Completely disagree with this analogy. Hotels have their place, and in so many ways they can be superior to a home rental.
I am the furthest thing from a luddite, but I personally prefer (as I know many others) hotels to Airbnb. There's a consistency to the hotel product that you can't get with Airbnb that I place a premium on, especially for short or last minute stays.
I'm also not really sure why Airbnb is considered a "tech" co in the same way FB or Netflix is. There's is no real time component to the app, and it isn't dealing with billions of people using the app at the same time like a FB or Google is. In the few times I've used Airbnb over the years I'm honestly surprised by how little "tech" really permeates my experience (i.e. its just a basic web app that facilitates the listing + payment transfer + messaging...once I've made the reservation and paid Airbnb's job is essentially done).
I think Airbnb shines with large groups. Me and 10 friends can split a house in the mountains or in some European city for a fraction of getting multiple rooms in a Hotel - with much less hassle.
However, if I'm traveling by myself or with my partner, hotels still seem the way to go. Valet parking in a city centre with room service can make a stay much comfortable.
Agreed. I have been using Airbnb since 2010. I've had more bad experiences when using Airbnb compared to hotels. Earlier it used to be cheaper to stay in Airbnb, but not anymore. Their fees are outrageous and the quality of the accommodation has been wildly inconsistent.
I find it more stressful to stay at an airbnb.. lots of weird rules and policies to keep track of. Airbnb customer service is horrible when things go wrong.
The better Airbnb locations are managed by professional companies. Their prices tend to be high.
Nowadays, I consider staying in Airbnb only for a long trip with a lot of people when I can justify the time to thoroughly research the places. Otherwise, I prefer the consistent experience offered by Hilton/Hyatt/Marriott. Ironically it is relaxing for me to come back to the cookie cutter furnishings where I won't have to open 5 cabinets to find a coffee mug.
Same here. I used to always go for an Airbnb, now I generally do a hotel unless I'm staying with a large group of people and need a big house.
The early Airbnb days were great, because it was mostly people that were renting out their place while they traveled. They cared about their place and they wanted you to care about their place. It reminded me of how eBay was before it became just another marketplace, it was a more personal experience.
Every single bad Airbnb experience I've had has been with the people that are taking out second properties to rent on Airbnb as a business, so they are completely disconnected from it.
Why should an AirBNB be cheaper? In many ways, you're getting more. More square footage, more amenities, more options. Sure, I can stick a family of 4 in a hotel room with 2 queens, but we will be way more comfortable in an AirBNB with a kitchen, living room, etc.
I totally understand why a business traveler would want consistency and simplicity. When traveling with family, I'm happy to pay more for the AirBNB experience, even if one of the adults has to sleep on a sofa bed in the living room, while the other is in a king bed with the kids. (Assuming a 1 bdrm rental. 2 bdrms is even better.)
Room service + daily cleanings + guaranteed TV in front of the bed is the best for vacations with my SO. Big group of friends = rent a huge house and have an awesome time. Your comment is spot on.
Totally agree about leaving luggage with the porter between early check in and checkout. On top of the predictable check-in, check-out, security, and elite membership benefits like 4pm late checkout, free waters/lounge access, keycard recovery.
Whereas I want none of those things. I want a living room I can hang out in while the kids are asleep, a kitchen where we can make breakfast so we aren't spending $15/head on food the kids don't like, a fridge and a microwave to store/reheat leftovers, and a nearby park or backyard to play in.
I agree that predictable check-in is nice, and I will seek out AirBNBs with code-based checkins.
Yeah, those are options. They usually aren't very well located, though.
The hotel business is largely focused on the business traveler as their primary market. They only really build for pleasure-travel in non-business markets (see all the Condos available on Maui, or the Hyatt House hotels in Anaheim and Orlando, which have bunk-bed rooms for kids, etc.) AirBNB fell into serving this market, and it's served them pretty well, especially since they were priced below hotels to begin with, and pleasure travelers are much more price-sensitive than business travelers.
