to pay for it. That's even good. It's only when the creation of new housing is inhibited that things go sour.
I would have liked more discussion on handling uncertainty; how big is it, how well calibrated is it, how are they approaching variance reduction, how do they reduce the predictive distribution into decisions, etc. And no discussion of causal inference in the marketing section.
My advice to everyone is to never book an Airbnb if you value your time and sanity.
After a couple OK stays I had an absolutely horrible experience. The place was super dirty and the shower was clogged. The hosts tried to play nice and made us stay even though they didn't do the cleaning (Our fault I guess but when you are tired and already there you just want to move on and forget about the incident).
After the stay they became dishonest and lied to Support, tried to make us pay more. Support sided with the Host and even deleted our bad review of the place.
And the final nail in the coffin is that by deleting our bad review the host was able to get to Superhost status.
That stay destroyed our holidays. We then had to spend multiple hours on the phone and by message with support to defend ourselves. Ultimately they manage to leave a misleading review for us that we couldn't delete and Airbnb deleted our review of them.
It was already overpriced but once you account for the time lost when something goes wrong there is absolutely no point to book an Airbnb ever again.
Stay with professional in hotels. Your future you will thank you.
Surely Airbnb - a company that runs a website - has the capability to put a text post on their own website. Then they'd own the content, and people looking for it could find it easier? It's not a revolutionary concept either, Facebook has one:
The reason for this blog post is "recruit engineers". Not every engineer is going to visit blog.airbnb.com, but presumably a lot of them are already on Medium.
They even close the article with,
> We continue to solve interesting problems around LTV every day (and as more insights come up, we’ll keep sharing them on our blog). Can you see yourself making an impact here? If so, we encourage you to explore the open roles on our team.
I feel like this is missing a really important factor: how likely are guests to use airbnb again after staying at a listing?
A listing could look great online and receive a lot of bookings (so high LTV), but ultimately drive users away from the platform.
A certain ad platform I worked on cared a lot about this - offensive ads could get you to quit the site altogether. You might want to count every ad as positive for the company since you make money, but some might actually be negative expected value! As a side note, I think this is a really undermeasured problem. There are many sites I won't use because the ads are so overwhelming or are often offensive.
> A listing could look great online and receive a lot of bookings (so high LTV), but ultimately drive users away from the platform.
I am precisely this kind of churned customer. I have personally booked maybe 3 AirBNB stays, and stayed with family in them on other occasions. The units I pick are always well-reviewed.
But in the cities I've stayed in (LA, SF, Rome), the price is really no cheaper than a hotel, and the quality is extremely variable. You have to really carefully read those 5-star guest reviews to read between the lines.
And you feel pressured not to leave a negative review, as that would negatively impact your ability to book in the future, since the hosts (I have heard) can see your average review score.
My impression has been that AirBNB's customers are actually the hosts. You, the guest, are an expendable commodity. You will use AirBNB until you have a severe enough problem, and experience them siding with the host over you. Then you'll be churned permanently, and by force if you do a chargeback.
If I were going to disrupt AirBNB, I'd offer hosts a better percentage with the requirement that the experience is standardized and high-quality. There would be an in-unit noise & vibration sensor, reporting directly in the app. 24 hour check-in and check-out. A minimum set of amenities, minimum WiFi speed. The bedding would be standard. Cleaning fee standard. Every unit subject to a surprise multi-point inspection at least once per year. Essentially, make it no worse than an average hotel, and maybe some units as good or better than high end hotels.
> If I were going to disrupt AirBNB, I'd offer hosts a better percentage with the requirement that the experience is standardized and high-quality.
I've noticed more and more apartment rentals appearing on booking.com. I haven't used any of them but I wonder what the tradeoffs are. My impression is overall booking.com is more guest-friendly as their userbase has grown from people staying at hotels, who expect stuff like being able to cancel and complain about cleanliness.
From my experience booking.com is the most guest hostile platform I’ve experienced to the point I try to actively avoid it. I travel A LOT and can book anything from 20 - 40 stays per jaunt. Whenever I have encountered a problem on booking it has always been met with ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ tough shit energy.
I remember one specific incident when a hotel had purposefully put me in a noisy room (I saw a sheet on the reception desk labelling it as ‘ruidosas’ which means noisy in Spanish). I took a video of it against the receptionists will and ensured I got the logo of the hotel in as well. When I reported to booking they essentially told me to jog on.
On the contrary, anytime I’ve had an issue with Airbnb they have sided with me and provided a refund/assisted me with finding better accommodation.
This isn’t a ‘you book more with us thing’, either. I have substantially more bookings on booking due to the prevalence in Asia but they literally could not care less
I'm Booking.com's Genius Level 3, so perhaps this only applies to frequent users, but I've been refunded in full for a booking after the date of the booking without even giving the reason for the refund request.
