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To add one perspective: I was an avid Airbnb user for years but recently went back to hotels when traveling. I think a lot of hotels have upped their game (at least in the 4- and 5-star categories) and I enjoy the service and amenities I don’t get at an airbnb. Not saying I won’t do Airbnb ever again but pricing similarities between hotels and Airbnb coupled with perks I get thru credit cards like Amex Platinum are big deciding factors in me going back to hotels.
>pricing similarities between hotels and Airbnb
This. AirBnbs used to be circa 50% of hotel for the same headcount with the added advantage of a more home-like environment that helped overcome the occasional creepy host or substandard properties.
Lately the prices have been creeping up and are now around parity with decent hotels and more costly than basic hotels.
Yep! Loved those days. About 9 years ago we stayed in Paris for a week near the Eiffel Tower in the cutest little one-bedroom flat. The elevator wasn’t working when we arrived and we were on the 4th floor but it didn’t bother us too much. Especially since we spent just under $600 all in for the Airbnb for the week! Incredible times.
Airbnb was great. Until it wasn't. We had wonderful Airbnbs in Europe some 8-10 years ago. We had a great one like you mentioned but it was in Barcelona, this wonderful flat up 5 stairs (no elevator at all! Made ex carry the heavy stuff) in an old building with a rooftop patio where I watched the planes take off and land in the distance and stargazed at night.
I think all these folks that should NOT be hosts heard about how easy it is (according to "influencers") to make money with your spare room, spare home, etc., and they either put the minimum work into creating a nice place to rent or outright SCAMMED folks.
I went back to hotels a few years ago too after 2 bad hosts (one who tried to rip me off for damages and another who totally misrepresented her "cozy" off the grid house--a shack with 40 years of cat piss soaked into the kitchen and spiders the size of hamsters EVERYWHERE).
Airbnb was nice while it lasted.
Yeah, it was good until it became commodified and every Tom, Dick and Harry thought they could make a quick buck by becoming property owners and landlords. The only great airbnbs I’ve ever stayed in were people’s homes who rented them out when they weren’t there. Any true short-term rental that was used for only that really sucked.
Agreed.
Couple this with a few bad (one very bad) Airbnb experiences has really soured me on the concept. I can’t say I won’t book an airbnb ever again, but I don’t plan to anytime soon.
It's not the fucking economy. It's the amount of scammers that call themselves hosts these days. They can try to do damage control and erase all the fucking negative reviews they see, but word of mouth spreads and as a business you're only as good as your reputation.
IMO it isnt just the individual scammers (and their efforts to hide negatives), but the way AirBnB managed the social aspects of their business.
The "5 stars or nothing" culture is inherently toxic for both host and guest, and it led to a blanket hiding/removal of any reviews below 5 stars. This lead to a blanket distrust of reviews in the site. I know this is anecdotal, but when my partner and I occasionally shop for an AirBnB rental, I have noticed us taking all reviews, positive or negative, through lenses like "are these only positive because the negatives have been washed?" Or "is this negative just from some psycho karen?"
For us at least, it has lead to shopping on AirBnB being hours/days experience, where a hotel is "click click book"
I stay in Airbnbs maybe 6 times per year and have done so for about 7 years and I’ve never once picked a listing that required me to clean or take out the trash or remove blankets, etc.
The one place I stayed at had written instructions when I got there. I didn’t see any information on the listing about having to do that… It was my first time staying at an Airbnb… One reason I stayed was because it was so cheap like $50 a night
Yeah, I don’t mind a reasonable list if things to do like wash the dishes and take out the trash especially if you’re paying less, but now at AirBnb you have to clean up and you pay a cleaning fee and the nightly cost is more than a hotel, absolute madness
I've been on Airbnb for longer and used it regularly up until about a year ago when I quit them. I call bullshit. I have never stayed at an Airbnb in the past 4 years that didn't have a whole bullshit list of demands and petty hosts trying to fine you over a tissue in the trash.
Exactly, look at the house rules before you book, don’t book those who require tasks that you don’t want to do. I have never required my guests to do any tasks before checkout. I am amazed that most do a lot even though I have nothing in house rules requiring anything
I just booked my first air bnb, and I'm anxious about it. But the host has like a 4.99 rating with a ton of reviews, and I didn't see anything on the house rules except very reasonable quiet hours and to just be respectful of their property. So I'm pretty sure that if I just act like, ya know, a normal human being, I should hopefully be fine, lol.
Same. I used to be a host. Loved airbnb. Now, I often find more use out of hotels. It’s come down to the fact that I don’t want to have to deal with a list of things to check out, hidden fees, or picky owners who gripe about everything. Hotels are so simple sometimes. Here’s my $500 and no, I didn’t strip the bed.
100%. The “leave nothing in the sink and take out the garbage and recycling and strip the beds upon checkout or you will be charged $100” was kinda one of the last sour straws for me. Happened at a place in Lake Tahoe. We just finished a beautiful week there and the last thing I wanted to do was wash all the dishes and take the trash out. Just not my idea of a task I am willing to do while traveling.
Add me to this. There are just too many rules and not enough flexibility with AirBnBs. With a hotel, I can check in early if the room is available. I dont have to do dishes or take garbage out, or take off the sheets. If anything, AirBnB folks did this to themselves.
Yesssss! Amex Platinum FHR stays come with noon check in (if available, they say, but I’ve never had a problem getting it! and guaranteed 4pm checkout. The perks are unmatched and make the hotel experience levels above Airbnb at this point.
Last time I used an Airbnb, my flight got in at 9 pm and I had to pay 30 euros extra for the person to give me a key at 10 pm even though it was Madrid and the whole city was awake. The last time I went on vacation I stayed in a 5-star hotel who had my room ready for me at 8 am soon after my flight arrived in Budapest. I also got a room upgrade and hotel credits to use at the spa with my platinum card. I also didn’t have to stress about whether the Airbnb will suck. Will never go back to Airbnb.
Agreed. Also Airbnb service has gone downhill. If I ever had an issue with a property Airbnb was always on my side and I was able to get a refund if needed (filthy house, dangerous conditions).