I find the nominally long stay brands are increasingly common even in cities. On the other hand, other than a kitchen, they’re not necessarily that spacious compared to a standard hotel room even if they have a kitchenette. But I’m staying at one in downtown Chicago this week and it was cheaper than other hotel options.
If you don’t have a car, the ability to check a bag is often unappreciated if you have a late afternoon or evening flight. Lockers are pretty much non existent most US places in my experience even for hand luggage and, you’re pretty restricted in what you can do for half a day if you’re hauling a backpack around.
They could be - if they spend a bit on improving the UI (look and feel) and a enable payment processing and they'd instantly be comparable to Airbnb. I use them 50%, 40% hotels and 10% Airbnb on my vacations.
At that size you can rent family hotels (or apart hotels, or vacance homes, whatever they call it). They can be a bit further from big city, meaning you’ll need cars, but for that tradeoff you’ll get decent service for cheaper than standard hotels.
That’s what we do with relatives, as it’s much more kid friendly than any other solution.
I really don't get the appeal of valet parking. It's expensive and I don't like other people driving my car. It's nice when a hotel offers a garage (super nice when it's snowing)
> I'm also not really sure why Airbnb is considered a "tech" co in the same way FB or Netflix is. There's is no real time component to the app, and it isn't dealing with billions of people using the app at the same time like a FB or Google is.
Personally I think the term "tech company" is a little more of a blanket statement these days. Virtually every large organization has some "tech" aspect to them.
If an Airbnb is a lot cheaper there is going to be a reason, often it's location. I tend to move around and the ridiculous cleaning fees for Airbnb make it a non-starter. I'm flying to San Diego tomorrow and Hotel Tonight has several nice looking choices at around $100 a night (~$120 with taxes and fees). I just looked at Airbnb and I can get a studio apartment in a similar area for $79 a night which seems like a steal, but it's $184 after fees! $70 cleaning, $19 service fee and $16 "Occupancy taxes and fees". Airbnb is worse than Ticketmaster in this regard.
I would only use Airbnb for long stays when I need extra bedrooms. It just doesn't make sense for the traveling I do or for most business travel.
This is generally the case in cities in my experience as well. Though right now I'm spending a few weeks working remotely in the countryside of Ireland and it's been a great way to kind of live like a local, which is an experience I like to seek out sometimes.
It sounds like that host has configured their listing wrong if cleaning is the same price as a night rental. Or they set the base cleaning price very high on purpose to deter short-term guests. I'm used to seeing the cleaning price more ~$10–20 per night.
I’m a multi-unit host and I charge a $50 cleaning fee for a $100/Night two-bedroom.
I’ve been thinking of doubling or trebling the cleaning fee and reducing my nightly rates lately to better mirror my costs: I spend almost as much time greeting and cleaning guests who stay two nights as those who stay two weeks, so I spend a lot more time in two weeks if I have multiple guests.
Upping the cleaning fee to $100-150 so it pays for my ‘greeting time’ as well sounds fairer for everyone: it’ll be cheaper for long term guests, as it should since they’re less work per day.
Interesting. I actually charge much more for the room, and less for the cleaning fee. Charging a low cleaning fee sends the message that I'm not doing as much cleaning, and I don't. Fresh sheets and towels, of course, a full roomba-sweep, clean toilet/shower/bathroom sink and clean, scrubbed countertops are a must. But the fridge has some spots, the floor doesn't get mopped unless it's bad, and there's often dust on the windowsills, spiderwebs and dirt in the patio door cracks, the windows have streaks, etc.
I've found that if I charge less for cleaning, then do less cleaning (I can usually turn my one-bedroom space in about 75 minutes, if I get the roomba started before I do), I'm happier, and the guests tolerate it. It's not hotel-quality, but I'm not providing a hotel, I'm providing a short term home.