I've shifted 100% away from AirBnb and to Booking and am still able to book whole apartments/houses. It used to be AirBnb=houses/apts, Booking=hotels. Now Booking covers both, is usually cheaper (especially considering the cleaning fees AirBnb listings usually charge), and has good customer support (in my experience).
I think of booking as a tool for finding a hotel. I then always happily book with the hotel directly.
> My impression has been that AirBNB's customers are actually the hosts
Yes for sure. Avg # of transactions per host dwarfs avg # of transactions per guest. Same with revenue. A frustrated host who pulls a unit (often, multiple units) off the platform is much more detrimental than an individual customer leaving the platform.
This could also be played the other way around if the customers are completely churned. (ie: airbnb will lose a full unit with XX bookings but can also loose XX customers multiplied by XX Life Time Value).
The duty cycle (number of business days per year) is less than 1% for typical guests but around 100% for a sizeable chuck of hosts, and in the 20-80% range for a lot of the rest.
Hence I expect the host LTV to be a couple of orders of magnitude greater to that of guests.
If you want standardized professional places to stay while you travel, why not just stay in a hotel? When I go to a hotel (and we travel a lot), I know I’m getting a standard level of service and if not - especially with a chain hotel like one franchised by Hyatt, Hilton, Marriott etc - I can complain to someone at corporate and get a refund and book somewhere else, usually it doesn’t even tags that. Just talk to the front desk. They don’t care if you get a refund - it’s not their money.
Airbnb “hosts” treat it like their “home” and are emotionally invested in what should be a business transaction.
This isn’t to mention how many hosts are running an illegal AirBnb.
> If I were going to disrupt AirBNB, I'd offer hosts a better percentage with the requirement that the experience is standardized and high-quality.
This is an interesting idea, but it puts the quality level way above what I want to pay for. Hotels are anti-septic and cold. I like staying in an apartment that feels like someone actually lives there. I don't mind a few dust-bunnies under the couch, nor a little dirt behind the toilet. It's even better when the kitchen is fully stocked, including a selection of non-perishable food (think cooking oil, salt, pepper, maybe a bag of ground coffee and a box of pasta.) Sure, the sheets and towels should be freshly laundered, but beyond that, I don't want much.
AirBNB allowed me to pay less to get a more human-feeling space. Hotels are like McDonalds, they are designed for the regular customer who wants to get that Hilton-feeling, regardless of if they are in Wichita or Cairo. I want to feel like I'm in Cairo, and if that means that I'm in a mud brick house with a single bathroom, no A/C, and no daily housekeeping that's great! AirBNB opened those worlds to us as travelers, in a way that hotel chains never did.
I think that's more common in other parts of the world. (i.e. getting places that people actually live in).In Europe most/all of the apartments I've stayed in are basically business apartments (more or less).
You don't feel that someone lives there because nobody actually lives there. It's like a long term rental apartment that in best case scenario someone is using as a savings/investment vehicle but on short term. "Worst case" it's part of an apart-hotel.
When I travel as part of a large group(i.e. more than 3 people) a short term apartment is great because we need a big affordable space (i.e. someone may sleep on the couch and we don't want the hotel "greetings & house keeping" experience) but nevertheless I don't want or expect a dirty place in any way, shape or form be it in Cairo or somewhere else. I'm pretty sure there are people living in less than sanitary conditions all over the world including Western Europe and the U.S. That doesn't mean I have interest in experiencing that kind of "living/sleeping".
All that being said I've stopped using Airbnb years ago. It seems a broken system. For short term rentals/apartments Booking.com is the only sane choice(IMHO).
It's not so much for a Hilton-like feeling. In most cases, it's because I'm looking for a predictable place to stay with, often, a 24 hour desk. I just don't care about the room most of the time so long as it's clean and comfortable. I'm generally not traveling for the purpose of staying in a hotel room. I do stay in more traditional B&Bs/inns though very rarely somewhere that's solely an Airbnb.
> In Europe most/all of the apartments I've stayed in are basically business apartments (more or less). It's like a long term rental apartment that in best case scenario someone is using as a savings/investment vehicle but on short term.
If that the only thing AirBNB offered, I would have much less interest.
> I'm pretty sure there are people living in less than sanitary conditions all over the world including Western Europe and the U.S. That doesn't mean I have interest in experiencing that kind of "living/sleeping".
Thankfully, AirBNB doesn't have to be all things to all people. As long as there are enough people like me to keep them afloat, they can provide a product that I am happy with, and you can stay at hotels that are immaculately clean.
I do hate the way that many AirBNB hosts have made hosting a business, and would fully support a limit on the number of listings per host. People renting out a space in their house, or a vacation rental in a vacation destination that they also stay in too is fine. People buying 3 or more apartments to rent them out (taking them off the long-term rental market) is terrible, and should be prohibited.