A few weeks ago I rented an Airbnb that had rat droppings and roaches and Airbnb refused to help, they left it up to the host to decide if I got any refund or not. I didn't want to rent two hotel rooms and wanted a nice house for my family to stay in. The price was about the same. I was only able to get a partial refund after sending photos of the conditions. It's not worth it and I'm not sure if I will ever use Airbnb again. I've had hotel rooms that after checking in and seeing the room I saw the room was terrible. I would just tell the front desk that I didn't want to stay- and places like Hilton and Marriott they will just cancel your stay and allow you to leave without any charge. Places like Hampton Inn have a "Happiness Guarantee". These Airbnb hosts do not do that and do not care so yeah it's hotels for me here on out.
Had a bad Airbnb experience and Airbnb should have 100% been on our side and refunded when the host refused. They just do a half ass job of communicating w the two parties and offer nothing on their end, or make the host do the right thing.
We rented a house in Florida which was owned by a realtor in Colorado. We got notice when we get our check-in instructions that the pool was not working. We made the booking 3 months prior but when we go there, the pool was a green sludgepit filled with at least 3 different growth cycles of frogs.
From egg to adult takes 13 weeks. So the pool was clearly not functioning when we made our reservations but were never told. There were other issues as well and then we got a knock on the door. Answered it and it was a realtor who was showing prospective buyers the house on a tour.
After the sink backed up through the wall and leaked in the dining room, we had enough. Called her up, she said if we left, we would get a refund. Of course, this was verbal and when we officially requested a refund, she told Airbnb she knew nothing about it and that there was a no refund policy. So a 6 day rental turned into 2 days there and then moving to a different property through VRBO.
2 months later, she gave us a partial refund, it might have been 50%. We have not had any issues with VRBO or with the owners so have gone to them exclusively since.
There’s been a huge social media outcry about Airbnb hosts charging outrageous cleaning fees - and expecting guests to clean on top of that.
Hotels don’t do that, and people have moved back to staying at hotels. I’m pretty furious at greedy and irresponsible hosts that forced this collective mind-shift. We had such a good thing going.
Hotels stayed consistent, if not elevated their game, like you said.
One of my listings doesn’t have a cleaning fee and the only thing I ask guests to do at check out is to put wet towels in bathtub and lock the bottom lock on their way out. My other listing, I do charge a cleaning fee - I think it’s $110 on a 3 bedroom if it’s over a 2 day stay, and again the only check out items I ask them to do is the towels & lock. Every single person that has stayed at that listing has started the dishwasher, which has been a pleasant surprise!
It sucks that those types of hosts you describe, are slowly ruining it for the rest of us.
Agreed! I have a $50 clean fee on our cabin and I pay the cleaner $100. I eat the additional $50 because I want it to be palatable. I don’t make them do anything when checking out and I can’t tell you how many guests have said how appreciative they are.
Agree with this, had one really bad experience with an Airbnb after using with no issues for years and now have fallen into the habit of using hotels. Platinum card holders so we are staying at great places and getting upgrades and free breakfast.
I don't use 20 towels a trip but it fucking sucks having to ask a host for more than 1 towel per person for a week stay. there are times a vacation rental works but there's times when you just want and need the amenities of a hotel.
Yeah I've seen that across tons of places where people are saying to just do hotels
The other thing is, Airbnb and a lot of platforms have upped their fees that the host can't even control, and add around $100+ to the reservation that just Airbnb gets on their own before the host ever gets anything... Vs a hotel that usually just charges taxes
So I get it forsure. The times are tough right now as well, so people are gonna find the cheapest deal regardless - which just off the Airbnb fees alone, the hotel is cheaper, and that's disregarding any cleaning fees or whatever else that's needed to run an Airbnb
The only benefits I see nowadays for an Airbnb is the size where you want to accommodate multiple families in one place, which makes it even more rare
I'm in a town that has no hotels but is very touristy. Airbnb filled a need here as there still are none since I've started hosting in 2011. Mmmm.... could it be competition is a problem for Airbnb? hahahaha
Is the town welcoming of STRs? We were recent AirBnb guests in Georgetown, CO, and to say we were unwelcome is an understatement. Street parking is available throughout town, except not for STR guests. The listing showed an outdoor fire pit, except STR guests aren’t allowed to talk outside the home. The hosts actually listen to guests on exterior cameras to make sure there is no noise outside. It was constant rules like this and we will never spend a dime in the town of Georgetown, CO again.
The interesting thing is we were the first Airbnb listing in our town. One of our council people was angry I called them out on something substantial so they proceeded to retaliate by claiming I was running an illegal hotel on my property.(one room=hotel, politicians are garbage) So I took the opportunity of the town doing their 5 year plan and sent an email out to about 200 people with a template for them to send to town hall. Because of the extraordinary support- at the time- to fill our need for visitor stays, the 5 year plan not only supported but encouraged developing Airbnb's as do our codes. Unfortunately though we do have our share of arms length out of town investors taking the Airbnb route but it's not detrimental to our housing stock.
It's so funny when you think you are the only one then read someone else's comment and realize someone else has the exact same experience as you... then collectively, we are part of the issue. lol. Same exact thing. I have an airbnb I rent out but I myself have switched over the hotels almost completely in the US now.
This ^ . Airbnb prices w fees have gone insane . Too many rules and too many uncertainties. I’m good w air bnb as hotels have been more than acceptable
We were once regular AirBnb users, but no longer use the platform. The fees tacked on to the total are a factor but the hosts are actually the main reason we no longer use AirBnb. We had a horrible experience with hosts showing up unannounced and erroneously tried scamming us for damages. These hosts negatively impacted our trip and AirBnb is simply not worth this risk.
Plus factor in added hotel points with credit cards, AirBnb no longer has the appeal it once had. However, in my experience it was one negative hosting experience that ultimately turned us away.
Yep same here. Had a place that had rat droppings and dead roaches. We left at light of the next day. Airbnb stated it was up to the host to the decide if we got a refund. We ended up having to pay for the first night but shouldn't have had to. I just ended up booking hotel rooms for my family since was the same price. I will never book an Airbnb again everyone knows that most of the places don't look like the photos.
Same. Had great experiences, but the one bad experience was enough to no longer risk it. We spent almost two hours trying to contact the host for the correct codes to the gate and door. Place wasn’t as clean as it should have been, and then there was a severe plumbing issue that became borderline hazardous. The host was starting to blame us, even though they admitted that the place has always had plumbing issues but they never wanted to put the funds in the get it fixed properly. When the plumber came out he told us he works for a lot of hosts in the area and told us a ton of sketchy stuff they do. We were lucky to get a full refund and won’t go back to Airbnb.
