Memes

Deposit at a hotel? I haven't seen that before.

Air bnb people definitely don't like that their rates don't cover property taxes and they run a deficit every month. They charge fees to stay in the black. They're just capitalist that think you have to make money on everything

AirBnB is not for ‘cheap’ stays anymore (if it ever was), it works a lot better when you use it to find quirky/interesting places to stay (like a treehouse!). People still try to use it to replace a hotel though. $100/night can usually get you a decent room with breakfast at a hotel in most areas.

Ironically the same brown central south American cleaning crew cleans up for the hotels and airbnb, also they are disappearing because of ICE

I've been enjoying watching the Internet collectively bully that one AirBnB couple, Cassie and Jon.

The basic problem of AirBNB was that it was never going to scale. Individual condo owners will never be able to compete with the efficiencies of scale of hotels. Having cleaning staff have to drive from building to building can never compete with a bunch of rooms in a single hallway.

The AirBNB concept does make sense for a few niche applications:

1. Small rental units in locations where big hotels aren't viable. (Think remote mountain cabins.)

2. Actual lived-in homes for people who are traveling and don't mind strangers staying in their house while they're away.

Neither of these scale. Cabin rentals can compete because it's not viable to build a hundred unit hotel on top of a remote mountain. But that market can't scale. Cabin rentals already have their own rental networks, and there are only so many of them. People renting out their actual residences can compete with hotels. You already have to pay your mortgage anyway, bringing in a short-term renter adds little marginal cost. But this model can't scale, as very few people actually want to rent out their own homes while they're out.

But AirBNB pulled the usual Silicon Valley bait-and-switch. Corner a market with unsustainably low prices, then raise them. The bait got many people to purchase rental units with the goal of renting them on AirBNB. But this was never going to be sustainable. Once AirBNB stopped subsidizing the rentals, the landlords have to raise the costs (both monetary and policy costs) to actually make the business profitable. And they simply cannot compete with the economies of scale of hotels.

$1k deposit, but yeah

AirBnb became popular when hotels inflated prices around certain events or were at capacity. Since then, AirBnb owners have jacked up prices to be more expensive than hotels, and you have to deal with the "landlord attitude." It turned from a genuine service into another cash grab scheme.

AirBnB became too many people’s “passive income”.

They don’t want to take care of the property or have too many to take care of, so they treat customers like house sitters for the luxury of renting the property as well as building equity off them.

Pretty messed up. In the early days Airbnb was ok, we used it a couple times, but I don’t think I’d want to mess with it today.

Yeah, if it's the same price why the hell would you not stay in a hotel instead of "pretend this random house is a hotel, but now with the added magic of no regulation"

Don't forget having to find the cameras watching you, and text messages every 38 minutes telling you to leave 5 star reviews.

Wait how are they even able to enforce the fee?

If you’re a party of 4 or fewer and are only staying for a couple of nights, a hotel with breakfast included is the better choice. Chain hotels also have a minimum baseline of quality so you at least have some expectation of consistency anywhere you go. Less chances of hidden cameras too.

Unless the point of your travel is the accommodation itself, you’ll likely only be in there for less than 12 hours a day, so all you really need is a secure room with a clean bed and bathroom.