I just randomly looked at hotels.com for hotels in Cairo and I saw name brand hotels from American brands like Hilton for around $120 a night. Even high end hotels like the Waldorf are $284 a night (I don’t care about fancy hotels personally). Why would I stay in a dirty Airbnb?
Not that I would ever use a third party booking site like hotels.com either…
I want the place I stay at to be run professionally and it to be I give them money and they give me a clean place to stay without having to worry about my ratings, discrimination, etc.
Especially in another country where I don’t know the language and after taking a long flight. I wouldn’t want to take the chance on an AirBnb.
> Why would I stay in a dirty Airbnb?
Because of what I described above! In summary:
* Desire to have an experience and living environment I can't get at home.
* Desire to have living space beyond 2 beds and a bathroom crammed into the smallest available space.
* Indifference to dirt or wear and tear.
Thankfully, no one is saying that AirBNB should replace name brand hotels, in the same way that no one thinks that every hotel should be a Motel 6. AirBNB/VRBO is just another segment of the industry, and those people who want to stay in an AirBNB can, just as people who want a Hilton can without affecting those people who want to stay in the Ritz-Carlton. This is the beauty of the market!
> Hotels are like McDonalds, they are designed for the regular customer who wants to get that Hilton-feeling, regardless of if they are in Wichita or Cairo.
Stop staying at chain hotels. There are plenty of hotels out there that are what you're looking for, and have an actual business to engage with in case of issues instead of some anonymous lister on AirBNB.
> Stop staying at chain hotels. There are plenty of hotels out there that are what you're looking for, and have an actual business to engage with in case of issues instead of some anonymous lister on AirBNB.
That has not been my experience. It is very hard to find a robust selection of hotels in a major city that has a living room and kitchen. Even when you do, in a part of the city you want to stay in, they are often tiny kitchens, with limited kitchen equipment, and where the cabinets are completely cleared of every food item after every guest. These places also have very antiseptic, uncomfortable furnishings. They are night and day different from staying in most AirBNBs.
> My impression has been that AirBNB's customers are actually the hosts.
Fwiw, I listened to an interview with Brian a couple of years back where he said that, internally and strategically, they call hosts “partners” and guests “customers.” Which makes sense to me.
Many people try this. I think Sonder was most recent but they pivoted. Blueground will do corporate apartments short term. I think these aren’t effective against Airbnb customers tbh. It’s not a perfect platform but the others are not as good because availability is key.
>And you feel pressured not to leave a negative review, as that would negatively impact your ability to book in the future, since the hosts (I have heard) can see your average review score.
Source?
I did a quick search and couldn't find anything to confirm this. Various airbnb screenshots geared towards hosts also don't show anything about guests' average rating.[1]
[1] https://www.airbnb.co.za/resources/hosting-homes/a/know-more...
Different than OP, but I’ve left 2 negative reviews that were purely factual - they were simply just deleted.
I left a negative review about mould all over the property and got an abusive message from the host!
An interesting distinction is between staying at a listing vs booking it. I booked an AirBnB in Texas for the eclipse last year. The booking was made months ahead of time. Minutes before I left for the airport, the host canceled with no communication and didn't respond to messages. I got a refund, but I wasn't able to leave a review because the stay hadn't begun.
I had only used AirBnB once or twice before and was leery of it, but after this experience I'm unlikely to use it again. The inability to review the host in such a situation is pretty much a dealbreaker. (Note that I want to review the host --- not the property, but the person who decided to cancel the booking at the last minute.)
We had an experience not as bad as that, but cancelling on us a week or two before we were due to fly (and had booked everything else). They wanted US to cancel, but I saw no advantage to us in doing so. I assume it was to maintain some reputation on their side. We declined.
No model is perfect, but some are useful. Their "baseline LTV" looks at the sum of listings on their platform (plus other features), then tries to forecast the next 365 days — so this should indirectly capture people coming and going. I think their cannibalization model is quite clever as well.
Going deeper with modeling users might yield some tighter estimates, but I imagine this gets estimates far closer than some simple accounting formula, and likely helpful for budgeting a year out — but it would have been nice to have seen some performance metrics.
I also think the cannibalization model is clever. The baseline model is however a bit underwhelming, as bookings can be misleading by themselves - you have cancellations, impressions, and so forth. For example if you only look at bookings in next 365 days, new listings will be penalized. But as you said no model is perfect :-)
AirBnBs are as expensive as hotels now, except you have to clean it yourself and deal with an often insane host and their random rules. I am back to hotels and resorts all the time now, you at least know what you’re going to get.
In the case of Airbnb, wouldn't that show up in the listing's reviews, requests for refunds, etc. and ultimately drive down the listing's LTV? Nobody leaves reviews on an ad, and I imagine that very few users report inappropriate ads, so you can only measure that indirectly. But if somebody books an Airbnb and has a bad experience, they are much more likely to give you direct feedback about it.
