The last thing I want to do when I'm pulling in after a long flight an hour past the kids' bedtime is to deal with potentially dealbreaking problems with the place. In a hotel, they generally have maintenance on staff and extra rooms to switch into in case of problems. Generally with Airbnb, the staff is 30 minutes away and is annoyed that you've called them. Most of the time, everything is fine, but there can be snafus with locks, plumbing, cleanliness, etc, and kids make these more complicated. This is all not to mention being asked to strip beds, take out trash, etc, after you've paid thousands of dollars, including cleaning fees for the place.
Just having a separate living room and bedroom in your hotel can be hundreds more per night.
Interconnecting rooms are rare, you can request it, and it’ll be subject to availability. So you can’t even guarantee you’ll have one.
Hilton and IHG both have similar brands, but their exact names escape me at the moments. The search keywords are "extended stay" and "apartment hotels".
Ok... Can you show me some like that in the EU?
> This is all not to mention being asked to strip beds, take out trash, etc, after you've paid thousands of dollars, including cleaning fees for the place.
Just don't do that.
There ended up being an issue with the dryer not drying. So the hotel staff took a laundry basket of clothes and delivered them washed and folded the next morning. That level of service would not have happened in an Airbnb.
This is different from Airbnb's where they abuse a residential building for short term stays.
Which is quite different from, and far more expensive than, a hotel which GP was talking about.
> This is different from Airbnb's where they abuse a residential building for short term stays.
As allowed by local regulations, so not quite abuse. Sure it used to be the wild west several years ago but it's been cracked down on since.
Yes, trivially. There are filters for it on booking.com. Here's a link for rooms in Paris suitable for 2 adults and 2 kids with 2 bedrooms, a kitchen/kitchenette and a washing machine.
https://www.booking.com/searchresults.en-gb.html?label=gen17...
My experience is that e.g. it used to be a lot easier in the USA to find hotels that even just had a kitchenette or even a pay to wash “laundromat” (which is what I assume you are referring to), but maybe that is also just my personal experience. But my sense is that those offerings have been in stark decline especially over the last decades, and especially outside of the inland western half of the country that in some places is still a kind of real America that has not yet succumbed to con job level corporate practices.
It seems fairly accurate to include AB&B in those who have succumbed to “enshitification” for whatever of the several reasons that may be. In the case of AB&B it feels like MBA Wall Street types pressed to slide or chip away at ever more standards to drive “growth” and/or “cost cutting”, the only two real tricks the number monkeys have in their bag.
American here. The opposite is true -- there used to be few of these, and they were "upscale". Now there are tons of different low-end chains that specialize in it. Homewood Suites, Marriott/Hilton/Sheraton Suites, Embassy Suites, DoubleTree, Hyatt Place, Springhill Suites, and maybe half a dozen others.
These are usually, but not exclusively, located in areas that are a bit more rural -- I don't know if you'll find one in Manhattan, for example, and you'll see definitely them by pretty much every major freeway interchange. But I've stayed in one on Maui, in San Diego, and near the airport in SF, so you see them in "tourist" places as well.
The suite hotel I used in Maui, for example was pretty fancy: pool, restaurant, bar, gym, balcony rooms, etc. But the price point was certainly below equivalent hotels in the same area.
Your description of how well hotels are run does not match my experience. I’m sure it’s true of very nice hotels. It’s also true of very nice AirBnB’s! And VRBOs, which are not as well known but similar idea.
Whereas I would not be surprised if more than 80% of Airbnb's have a full kitchen or access to one.
Hotels tend to be pretty consistently good when it is over a certain price point, and at any higher price point, all you get is better views/location (and may be some amenities such as gym or pool) - aka, quality caps out and just becomes expensive.
Airbnb prices are quite correlated to quality. High priced airbnb (for example, a holiday lodge) can be _very_ good for the price. But airbnb is a sort of buyers beware type deal.
I think what you mean is "chains" tend to be pretty consistent. Which, yeah, that's always been the main value prop of a chain. You go to McDonald's in Tunisia and you have a pretty good idea what you're going to get.
I mean, that one is on you. It is possible to go on vacation even camping with kids without having anxiety attack over everything.
Also, while some kids are difficult and kids are slow and certainly limit you, hours of tantrumps every holiday and impossibility to eat are not normal.
