I’ve had nothing but bad experiences with Airbnb and hosts who are basically trying to rinse as much money as possible for as little effort as possible. I’m not sure after a long journey I want to wonder around the Edinburgh fringe again, trying to decipher Scottish, while the wind is going crazy and there are millions of people floating around just to get keys. I think Airbnb is great if there are 15 of you sharing a flat but a lot less good if you’re a couple who want their lives to be simple. I really do not get why it’s so popular, it’s barely cheaper than a hotel after cleaning and service fees - and 100% less convenient.

I have had both kinds of experiences.

Most of the time I get a good experience in an environment that I prefer over a hotel. It is wonderful.

But then there are times like the time we went to NYC, the host was lying about their address to avoid getting in trouble with the city, and expected to contact us on our way to correct that. However we were on an airplane, and when we arrived the host was asleep.

Ever shown up at a stranger's house, past midnight, with 4 kids expecting to go to sleep there? With them having not a clue why you are trying to break into their house?

I have.

Because I've had the opposite experience would you be willing to share how you pick places?

I rent: "Whole places", with a strong bias towards detached buildings, that rate 4.7 or higher on their scale, and have glowing reviews that mention how nice the host is. These are almost always $90/night or more, with an average of $120/night.

This is basically how I rent and I've also had great experiences.

I have rented a "non-Whole place" and I would say that was a pretty bad experience. Our room was supposed to be the only Airbnb, but two nights in, they rented out a room with a frosted glass separator next to us as "420 friendly" and the couple that moved in proceeded to have quite loud sex. We gave them pretty scathing reviews, which I am not wont to do.

Ha, that may beat my weird one. I was with an ex, and we rented a room in a home across from Golden Gate park. We cleared with the resident that we would be back around 2am, and that it would be fine.

At 2am, they got mad at us for making so much noise. THEN at 6am, they start blasting some ethnic music as they proceeded to fry food for hours and party. Turns out they were VERY Jewish and were celebrating the Sabbath being over. Surreal.

Exactly, I think sharing homes with the whole population is very problematic as on average you’ll get a lot of people who aren’t really into Airbnb as a concept and don’t really care.

Getting home at 2am happens, if you don’t like it don’t rent rooms for money. In my head I edited out the expletives from that sentence :-|

And how did you review the room?

Poorly, but Airbnb's website has poor support for historical reviews so I can't actually see what I wrote. This was 4 years ago or so.

I likely would have been kinder if it weren't advertised as "whole condominium".

I’m not sure, now that I can afford a nicer place I usually book a hotel due to my previous experience. Maybe I should increase my price ranges and try again, but the key problem just means I really cannot be bothered. If they had places around town to get the keys from I’d be much more likely to use it again.

Having said that places usually are over £90 per night but this is very place dependant.

I've rented about 20 whole places. 50% had issues. 50% were good. Prices were almost always is the $120-$150 a night range. Examples of bad: claiming to have reserved parking but not having parking. Claiming to be one place but being another. Claiming to have usable internet but not. Claiming to have a bed but just having a cot. etc...

At this point I'd mostly choose hotels over AirBnB because generally a hotel will try to fix an issue but AirBnb never will. Their position is effectively "sucks to be you, you shouldn't have chosen that listing".

They policy is basically "unless it's life threatening shutup!" and the worst part is either you suck it up or you're out a day of your vacation travel etc as you try to scramble to find another place. It's not fun.

Most of the time when I travel, it's the city etc. that's the experience I'm looking for, not the accommodation. I have no doubt there are, even many, AirBnBs out there that are quite nice. But I'll usually go for predictability, as well as other amenities, like being able to leave my luggage for the day after I check out.

I find I get a much more real sense of the city living in one of its (non-hotel zoned) neighborhoods in a real house.

The issue is that when you do this via AirBnB you're actively participating in driving out the people who actually need to live there and who make up the city and give it part of its character.

And driving up the price of rent for those living there too...

I've had many bad experiences with airbnb. Also some really great (esp in the beginning), but usually those were huge places.

AirBNB is often more expensive, is a hassle with getting a key some times (other side of the city wtf), NO support in case electricity fails, some had dirty laundry. etc etc.

I have stayed at "conventional" B&B's that I've noticed apparently also list on AirBnB and they've been fine. I think a general point whether we're talking renting a room/apartment, ordering online FBA, etc. is that a lot of people bargain hunt. While that often works out, there's also a reason for the saying that if something looks too good to be true, there's a good chance you're going to get burned.