I am a host. I pay $80 for cleaning the unit. I have to pay regardless of whether the guest stayed 1 night or 2 weeks. 1-night stays end up being very expensive.
And I agree with Airbnb being like Ticketmaster in the fees department. It's insane. What's more annoying is that guests often attribute faults (like the fees, or the myriad of bugs in the app that makes hosting hard) to the hosts, not to Airbnb itself. The hosting experience is really painful.
Yep. I got a hotel when I stayed w/ friends recently and had been planning to sleep on their couch but they didn't provide me a blanket, pillow, or towel (great people, terrible hosts lol) and a hotel room that was quiet conveniently located near them was cheaper than any Airbnb after fees.
What is considered "insanely expensive"? Hotel prices widely vary depending on the city and time of year, and within a market there's 1* to 5* hotels.
I'm looking at hotels in Manhattan for this weekend and there's 4* hotels for $150/night. Is that expensive? That is equivalent to what some people pay in rent for a 1-bedroom apartment in SF or NY.
The fact that on a nightly basis a 4* hotel in the most expensive part of NYC is comparable to the 80th percentile for 1-bedrooms in SF or NYC actually shows that it is very reasonably priced because what you're really paying for is the flexibility and convenience of a short-term stay + the cleaning/security/concierge/other amenities.
By the same logic, if you eat at a restaurant and it costs only 50% more than what it'd cost if you made it at home or order a beer at a bar and it only cost 50% more than what it'd cost if you bought it at the grocery store you'd be really happy, though chances are you're paying at least 100% more, if not more.
It would be "expensive" if you lived at a hotel in the same way it's "expensive" if for every meal or every beer you drank you had it at a sit down restaurant or bar.
Right, I agree with you that in the case of NYC you're getting a great deal, but in other places you do pay a heavy premium for a hotel. For example, I checked a few places where I know you can get a 1br for $500ish a month, and hotels there are mostly more than $100/night, which is ridiculous.
Furthermore, I wouldn't say that the concierge or security are worth mentioning. I know personally I feel about as secure in a hotel as with an Airbnb - or at least I'm always aware of the possibility of theft from hotel rooms.
I understand labor costs etc are a big part of the price, but I wish there were more low-cost hotel options. Not hostels, but an actual room to yourself. Why does that have to be expensive? Just cut the room area in half and half the price! Yotel is nice, but they're still not cheap, and don't have many locations.
If there were low-cost hotels available, for $30 a night or so, I'd spring for them much more often. But when you can grab a nice-looking Airbnb for $25-30, vs a motel for $50-60, it's hard to justify the motel.
Yotels tend to be in pretty high-priced areas. I like how they optimize for space. There’s one I especially favor in Manhattan. It’s not cheap in absolute terms. But it’s well located for many purposes. Has a nice common area. Uses the room space well. And is clean and quiet. And a relative bargain for a Manhattan.
The average Manhattan hotel room is considerably smaller than a 1-bedroom. I don't think I could live in that for any period of time. (Also fwiw, I doubt winter weekends are high season for Manhattan)
With hotels, I can get late checkout until 4pm, and sometimes check in early. Additionally, they’ll hold on to my luggage even when the room isn’t ready and they’ll hold on to my luggage when I checkout and I’m ready to leave the city. I can be guaranteed that my room will be professionally sanitized and cleaned.
If I have status either via frequent traveler program or credit card, they’ll reward me with points multipliers, upgrades, and free breakfast and lounges (free beverages, waters, and snacks). Marriott’s BonVoy program comes to mind.
Airbnb’s, on the other hand, have strict check-in and check-out times. Then I have to carry my luggage for the rest of the day from 11am checkout. And for Airbnb’s without a keypad entry system, I have to negotiate a check-in time with the host to obtain a key (and if I lose a key, I’ll owe a key deposit).