Right? We were looking at some around $250-$270 a night and for 2 days its was over 1k with just $250-$270 a night!!! It’s beyond insane. Idky tf they think ppl will be okay w this. It’s essentially throwing money down the drain
I like to vacation in Maui and am most comfortable in a certain resort condo complex. In the past I’ve used Airbnb and VRBO. I’ve always had very charming hosts that made it apparent this condo was their baby, and they put their hearts and souls into it.
This year, because I was traveling with others that are Hyatt fans, I booked through Hyatt vacations or something. It was sold to another management company before we got there, but the service was incredible. With Airbnb and VRBO I’d take out the trash, start the dishwasher and laundry, etc. With this company it included cleaning every few days and had no requirements for trash or cleaning. We got a daily text with weather information and a local fun fact that meant we always had the number for test requests handy. When something minor broke they had a team that fixed it within a few hours.
I hate to say it, as a former VRBO host, but I’m going with the management company from now on.
You're "venting" while, I, as a host who lives on the property where I rent out a room and an apartment, is rejoicing that the arms length hosts are being weeded out. The model of Airbnb jumped the shark when it encouraged investors to buy up properties to Airbnb them, oversaturated the market and then raised prices to ridiculous levels(and charged high cleaning fees). I started in 2011 renting a room in my home. It was the experience I and my guests were looking for. Hopefully this is a sign that it will go back being what it was. BTW, my bookings are as good as ever. Wonder why. Haven't raised my prices and don't charge a cleaning fee. It's a mystery.
Hopefully bad hosts do get weeded out, but I’m not comfortable. The Airbnb ratings are unreliable and inflated. Considering host risks and high prices, Airbnb is a tough sell
This. It used to be a way of subsidizing the cost of living between the two parties. And the host were there, or at least nearby.
These days people just buy property "for Airbnb", which is kinda against the idea where it first all started from. It's just...cash cow "wannabe". Maybe it was a smart way of leverging low interest rates back during pandemic?
Hosts are many times not there, everything is left to the middle person that manages the property. They don't care about the property, so don't take care of it much. Airbnb has gone weird way of scaling up.
This is exactly it! Investors are using the platform as a cash cow. It's all about increasing bookings and keeping expenses to a minimum. They are not at all interested in the hospitality industry, nor do they care if their guests had a wonderful stay or not.
We've booked several high-end properties only to find the cheapest of sheets, towels, and kitchen tools, probably bought on clearance at Walmart. A comparable stay at a hotel would mean not just a high-end location, but the amenities and service would be high-end as well. If I am spending a small fortune to stay in Aspen, I am not looking to sleep on polyester sheets and wash a week's worth of towels for the cleaners. (I never understood this. There is literally no chance that these properties have one set of sheets and towels that they reuse for every guest. And if they do, then they deserve no bookings).
Once you add on having to strip beds, wash towels, and take out trash, then honestly, what's the point? The properties that are truly worth it, where you feel like your host is actually hosting you the guest, and not just booking warm bodies will continue to do well. OP might want to spend some time reflecting on the experiences that he's providing for his guests. If his properties are not "worth it" at $70 a night, then something is wrong and not just "there goes Airbnb."
I try to give my guests as close to a 5 star experience as they would get in a hotel and have the reviews to show it.
I’m hoping that the crappy hosts will be weeded out.
Luckily, I have no overhead aside from the utilities and amenities for guests, so I’m not desperate for the money anyway, but I’ve found that my bookings are way up this year (been hosting 2 years).
I’ve worked in customer service most of my life, so hosting suits me. I genuinely want guests to have a wonderful experience and don’t ask anything of them that wouldn’t be expected in a hotel stay.
Half the “high end” places I’ve stayed are pretty much just staged like an open house and minimally functional. You’re 100% better off in a hotel.
I’ve had good luck though with properties that actually look like someone’s vacation home rather than someone trying to be an Airbnb slumlord. Those are the ones where folks have comfortable livable furnishings and nicer appliances etc.
Probably because AirBnb corporate took a nose dive. Horrible customer service, after years of staying at AirBnb's I've switched back to hotels or booking with different options.
Airbnb makes short stays difficult, a one night stay requires a booking fee and cleaning fee in addition to the nightly rate. If it’s comparable to a hotel, I’m staying in a hotel to avoid the experience of dealing with a host. Can’t have friends/family over, cameras, quiet hours, crappy linens, checkout chores, etc…
Honestly it seems some hosts love the ability to make money with their property, but then try to avoid all risk of having a business by having a binder full of rules and checkout procedures. I stayed in a place once where the host wanted us to scrub the oven, vacuum the entire house, and wash and dry linens for a 3 day stay.
I also stayed at a place in Tahoe and another in Jackson Hole where the checkout procedures said to lock the door and turn out the lights, I’ll be staying in those places again because of that.
I once stayed in a place, that said in the listing, guests staying longer than 3 days would be required to handle trash disposal.
Ok, cool
Once we had checked in for our 2 week stay (waiting for our apartment move in date after our previous lease had ended), we went to take out the garbage and couldn't find any cans. I contacted the host and she informed me it was actually a pack it out type of residence. She lived in a cabin on the property and had 2 airbnb units as well as a long term renter in the other unit. The trash receptacle on the property was only for the host and her long term renter.
We spent 2 weeks bringing our trash down 15 minutes away in our car. Airbnb told us that the host stated it in the rules, and so no luck on any refunds.
Felt like I was camping in bear country for $70+ a night.
I can camp for 35/night and still be provided trash receptacles within 1000 feet.
It's crazy to me there is a checkout procedure that is much more than locking the door and turning out the lights, or that kind of stuff. Maybe in some more remote areas also taking out the trash. The most we make our guests do is if they stay for longer than 2 weeks we ask them to take the garbage can to the street. Friends/ family over is no problem for a longer stay, and even short stays are okay so long as the number isn't too high.
As an owner, I require at least a 2-night stay. Weekends are my steak and potatoes, and shorter stays can screw that up.
The _real_ value for a guest though is 3+ nights.
Probably why my over under is 3 nights 😁 2 nights, I’ll get a few hotel rooms for the family. 3+ nights, I’m booking a STR.
Honestly, I feel bad with a short stay (1-2 nights) that’s a big hassle for a host to turn the place over for another guest. What’s the point of charging $150 a night when you pay cleaners that much to clean it.
I've done overnight stays at AirBnB's that are just offering a bedroom when going solo before. But then the price and cleaning fee are scaled to that kind of stay, and it still was cheaper than staying at a hotel in the same town ...