And yes, the point being advanced in the thread is that compared to camping - which is generally healthy and not something to freak out about! - homes are going to be cleaner, occasional mold issues aside. So it's silly to freak out over the infinitesimally-slight chances of little Timmy and Sally getting dust-mold-smoke cancer-AIDS from a less-than-perfectly-sterile room.
Generally though, I would expect camping to be healthier than a hotel room. Hotel rooms and airbnbs are places that many humans go through, and humans are generally the main carriers of human pathogens. The only germs on your camping gear are your own ones.
I mean, it's an adventure, and those can also go poorly, but our experiences have been just excellent. And at those bottom-of-the-barrel prices mentioned earlier.
Definitely not something that hotels offer.
I think this is a huge factor in why my family always camped when I was a kid.
And to be frank, I don't like being cooped up in a hotel either.
I, like you, prefer the hotel offering. Messing around with hosts and their rules is not on my list of things I want to care about, the fact that there are hidden fees and stuff leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Hotels, I know the rules. Don't destroy or steal, make life easier for the maid: done.
With AirBNB, there's the cleaning fee, there's the self-replacement of items situation, there's the unknown state going in; and there's some faff about checking in.
However, the laundry fee's are definitely killer in hotels. I prefer to travel light and paying €8 for a pair of socks (or.. depending on the hotel manager PER SOCK) to get them washed is just painful. It's not just a high price tag at that point, it's borderline criminal markup.
I have also noticed that amenities such as Irons are less common in hotel rooms these days, which is annoying as I've started wearing shirts in my old age- worse still is the toilet situation. Modern hotels must think we're all voyeurs or something. The majority of hotels I've stayed at in the last 3 years I would not want to be with a child, frosted glass bathrooms, rarely a lock, sometimes it's just slatted wooden cabinet doors... idk, something wild is going on with hotel bathrooms man.
The ironing board is sometimes.. however..
Kinda small: https://www.amazon.com/Ironing-Tabletop-Foldable-Collars-Han...
Just as much as many parents think having had kids is one of the proudest decisions (or happiest accidents) they have made, I think not having them is one of my best decisions, travelling is one of my many reasons for that, and I find the assumption from some parents that we should bend around their choice is a little presumptuous.
Furthermore, ignoring various other definitions of better, hotels are sometimes better value (or, at least, just less expensive) then AirBnBs these days, unless you are lucky, and inexpensive/value-for-money seems to be a very important factor for parents that I know.
Having said that I still use AirBnB sometimes, it just certainly isn't my only/preferred option as it was for a time.
As a a direct result of the worst parenting in 30+ years, kids Fing suck to be around for more than just a few moments.
My issue is the assumption, amongst many of those with kids, that everything should be optimised for people with kids, and anything that isn't is wrong. Because why would you want to optimise anything for other conditions in some cases?
>Why not show the same courtesy?
There is courtesy, and there is being expected to accept suboptimal things for myself so that everything can be optimal for other peoples' choices.
--------
[1] except perhaps the particularly uncontrolled ones, and I acknowledge that is sometimes unavoidable
How exactly is everything optimised with families in mind? Ask any parent and I'm sure they will tell you how unoptimised their life is.
Why does a single person with their own expendable income worry so much about being catered for specifically? Your only responsibility is to yourself. Do you look around and bemoan family specific services? It's such an odd thing to care about unless you had a grudge.
Kids aren't a 'lifestyle choice' like deciding to travel. Do I need to go into the reasons why kids are important or who will be paying to keep you alive when your older?
In your response, yes. Either that or you are significantly misreading my posts.
> How exactly is everything optimised with families in mind?
It isn't. I didn't say that at all. Some things are, possibly not enough, but many parents think everything should be and everything that isn't implies some deliberate slight.
> Ask any parent and I'm sure they will tell you how unoptimised their life is.
Ah, the old “you are not a parent, you don't know how hard it is”. I know many parents, and even without that personal context the issues with parenthood are well documented throughout our culture. If anyone is ignorant of reality here it is parents who are surprised to find it isn't easy…¹
> Why does a single person with their own expendable income worry so much about being catered for specifically?
I don't, and that isn't what I said.
> Your only responsibility is to yourself.
Incorrect. I have parents, other family, friends, pets, my work (though that could be filed under responsibility to myself I suppose - I'm not a public servant by any description), other organisations (both commercial and charitable) that I interact with, certain responsibilities we all have to society in general, etc.