I also find them priced within comparable range to Airbnbs. Not that I advocate anyone doing this, but somebody could try a /[1-9]{1}[0-9]{3}/ brute force search for a SET code/corporate rate on Marriott :) It’s only 9,000 permutations to find a good rate... (SET code: 1000, 1001, 1002...9999)
Airbnbs are incredibly overpriced for what you get. They remind me of food trucks. Everything leads you to expect lower prices than a brick and mortar restaurant yet the prices are similar due to the small scale.
I live out of hotels pretty much full time. Really, it's not as expensive and as bad as you make it seem. My average nightly rate averages out to just slightly above my rent, and I have a lot more flexibility. At the end of this month, I'm ditching my place and going full time, and I'll actually be saving money overall, and I can be anywhere in the world without the feeling of my empty apartment burning a hole in my pocket back home.
Not every city is New York or SF with their crazy hotel prices. In expensive cities, I'll use points to save money.
What cities do you prefer and how much does it cost you, out of curiosity?
I'm on what's considered a fairly good wage for my area (Melbourne), but if I were to do this it'd cost me close to 70% of my take home salary. Whereas I could rent a beautiful apartment right near the city for about 30%
I make a SF-level income, and swapping SF rent for living in hotels full time doesn't break the bank if you enjoy spending time around the world, in many places which are significantly cheaper than SF. I could save a ton of money by renting at local prices instead of staying in hotels while I travel, but I like the lifestyle so I'm not bothered by the cost differential. Basically I compare my lifestyle of luxury hotels around the world, compare with SF apartment surrounded by filth in soma, and at a similar price range the former makes me much happier.
My average nightly spend is about $119 all-in (I track it all in a spreadsheet). Market rent for my apartment in SF would be $4,500, i.e. $148/night, assuming every night is used. If you do any amount of traveling, the cost per night used of your apartment increases.
$125 can buy you some really really nice hotels. I've stayed at 5-star properties in Bangkok at that price. And if I'm willing to go limited service or 4 star (but still nice, I have standards), I've done stays as cheap as $45 in Bali, $65 in Kuala Lumpur, $80 in Bangkok, $125 in Taipei, etc. In China, I've stayed at St. Regis and Ws for barely over $100. I can pretty much always get something nice for under $200. I learn the tricks to lower rates through promotions and other programs like Citi's 4th night free or through TAs who have access to special rates.
Given how much time I spend in hotels, I have top status with three different chains (Hyatt, Marriott, and Hilton, and mid-tier status with IHG). That means I always get the best room available, and I've gotten some absolutely ridiculous suite upgrades (twice the size of my apartment). I also usually get free breakfast, access to a club lounge with free afternoon food and booze, late checkout, welcome gifts, and other perks.
With Hyatt and Marriott I have a dedicated team member to take care of any issues or requests. Basically, I get treated like a king by all of them, for the same price as my rent in SF.
For me, living in hotels full time, vs. $200+/night used in rent in SF… the decision was a no-brainer.
Hyatt and Marriott I earned. Hilton and IHG I "bought."
Hyatt: 80 nights in their hotels last year (5 from CC)
Marriott: 105 nights in their hotels last year (10 from CC, 1 from birthday) + required $20k spend for Ambassador status
Hilton: credit card for Diamond
IHG: credit card for Platinum, $200/yr to add Ambassador status
211 total hotel nights last year.
There's 365 nights in the year, enough to earn top status on every chain you want. I plan on adding Shangri-La to the mix this year.
I struggled with this a lot in my first few years as a digital nomad, having mail delivered to my parents house, bills often lost, etc... Then someone told me about virtual mailboxes. https://www.postnet.com/virtual-mail/ . You pay 15 bucks a month and they can act like your home address, accepting all your mail. For an additional fee, they can either scan the mail, or forward it physically to wherever you might be at the moment.
To the outside world it looks like your permanent address. I use mine to buy health insurance through Obamacare and also have registered my car to this address.
So, I still have an unused apartment where I go collect my mail every month. Once I move out at the end of this month, I plan on sending most mail to a virtual mailbox. I may have more important things sent to friends in San Francisco.
