> Step outside of the software bubble we’re in and I’d guess 80% or more people would prefer a world without Airbnb

This is delusional. Here's one survey, by YouGov, pegging their liked-to-dislike ratio at 3.4: https://today.yougov.com/topics/travel/explore/website/Airbn...

The software bubble is nothing compared to a political bubble.

I suggest looking across the US border for a bit.

Sure, there’s no bias whatsoever in that survey, surely the old grandma living on an unspecified european city center that is against airbnb is as likely to respond as the young FAANG-salaried international US traveller that wants to travel cheap and authentic.

On the one hand, we have survey data, with which we can quibble on methodology. On the other hand, we have an HN poster who just really doesn't like Airbnb and pulls a number from his nether regions guessing that everyone actually agrees with him. Truly a conundrum as to which might be closer to the truth.

No conundrum, we can reject both.

I'd rather keep the survey data from the respected polling firm, actually. No need to assign it a weight of 100% truth, but certainly useful.

No need to hide the information on the methodology of the survey:

"YouGov Ratings

YouGov Ratings measures Airbnb’s popularity and fame every quarter. The latest data is based on 1532 nationally representative interviews of the US population, collected during Q2 2023."

The number of housing units has not kept up with population growth. There's your housing shortage. Blaming Airbnb for this is laughable.

The lack of builds is the primary cause, sure. But parent is not wrong that in a lot of places airbnb is clearly making the rental market worse.

It’s not laughable if it’s exacerbating the problem

>Step outside of the software bubble we’re in and I’d guess 80% or more people would prefer a world without Airbnb.

I have, and the ability to travel (affordably) seems fairly important to working class folks. The people I've seen complain about AirBnb are the same sort of people who sneer at Ryanair - definitely not "the masses".

Then again, things may be different in the USA. I've always assumed the 40 year old man who has never seen the ocean is some sort of a ridiculous stereotype, but who knows.

If you're on a budget, you're not using AirBnb (at least in the US). You're using budget motels.

Is that also true if you are (or are traveling with) a woman? I'm not much of a motel person and am mostly working with stereotypes here[1], but a cheap motel does not strike me as the place where a woman can safely return home by herself late in the evening.

I guess, cheap AirBnbs may be at similar locations, but that doesn't seem to be necessarily (or usually) true. And often you can't quite figure out how unsafe the place is ahead of time, so you rent something and roll with it, but that's a discussion for another time.

[1] Then again, so is everyone else. A guy a few comments down presented statistics, which were somehow refuted trough the careful deployment of a stereotype.

> Is that also true if you are (or are traveling with) a woman?

I don't think gender is a factor here. But it depends on the neighborhood you're in, not whether or not it's a motel.

However, that's not pertinent to the point that I was making, which is that Airbnbs are more of a luxury option, not a cost-saving option. The comment I was replying to appears to be asserting that being opposed to Airbnbs is elitist because it's being opposed to affordable options. In my experience in the US, that doesn't track. Airbnbs tend to be more expensive than someone who runs lean is likely to choose.

I live in a pretty typical American middle class neighborhood far from any tech centers and Airbnb is almost universally hated around here, for pretty much the usual reasons you hear (disruptive guests, housing availability, etc). Airbnb clientele is heavily skewed towards techies and upper-middle class in my experience. Folks traveling on a limited budget either can't afford Airbnb or can't spare the extra time they take compared to a hotel.