I've had OK experiences, but I've acutely aware of how close I am to a bad experience, and it makes me uncomfortable. When I'm in a hotel, I'm never thinking "what if I can't get a key to the room," "what if a neighbor asks what I'm doing," "is there a hidden camera," etc.

AirBnB is on the long list of very successful startups that I absolutely don't get at all. Staying in some randos house feels so incredibly awkward and unpleasant to me. I'm genuinely surprised how many people are fine with it and even more surprised at how many people are willing to rent their homes to strangers. The whole thing just feels like a giant scam to dodge hotel tax.

I have a lot of good things to say about AirBnB, it's beautifully designed, the one time we used it, it was great. Awesome host and at that time, much cheaper than a hotel.

However I can't get over the service and cleaning fees, especially as they are added on the second page. I don't mind them, but why not include them on the listing page?

Not sure if it's an US thing or if it's something people actually falls for? This is a practice that is prevalent throughout industries, but one standing out of course is restaurants. The menu price: 20USD BUT + SF mandate + service fees + sales tax + mandatory tips, the dish is actually at least 30USD ? Why not just put that on the menu? In Sweden for instance (and most of Europe) the price you see in stores and on menus is the price you pay. Someone starting the next AirBnB and just shows you the actual price on the front page that is on your statement of your credit card in the end, will be very successful (I hope!)

Theres a chrome plugin that fixes the pricing you mention such that the search page shows the true combined price.

I never used AirBnB for that reason: The hotel was mostly the same price. But I guess if I were with 2-3 friends, the equation will change. AirBnB is bad deal if you are traveling alone.

If you pay at the higher end of rates and go with Superhosts, your experience will largely be flawless. I've never had a problem and my stays have been amazing, but I'm also spending hotel-equivalent prices or higher.

I feel like this is not some great engineering feat with Airbnb and has much more to do with classism and the type of person who typically owns that beautiful vacation home you want to stay in.

> has much more to do with classism

You're right but I think that's an unfair way to put the fact that two rich people can get a remedy from each other without the law, but a rich person only gets remedies from poor people through the law.

The better comparison is Airbnb versus CouchSurfing or TrustedHouseSitters. All three use unused space in your home in exchange for something of psychological and monetary value, including some things Paul Graham said were important to Airbnb - like the psychic pleasure of having guests over.

The difference is that TrustedHouseSitters sitters and CouchSurfing surfers are disproportionately completely broke, so if they go and they break your rich person coffee machine, what are you going to do? Get money from the guest?

You'll never use THS again. Retention is 0% after the first incident. The private equity firm that owns THS isn't going to make you whole, the insurance they give has a $1,000 minimum, the requirements are onerous, etc.

When I break something in an Airbnb, I pay every time. When they fuck up the parking and I get towed, the Airbnb paid. So we both keep using the service.

Michael Sandel talked big talk about Airbnb monetized something that used to be generously gifted, but he omitted the special math of how rich people exchanging stuff with each other results in that thing being utilized 10,000% more, simply because it is sustainable in the sense of people retaining and not hitting the home button, and he never really talked about, ironically, the lack of justice when people break or steal your shit and there is simply no remedy.

> When I break something in an Airbnb, I pay every time. When they fuck up the parking and I get towed, the Airbnb paid. So we both keep using the service.

This seems very orthogonal to concerns about being murdered.

> Michael Sandel talked big talk about Airbnb monetized something that used to be generously gifted, but he omitted the special math of how rich people exchanging stuff with each other results in that thing being utilized 10,000% more, simply because it is sustainable in the sense of people retaining and not hitting the home button, and he never really talked about, ironically, the lack of justice when people break or steal your shit and there is simply no remedy.

I'm sorry, I honestly don't really understand. I'm assuming you're discussing Sandel's recent work on what he sees as the moral limits around markets.

You're saying that markets provide a recourse for property damage, which makes them more just? That, again, seems unrelated - no reason you can't have recourse for property damage even if you are letting someone stay in your house free of charge.

I also just think the narrative you're spinning is sort of misleading. Rich people overwhelmingly do have remedies for wrongs and have the capacity to pursue legal action.

I guess it would be more like renting someone's fancy car for a weekend.

Also you're unlikely to see the owner, they certainly won't be inside with you, you can leave any time, you're likely to be with others, and they can't change your location.