The other big annoyance about living as a full-time nomad is laundry. So far I've managed with a mix of laundromats, laundry shops, and the occasional hotel laundry when it's reasonably priced (rarely).
I'm a nomad and I converted a lot of my wardrobe to wool with brands like Wool and Prince and Unbound. I can wear a shirt for a long time before it needs dry cleaning.
I find dry cleaning to be cheap compared to the time I would spend doing laundry activities.
Ironing an expensive dress shirt with a rusty iron at an Airbnb is not something I want to entertain.
I haven't found a good solution for workout clothes though so I usually stay in an Airbnb with at least a washer.
Not sure if there are analogous workout shirts and shorts but the ExOfficio Give-N-Go boxer briefs are the most travel friendly item I own. They're sorta like Under Armour material but even thinner and lighter so they can be hand washed or air dryed insanely fast. Definitely looking to get more clothing that fits in that category.
The market should converge, and in fact we see this (and it's well attested in this comment section).
I like airbnb for a couple of use cases:
- parts of cities without many hotels (usually means without much tourist attraction). You can stay near friends without imposing on them.
- transient events. E.g. PAX sucks up all the hotel rooms in Seattle and there are nice AirBnbs that show up along the "traditional" model (they aren't professionals but folks wanting to make a few extra bucks opportunistically). They tend to love a business booking as they know I'm not likely to smoke crack in the living room
Apart from those cases, these days a hotel is likely a better bet even if the cost is comparable.
As a counter to that, I don't know the last time I stayed in an AirBNB and it was cheaper than a local hotel. Rather I was forced into it by people I was traveling with.
Not sure of your group size or location but I've had success getting a big place that's also reasonably nice for 8–10 people cheaper on VRBO. In the ballpark of <$100 per person total for a long weekend.
Echoing other replies to this, I find them to be very competitively priced for the places I'm going. Anecdotally, I have a trip to NYC planned next month and the hotels are in the same range as most Airbnb listings, and you get more than a room in someone's apartment.
Not sure what you mean. These days boutique hotels are about the same price as similar airbnb listings. We're not talking about the four seasons, but even for boutique hotels I trust them more than airbnb.
Out of curiosity, do you live in a high cost of living area? I’ve found I have lots of friends who live in places like Florida or Ohio, where rent is cheap, tend to not flinch as much as I do at staying in hotels. We make similar amounts of money, but when tons of it is being eaten by rent/mortgage payments it’s hard to feel open to splurge on anything.
I have the opposite opinion. I just use priceline to get get a good deal on a hotel. Its always cheaper than airbnb. Plus its a pain to browse through hundreds of listing to try and figure out the catch in an Airbnb listing because of the non standard places.
I agree with some of the other replies: nowadays, AirBnB rarely has a price advantage once you factor in the extra fees. It still wins in terms of uniqueness, for large groups, if you have kids, want to cook, etc.
Whether or not a company is a "tech" company is kind of a muddled question, but taking even a brief glance at https://airbnb.io/ (their engineering blog) makes it clear that AirBnB does some pretty serious engineering.
For example, their post about their work in search ranking is quite interesting [1].
I'm not suggesting they don't have engineering challenges, but if you stack ranked the engineering challenges by difficulty across Airbnb, Uber/Lyft, Google, FB, Netflix, Amazon, Dropbox, Pinterest, etc. I don't see how Airbnb would not very easily rank last by a long shot.
Airbnb is basically just a prettier craigslist with a payment transfer mechanism and messaging. It isn't to say it isn't a great business, just that the "tech" part of it is not really much more than a web app.
Not sure where the threshold between tech and non-tech would be though... Dropbox is just unison on the cloud, Pinterest is just a photos website etc.
Also engineering challenges aren’t always obvious from the consumer facing product. It is true that AirBnB founders have design backgrounds rather than engineering ones, but from what I’ve seen of their engineering and data science work, they would qualify as a tech company in my estimation. They did come up with Apache Airflow which is a well regarded data pipeline management system.
