Their search now prominently encourages odd stays like this as well. It's puzzling as it seems to be at the expense of other search filtering.
They've reduced useful search filters like 'has a desk' and there is no filter for 'not a tent or van' which is increasingly common. Some areas (Hawaii) contain vans as the majority of their listings. But no filters against them.
Their direction reminds me of the progress of Netflix to be less searchable and more about content they want to push. I guess it works out in the a/b tests but likely misses the forest for the trees.
A tip: use airbnb.com.au instead of .com as you'll get the real full price in the searches as they must comply with Australian law. This works all over the world.
Great tip, but I'm probably done using Airbnb. At first they were a no brainer. Quality listings and you'd have a good time. Now it is like staying at a crap hotel and often more expensive. I'd rather just stay somewhere nice using a traditional agency.
>Now it is like staying at a crap hotel and often more expensive
not surprising, companies like Uber and AirBNB were initially cheaper because they were basically ignoring most laws and getting away with it, plus subsidizing cost with VC money. Now they are being forced to pay for compliance and taxes, and trying to turn a profit, costs go up. Plus their renters don't have the economies of scale compared to traditional hotels, so it makes sense they will be more expensive
After a few poor experiences airbnbing in London I switched entirely back to hotels. The Airbnb experience was either: have your own place, but it's more expensive than even a nice hotel; or stay in someone's house who, when it gets down to it, would really rather you weren't there, because most people actually don't like having strangers in their house.
Currently on a 2.5wk trip around Europe, only two nights of which are in a proper hotel. I previously had great and unique experiences with Airbnb, but lately, I'm paying what's probably more than a hotel, and the experiences have been... Awkward and sometimes kinda skeezy. The one thing I really want is a convenient washer to do laundry, which almost every Airbnb I've stayed in has. Not so much in hotels.
I once got bedbugs at a hostel in Argentina. They were kind (?) enough to refund my money, but then I was left uncomfortably itchy and roomless. Plus I was freaked out that there might be bedbugs in my clothes and backpack. I bought some detergent and booked a room at the Hilton, put every belonging I had in the tub and filled it up. I've wondered at times what kind of gross stuff happens in hotels, but on this night, I was the gross one.
Those searches maximize their profit, that it comes at the expense of your utility is your problem.
The same with google: google search is going down the drain but google search income is up.
This is exactly the kind of thing that tends to enable competitors in normal markets, but on the internet monopolies are propped up by all kinds of tricks and then you can make moves like this without expecting to be punished.
It seems like A/B tests failing to capture long-term effects is a common trend among these companies.
Assuming you’d want to work data-driven, what would be a better approach to figure out what works and doesn’t? Or is it a conscious decision to capitalize on the short-term at the expense of the long-term?
I think there's an aspect of the recently-discussed right-hand pole instability: an A/B test continues just long enough to see an increase in a given metric, but basically never long enough to determine whether that increase results in a change in behaviour that results in a longer-term net-decrease in that metric.
e.g.: Putting emojis in your notification texts increases engagement… until it kills your engagement entirely.
I agree with the sentiment, but if you keep performing small A/B tests (including emoji vs plain) this would be discovered in the future as a performance gain and reverted. Assuming no manager says "we already ran that test".
Not necessarily, because once the result has been generally has been rolled out, you've started altering the population your experiments are drawn from.
No amount of short-term testing will discover [*the cause of] a long-term decline, if the long term response of the system of customer/product/company is swamped by an opposing reaction in the short term.
I agree with your point. Just to add to the conversation.
The population is already changing long term for reasons outside of our control. If for instance, other companies are adding the emojis and people are tired of emojis that will affect the performance of our experiments.
It is by no means perfect, but at least it offers a way to get feedback (given enough users, not annoyed enough :)
Exactly, there will be no way to determine that why negative effects you measure were actually due to the emoji.
The only real way to deal with this is to run these types of A/B tests “forever”, which is not desired. Which is why I’m very much wondering, what is the appropriate way to deal with this?