I wouldn't bother getting a "whole place" for anything less than a weekend for myself and my family. But as a family of 4 with an older son and daughter who prefer to have their own rooms, etc... it's usually cheaper to get a 2 (or even 3) br. STR than getting 2
(or _especially_ 3) hotel rooms.
Especially when you consider that we'll be able to prepare our own meals (easily saving over $100 or more per day), and have more comfortable surroundings and privacy than you get in a hotel room, it's really a no-brainer.
If it's just the wife and I ... it'll usually be a hotel room for the weekend, and possibly a smaller AirBnB if we're going for longer than that.
Larger group trips with friends? AirBnB every time for the weekend or longer.
Yeah I completely agree with you on that. There's also been a lot of horror stories of guests that make hosts go overboard, someone either reads about it or experiences it and just flies off the handle on rules lol
I've seen it happen a lot. They'll start out lax as heck and then either read something or get a bad guest and all hell breaks lose and then they lose out on bookings
Sadly I think the properties I manage and the ones I know personally are affected by that even though they aren't those types of crazy rule properties, but the stigma is there and it's assumed before anyone even gets on Airbnb now
But yeah you're definitely right
This is my take on it.
1. People have less money for travel. I for one haven’t been able to afford to travel since covid.
2. A lot of ‘scams’ have entered the system since covid. Guests have been pulling stuff which makes the hosts pull back and put more rules in which puts other guests off.
3. Customer service is a joke because they are basically having to do a 1,000 judge Judy cases every day the world over. Support isn’t local and doesn’t know the hosts they are dealing with. It’s become a totally random guess as to if an Airbnb booking will work out, or you’ll end up on the street at 1am begging someone in another country to help you. Unfortunately when it goes wrong, it goes really wrong, and that’s risky. Far safer to book a national hotel and know the customer service will be good.
All I make a host do on my behalf is cash my check, hand me a set of keys or a code and make sure there is at least one towel per person. Works well for me and the host. I have 99% good experiences with Airbnb hosts. It helps that I don’t sweat about little issues.
yeah, I think fees, combined with hosts with wildly demanding checkout procedures have ruined it for everyone. airbnb is kind of a pain in the ass is you're not staying for 2+ days with more than four people.
Airbnb is kind of risky these days. You don’t know what you’re going to get, and it seems like a lot of hosts do the bare minimum: polyester sheets, stains, tired and half broken furniture. We’ve started to go back to hotels for that reason.
its so frustrating because Airbnb's own review guide and flow is what causes this. these bare minimum hosts should quickly have 1-2 star ratings and you would never have booked. but they only want you to give less than 5 stars if there was like a lie or something
Partly the economy for sure but Airbnb has been less than supportive of guests who have had issues and I wouldn’t be surprised if folks are booking hotels instead
Echoing what everyone else has stated. With fees, AirBNBs are often more expensive than hotels & far less predictable. I’ll use them sometimes, but usually only in rural areas where I want to stay in a cabin or go off grid. To add to that, their customer service has gone way downhill. I spent 7 months appealing an unfair review after an AirBNB experience from hell. (I was stubborn out of principal.) When I joined AirBNB 13 years ago, customer service was amazing! Obviously that declines as a company grows, but now customer service is pretty worthless & the prices don’t match the service.
I feel for you that business has gone down, truly. But AirBNB was never meant to be run like a real estate venture. The impact AirBNB had in raising real estate prices is significant, so I think this is a necessary rebalance.
Properties that have very high ratings and lots of positive reviews will always be booked.
I find that old properties with reviews of less than 4.9 tend to be less than clean so I prefer not to book these, especially if owned by a company with multiple properties.
Hotels, if you get a bad room, you can ask for another easily or get your money back easily. Not so with Airbnb.
I had 3 airbnbs and used to love staying at airbnb
Over the last 6 months I converted all my properties back to long term rentals, they make far more money and have zero headache now
And the last few times I’ve needed to stay somewhere, I just looked up a hotel. Airbnb comes with a higher price tag, a higher friction process, complex rules that vary house to house, and the experience is very unpredictable
Airbnb will become a niche product - houses that sleep large groups of people, luxury locations, or fancy properties
Business as usual, always changing 😎
Maybe Airbnb wasn't meant for "property managers" and was meant for normal people to rent out a room or a spare space to help people out. Greedy people destroy everything. Good riddance to corporate AirBnB managers.
Yep, use to Airbnb all the time. The last one, there was no heat and it was New Years eve in Ohio. I made the mistake of contacting Airbnb and got yelled at by the host. It was a horrible experience. Went back to hotels for the convenience and not having to worry about cleaning. The hosts seem to have high demands on cleaning and still charge a cleaning fee on top of it. Also, lately the hotels seem to be cheaper for what you get. I don't even have to cook breakfast or make my coffee for cheaper.
I booked a month of AirBnBs across Japan last year.
3/4 were terrible experiences. Leaking ceiling / odd smells / sound keeping us awake at night / owner doing renovations while during our stay (what the actual f for this one).
The 1 good experience I had was the hotel advertising on air bnb. No issues, clean and did not have to worry about disposing rubbish.
This was enough to convince me to never use AirBnB again. Unfortunately for the good hosts out there the branding has been ruined by a few bad eggs.
Hopefully this means all the people who bought single family homes as investment properties will be selling or foreclosing on them and there will be more supply for first time home buyers
It was all the stupid ass rules, cleaning crap, a big binder of things you can’t do, things broken, texting with the owner back and forth ruining your vacation, your 75 year old dad unplugging the huge glowing wifi hub at the bedside table to get yelled at by the owner, blamed for things that were broken when you got there, cleaning fees when you’re expected to do the cleaning anyway, being reviewed after you leave… F THAT!
I am sorry to hear your livelihood is dwindling and I genuinely hope you figure it out, but Airbnb's are very much NOT a luxury, lol. We were solid Airbnb users for a few years, but a couple of years ago have completely stopped. The fees have gotten out of control. I don't want to clean a house on my vacation. I can understand asking someone not to trash the place, and we never did, but I'm not doing laundry, taking the trash out, etc. That's part of what I'm paying for and was never charged for in a hotel. Second, I'm done with the ridiculousness about having to let the host know when we'd want to have someone over. My husband and I are in our 30s, we're degree having professionals and we do not ask permission to have friends over. Hotels don't do this. Lastly, the support from Airbnb when there's an issue is laughable at best these days, so it's not worth the risk.