Contrast that with an intoxicated young woman climbing alone into a stranger's car where he has a lot of control - including being able to lock the doors or take her to a remote/unfamiliar location. Even with all the checks and measures in place, assaults are not uncommon; I'm not familiar with any AirBnB type assaults (far more frequently, it's the guests victimising the owner via property damage).

> they certainly won't be inside with you

Not true, we once stayed in Pisa, Italy, and the (absolutely messy) appartment was shared with the host and her son. It was quite awkward at times but we still enjoyed the stay

Many years back I stayed in Melbourne, Australia with a lovely Chinese speaking elderly couple. They made me lunch, I have no idea what it was but it was delicious! I think it was much more common to rent an extra room back when Airbnb was relatively new.

My best Airbnb experience was my first one 4 years ago, when with a partner I booked a room in a house with the owner living in. We had a tremendous time, we had bbq one night together, it was an enjoyable not planned semi-communal experience. Nowadays, the experience Airbnb offers is mostly that of a poorly managed hotel that has properties all over the world. It can be worthwhile when traveling in groups, but otherwise I tend to prefer hotels.

Still very common. My parents are AirBnB "super hosts" and they live in the basement due to regulatory requirements that are common in pricey American cities.

I think the host caliber was much different then too. The professional AirBNB people had not setup shop.

I had a similar situation. I was very weary at first, but it was one of the best trips I had in a while. I still keep in touch with the hostess.

"once" :-)

Airbnb is not a tech company, it’s a hospitality company.

From what I’ve heard the tech is mediocre at best there. Doesn’t matter though, the brand is what people pay for and what drives hype.

> How often do you hear people talk about being murdered in uber? I still hear it. How often do you hear it for Airbnb? I haven't heard someone express that worry yet.

Only in the US: They've solved one of the hardest problems, not being murdered while using their service....

British person here: I get where you're coming from, sorta, but it's a pretty bad take...

Uber has had their license revoked and returned repeatedly in London for the last few years because they have such a terrible reputation for consumer safety - instances of girls being assaulted by drivers, and insufficient protection by Uber after that.

Sure, not murder, but still pretty bad.

>How often do you hear it for Airbnb?

I've heard a lot of potential hosts not do airbnb for worry of things like guests having massive parties, making drugs, destroying things, etc.

I’ve been running two airbnbs for two years, with over 1000 nights hosted, and I’ve had none of those things. The worst that’s happened is a guest broke a chair, which they apologised over and paid for.

People are generally decent.

Some evidence of that would be that AirBnb has been growing for almost 15 years. If people were not generally decent, the business would never have scaled to this level.

My neighbor let his apartment out on AirBNB and the people who stayed there started a fire in the fireplace and didn't open the flue. I had to crawl out a smoke filled hallway.

I've had the displeasure of going through AirBnb dispute resolution process more than once, which was resolved in my favour once and not the other. Neither time did I think they did a good job of hearing the sides of the case and deciding on solid principles or written foundations. It's pretty much a matter of who sees it and makes a subjective call. It's also shocking that the first several tiers of customer support is seemingly run by volunteers (or otherwise ill-equipped people).

The success of the trust and brand issue is largely due to the number of well meaning hosts far outnumbering the bad and AirBnb keeping the bad stories not get viral too often.

The 'keep your rating high' has been around since eBay and could easily be copied. I wouldn't have a problem using a service that competed with AirBnb. What they have is a volume lead. People look there because that's where the listings are. Hosts list there because that's where people look.

Their dispute process reminds me of credit card chargebacks. They don't read the info you produce most of the time and make a call based on what's best for the company. I hate it.

There are plenty of horror stories, even if not directly murder. Rending out a nice, luxurious/novel holiday home is the story they sell, but that's far from the bulk. They enable a secondary, dodgy market in a lot of towns around the world.

A market that's driving out long-term rentals and causing lots of issues for the people who actually live in the towns as well.

You do still hear about hidden cameras however.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/03/what-...

I scan my Airbnbs with my thermal camera to try to find hidden cameras. I'm pleased to say I've never found one yet.

> They've solved the trust and the brand issue, and _that_ is their moat.

I think they've solved it better than their competitors, but I'm not sure that they've solved it broadly for people using hospitality services.

For better or worse, one bad experience tends to sour people that I've talked to on the overall host-driven places to stay. Whereas for hotels and other more traditional forms, that seems to be compartmentalized to specific locations ("ugh, the hilton in boston") or chains ("I'm avoiding all Marriots from now on").