Yes because they know at the back of their heads, competing with hotels for a good experience is hard and they can't handle it. No airbnb is a four seasons. However they can compete in weird exotic places like a potato or a loft. It's basically Ringling Brothers circus as a temporary accommodation.
walking by recently, it appeared to me that the Four Seasons in downtown San Francisco has been converted to some kind of time-share ownership model. too much demand? insider club ? no idea
edit not the Four Seasons with a door on Market Street, the sign I saw was closer to the Moscone Center..
Agreed, the main app prioritises showing you gimmicky tree houses over places which are much more interesting (perhaps with a more convenient location, or remote work friendly for 2 people).
They are probably trying to push back against the commodisation of AirBnB stays. In the last few years they seem to have become extremely standardised, within a certain price range and star rating you know almost exactly what you'll be getting in terms of service, cleanliness and outfitting of the apartment. I like it a lot as a cheaper alternative to hotels for longer stays! But perhaps lower margin than littering the countryside with wacky constructions.
We used AirBnB extensively in the past for our trips accross Europe with the kids, camping isn't always an option, especially for city trips. Not sure when, but at a certain point Booking.com just surpased AirBnB with selection, availalability and price, plus it does include hotels and the like. In some regions you find tons of options on bookong and basically none on AirBnB, Iceland is recent example where AirBnB was mostly useless.
Maybe those two things are related, AirBnB searching a nieche to occupy with more "exotic" options. After all, hotels didn't go away, did they?
I just don't even bother with them anymore. Booking.com has scummy UX tactics, but the filters work, the prices are accurate and the range is wide. Once you find something, always good to check agoda or similar to see if they're cheaper. Also always double check on apps - for some reason they discount more, seems marketing execs still dream of app based e-com. And the websites of the places you want to stay, even holiday houses tend to have their own websites.
As an alternative theory... A lot of the airbnb and hospitality industry got annihilated in the last few years. An adaptation to this state of affairs has been more and more hotels or AirBNBs where travelling to the hotel. In Japan there seems to be quite a lot of this[1]; maybe they are the most pronounced example hotels needing to evolve or die.
I am not deeply sold on this idea as a whole, but it seems like having a very low-maintenance van has its advantages right now compared to a hotel room which has probably sat empty for the majority of the last few years. As you say, it seems unlikely that airBNB is explicitly pushing them at the expense of other listings; more likely, it just is a consequence of the world we live in.
Been using Airbnb on and off for 10 years and I'm really not convinced it's a better model than traditional hotels. Maybe it's because I'm always looking at the cheaper end of the scale but when browsing Airbnb I can't help but feel suspicious at most listings, based on previous experiences. It's ALWAYS shittier than the pictures. Often there's a feeling of "oh well could be worse, we'll just deal with it" after walking in to these places.
I just checked a bunch of normal boutique hotels and their listing inspire much more confidence and are actually cheaper. At this point I have no idea what Airbnb offers that hotels don't do better.
In my personal experience Airbnb is good when you are travelling with a large group of people (6+) and/or with children.
You can get a house with 3-4 rooms, a few bathrooms, a functional kitchen, laundry area, etc, for about half the price as it would be if you got double rooms at hotels for the same number of people, and it's much more convenient since you're not spread across different floors.
For solo travel tho, I'd rather book a hotel sight unseen than use airbnb, since too many people try to make their couch in the corner look like a nice private room in the listing.
I've worked for a hotel chain in the past. They're using the same rate codes you could be using booking directly with the hotel. They just know how to show the lowest rate code possible.
If you look at hiltons on booking.com and booking at hilton.com you'll see different prices, until you go through the hilton.com process and select non-refundable/non-cancelable rates, then they're the same rate, expect if you book via booking.com you don't get any points with the hotel chain.
At some point over the past year or so, they even removed the ability to filter by whether the stay has a crib.
The information is there, but there's no way to limit your searches to only those properties, so you're forced to open up all that seem interesting and scroll through the listing just to see.