I think it could show up in those other places, but probably isn't fully captured?
Imagine an airbnb that's great for most guests but absolutely terrible for 1 in every 5, so bad that they quit airbnb. Maybe it's next to a music venue, so every once in a while it's very loud.
It's possible it could maintain a decent average star rating and LTV as described in the article but actually have negative (real) lifetime value for airbnb if the 1 in five that they lose would have spent a lot of money on the platform otherwise.
Bad reviews are often moderated away and refund requests are stonewalled (and few people know about chargebacks so that isn't factored in). It is easier for the platform to acquire guests than hosts, so the platform takes the side of hosts.
Edit: at least that was the situation a couple of years ago. A host below now reports that the situation has changed and they take the side of the guests; however, either way it's open to abuse no matter which side they take.
The issue is that in a marketplace where both sides can be dishonest, the only way to ensure quality is to do spot checks by trusted actors (aka company employees) where the penalties for failing such a check are dissuasive enough that it becomes more profitable to play by the rules.
This is similar to how law enforcement is supposed to operate - the reason the penalty for theft (for example) is more than merely returning the stolen items is that since law enforcement can't observe everyone all at once, the penalty needs to be enough of a deterrent to make the bad behavior unprofitable overall, to discourage it even in cases where law enforcement isn't there to witness it and enforce said law.
Good point and it affects far more than just Airbnb. I'm sure some companies internal ROI for app notifications is universally positive... but when you send me 10 app notifications a week for a product or service I only purchase occasionally, I'm uninstalling the app. Obviously I'm in the minority because the app still has millions of users but hopefully others have turned notifications off.
I basically uninstall all apps between two uses of them: Uber, AirBnb. Even the bank, I have a problem with the mandatory confirmation-on-phone for the yearly stock options plan I use. Wouldn’t want a thieve to see that app.
Can't you just turn off notifications. I have very few enabled.
Yeah I think about this model weirdly often.
I think it's pretty hard to attribute bad stays to stoppage of the service though unless they use reviews in a model which is probably the best data they have to predict this.
I haven't booked an Airbnb in years, whether it be due to having hotel points to redeem or someone else in my party booking on their account or just the price differences in that specific city I am going to. I'm not averse to the service but my account is basically dormant
I had this experience years ago. The first place I ever rented in had Wi-Fi that didn’t work and after about a week the water stopped working. I cancelled my booking through support and the owner called me 3 or 4 times on WhatsApp and then left me a bad review. The second place had a shower that didn’t drain and the washing machine flooded the apartment one evening. The third place had black mold growing out of the kitchen ceiling. I tried to get them to waive the cleaning fee over it, but the owner claimed he had told me about it already and refused to do anything. When I left, he told me he had written me a good review and expected one in return. I pointed out that he had done nothing to remedy the mold issue and then posted my own review, and found that in his review he had accused me of bringing prostitutes and drugs into the apartment (which I did not).
It was nominally cheaper to travel this way, but for my next trip I’ll be staying in hotels.
This is how things like Airbnb (and ebay) die - the hosts and sellers know all the tricks and so the buyers just leave; it’s not worth the hassle.
The eBay experience has improved dramatically. Its far better than Amazon 3rd party
I've actually noticed that; perhaps it's easier to scam/sell crap on Amazon now than eBay - and so eBay becomes actually usable again.
I think the scams are all automated on Amazon so that makes it even easier
> There are many sites I won't use because the ads are so overwhelming or are often offensive.
I hate to sound like the “Do people still watch TV? I haven’t owned a TV in 20 years.” Guy. But why are you seeing ads on the web? Don’t you use an ad blocker?
I used to use one but when I started working on ads it felt hypocritical. I want to support the sites that I use, especially those that don't paywall content. I don't work on ads anymore but have stuck with it.
Most advertising these days are based on click through. If you aren’t clicking on the ads, you aren’t making them money.
Airbnb’s original promise was magical, thrilling, interesting - get to stay in unusual places that are full of charm and possibility.
But that promise was broken for me when Commaleta played back the video of her front door camera and counted that we had 10 people walk in her door, not eight. She proceeded to accuse us of throwing a party, when we absolutely did not, and tried to charge us $1000 extra dollars.
At that point, I decided that Airbnb’s hosts were too much of a wildcard in most travel situations.
By the way, the story above is from 10 years ago and I will never forget her name for the rest of my life…she turned what should’ve been a relaxing, beautiful week into a miserable arbitration process. It’s hard for ABNB to succeed long term when one experience like that can ruin everything.
Were 10 people in fact staying when the listing max was 8?
Many hosts consider anyone entering the unit , even just for lunch or dinner, to count against the listing "max", and accuse you of having a party. and some are quite big brotherish about monitoring.
No, a couple friends who lived in town stopped by for an hour.