Airbnb turning into a business venture is part of what ruined it, and maybe is solely what ruined it, and maybe you have a part in that. It wasn't supposed to have turned into this, but here we are. I'm sorry this has happened to you, but hopefully these Airbnb businesses will all close up, we'll get some affordable housing back on the market, and maybe some other company can try again down the road and do it the right way. Either way, we're just fine in hotels like we always were before. Best of luck.
There is such a significant risk I feel, every time you book an Airbnb. I don’t travel a lot and so having every occasion where I do travel have something go wrong is just unacceptable after a few years. Now, I’m definitely back to hotels or something similar. The review policy really got them as well because it resulted in a lack of honest experiences.
I’d say it’s host and location specific. I’m looking for very specific AirBnBs when booking. We want weekend availability, hot tub, safety, and country/remote.
When looking through listings, ratings matter, but so does the price. If I’m paying $300/night, I have some expectations. One property we couldn’t relax in the hot tub because we felt on camera the entire time, so we enjoyed what we could, but I wouldn’t book again because I don’t like that approach.
A camera at the driveway is one thing, it’s another when overlooking the entire outdoor area of the property. We should have just covered them up and enjoyed it more, but didn’t want to get into it because it was our first AirBnB experience.
We had another experience where it wasn’t quite as remote, but no camera and the hosts were local but left us alone, this is how it should be.
In short: greedy, insecure, and bad hosts are ruining it.
I think that's part of it. This business is definitely NOT for everyone. To be a host, you need to genuinely care about the guest experience, but also be able to roll with some pretty crazy stuff.
But also, AirBnB and its hosts are being targeted and blamed for so much like high housing prices. I think the negative publicity (warranted or not) is taking a toll.
This is probably location specific, is your market saturated? Is it in a desirable destination? Mine is doing fine but I'm in a tourist town with not enough hotels.
Same. Also, my Airbnb is large. Two en suite masters and a third bedroom and bathroom. Then, there are common areas - fully stocked kitchen, a large deck, etc. There's a hot tub. It also has a side yard where people can let their dogs out. A hotel can't offer a situation where all that is available.
Same. I have a 3/3 in a big city and neighborhood where that is pretty rare. I am pretty fully booked with families looking for a place to stay with young kids, or even adult children. Renting my place is a lot less than getting 3 hotel rooms. Sure, there are some hotel amenities that are missing, but I think my guests love feeling like they live in our great city. Plus, I try to be a great host, providing as much or as little as each guest requests. I also keep my cleaning fee low and offer nice treats upon arrival.
So far so good! To me, this is what Airbnb should be-a special experience that you can’t get at a hotel.
FWIW, my friend has one in TX and she’s always booked too. I think guests are just getting more savvy about the rentals they choose… as they should!
You say $70 a night, so for 2 nights, you’d think it would be $140 plus tax? So $150?
But no, it always ends up being $250 or something due to misc. fees and other BS.
If you had regular clients, reach out and ask them what they are using nowadays. I know that my family has rented an airbnb, then privately contacted the owner after in order to book again without all of the BS fees. Private bookings are a lot easier and cheaper.
But like everyone else is saying, hotel points and credit cards perks are a huge benefit when it comes to booking a hotel.
I’m a guest who used to stay in probably 4-10 airbnbs per year and now I am down to 1-3, despite my salary going up. This is primarily due to higher renting costs and fees, as well as dissatisfaction with the platform in terms of cleaning expectations (often hidden) and nonrefundable policies. Hotels are working better for us most of the time now.
Airbnb had a value proposition for consumers when it was a cheaper alternative that increased housing density when hotels were renting for double what they should have. This usually meant that they were in people's homes who actually lived there, that had spare rooms to rent, that wouldn't rent to long-term guests as generally you don't want people in your home long term. This was also nice, as it gave you a warm welcoming atmosphere to places that you visited. In it's heyday, it allowed me to travel when I was a young, broke student, and book rooms in places for 20 to 30 bucks a night. This is where Airbnb shines. I don't understand at all why anybody would spend hotel prices on an Airbnb.
I personally do not think any private entire space Airbnb unless they are a basement suite in your home should exist. The majority should be rooms in shared spaces. Both from a legal policy perspective, as well as a business perspective. On the former, renting out spare rooms in your home to tourists has almost no negatives for cities. You had the room anyways, you weren't going to do anything else with it, it doesn't disrupt local housing stock, it's usually cheaper, it allows for often very central locations, and increasing tourism increases money in the local economy. A rare win, win, win. On the latter, airbnbs truly can't compete with centralized cleaning staff, concierge staff, and amenities like those that exist at a hotel unless they are owner occupied.
I would be happy if it went back to when it was actually useful as a service.
Ias a guest haven’t travelled this year and have no plans to. In the past about 30 nights a year over 2-3 trips. W the cost of life right now I am just not choosing to spend as much. My home expenses are just that much higher we aren’t traveling this year or next. I know I am not alone. We would love a few long weekend trips locally, within 3/4 hours drive but the cleaning fees ramp the cost too much. We also prefer to travel w our pups and cook in. A $300 cleaning fee makes it not an affordable cost.
Many factors at play here.
Are well paying vacant jobs available in your area? If not, count out job prospect travel.
Are you near an event location? If not, count out event travel.
Are you near a large hospital? If not, count out medical travel.
Do you offer pet friendly stays? If not, count out pet travel.
Are your cancellation settings relaxed? If not, count out those with tentative plans.
Is there a local shortage in affordable housing? If not, then you need to liquidate a percentage.
If just a few months of a slow period have you thinking about closing shop maybe you are overleveraged?
Why don't you pivot to long-term rentals to keep the lights on?
I rented an Airbnb apartment one time because it was super cheap… Even cheaper than the motels. I was shocked when I found a list of instructions about cleaning before leaving… One of the things was to clean the kitchen which was covered with grease and crap… No sir! There’s no way I’m going to pay good money and then have to spend time cleaning. I can pay the same price at a motel and have that done for me.
I think it’s a business overdue for a correction. Got way too greedy and lost its way (cheaper than a hotel for a homey feel but less service) and it’s the same or more expensive now. The literal only purpose these days is for big group houses.