Lots of people mentioning the service in weird ways makes it seem like there is some PR going on in this thread for a certain website. I'm half joking.
This just makes me want to puke. My neighbors spent a couple years built a fucking chalet that took up their entire backyard, ruined my small view of the occasional sun in Portland, just so they could fuck off to Europe and Airbnb it for an obscene amount of money. This shouldn't have been allowed, but they got away with it under the Portland code exemptions that are super friendly to covering every inch of your property if you're building "affordable housing". Now we basically live next door to a motel with constant in/out and their hired maids shouting "housekeeping" at 8am. Airbnb can take their $1m and shove it up their asses. I support anything that helps bring down this model of turning neighborhoods into decentralized hotels, up to and including occasional acts of arson which unfortunately, I can't do because it would also burn my house down.
One good friend of mine was a member of a Welsh group in the 80s whose name I don't know (but maybe someone on HN does know) who literally burned down the vacation houses of English people. I always think of that every time I'm woken up too early, which is almost every single day. I live in a $500k house and Airbnb has wrecked my daily peace and my neighborhood. Sure if I were smart and also an asshole I'd just put my own place up on Airbnb and fuck off myself. Part of me just believes it would be fucked up to do that to my other neighbors, and part of me doesn't want to accept that as the world we have to live in.
> My neighbors spent a couple years built a fucking chalet that took up their entire backyard, ruined my small view of the occasional sun in Portland
> One good friend of mine was a member of a Welsh group in the 80s whose name I don't know (but maybe someone on HN does know) who literally burned down the vacation houses of English people. I always think of that every time I'm woken up too early, which is almost every single day.
> I live in a $500k house and Airbnb has wrecked my daily peace and my neighborhood.
Wow, this one is an odd comment. An actual nimby praising terrorism.
not wanting your neighborhood to be turned into a profit center for real estate investors makes you a NIMBY? Give me your address so I can build a loud night club next to it, otherwise you are a NIMBY. Don't be a hypocrite, think about my bank account
You assume I consider "nimby" to be an automatic insult. I think it could go either way. The Welsh group I mentioned were "nimbys". Maybe you could call the Palestinians "nimbys praising terrorism" too. I know the term is meant to imply people are selfish capitalists, but more often it describes small landowners having their rights taken away by giant corporations. If you think about it for a minute, isn't it more selfishly capitalistic to say anyone should be able to build commercial enterprises wherever they feel like at the expense of the health and well-being of people living nearby? This isn't like "I don't want a homeless shelter on my corner". I have a homeless shelter on my corner. This is like: I don't think you have a right to make money on your property in a way that directly and negatively impacts me.
Wow. Thanks for the find. I had no idea about the residency requirements. I received the "neighborhood notice letter" the day they left the country 3 years ago, and just assumed they had worked out the permits.
The problem is I don't like getting into conflict with neighbors, or making trouble for people. I try to be considerate even if I feel like they're not doing the same.
> ...a Welsh group in the 80s whose name I don't know (but maybe someone on HN does know) who literally burned down the vacation houses of English people.
OP shouldn't have to take steps. They live in a residential neighborhood, and the incentives given by AirBnB have started to ruin it, as they have countless neighborhoods and cities all over the world. AirBnB is a net negative to the world, as it just increases rents and exacerbates housing crises all so tourists can feel like they 'live' in a city at the expense of its actual inhabitants.
I have lived in residential neighborhoods my entire life. It is completely common for brief, recurring noises to take place at certain times of the day. Someone might have a car with a loud engine that we hear when they leave for work and return, another neighbor might have a lawn service that starts in the earlier part of the morning. Someone might have a small woodshop in their garage and occasionally I'll hear them sawing in the morning. Hell, my next door neighbor was doing some serious pressure washing all day long yesterday, and that was quite noisy.
