I remember when things like Uber and Air BnB came along the media was saying it was the death of cab companies and hotels. Well enshittification marches on and they’ve both become bogged down in costs, fees, rules, etc.
and it has mostly reversed, now cabs/ or other rideshares and hotels are lower costs.
Corpos gonna corpo… Avoid them as much as possible that’s the one of the few effective ways peasants got left to fight the parasite. Goverment, courts and media are always shiling for the corpos and their owners at pleb expense.
I’d shoot myself rather than using Airbnb again.
¿porque no los dos? (/s)
Me inscribí a Feddit esperando encontrar gente mas inteligente y no los mismos gusanos que infestan Facebook. Evidentemente me equivocaba.
What. The. Fuck.
They haven’t been doing this from the beginning? That’s shady as all hell.
They had it originally and when they removed it is when I stopped using them. Like every other fucking “Uber of” tech company, they couldn’t compete with the traditional thing they were trying to “disrupt” once the VC money dried up, and tried to cover for that with deception. Fuck them, I’ll just book a hotel.
the only way there were going to disrupt is offer a cheaper sustainable service, that turned out to be the opposite in the long run, and airbnb has even caused harm in housing too.
In future news, AirBnB has gone bankrupt due to lack of bookings.
Any alternatives? Especially European?
HomeExchange looks good and is European.
It naturally lacks the depth of listings that Airbnb does but will grow if people use them
VRBO. Idk if it’s European.
It’s American.
And it does all the same bullshit airbnb does. Even if they have different policies (spoiler: they’re the same) they cause the same problems related to using homes as profit machines for assholes.
Booking.com they also have private hosts on their platform
Never book flights through booking.com, they use a third party company called GoToGate who have the worst customer service possible and do not refund, and only try to charge for more.
They tried to not refund my whole flight so I talked to customer support which refused so I charged back with my credit card and they reversed the original refund and gave me the whole refund
Never book with that site or any of its affiliates
hotels/hostels?
Airbnb turns potential living space into hotel space and thereby helps driving up housing prices. The whole concept is inherently problematic.
If you are looking for a permanent place somewhere in Europe, it’s very difficult to quickly find monthly or weekly rentals with the appropriate monthly or weekly discount you will find on Airbnb. I don’t discount it’s négatives, but with the paperwork burden to find a medium or long term place in many areas in Europe Airbnb does the best job of cutting through all of that and getting you a place now
Without airbnb more hotels would be built instead of apartment buildings. The tourists will get a place to sleep eventually, you just have to decide whether it’s in an apartment or a hotel. That will determine future construction projects
hotels are controlled by laws and zoning, airbnb gets around that and turns planned living space into hotel space.
This is not a good thing, zoning laws often lead to higher rents because they constrain construction. They also lead to having to drive everywhere because your house is too far from anything that’s not another house
You can’t just build a hotel in a residential area, that usually goes against zoning laws which Airbnb circumvents
Yeah, that’s why we should have mixed use zoning. I stayed in a hotel in a residential area in Seoul, it was great. There’s convenience stores everywhere and little restaurants and cafes next to residential houses
Not quite hotel space as I have yet to find a hotel that can accommodate several families traveling together with a shared space, including a fully stocked kitchen, washer and dryer, parking, etc. There’s definitely a demand for something like this that isn’t filled in any other way.
Just rent a villa, they offer those in a lot of places
In Germany it’s called “Ferienwohnung” where you can rent a whole house if you need it. This is going for decades before AirBNB, I’m sure there’s something comparable in other countries.
Appartment hotels maybe?
too little too late.
This 100%.
AirBnB used to be cheaper than a hotel. Then it got so easy to tack on fees and ridiculous requirements that you’re basically paying more than a hotel to housekeep your own room. Mix in lots of shady hosts and most of the time I’d rather just stay at the Hilton for the same price.It can still be useful as a novelty, like book a party house somewhere or as easily cheaper way to house an awful lot of people. But for the most part, I’ll pass.
Airbnb was started to offer up your free space to someone for a night for a bit of cash, and that was it. Then the morons found out and bought whole ass houses specifically to rent out on Airbnb.
People ruin everything.
Yes. This is the origin. Airbed and Breakfast.
TIL what “Air” means in the brand name.
Yup. I used AirBnB when they first started and it wasn’t terrible but then it became a huge hassle. Don’t give me a list of chores and then I might get penalty fees if I don’t do them right. Plus all the other damn fees. I don’t even bother to look at ABnB any more
those happened all the later in its years airbnb, yea airbnb probably saw a way to gouge people more money
Yeah exactly. I’m on vacation, if I wanted to do chores I would have stayed home. Plenty of choice to do right here.
I stopped using their site for anything years ago. This was one of the main reasons. Too little too late for me.
