Now it's basically: have a property and enjoy doing the backoffice of short term rentals (cleaning/basic accounting/being a host), and then you are essentially competing for customers that would typically go to a hotel/hostel.
But if you think about it rationally, Hotels, even very cheap ones should be able to offer more services for less, given that a hotel cleaner can go room after room doing the work.
The same is for other utilities like swimming pool etc, as it's shared, it's cheaper.
There used to be a time when hotels were more expensive even though you could get an apartment for yourself with a pool and all those services, as well cleaning fees were lower. Nowadays after the arbitrage happened, things are more evened out.
Anyways, I understand that for people with money or certain conditions, Airbnb is more interesting, but I can't see that model having a scale bigger than the old way, it's just a niche, and I think Airbnb at the moment fail to make that niche as profitable as the main thing.
it might be a way for Airbnb to diversify: treat these two a two different businesses. Airbnb-style hotels and rooms in a lived in apt and actually local's apts. Three separate offerings as opposed to a big pile of random stuff.
But there was NO big investment for the people who offered the original Airbnb fare: one available room, or one available apartment.
We are now in the phase where some Airbnbs really are overpriced as seen from the consumer side. But perhaps perfectly priced as seen by the owner (who perhaps wants fewer but higher priced rental days to better fit their own hassle overhead.) There is space for the prices to bounce around. And for some consumers they are still what they want: as others described, if you want more than a couple days and you want a real living place as opposed to just a place to sleep and desk.
Does it mean that AirBnB disappears? Of course not. But their business has really changed, yes. Have they adapted enough? Are they continuing to adapt enough?
What sounds more of a problem to me is that Airbnb has not solved its hassle issue: The inventices for the reviews to be effective don't seem right to me. And it has not solved its issue of relations with governments / voters: the supply of Airbnb is threatened pretty much everywhere. And while booking.com and the others seem highly diversified, perhaps not so for Airbnb.