People make noise, that's the way things go. I'm not saying it's pleasant - that pressure washer sure pissed me the fuck off, almost irrationally so, so I completely understand where OP is coming from. But what I read in OP's post is that they don't like someone yelling, "Housekeeping!" at 8AM. If that's legitimately the only thing that regularly wakes them up early, then there are plenty of ways to prevent yourself from hearing it.
Edit: Please do not take this as a defense of AirBNB whatsoever - in point of fact, I agree with the general sentiment that they make life difficult for neighbors. That said, there's nuance here, and I'd just like to know more about OP's situation, because what they described doesn't sound anywhere near as bad as other AirBNB horror stories.
"Housekeeping" was just a handy one-word example so you could get the picture. More specifically, the unit and its walkway are right up to the property line, inches from my bedroom window. People roll their suitcases in and out daily, stop and talk on their cell phones, come back from the bars drunk, etc.
The (absent) owner does take some efforts to prevent loud groups, and to inform the guests to respect the neighbors by not playing loud music, etc, and mostly that's adhered to. Because of that, there's developed a kind of detente where I don't want to aggravate them or get into a neighbor war over nits like "Housekeeping", when really it's the totality of it that takes a toll on my sleep and my nerves.
Yep - I also used to use airbnb without even thinking twice about it in Europe. Last few trips have been getting steadily worse, culminating in a stay where the residence was completely unsuitable for habitation (extremely cold & heating was broken, no linens/towels, mold & damp issues) and airbnb caught us in some sort of bizarro catch-22.
Basically they said: "we can't refund you until you give the host a fair opportunity to address the issues, so get back to us in 24 hours if the host hasn't done anything". When the host failed to do anything and we re-contacted airbnb, they said that the period of validity for us to file a complaint and get a refund had expired, and they would not do anything to help us.
My wife and I fought this, HARD. One of the few times I've basically seen red while trying to sort out a simple issue like this. The host was contacted by airbnb and was livid, and became extremely hostile and unfriendly to us in communications. We ended up getting a hotel nearby and working out the whole thing through travel insurance. Honestly, fuck airbnb.
> culminating in a stay where the residence was completely unsuitable for habitation (extremely cold & heating was broken, no linens/towels, mold & damp issues) and airbnb caught us in some sort of bizarro catch-22.
This isn't normal? Unfortunately I've used Airbnb twice and this was my experience both times. Put it down partially to someone else booking it and probably being a bit cheap but yeah I'm just gonna use hotels haha. At least you can point issues out to them in person.
For me Airbnb has a reputation of being the place landlords list the shitholes they can't rent to people normally
I had one bad host experience, with a listing that as far as I can tell just didn't exist. Sent info to airbnb, including screenshots of trying to call the host. Got reimbursed in full in a few weeks. Pretty much what I expected them to do.
Since airbnb is a marketplace, it pays to look at host ratings and reviews, or just filter by superhost. If you pick somebody with 2 reviews that just opened, you have to be aware it's a gamble. It's not necessarily a mistake, depending on context, but a gamble.
Had this scenario in SF and lost out on $4k. Support just closed each chat to stop responses. The transcript of the phone calls they provided was inaccurate and they refused to provide the original audio.
They have a large problem of "hosts" being businesses, and not individual people.
I booked an apartment in Dublin with "Johnny", but upon paying for the booking, discovered it was a company called "City Break Apartments Limited" who required a large deposit upon check-in.
Nowhere in the advert was any indication the host was a company.
And a large problem of individuals wanting the money for running a business, but being disinterested in any of the work such as answering emails, showing up to give you the keys, or taking dishes from the dishwasher after your 100 EUR "cleaning fee".
This is an endemic issue in various services that say they're just people like you and me, but have businesses underneath. ebay leaned into it completely, it USED to be a buy / sell from peers deal, but nowadays it's basically aliexpress and co.
Yup, tried to book through them recently and there were technical glitches which prevented me from doing so. Eventually AirBnB support told me to tell the host to perform various actions to "reset" their availability status, etc. After a lot of fruitless back and forth, I messaged the host via AirBnB and told him that I was going to book his place through Booking.com. As a final insult, AirBnB wouldn't let me send the message because it contained "booking.com", so I ended up saying "the other platform".