> Do you look around and bemoan family specific services?
I very much do not, I don't even bemoan funding them, and I explicitly said as much (to quote: “I don't begrudge my taxes going into education and relevant parts of the NHS…”). Try reading what you reply to before replying to it!
> It's such an odd thing to care about unless you had a grudge.
Not a grudge as such. Just an irritation that if I'm sometimes seen as selfish if I appreciate something that is optimised for my lifestyle. I've been called selfish for just not wanting to have kids.
> Kids aren't a 'lifestyle choice'
They very much are. It is a choice that affects your lifestyle in a great many ways whichever side you choose (or, in some cases, have chosen for you).
> Do I need to go into the reasons why kids are important
No need, I've been told these things, despite already knowing them, many many many times already!
> who will be paying to keep you alive when your older?
That is a complicated discussion that I really don't have time for ATM, but further to “why kids are important” I am well aware of the problems an average ageing population can cause.
--------
[1] Obviously excluding those whose kids have specific issues, be they physical, mental, or both. Those matters are not predictable unlike the general challenges almost all parents face.
However, you find it irritating when people call you selfish when things are catered for you.
Who are these people calling you selfish by the way? Who has said your selfish for not having kids for example.
This frustration with parents seem to come from a sense of guilt? Not that I agree you should feel that way. But all this talk of feeling selfish and being called selfish. I have never felt that way about any friends or family I know without kids. Never even crossed my mind.
If you're truly happy with your lifestyle choice, these things shouldn't bother you at all.
You are twisting my words again. I'm strongly suspecting this is deliberate, to make my position sound more hard-line, rather than a misunderstanding on your part. I said many, which is far from most, and to those with kids not to their specific family¹.
> This irritates you.
Not directly. If you pay attention to the start of this thread² you'll see that the source of irritation was the implied “you aren't a parent so you don't understand”. Here it was said lightly, but often there is more than a hint of suggesting that those without kids, particularly those who very much don't want them, are somehow both inferior in terms of knowledge, intellect, morality, or some mix of the three.
> Who are these people calling you selfish by the way?
Currently, directly to me? No one. I've successfully convinced the world around me that my line ending here is not a bad thing!
Though it was explicitly stated in my direction in my younger years when talking about future life plans. Who was saying it? Quite a mix of people, though there was certainly a bias towards those to whom religion was an important part of how they gauge the actions/intent of others. In some cases I think people take my explicitly not wanting that way of life is me saying that the other choice is generally wrong and that they, by inference, are wrong³, which is not the case. My original home town has a prevalence of certain opinions about the world, and there was from some people a suggestion that other cultures having more children than was a concern so breeding is some sort of duty, but that is part of a different kettle of mouldy fish.
As an example more outside of myself: I have a couple of friends who would like to have themselves rendered incapable without the hassle of pills and other treatments which, for them and quite a few others, can have significant side effects, but that isn't something they are allowed to choose in this country even at their own expense. The word selfish has definitely been levelled at them (also “misguided” and similar, along with “you'll change your mind and regret it” as if they are a 14-year-old wanting a face tattoo not a 30-something trying to make their life less problemful for a week each month).
> This frustration with parents…
Again, your wording seems to be trying to frame me as saying things that I am not, here that all parents have unreasonable expectations. That is rather disingenuous of you.
> seem to come from a sense of guilt?
Nope. I don't see what I would feel guilty about here.
> If you're truly happy with your lifestyle choice, these things shouldn't bother you at all.
I am, but I have to admit to not being high-minded enough not to be bothered by the implied inferiority (“you aren't a parent, you wouldn't understand”, etc.) or that everything should cater for the other choice.
Also, I am not the only one who matters here. That the pressure to conform to traditional family models exists, means that some end up in a place that they really wouldn't have chosen for themselves and that they are not happy about.
----
[1] The latter would imply I think that their view point is from an entirely self-centred perspective
[2] Assuming you are not an LLM with a limited context window so don't have access to that!
[3] This certainly applies to a couple of people who have since popped out enough, or been the cause of others having them, to make up for my lack of desire to have any. How much it applies more generally is less provable.
When things go well, it’s amazing. When things go poorly, you realize how anti-guest the policies and support team behave.