Last month a first time host confabulated $1200 of maintenance charges. Having left the property already, I was in no position to produce evidence that they were fake. Arbitration was hopeless, I canceled my card and won't be using Airbnb again.
Funnily enough I went through something similar 3 weeks ago at an Airbnb in France.
The host retaliated because we had the audacity to tell her that the place was unclean when we checked in. She claimed 2000$ of fabricated damage and as you Airbnb sided with the host initially.
It's only because I lost 3 hours of my time with support and took a thousands of screenshot from our Messages that I got them to drop that charge.
I also issued a Chargeback with my credit card for the dirty place.
But yeah, this is done for me as well. I had 20+ stays but I will never , absolutely never use them again. My time is worth something and this Airbnb destroyed our holiday and took way too much of my time to handle.
had the same experience with a wildcard host that went absolutely full lying during our stay just because we told her that the place was not really clean.
She went full damage on us as a revenge. Trying to charge us 2000$ for fabricated damage. Airbnb Support tried to stand on her side asking us if we "had proof we didn't do it". I was on holiday. I didn't think about taking every single object in high definition picture.
We had to spend 3+ hours on the phone and by message to have Airbnb "drop" that 2000$ charge.
Never again. Not worth the time. Airbnb is great when it goes well. But you have too many bad hosts that ruin it for everyone. And when it goes bad it goes really bad.
> A deep dive on the framework that lets us identify the most valuable listings for our guests.
An opening article lie! For our hosts would be much more appropriate. Why does a guest care about how many nights a place is going to sell in the next few months?
This assumes value for guests is how much money the property they stay at makes, when it obviously isn't that.
Man I'm so sick of trying to find something on Airbnb only to discover by the time I order that the price has doubled.
Airbnb these last years went from feeling fresh and adventurous to scammy and dubious
Use the .com.au variant to find listings, as Australian law requires they list the full price, inclusive of tax and fees.
In New York the website recently updated to do this, presumably because they were forced to. They had a whole banner announcing it.
I'm Australian and moved to New York recently-ish. It was one of those classic anti-consumer disappointments one experiences moving to the states. Glad they fixed it.
That's one thing, annoying but possible to work with.
What I'm talking about is Dynamic Pricing. Had to look up what really happens: The host sets a rate-range, and Airbnb first gives the low price and then as you click around in the area they notice you're more interested so they increase it towards the high end of the price range (possibly also time of day and such signals?). Then I guess there's a slow cooldown.
Like how a good haggle is made to give you a friendly relationship with the seller, this seems specifically designed to make people hate Airbnb and swear to never use it again.
Meh, they're just complaining because it's cool to whine about AirBNB online these days, US based AirBNB has had this feature for quite awhile now.
Worse is when your booking is confirmed but then cancelled a week before you go, at which point all the prices are much higher
Insane that they allow that. Maybe it's an option the host can set on the listing?
Booking, as far as I know, straight up doesn't allow hosts to cancel. Recently, a host sent me a message begging me to cancel my booking because they really couldn't be there to receive me.
Hosts can cancel, but they are subject to their cancelation penalties (according to the level they've chosen for guests) plus there is an automatic "review" added stating that "This host cancelled a booking X days in advance". Unless X is very big, I run away from those listings.
Interesting, good to know.
It was sometime ago (2018), but my host cancelled with 3hours to go
I will never use AirBnB again
Airbnb hosts are penalised if they cancel - they get downrated - so it's not something that hosts generally want to do. Far better if they can persuade a guest to cancel
Use booking.com, better in every way and customer support that won't stonewall you.
Booking.com is awful. Anyone can make a listing on Booking.com for places that don't exist. Airbnb at least makes an effort to verify the building is real.
The last trip to Brasil I had problems with AirBnB - both incorrect listings (e.g. wrong location) and listings that weren't actually available.
I've used booking.com around the world and I can't recall any serious problem. When dealing with an issue, AirBnB error flow often sucks and booking is mostly fine.
When AirBnB works out great, you can find some real magic, but when it fails it really sucks.
I've found booking.com is usually more hotel-like and professional (e.g. contactable and reliable).
I still use both but I'm careful to choose depending on perceived risks.
Disclosure: long booking.com
I have done dozens of reservations and never heard of anything like that.
Maybe don't book places with fewer than 5 reviews? Same goes to airbnb or any platform that allows for anyone to publish a listing.
On the other hand had one severe issue with a booking on airbnb and they essentially told me to go fuck myself.
Use booking.com for discovering hotels then book direct. Never had issues doing that
I've made thousands of reservations work booking.com, this does not happen.
I guess if its never happened to you its never happened at all.
Thousands? Personal reservations?
If anything the flight bit is even worse.
People are getting downvoted for criticizing booking.com. They're a shit company and everyone who works in tech in The Netherlands knows it.