Frankly the other platform seems to often be cheaper when the room's listed on both (there's surprisingly little overlap even in the self catered apartments and spare rooms category)
Sure, it has the irritating design patterns telling you that 3 people have looked this room in the last hour to try to encourage you to rush a decision, but manages to be still more honest in displaying the actual amount you pay per night rather than an amount plus 14% fees...
I live in Soho, London as an owner-occupier in a building with 6 other flats (7 total).
Of the 6 others, 3 of them are being used permanantly for AirBnB's, in direct conflict with the Leasehold agreement, which explictly states that the accommodation cannot be used for short-term, hotel-esque businesses and directly against the law (London requires that a flat not be used for more than X days per year). These are operated by a company that manages 10s to 100s of them in the area
Having complained to the building management, they simply don't care/don't do anything. It's on my todo list to take it up with the council/lawyer up against the building management, but I just don't have the time. It seems like AirBnB has just completely outsourced the fraud elements as "not their problem".
Will never use an AirBnB again, and will aggressively advise against it for friends & family.
Yep. AirBnB is directly responsible for exacerbating housing crises and ruining neighborhoods world wide by making it easy to break the law and providing perverse incentives to do so. A negative externality of society if there ever was one.
I don't know anyone who trusts Airbnb anymore, whether host or visitor. Several years ago I booked a week in SF at what looked like a very nice place. Naturally, the reality didn't remotely match the photos -- everything was broken, in tatters, filthy and it reeked of mold. Airbnb's resolution process was to have me wait several hours for someone to come and re-wash all of the bedding, but everything still smelled like mold afterward. This cleaning person actually told me the owner is aware that everything in the place is filthy, but refuses to change anything.
Unfortunately, Airbnb wasn't satisfied with my story because I couldn't prove that it smelled like mold -- yes, they actually wanted me to prove the presence of mold over email. They also weren't satisfied with the cleaning person's story, or the dozen photos I sent of the place being in shambles. They not only refused to help me find another place, but refused to refund me, as well. They didn't just steal $4,500, they forced me to spend my entire first day finding other lodging at premium last-minute prices during Salesforce Week.
My choices were to cancel the whole trip and head home, or spend another $6,500 at the damn W, of all places. I decided to stay thinking it would end up only being an extra $2,000 after the Airbnb refund, which was a mistake, because they never refunded me and brazenly told me to bring them to small claims court. But after travel expenses and attorney fees, I would have only ended up getting a few hundred dollars back.
So, Airbnb effectively screwed me out of $11,000 and their representatives seemed genuinely happy about doing it. I honestly don't recall a single apology from anyone at any point.
This is what credit cards are for -- you can dispute the charges. I hope you did. Credit card companies tend to err on the side of supporting consumers.
That might have once been true, but my own recent experience makes me think that the tide has turned. I no longer expect the card companies to advocate for the consumer in these kinds of "ambiguous" situations, particularly when the business is willing to misrepresent the truth.
I disputed it, but after three months of waiting, the bank decided there's nothing they can do because Airbnb's position is protected by the user agreement and CA law. It was a severely disappointing moment.
Despite the circumstances, it was technically my own decision to spend that money, so I wouldn't have been able to claim the hotel. I would have been limited to claiming the $4,500 plus partial attorney fees. But not only would it have cost roughly $4,000 to make that happen, the attorney warned me there's a chance I could actually lose due to Airbnb's solidly anti-consumer user agreement.
They both have the same problem of needing large margins for being a middle man. Good ones no doubt, that provide good services for buyers and sellers, but they're still middle men. The kind of technology and services they offer seem pretty vulnerable to competition and becoming increasingly commoditized. Whereas the cost of providing a house/car and person to service it is not coming down. So the idea they can just keep extracting billions of dollars per year out of this (and massively growing that revenue to cover their vast operating costs) seems optimistic to me.
