But one thing I don't hear complained about enough: Having to share your home with AirBnB guests.

We live in a luxury condo in a major metro. A number of the owners in our building are absentee (probably not even in country) and they AirBnB. Nothing like paying a small fortune for a home and facilities and then having to share your pool with a bunch of obnoxious travelers who think they're in a fucking hotel.

We've tried to work with the company that manages our building but it's nearly impossible to stop, short of policing all of the residents. And it's illegal where we live! AirBnB doesn't give a shit. The offending owners (technically our neighbors) don't give a shit.

Honestly, I'd love to see them tank.

Now, it seems to be mainly listing what are essentially unlicensed hotels with rooms spread across an area. Half the time I’ve used it recently I go to the address I was sent, only to realize I’ve missed a message telling me to go to a different address 15 blocks away to obtain the key from a lockbox.

Plus I’ve found they make it difficult to see a map view in some places.

Now I only use Airbnb for renting entire houses (eg for a ski trip). And even for that, I check booking.com first

In many jurisdictions it’s illegal to operate residential properties as hotels for these and other reasons.

I don't know the situation in the OP's country, but I wouldn't assume that filing a lawsuit is always an accessible option in jurisdictions outside the US.

Many countries make it very difficult for the general public to access the court system.

Where I live for example, it is extremely expensive to even begin a lawsuit (multiples of median monthly income), contingent legal fees (i.e. no win, no fee) arrangements are illegal (up to 7 years in prison), and class actions (i.e. multi-party litigation) are not permitted.

However, my HoA was fine-happy and generally useless othwrwise

It's a shame airbnb has basically let professional real estate firms take over and completely trash it with listings that are nothing like what they show.

The last one I stayed at in Florida had a really bad ant problem and the place was filthy. They also had the AC set to turn off after 30 minutes. Keep in mind, it's in Florida and this was middle of summer.

While I'm ranting, why do they let basements or single floors of a shared house count as an 'entire place'? It's really weird to turn up and see you're actually in a basement in the owners house with their kids stomping around upstairs.

Agreed, this is very annoying. Basement apartments shouldn't show up under "entire place". They may be called basement apartments, but it's just a basement with a family upstairs and almost always constant, barely muffled noise. Some listings won't even disclose this until the very bottom of the description, or sometimes not at all, and then I have to dig through reviews to see if anyone has remarked that it's actually a basement.

I've stayed in a lot of Airbnbs, and every basement apartment has been awful in a lot of different ways. Some are even more expensive than full apartments despite same area and similar quality and size. But if you're on a tight budget, the cheapest option between a hostel and hotel room or apartment probably is a basement apartment, so I suppose they're not entirely useless.

Would you describe a room in a hotel as an "entire place" or a "shared space"?

this has gotta be the answer. I have the exact same experiences and feelings as you. I always look for basically the cheapest Airbnb and it ends up cheaper by 2-3x than local hotels and I've never had an uncomfortable stay. What I have had are completely normal rooms in working class homes - which is fine because who the hell cares about enjoying the hotel room when you travel!

My impression is that virtually all of the Airbnb complaints (both from guests and from neighbours) relate to "entire apartment" listings and/or the "private rooms" where the owner isn't on site.

There was once a time when most of the listings were for spare rooms in someone's house/flat, and to me that was kind of the whole point of Airbnb in the first place.

In recent years we run into more and more listings where somebody renting out the entire house, each room to a separate individual. Sometimes it is indistinguishable from the former one before you arrive. If I staying at a "hostel" I want my bathroom and kitchen cleaned every day, but most likely I would just choose a real hostel.

Most places also never looked as advertised: they’re way noisier, dirtier, low quality, and as others have said you have to trek 5 blocks to get and return the key to an automated 7/11 mailbox.

And should you report it to Airbnb, be prepared to stay 45 minutes on the phone every time you call, starting over from scratch because the agents can’t read previous calls notes, to eventually be told that they’ve checked you out, refunded, and good luck finding another place to stay tonight.

I’ll take hotels any day. Fuck Airbnb.

And the last time it was a great place, a bit better than a hotel.

There's nothing wrong with that, of course. I just dislike all their Jobs-esque bullshit about it, pretending they single-handedly "innovated" the platform, which they didn't.

In the days before AirBnB I rented an apartment in Paris for a week and had to wire half the money up front (in EUR, from the USA) and bring the other half in cash on arrival. The apartment was awesome, the host even better and I had no regrets. But it was a hassle, a bit risky, and certainly not something most of my friends and family would have been willing to do.

Getting in the middle of the money may not seem like much of an innovation but from my own experience it was probably one of the more complicated aspects of their platform. Dealing with currencies, escrow, risk management, settlement, chargebacks, etc. is a major undertaking. But it’s what made the model accessible to a lot more hosts and guests.

Also AirBnB innovated in break-ing Craigslist TOS to spam their users in early marketing.