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
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.
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.
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?
e.g.: Putting emojis in your notification texts increases engagement… until it kills your engagement entirely.
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.
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 :)
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?
edit not the Four Seasons with a door on Market Street, the sign I saw was closer to the Moscone Center..
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.
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?
Airbnb is just frustrating from start to finish.
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.
[1]https://prtimes.jp/main/html/rd/p/000000586.000030117.html (Detailing a niche hotel where you get to pretend to operate a main tokyo train line and be woken up by the same device train conductors use)
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.
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.
As a business? They avoid tons of regulations there for zoning, public safety, etc. That leads to higher profit margins.
To a consumer? I'm not 100% sure anymore. Except some places where hotels are booked through AirBnB to gain better access to customers
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.
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.
Painful.
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.