It has become obvious that AirBNB is now targeting the upper-end market in terms of pricing. Their homepage constantly shows ridiculously expensive properties that I have no interest in staying at. (I've been traveling around Europe for 5 months so far purely staying at AirBNBs).
None of this "OMG Fund" money will be going to improving the core experience the main cohort of users; it is however broadening their marketing to higher-end properties and higher-paying visitors.
The experience is great, and I will continue using them.
Not saying there is anything wrong with AirBnb, but they seem to be steering away from the "rent a room in my house" target audience.
Just know the experience is great for you. I can guarantee it's probably pretty bad for the actual residents of the places you're visiting, who now have one less house/apartment on the long-term market because someone decided to AirBnB it to tourists who don't want to stay in hotels. Causes their rents to raise, as well as makes it even more difficult to find a place. AirBnB is a net negative to society, and needs to be shut down yesterday.
>It has become obvious that AirBNB is now targeting the upper-end market in terms of pricing
less than 20% of the global population has ever been on a plane, AirBNB has always been targeted towards the 1% of the population that can afford to throw money away on leisure travel
AirBnb was about renting a spare room in someones house. Not saying anything bad about AirBnb, I love it and will continue using them.
There is a clear difference however between the $25k for 5 days kind of stays they are constantly promoting on their homepage, compared to their bread and butter apartments scattered across cities.
Yeah Booking.com is a good go-to also. Compare prices.
As for destinations, I have noticed they have all been getting more experience, both due to the weather but also post-lockdowns, everyone is out and about.
Central/Eastern Europe is my personal favourite. Krakow, Poland (amazing). Belgrade, Zagreb, Kotor Montenegro.
And here I had hoped that it was a fund for people who had a horrible experience with with an airbnb host or guest, to give them quick and easy compensation.
This feels more like a half-baked supermarket marketing campaign than an actual push for innovation. But hey, I'm all for it! It's one of those rare market conditions that allow creative people to bring wacky new ideas to life.
That could be a suggested solution. A quirky duplex where your stay covers the cost of also housing one homeless person. Who's back yard are we putting this in? (And not /s, I like the idea)
There’s a lot of unfounded speculation about why AirBnB made its recent decisions. The truth is far simpler (or dumber, depending on your point of view)
There were no A/B tests that caused them to take this product direction.
There is no quantitative model of any kind that points to this as the revenue maximizing approach.
They are trying to differentiate themselves from hotels as much as possible to create long term brand equity.
This is the opposite of what many posters are suggesting. It may or may not succeed but it’s not driven by short term thinking as many are claiming here.
Reading the comments and reflecting on my experiences, I wonder if we might ever see a backlash and a resurgence of couchsurfing - not-for-profit, people wanting to help travelers.
I never did couchsurfing, so maybe I have a too uninformed opinion of it, but it seems like a great idea.
The % of people looking for interesting places to stay vs those that just want lodging is probably very low. If I was a hotel, I would probably check which area has high demand and simply provide safe, secure, predictable lodging. It makes you wonder how sustainable is Airbnb’s business model at a specific location is over a 10 year period is. I predict that Airbnb’s business model will be hard to sustain over a long period. Hotels will always win in the long run.
One of the interesting things I heard about Brian Chesky was that at one point he decided he was going to permanently live in Airbnbs. I thought that was really interesting because that Airbnb will be run by a guy who has the experience of being a billionaire using Airbnbs. I wonder if that's had an effect on the company's direction.
They've reduced useful search filters like 'has a desk' and there is no filter for 'not a tent or van' which is increasingly common. Some areas (Hawaii) contain vans as the majority of their listings. But no filters against them.
Their direction reminds me of the progress of Netflix to be less searchable and more about content they want to push. I guess it works out in the a/b tests but likely misses the forest for the trees.
A tip: use airbnb.com.au instead of .com as you'll get the real full price in the searches as they must comply with Australian law. This works all over the world.