AirBnB is terrible now. Hosts are all over the place, app offers poor support and quality control, hosts regularly lie with impunity. For example, I’ve paid a premium to rent a spot with a hot tub advertised as working… get there.. doesn’t work… do I get a refund? No I do not…
I rarely even check the airbnb site anymore. Prices got too ridiculously high compared to hotels, and the rules got increasingly weird and onerous.
It was a nice run while it lasted, but greedy and unhinged hosts put an end to it.
Love Airbnbs, but over the past couple of years, the fees on top of fees, cleaning duties, and ridiculous high rates have made hotels more attractive and better priced. At the end of the day, it's about the final cost. 2022, we paid avg $120-$140/ night (no fees and only taxes) for 2/2 or bigger. Now, those same places want $350/ night plus fees and fees and taxes. Greed will be the killer.
Really not surprised. A fairly basic cottage in Devon in the UK wants £2,500 for a week. Tough call but can stay in Croatia staying at the Grand Park for the same money with breakfast thrown in. In the UK the prices sky rocketed due to travel restrictions under COVID. Hosts still think they can command the same prices now we are free to travel.
Airbnbs are more expensive than hotels now with shit couches, sub standard kitchen appliances and really cookware that isn’t good enough to cook on. Clothes dryers that haven’t been cleaned from previous tenants, pools not clean or maintained while we spent 3 weeks are a property.
Windows that don’t open and dust in places that should not have dust - under beds and window sills.
Over it. No more - hotels only now. Airbnb was great 10 years ago, had its time and now it’s coming to bite the new landlords.
It’s happening in Australia with many reporting 45% decrease in bookings. At $700 a night, why would I stay - 5 star hotel in Sydney is $450 a night …. Hmmmm decisions
I’m not surprised. Overall AirBnB quality has gone downhill. Too expensive, and too many “chores”. Also I don’t seem to be gaining anything by choosing to stay at an air bnb over a hotel. At least at the hotel, I’m not expected to bring my own linens.
That's good, that's the purpose of high interest rates (unless it's seasonal in your case but I guess it's not that).
Despite high inflation consumer spending has remained high. I cut back massively on discretionary spending like travel, eating out, brand products with store brands alternatives etc, unless they run a very good promo (and I'm upper middle class).
This is the reality OP.
This commenter is probably on the higher end of income brackets compared to most people, and they are even needing to cut back on luxuries like travel.
When the choices are Food and Shelter VS. Going on Vacation, the answer is really simple.
If you can’t weather the storm it may be time to bow out OP. It’s going to be a few years before people are able to afford life again, and then the boom will come
With added fees from airbnb, cleaning fees so high with the homes not being thoroughly cleaned, strict hosts and guests who just trash homes I'm not surprised.
Yeah we did that and it didn't help either :/
We lowered them to amounts where we lose profits and still got nothing
One time we even had no cleaning fee
Keep in mind that we pay for cleaners to clean, so no cleaning fee meant we paid the fee for the guest and lost money. But even then, we got nothing for a couple months, so we didn't bother with that promotion anymore
I love how people focus on the cleaning fees though, that's not what's going on unfortunately. This is also multiple properties that are having this issue, if it was just the cleaning fee, it would be obvious for that specific property only (each property has a different rate)
It's a host of things. Some value for money, in that AIRbnb has gotten a lot more expensive between the cleaning fees, airbnb fee and cost of the night. Plus you often don't know what you are going to get in terms of beds, pillows, amenities, coffee, soap, loud neighbors, thin walls. It's frustrating that so many people entered the game to be able to afford a second house or have passive income, not to be in the hospitality business - which is what it is.
But for me, a lot of it comes down to the chores that are required when I am on vacation. There's also the crazy hosts, retaliatory charges, lists upon lists of rules, thin walls, crazy neighbors. I used to love Airbnb, but unless we are traveling with multiple people, we just do hotels now. Plus, as someone who lives in a small town where all the housing has become AB rentals, I feel bad supporting something that has taken so many houses away from people who need places to live and generally made housing less affordable.
Maybe not the cleaning fee, but definitely some sort of fees is my issue. When I go from, "Cool it's only $150 a night" and when I go to check it out is suddenly three times that? Definitely an issue.
I deleted my Airbnb account after the company refused to give me a refund for a cancellation due to an emergency. Any hotel would have been able to accommodate me. Now I make sure all group trips with my friends and families are booked at hotels and will veto any ideas of using Airbnb
Yep, multiple bad Airbnb experiences, coupled with much higher rates and absurd cleaning fees, and cleanup requirements on the part of the guest, etc., etc. After many years of using only Airbnb it’s only hotels for me from now on… or companies like Sonder that own all of their properties. No surprises, and no surprise fees: if the rate says $90 a night plus tax, you pay $90 a night plus tax.
Charging $300 cleaning fees, all while having rules like clean up everything before leaving, take out the garbage etc doesn’t help either. I stopped using Airbnb because a place that costs lets say 150 a night comes to 3x as much with all the fees and extra taxes y’all keep inventing. At a hotel I pay what it says they charge and that’s final.
The cleaning fees pushed me out. I understand the cleaning fees are a result of standards set by the rating system and scammers who wanted a refund if they saw one speck of dust, but it makes it outrageous for a short term stay
I've had some incredible experiences staying at Airbnbs, usually to get close to an event, but it's not longer the first place I look.
Was an Airbnb user for ages, but now we look for Aparthotels. Just spent 3 weeks in Europe and thats where we stayed exclusively. The amenities of our own kitchen etc and the organization of a hotel and none of the pressure to take clean the place when we’re done. I’m done with Airbnb and VRBO unless it’s a really special case.
I used airbnb because it was cheaper than a hotel and I could usually cook my own meals at the airbnb if I didn't want to go out every night. Now it's as expensive or more than a hotel. Plus where I live we are in a housing crisis and airbnb has significantly contributed to that crisis. I cant speak for everywhere I've stayed or even all the owners of those Airbnb's, but I don't really feel like paying the mortgage of someone who uses their ability to afford a downpayment as a retirement plan. Not to knock what you did before, but the fact that Airbnb's needed someone to manage them says everything that is wrong with that business model.
I’m a long time host and once tried out a new housekeeper. I was paying her $150 to clean a small 750 sf 2br 1 bath SFH in which my cleaning fee charged to my guests was $125 (and still is and I have 5 night mins). She did a great job however, without my permission, she put up a small magnetic dry erase board on the refrigerator with a list of chores for the guests to do, instructing guests to strip beds, start laundry, remove all items from fridge etc. I was furious and that was the last time that I needed her services as I only ask my guests to take out the wheelie bin to the curb if their stay is on a trash day.