Well like every tech company the entire purpose of an externally facing engineering blog is to maximize their "tech/employer brand." That's the whole point. I would also guess that some of the projects highlighted are could probably fit into "complexity for complexity sake" e.g. teams of bored or overzealous engineers who are trying to justify their jobs by working on complex things that are probably overkill for the actual problem their trying to solve. That's pretty common.
I'm just pointing out that the nature of Airbnb's business means that there's no real-time, no streaming, no billions of concurrent users, etc. The tech boils down to a 1) web app 2) payments mechanism and 3) messaging. Nothing particularly revolutionary on the tech side.
I'm not saying a "tech" company has to be defined by how "hard" the tech is, or that a "tech" company isn't a "tech" company because it isn't working on LIDAR or AI.
I'm just pointing out that Airbnb's application of "tech" isn't necessarily "hard" tech, relative to other companies that it's usually associated with or compared to in the SF startup scene.
Fair enough. I guess your original statement was more that AirBnB shouldn’t be consider a tech company in the same breath as FB and Netflix, and not that it isn’t a tech company.
Not to take a stance either way, but pretty much any org will find a way to justify the salaries of the people it employs. It’s neither informative nor surprising that a company that employs lots of engineers will have lots of engineering problems.
The question is: if you sacked everyone but the core team who keeps the trains running, what would happen to the business?
Do you mean private with respect to the host or private with respect to other guests (e.g., booking a single room in someone else's place)?
I'm trying to understand the underlying problem you're getting at. I haven't had trouble with getting places with my own bathroom though I do not stay in Airbnbs with multiple concurrent guests much.
Airbnb traditionall had three, now four "Home types": Entire place, Private room (Have your own room and share some common spaces), Hotel room, Shared room. The entire place will (almost always) come with your own bathroom and kitchen and living room etc. It's an entire place, after all.
A private room typically means you get your own bedroom but there are others living in the same home, maybe the owner, maybe other guests. Living room, kitchen are shared. The question is whether you also get a bathroom for your own use or not. This is displayed even in the listing (4 guests · 1 bedroom · 1 bed · 1 shared bath vs 2 guests · 1 bedroom · 1 bed · 1 private bath) but you are unable to filter on it. They understand this detail is important enough to put it in the listing but you still can't filter on it.
And the reason this matters, well, that should be pretty evident: multiple strangers can be in a kitchen or a living at the same time but not in a bathroom. A shared bathroom is a botttleneck in the morning and an overall pain in the neck to be honest. And in some places the private room-private bath combo is by far the best value.
I like Airbnb but I am surprised by their reputation as having expertise in front-end web development. The web UI is very slow to load and during on-page interactions, it is confusing to navigate between listing and related pages, and there are other badly designed aspects, such as the way that in order to select a menu item, one has to move the trackpad horizontally and then vertically to avoid dismissing the open menu while en route to the desired menu item.
>There's a consistency to the hotel product that you can't get with Airbnb that I place a premium on, especially for short or last minute stays.
Every time I try to use Airbnb I have to 'request' from the host and I swear 4 out of 5 times they cancel the requested rental because they're staying in the place or some other BS. I know when I get a hotel room its instantly reserved and there is no question about its availability.
I am the furthest thing from a luddite, but I personally prefer (as I know many others) hotels to Airbnb. There's a consistency to the hotel product that you can't get with Airbnb that I place a premium on, especially for short or last minute stays.
I'm also not really sure why Airbnb is considered a "tech" co in the same way FB or Netflix is. There's is no real time component to the app, and it isn't dealing with billions of people using the app at the same time like a FB or Google is. In the few times I've used Airbnb over the years I'm honestly surprised by how little "tech" really permeates my experience (i.e. its just a basic web app that facilitates the listing + payment transfer + messaging...once I've made the reservation and paid Airbnb's job is essentially done).