Their hyper aggressive marketing strategy is already telling. Their website randomly pops up when you search and book the flight already. Spanish holiday rental owners don't even advertise anywhere else afraid of booking.com price match policy, but are insolent enough to collect full photo of guests' id document and install cameras inside apartment. Booking is the only place to book holiday rental in Europe and I hate using their service.
What does that have to do with their user facing experience?
Last I heard they're also a company that actually hires juniors there.
Booking is a total scam fake photos fake listings fake reviews
Honestly, ABNB was good till the enshittification became too much. A traditional hotel is almost always better except in a few unique circumstances.
Mega-tangent: As a host, I feel compelled to rant about Airbnb whenever they come up in a discussion.
The last 2 years they have _really_ moved to squeeze the hosts. The customer service has been demolished and they seem to have taken a stance of "the guest is always right". I've spent countless hours going through their customer service as a super host, so I know I have a decent amount of anecdata.
My suspicion is that they found themselves with more supply than demand, so they are "improving the guest experience" at the expense of the hosts. Since they are a quasi-monopoly (depends on the market) it makes sense for them to prune supply in exchange for better guest experience, a full market approach makes less sense since they make money in proportion to the total amount of money transacted (which as a monopoly it can optimize for in the way a free market can't).
But I think this will blowback sooner or later. The biggest value for an Airbnb guest is the review system that allows you to have some degree of certainty of what you are getting. The biggest value for a host is the massive global audience. But guests and hosts, pay a steep fee (17%!) for this. For well-reviewed, long-living stays (like mine :)), paying 17% is way too much to access this audience: the listing already has an online record that provides that quality assurance for the guest, and the host could spend that money on advertising.
So that's what many of us are doing, moving to PMS + paid advertising / SEO to diversify on distribution channels. I think there's an opportunity for capturing that semi-pro host market and bundling them in a similar offering that 1) doesn't squeeze them, 2) offers a proper PMS software, and 3) charges a flat fee instead of a variable rate.
PMS as in Pantone Matching System or Premenstrual Syndrome?
AirBNB can be equally frustrating for users as well. Recently ended up at night in a new city in northern Japan where the host told me the listing was at a different address, where I found nothing, and got only radio silence from the host. Every hotel room in town was occupied that night. Airbnb support, seemingly in far away India, told me to try contacting the host, and that was that.
Also recently stayed at a place with a dog that shat inside due to the owner not taking them out; due to politeness no one had complained in the reviews.
Also Airbnb lists one price but when booking it always ends up being way more with more fees added.
I’m using hotels.com with a filter for “has kitchen” these days, which was the only reason I used Airbnb in the first place
PMS - Property Management System, aka what actual hotels use to manage room inventory, bookings, etc.
IMO most of the things that people like about AirBnB vs hotels is downstream of the failed experiment of urban planning. If we want hotel operators willing to "spend" floorspace on kitchens and other niceties, then legal floorspace can't be scarce or special, but most of the current planning regime is oriented around enforcing limits on floorspace. Ditto for having options of places to stay that aren't tourist traps or commercial areas.
I suppose hotels can have a few rooms with kitchens but I'm guessing a vanishingly few people care about kitchens when traveling outside of maybe a microwave and a small refrigerator. AirBnB that are larger (e.g. houses) can also be nice for groups but that's more outside of cities than in a city center. Hotels tend to optimize for the 90% case.
Where I'm staying at the moment is a "serviced apartment" and does have a couple burners but that's unusual and I mostly stay here because I like the location in London.
A large fraction of families traveling value the kitchens (leftovers, kid breakfasts, not having to eat restaurant food for every meal, when all the kids want is Kraft Mac&Cheese, etc.) and the common living spaces (kids go to bed early). I hate traveling with my family and being stuck in a hotel room (or two!). When I'm traveling alone or with just adults, I can be out all day and only use my hotel room for sleeping, but with a diverse set of ages traveling, we often hang out in the living room while someone naps, or my kids will be done with touristing by 3pm and we need somewhere to be until dinnertime.
You see this in vacation destinations like Hawaii and Ski towns; there is a significant fraction of accommodations that are Condos, because you need a place to hang. AirBNB brought that to urban areas by sub-letting apartments, when hotel operators only provided maximally-dense sleeping-focused options; multi-bedroom hotel rooms with living rooms and kitchens largely did not exist in major city centers.
This is the primary reason I use Airbnb and it's equivalents. My typical traveling party is 4 adults, 3 kids, and 1-2 dogs most of those people have a preference to cook rather than eat out. Accommodating that in a hotel is a disaster unless you get an ultra low price of a double suite or something.
That's really the sweet spot for Airbnb (and Vrbo). Very few conventional hotels accommodate large groups well. If you're just trying to save a few bucks as a couple or solo traveler I'm not sure it usually pencils out given other tradeoffs.
My point was that this is a minority preference in most paces.