(The cost was fascism)
Wouldn’t this mane Americans uncomfortable, they aren’t used to seeing the actual cost if something until one step away from checkout, or sometimes not even then.
DUMP AirBnB right away. They are kissing Trumps ass all the way. The CEO is very… very proud to be part of DOGE. Fuck them.
Gross. I didn’t know that. I do occasionally use AirBnB. I’m aware of their impact on the rental market, so I favor hotels most of the time. But there have been a few occasions in recent years where I was traveling in a larger group and an AirBnB made more sense. But no more of that.
I looked in to this a little, and Joe Gebbia is no longer the CEO, but he is still on the board. Still a good enough reason to boycott.
I never stayed in an Airbnb, always found easier and/or better options at hotels, or an apartment at booking.com. People act like Airbnb came up with the concept of renting apartments, while websites like this have been doing this for a decade by the time it came around.
Booking is also pretty scummy. There was a blog post a few years ago from a hotel that always showed up as sold out, even it had plenty empty rooms. In the end it was a “feature” where other hotels could “promote” their business in a city so it would show up first, but the competition would also be listed as unavailable to force visitors into the promoted business. The other thing is that booking will show “only one room left” to pressure you into booking right now, but what ot actually means is that a hotel might only allocate 20 of 100 rooms to booking, and still has 81 free rooms if you call them directly.
Hotels have always been better in my experience.
Unless you want something like a fishing cabin on a river, but even then I’ve started to look at resorts because after all the fees, they work out to the same price as an airBNB.
Same price, fewer chores.
Capitalism breeds innovation
Yeah, just not on the consumer side 🙃
TOO LATE!
These companies are unbelievable. Create the most predatory system on the planet and when their bottom line tanks they turn around like they didn’t create the very thing they now want to “fix”.
Anyone have an ETA on the rocket to the sun?
Getting a rocket to the sun is easy. Getting it back is the hard part. Since you dont need the rocket to make it back, it sounds like you’re all set for operation “beam em up”.
Even by space flight standards, getting a rocket to the sun is very hard.
Naw easiest thing in the world! Move aside rolls up sleeves
I’ll hold your beer.
before taxes
Why is the West like this
Unfortunately, Canada too. Very annoying.
We always see prices after tax in the EU
Feeding on the simple minded and ensuring the feeling of taxes is like the devil.
I share a lot of of the criticism towards AirBnB. However, I’ve often ended up using them either way. We travel with a dog and a toddler. They need to be allowed in the first place. And ideally we get a kitchen, a separate room so we can still have normal noise and light when the kid sleeps. Often we even find Airbnbs with toys, kids books, dog beds, treats on the table when we arrive, …
You simply don’t get that in hotels. At least not in a price range I’ve considered so far
Tried that many times. It has given me the exact same place for slightly cheaper than AirBnB once. Other times it was more expensive but most often of simply had worse choices.
i don’t think people need to justify Airbnb’s, it’s a great alternative to a hotel for many reasons including those you listed. What needs to be addressed is the damage the shareholders who are running the company are doing to society. let’s not give them too much credit about this choice: they are still sucking up homes from homeowners and removing money from the middle class. they only made this change because someone realized it will make them more money.
I guess: great concept, shitty company.
Like with so many “tech giants”, they had a great idea but greed is spoiling it. I wish we had more “public infrastructure” for this. I’d love to have OSS, tax-funded or at least heavily regulated SoMe, video sharing, home swapping/renting, local marketplace, … Those should not be industries, they should be part of our society’s fabric like the fire department or trash pick-up.
Their footnote section is doing a lot of work.
1 In some countries and regions taxes are included in the total price displayed. The total price including taxes is always displayed prior to checkout.
They also either don’t know how notations work, or the AI they’re using to generate this doesn’t because it has a separate footnote with that same sentence later on.
I would be thoroughly unsurprised if some EU or other regulation came into effect so that they have to do this, and now they’re taking credit for being consumer friendly.
It’s actually a US regulation which goes into effect on May 10th. Most other booking sites should be following suit with something similar over the next few weeks.
That’s awesome! Hopefully AirBnB doesn’t donate a million dollars to Trump for an exemption.
I do kind of wish these things required some kind of disclosure instead of letting them pretend they’re super consumer friendly and don’t need any of that demonic regulation.
Exactly!
I have young kids, and airbnbs offer a lot that hotels don’t, and they don’t have the crap I hate about hotels (housekeeping, sketchy parking lot, etc).
Surely we can find a solution where you and I can get what we want, while residents get what they want.
Yeah, I mean, there is a solution. Liberalized zoning and Georgist tax policies. The problem is rarely that there is a lack of space to live - it is that that space is poorly utilized. And this is true because (1) it is illegal to build what people want where they want it in many places and (2) investors and homeowners speculate on land value without providing value to anyone else.