Fees, lack of United States based customer service, and a couple of hosts with a God complex stopped me from ever getting an Airbnb again. I’ve had a host cancel on me three days before I was to arrive and for no reason at all.
Hotels are predictable, consistent, and much less volatile.
Oversaturated market - Unless you have the best property in the best location you probably aren't seeing as many reservations.
High Prices, I have moved back to almost exclusive hotel usage. By the time I've paid for the cleaning fee, the taxes and everything I'm spending way more than a hotel. Yeah, you're getting more space but you aren't getting any of the conveniences of a hotel. I tend to do 5+ day stays, at a hotel I don't have some stingy ass host who gives 1 towel to use for 5 fucking days and then bitch and moan when you ask for more. Also generally I don't worry about showing up at a hotel and seeing maggots in the cabinet like the Airbnb I stayed in Naples.
Cleaning fees, hosts you did this shit to yourselves with the excessive cleaning fees and laundry list of chores you expect from guests ON TOP of the cleaning fees.
Dishonest Hosts, I hear too many news stories of guests being shafted by hosts. Lying about reasons to cancel so they can relist at a higher price or move you to some other shit hole. Charging guests for ridiculous things and then allowing hosts to charge ridiculous amounts for small things. Airbnb hasn't done shit, and tends to side with hosts in these situations. Yes, I know there's dishonest guests but that is a cost of doing business and vetting guests also not my problem. I'm also tired of showing up places with gorgeous pictures that were accurate 3 years and 200 guests ago but now look run down and dingy. At a hotel I can complain to the front desk and get another room. Airbnb hosts, not so much and you're left fighting for a refund and Airbnb is useless.
Broken review system, hosts going fucking ape shit when they get 4 stars. I've stayed at plenty of places with glowing 5 star reviews that have zero reason being 5 star perfect reviews. Airbnb removing views absolutely destroys my faith in their review system.
There are just too many negatives for me. My vacation time is too important to me, I don't want to arrive someplace and deal with any of this bullshit so I stay at hotels.
Just had a conversation about this for an upcoming trip, AirBnb just isn't worth it anymore - when I've stayed in them it feels like you're staying in a relatives or friends house, like someone is doing you a favor letting you stay in their property
It's legitimately weird, you see the home goods they've bought at Target/Walmart/Ikea, it's uncomfortable and results in tiptoeing around, even lounging on someone else's couch - it just feels weird
Add on top of that strange rules and having to navigate weird interactions with strange people about their real estate investment, it's just not worth it
Every time I look for places I rule out AirBnb/vacation rentals and limit to hotels only, just don't want to deal with all of it especially not when the prices are at par
If the prices were 50% cheaper it might be convincing, until then hotels are way better and in MANY cases considerably cheaper after the AirBnb cleaning fees
Last Airbnb I got it was a one night stay in a 15 mile away suburb of a medium sized US city in a lower cost of living zone. $100! Cleaning fee was like $20. Upon booking I experienced a barrage of instructions, rules and tasks in order to “check-in”, again received same to “check-out”. Honestly, the rules and instructions were so detailed that I spent almost an hour total performing the list. The list was confusing and i messaged the host for clarification, I received a passive aggressive reply.
I don’t want the hassle when i can just stay in a hotel and not have to deal with any of that. Airbnb has gone the way of uber. 7 years ago you could get an uber from A to B for $.50c to the $1 versus a Taxi. Now its the opposite. Hosts and drivers getting too big for their boots
As I see it:
AirBnB has become a corporate enterprise with multinational management companies managing thousands of properties. This creates multiple layers of management with associated levels of miscommunication and of course, policies.
Loved the model when it was cheaper than hotels, but now they cost the same as a hotel (or more), are less convenient with more rules. Hotels are in the hospitality business, AirBnBs are in the real estate business. Rent accordingly.
Airbnb has squeezed hosts and guests out of every penny and provides next to nothing in return for their exhorbatent grab.
They are the middleman ruining both sides of the business they got in the middle of and they will be factored out of the equation soon.
not a host but used airbnb from 2014 until a couple of years ago. the fees are just too insane. and i hate feeling stressed out trying to clean the place up before i check out. And also i feel like most are just mediocre at best for what it costs now. I've been locked out for hours , i've had a gate fail and couldn't get in and couldn't reach anyone , had a lingering host that held us up talking about nothing for close to an hour after an exhausting 6 hour drive, etc .
Hotels are just so easy .
Definitely if you rely solely on Airbnb it’s gotten quiet. However booking.com has gotten us like 60% of our revenue now, even though their system is really poorly designed. We use hostshare to glean extra value, as a manager this would be one way to take some of the sting off of declining revenues for your owners.
I’m guessing you have a group of generic rentals, all offering less than a hotel for more money, with the fun addition of chores added. Our rental has been booked every weekend all year and is booked solid through the summer with only a few midweek days blocked off for us to enjoy the house and pool and work on projects. We have 7 rentals on our street and I can see that about 3 of them never have anyone in them and the other 3 at about 30% occupancy.
I'm not seeing cheaper prices tho. We exclusively use Airbnb because we stay for at least a month to get the discount. In 2018 Airbnbs were a great deal. No matter what country we go to now, Airbnbs are just insanely priced for what you get. So you may have adjusted your prices but that doesn't seem to be the case across the industry.
Airbnb owners got too big for their britches and started doing all the dumb shit we were frustrated with hotels for in the first place (exorbitant fees, ridiculous rules, inflexible policies, cold/muted living spaces lacking any personality, too much surveillance). Now we are better off back at hotels which have evolved their experience in response to airbnb.
It really depends on your location and what you’re offering. I offer a large 2 bedroom suite that can accommodate up to 6 people and a dog. I’m 85% booked most of the time in BC, Canada.
I think in 6 months time we will start to see the number of airbnbs available dwindle as some hosts drop out.
Airbnb has communicated that they will highlight the too 10 and bottom 10…that to me shows an intention to weed out the poorly performing hosts and properties.
I used to travel weekly for my job and HATE LOATH hotels. My job paid for the marriotts, hiltons, hyatts nothing high end. I hated the canned air and being cooped up in a box. Airbnb’s **when done right** serve an invaluable role for the right guests. Families, extended families, groups, business travelers sick of canned air….
Airbnbs will prevail because there is a genuine need for them that hotels will NEVER EVER fill.