If it truly is a minority preference, then we need a way to square that with all the people saying they book AirBnB's instead of hotels because of the kitchens. :)
The people who don't need kitchens and just book hotels don't say anything because their needs are met.
There are also some hotels with kitchens. Usually they have 'Suites' in their name. I stay at one most holiday seasons, we go and visit my folks and want to have a place where my family can cook without taking over my parents' kitchen.
I've stayed places with vrbo, which is pretty similar to airbnb, but older. It's most convenient IMHO if you want more than two bedrooms for a group with shared space, or you're going somewhere without many hotels.
> There are also some hotels with kitchens. Usually they have 'Suites' in their name. I stay at one most holiday seasons, we go and visit my folks and want to have a place where my family can cook without taking over my parents' kitchen.
These are okay, but they still have the antiseptic, overly-clean feeling of a space optimized for housekeeping. They will usually have a small couch or two, and maybe a table for 4. I have never seen one with a full dining room with table for 6; a fully stocked kitchen that includes non-perishable food staples, or any outdoor space. These things are common in AirBNB rentals, often at the same or similar price to nearby hotels.
AirBNB and VRBO absolutely opened a new market of accommodations compared to what was available before. These options may or may not be for the previous commenters, but it's silly to state universally that you can or should stay in a hotel instead. It's like saying "I love to ride my bike", and the reply being "you know you could ride a scooter to your destination, or drive a car."
I don't see anyone arguing that you shouldn't stay in an Airbnb or Vrbo. But a lot of us with more routine needs just want to plan to be able to checkin at any time, leave our luggage for a late departure, have a fairly predictable experience, etc. for our typical hotel stay.
The argument was never about what anyone individual should or should not do, it was about the idea that the limitations of the hotel format are more driven by urban planning and local politics - striving to keep buildings as small as possible, concentrating all non-house buildings in small slips of land, etc. - than anything inherent to the hotel format. Hotels and Airbnb’s are great, but both be better if both were legal on 100% of the land in the city, along with apartment buildings and every other form of housing, and without the arbitrary restrictions on size.
Yes, this is spot on. The more lax the regulations for hotels, the less appealing Airbnb is.
Sure tho TBF I wouldn't use the word lax - it implies there's something dangerous or untoward going on and we are choosing to let it slide. :)
Rather since the rules limiting hotel size, locations, quantity etc have nothing to do with safety and everything to do with class, exclusivity, and segregation, we can jettison them confidently without worrying that we are being too lax about anything important :)
PMS as property managements software :).
And yes, I use Airbnb as a guest as well, but I gauge the risk of having a bad host into the decision making.
We also get all type of horror stories from guests that had a bad experience and found themselves trying to find a last minute place to stay.
The problem is that the Airbnb app heavily disincentivizes "professionalization". They have a small cartel of PMS providers that can actually hit their API. I can't build my own systems on top of their API, I have to go through a middle man or use the their crappy app.
Their app is so incredibly obtuse that it puzzles me how people shower Airbnb as a "great product design company". It's a beautiful app sure, but incredibly clunky. It's like a call center phone menu made into an art piece.
I never even understood why people even think Airbnb is a tech company.
They basically operate a pretty simple website. Most of their busines is about arbitrating issues when they come. This has nothing to do with tech.
I would bet that United Airlines or American Airlines website handles way more queries than Airbnb.
But for some reason they managed to market themselves as a "design driven" "Tech company".
It's a tech assisted operations company, similar to Uber and Lyft.
The key distinction between say United Airlines and gig tech companies is that the latter will aggressively avoid owning physical assets and use tech to be a streamlined middle man in a market that actually requires a lot of operations.
They are a tech company, but in the sense that they get their edge from software not that they sell it.
Surprised to hear this because I had a very weird experience on my last stay. (and it will always be last as I will never stay at an Airbnb again).
Airbnb sided with the Host for some fabricated damages because the host was mad we told them the place was unclean. They put the burden of proof on us to prove we didn't destroy one of the sinks. Absolutely ridiculous.
We had to fight it for 3+ hours on the phone and message and start a chargeback and only then did support drop the fabricated charge.
And to top all of this, Airbnb deleted our bad review from that place (but left the review of the host).
So, never, absolutely never again. Too bad because I was spending 2k+$ on Airbnb before that incident and only got great reviews from other hosts.
You are yourself in the business of squeezing, so any company that will be willing to deal with you will have the aim to squeeze you.
AirBnB and Uber both have a dynamic where the host/driver has often taken out a loan and modified their lifestyle to depend on this income, which makes them the easier party to squeeze.
I have a smalltime Airbnb and I feel the same. Their only value is in their marketing distribution and they take 30%+. Their hosting tools could be worse but are not particularly great. Usually things work fine, but they have zero / hostile customer service on the host side on the random exceptional occurence. Hopefully more marketplaces show up
I would love to not use Airbnb as a consumer but there is no real alternative here. I hear a lot of people say that Airbnb is just as expensive as hotels but I just don't see it. I'm looking at traveling and a hotel in the area is $900 to $1200 while Airbnbs are $500 to $800.