That’s when it changed for me. I realized how pro-host, anti-guest they are. Hotels generally seem to care when something goes wrong. Airbnb support behaves like you have inconvenienced them by raising the issue.
The hotel I’m staying at right now is dirty as fuck.
The valve for the shower does not operate properly, the water pressure is extremely low and it barely gets above 90F. Other rooms in the same hotel have a different valve and the showers work fine.
“We will send a maintenance person right away” it’s been a week.
There is old food under and behind my bed.
They empty trash in the hall once a week, it fills up in two days.
They advertise laundry but the driers are all out of order. Apparently the only reason is the change collection bucket is full, the owner doesn’t trust anyone but himself to empty it, but he’s two states away.
I can hear everything through all the walls around me. I can hear people fart.
This hotel has 4.5 stars with >2000 reviews.
For me AirBnb has the dubious distinction of being the only online service I'm banned from, and I have no idea why. I barely used it and the few times I did the hosts were happy. One day I tried to log in and the app wouldn't work properly. I filed a support ticket and they told me they weren't going to tell me anything and there was no appeals process either. And that was that. My guess is I got IP clustered with another person whose account was legit banned, but really, who knows. What's the point of the ID verification process if they act like a free webmail operation anyway?
With booking.com and hotels, you're paying about the same but avoid the BS that comes with Airbnb. It's a much more reliable and predictable experience. The idea of people requiring Airbnb for anything more important than a vacation rental is horrifying.
Not really. When was the last time you stayed at a non-chain 2-star hotel in Asia?
Hotel chains care because they care about their brand. Not that's a result of being a chain, not of being a hotel.
I booked a cabin via VRBO for a few nights as a celebration. It was somewhat remote, but the architecture was neat, and it was a decent deal for my budget. There was some weird cotton-like stuff and...snapping?...in one of the walls that was a bit off-putting, but nothing seemed serious.
Then, night came.
I awoke in my bedroom to something moving. Bleary eyed, I turned on the bedside light and saw something flitting almost silently in the darkness. It seemed like a large insect perhaps to my blurred vision. But whether it was the size or the weird sounds, it eventually clicked: it was a bat trapped in the high-ceiling bedroom.
So, after swiftly getting out of the room, doing some hasty research, and calling animal control, I learned two things. First, bat encounters in the area have a standing policy to IMMEDIATELY see the nearest emergency room to receive a rabies vaccination. It turns out bat bites can be super-tiny and difficult to detect, and they are carriers.
Second, I struggled to convince the limited support channels at VRBO that there was a freaking bat in their property. There was no real emergency line for support I could locate at the time, and I really hope that the information I left would somehow be used to prevent someone else using said property from, ya know, potentially contracting rabies.
To this day, I find myself more wary of property encounters. I don't think I ever got a refund for that debacle, but admittedly I may have been a bit more focused on my mortality.
Normally, I never use a kitchen when traveling. When with GF, she does often like eggs in the morning though. So if there isn't a hotel/inn breaffast that can sometimes be useful.
I agree with respect to circumstances where you want houses or at least multi-room apartments though. Hotels aren't mostly a good fit for that although suite hotels sometimes have a couple of bedrooms.
The kids generally prefer hotels because they have pools.
We've found plenty of professionally run "resorts" where the space is like a small apartment, with a full kitchen and multiple bedrooms. These tend to be right in ski areas where we could walk to the lift if we were staying during the ski season. We did stay in one that was AirBNB-like because it was privately owned but the ski area handled the reservation and any issues that came up while we were there.
- If I need a kitchen? AirBnB
- Am I staying somewhere with low population density for more than a couple of nights? AirBnb
- Am I staying somewhere with low population density for a couple of nights or less? Motel or camping
- Everywhere else: Hotel
And this is after I explained it’s my wedding!!
Never again.
At hotels you also don’t have to worry about spy cameras, upset neighbors and questionable legality.
I did use AirBnB years ago with my family and it was great. However the quality tends to reflect the country. I have had wonderful experiences in Northern Europe and the worst in San Francisco.
Having an actual kitchen when you travel with kids is great. Having actual separate bedrooms so we don't have to go to sleep at 8pm when the kids go to sleep is great. Being able to do laundry without tracking down a laundromat or pay exorbitant hotel prices is great. Having a living room or similar area with at least a few square metres of floor space where kids can sprawl is great.