> How often do you hear it for Airbnb? I haven't heard someone express that worry yet.

I think the "not getting murdered" but is more to do with the demographic of people who are "hosts" with the service that they offer (which are mostly whole-homes). It is just at a higher price point that doesn't match the stereotype of "murderous Uber driver". If someone did "something" it's a lot riskier to kill someone in a property that you own vs a moving vehicle. I'm not saying that stereotype is valid in any way, Uber<->Airbnb isn't really a valid comparison there.

That being said, I have 100% heard both stories and concerns about people's privacy being violated in Airbnb's. Hidden cameras, nosey "hosts", etc. That's not even including the trust issues around "I showed up and the host won't let me in and Airbnb is not being helpful, what am I supposed to do now?". Those trust issues definitely still exist.

I've had better experiences with VRBO than AirBnB

Agree, largely because AirBnB tends to have higher platform and cleaning fees.

I also have a hard time understanding why AirBnB is treated as crown jewel of success for using $6 billion in raised capital and more than 6,000 employees to copy what VRBO already did well (and with substantially less resources).

(Honestly, I would like to understand this, if someone can explain it to me).

I find many properties are posted on both sites, then it comes down to fees, for which I feel Airbnb's are much higher.

Same, it's been great. I've mostly used it for renting large homes in Tahoe.

There seem to be quite a lot of news about hidden cameras in Airbnbs though

There was a very big story last Halloween about an Airbnb house party in Orinda, CA that resulted in a mass shooting and 5 deaths. That started their crack down on house parties.

Don't they have a issue with scammers? https://www.vice.com/en/article/43k7z3/nationwide-fake-host-... . Although you got to love the ending, even after being scammed, the writer said she'd still use it:

> I can’t say I’ll be leaving the platform, either. Dealing with Airbnb’s easily exploitable and occasionally crazy-making system is still just a bit cheaper than renting a hotel.

And also dicking around renters when shit does go bad? (Typical example: host says $2000 in damages. AirBnB offers $200. Deliberately frustrate host with weeks/months of back and forth "negotiation". End with an offer of $500, host gives up and take it. Hey hey, $1500 saved!)

Is it though? There are plenty of other platforms that people don't think twice about booking on. Booking.com, Trivago, etc.

Their real value is that when a lot of people think "I'll book somewhere", they now go to Airbnb first, much like when people think "I'll buy something" they go to Amazon first. But I think that's a fairly weak "moat" on the scale of things.

Not exactly true:

https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/police-identify-three-men-killed-...

My friend had her whole house ruined with everything stolen (and then only received a fraction of the cost back because of bad record keeping). I don't think she'll be recommending hosting to anyone.

I've rented a lot of homes with VRBO and never had any bad experiences. In my use-case I don't see what AirBnb offers over VRBO.

Maybe not murder, but I know women hesitant to stay in AirBNBs due to the stories of hidden cameras.

shorting a stock in this market is a fool’s errand.

Jim Cramer was hilarious when talking about Tesla stock during Doordash's IPO. He said he was talking to a young person about Tesla and was asking them why they bought the stock. And they said "because it goes up! and I want to be rich!". He threw up his hands and said "how do you argue with that?".

> I hear a lot of talk surrounding their "moat" and many skeptics are questioning whether or not they will be able to maintain their competitive advantage.

Why do they need a moat? What happened to all the free market capitalism everyone believes in? Let the better company win out in true competition?

Or is that just a taking point, and everyone actually believes in building moats to avoid competition?

A moat is what enables you to avoid being in a race-to-the-bottom commodity business. In a commodity business you get just enough returns to cover cost of capital plus a little bit. With a moat you can get 20% - 30% profit margins: Coca-Cola, Apple, Google. A moat is also what builds an enduring business. The moat is what prevents other people from just doing that same thing you are doing but at a lower price. A moat isn't rent seeking, it is (or at least can be) out-competing. The iPhone was a huge moat for Apple for many years; they were 2 years ahead of everyone when it came out, so much so that engineers at Microsoft and RIM both thought that the announced product was impossible. The M1 is similar, everyone is probably two years behind, if they can even catch up. (Eventually they will, because Apple probably can't ride the process improvements that long)

A commodity business is the essence of free market capitalism.

Every time you say you don't want to be in a commodity business, you're saying you don't believe in free market capitalism. You don't want competition.

I think the unstated context is that “moats” might justify a higher stock valuation than otherwise, which is relevant because of the behavior of the stock on IPO