>So that's what many of us are doing, moving to PMS + paid advertising / SEO
For those of us not in this space, what does PMS mean?
> Property Management Systems (PMS) or Hotel Operating System (HOS), under business, terms may be used in real estate, manufacturing, logistics, intellectual property, government, or hospitality accommodation management. They are computerized systems that facilitate the management of properties, personal property, equipment, including maintenance, legalities and personnel all through a single piece of software.
PMS as Property Management System
> paying 17% is way too much
Have you considered increasing the cleaning fee to recoup some of that money? /s
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An AirBNB host is not a landlord.
Without landlords, you have no rental properties and everyone who can't afford to purchase their residence outright would have to find another option whatever that might be.
(I have never used AirBNB.)
Without landlords we wouldn’t have a chunk of the housing supply held captive as investment, driving costs out of reach for most of the non-HN-reading audience.
> Without landlords we wouldn’t have a chunk of the housing supply held captive as investment, driving costs out of reach for most of the non-HN-reading audience.
That isn't caused by landlords, it's caused by zoning boards.
Suppose you have a city with a growing population. Then you need someone to pay construction companies to build more housing. When the new residents can afford a down payment, they pay the construction company themselves by taking out a mortgage. When they can't, a landlord does it, or else who? The tenant doesn't have a down payment and needs somewhere to live. The somewhere to live doesn't exist unless someone pays the construction company.
The problem only comes when the zoning board stops the construction company from increasing the housing supply. Then a landlord who wants to invest in property has to buy existing property instead of causing more to be created. This is the actual problem.
It doesn't matter if landlords want to fund the creation of lots of new housing by supplying capital to pay for it. That's even good. It's only when the creation of new housing is inhibited that things go sour.
So do you propose that e dry one buy a house and commit to a mortgage no matter what stage of life they are at?
So a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" kind of situation?
This isn't an LTV model, it's a regression model. Is it even good? Doesn't seem so.
Maybe their folks need to punch "LTV" into Google Scholar.
And also, is it even actionable?
> For example, suppose we run a marketing campaign that provides hosts with tips on how to successfully improve their listings
Right guys. “Marketing-induced incremental LTV” indeed.
Yeah I thought the same thing. LTV defined as value over the next 365 days…so…not LTV at all?
I would have liked more discussion on handling uncertainty; how big is it, how well calibrated is it, how are they approaching variance reduction, how do they reduce the predictive distribution into decisions, etc. And no discussion of causal inference in the marketing section.
My advice to everyone is to never book an Airbnb if you value your time and sanity.
After a couple OK stays I had an absolutely horrible experience. The place was super dirty and the shower was clogged. The hosts tried to play nice and made us stay even though they didn't do the cleaning (Our fault I guess but when you are tired and already there you just want to move on and forget about the incident).
After the stay they became dishonest and lied to Support, tried to make us pay more. Support sided with the Host and even deleted our bad review of the place.
And the final nail in the coffin is that by deleting our bad review the host was able to get to Superhost status.
That stay destroyed our holidays. We then had to spend multiple hours on the phone and by message with support to defend ourselves. Ultimately they manage to leave a misleading review for us that we couldn't delete and Airbnb deleted our review of them.
It was already overpriced but once you account for the time lost when something goes wrong there is absolutely no point to book an Airbnb ever again.
Stay with professional in hotels. Your future you will thank you.
I wonder if you could use the same methodology to value potential investments in short term rentals.
Stopped reading at, “At Airbnb, we always strive to provide our community with the best experience.”
Why do they publish blogposts on such a lame paywalled website though...
I was wondering that too!
Surely Airbnb - a company that runs a website - has the capability to put a text post on their own website. Then they'd own the content, and people looking for it could find it easier? It's not a revolutionary concept either, Facebook has one:
https://engineering.fb.com/
Wait, Airbnb already has one?
https://airbnb.io/
Genuinely confusing.
> Why
Distribution.
The reason for this blog post is "recruit engineers". Not every engineer is going to visit blog.airbnb.com, but presumably a lot of them are already on Medium.
They even close the article with,
> We continue to solve interesting problems around LTV every day (and as more insights come up, we’ll keep sharing them on our blog). Can you see yourself making an impact here? If so, we encourage you to explore the open roles on our team.
These blogs are always about recruiting.
Why would I pay for a paywall to read a job ad?
There’s no paywall. It’s totally free to read. The popup is just a prompt to join/sign into Medium but you can close it.
Seems pretty consistent with their revenue model.
Is this post paywalled for you?
Or is there just a signup/login banner that you can dismiss?
If there's a paywall we'll pin a workaround at the top.
My User Agent goes around the paywall easily.