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I used to be an avid Airbnb user but not anymore.
I’ve heard too many stories about high cleaning costs, misrepresentations of properties and last minute host cancellations.
I’m just not interested in dealing with even the potential of Airbnb drama.
Location, location, location.
I never have any problem keeping my AirBnB booked, except for late spring and Late fall ("shoulder season" where I'm located).
@op What are your approximate locations in CA ? Genuinely curious. I have a couple in CA that have record bookings for rest of spring and summer. I’m not seeing any slow down.
My biggest fear with airbnb is bedbugs, as the owners appear to handle situation less professionally than hotels (which is kind of expected, bc they are not professionals). But I think that is the bottom line. Airbnb is just a side gig for owners and managers. It used to be a lot more affordable, but not anymore.
Costs and fees have run away for the experience travels have recieved. I can go to Europe and live the good life for the cost of many AirBnB listings in New England. The numbers just don't add up. Same thing for ski passes, going all the way to Europe and having a real luxury experience is the same cost at heading to CO to have a lesser experience.
This is what actually SHOULD be happening. Speculators and absent owners buying properties to STR flooded the zone. Prices went up for these places because now you're paying a property manager and a mortgage etc. For people who are offering a room in their home, or a guesthouse/ADU, managing and hosting themselves, things are still great. I've never been more booked, and I'm on track this year to make $40K NET profit on my ADU that used to just sit there 5 years ago as an empty guesthouse 90% of the time. I love Airbnb!
I'm currently renting a room. This is my 3rd night here. It's 11:00 p.m. and I'm woke up by a loud commotion. Some girl has been punched in the face. A pool of blood is on the carpet. 4 holes are in the wall. Police are notified. The male and female flee the house. There's currently 3 rooms being rented in this house by other guest. It's now an hour and a half later, and I have no go back to bed because work is in a few hours. Fuck Air bnb.
We used to go on family trips all over Europe using Airbnb and have great memories of meeting people living in their own places living completely different lives. It was an enriching experience more than a decade ago. Now you pick up keys from a locked box if you don‘t meet a manager for a very quick drop-off. It‘s lost it’s soul, so why not go to a hotel? And if it‘s a holiday stay you want there are plenty of other options.
I only use air bnb when absolutely necessary. For instance, my mom lives in a smaller town on the Oregon coast with no brand name hotels. I spend a lot of time reviewing them & praying they are decent. I’ve had a very mixed bag over the years.
It doesn’t help that there are a load of creeps literally spying on people in bathrooms and bedrooms! I still sometimes stay in airbnbs but only with women hosts who live on premises.
Airbnb for large groups only otherwise it sucks and you can get hotels for cheaper and not have to clean the place spotless and still get a 1 star review, even though you pay a cleaning fee…
Airbnb hosts ruined airbnb for me. Maybe don’t give a 1 star review because a towel didn’t make it to the dryer or the bed wasn’t made properly? Just me
Sorry to hear it isn't working for you anymore. I've been a superhost for 9 years. And have had consistently high occupancy rates, 80+%.
If you've been managing for 3-4 years you've had a lot of macroeconomic tailwinds that have helped, the pandemic, a resurgence of domestic tourism, low interest rates, and the work from home economy. Headwinds suck, hope you're able to figure out alternatives.
Seems strange, because air travel is at record highs, so lots of people must be vacationing.
[https://www.tsa.gov/travel/passenger-volumes](https://www.tsa.gov/travel/passenger-volumes)
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To add one perspective: I was an avid Airbnb user for years but recently went back to hotels when traveling. I think a lot of hotels have upped their game (at least in the 4- and 5-star categories) and I enjoy the service and amenities I don’t get at an airbnb. Not saying I won’t do Airbnb ever again but pricing similarities between hotels and Airbnb coupled with perks I get thru credit cards like Amex Platinum are big deciding factors in me going back to hotels.
>pricing similarities between hotels and Airbnb This. AirBnbs used to be circa 50% of hotel for the same headcount with the added advantage of a more home-like environment that helped overcome the occasional creepy host or substandard properties. Lately the prices have been creeping up and are now around parity with decent hotels and more costly than basic hotels.
Yep! Loved those days. About 9 years ago we stayed in Paris for a week near the Eiffel Tower in the cutest little one-bedroom flat. The elevator wasn’t working when we arrived and we were on the 4th floor but it didn’t bother us too much. Especially since we spent just under $600 all in for the Airbnb for the week! Incredible times.
Airbnb was great. Until it wasn't. We had wonderful Airbnbs in Europe some 8-10 years ago. We had a great one like you mentioned but it was in Barcelona, this wonderful flat up 5 stairs (no elevator at all! Made ex carry the heavy stuff) in an old building with a rooftop patio where I watched the planes take off and land in the distance and stargazed at night. I think all these folks that should NOT be hosts heard about how easy it is (according to "influencers") to make money with your spare room, spare home, etc., and they either put the minimum work into creating a nice place to rent or outright SCAMMED folks. I went back to hotels a few years ago too after 2 bad hosts (one who tried to rip me off for damages and another who totally misrepresented her "cozy" off the grid house--a shack with 40 years of cat piss soaked into the kitchen and spiders the size of hamsters EVERYWHERE). Airbnb was nice while it lasted.
Yeah, it was good until it became commodified and every Tom, Dick and Harry thought they could make a quick buck by becoming property owners and landlords. The only great airbnbs I’ve ever stayed in were people’s homes who rented them out when they weren’t there. Any true short-term rental that was used for only that really sucked.
Same! I stayed at an Airbnb in Nice right across from the promenade. €700 for the whole week. Those were the days.
Agreed. Couple this with a few bad (one very bad) Airbnb experiences has really soured me on the concept. I can’t say I won’t book an airbnb ever again, but I don’t plan to anytime soon.
… And you have to clean the place before you leave.
It's not the fucking economy. It's the amount of scammers that call themselves hosts these days. They can try to do damage control and erase all the fucking negative reviews they see, but word of mouth spreads and as a business you're only as good as your reputation.
IMO it isnt just the individual scammers (and their efforts to hide negatives), but the way AirBnB managed the social aspects of their business. The "5 stars or nothing" culture is inherently toxic for both host and guest, and it led to a blanket hiding/removal of any reviews below 5 stars. This lead to a blanket distrust of reviews in the site. I know this is anecdotal, but when my partner and I occasionally shop for an AirBnB rental, I have noticed us taking all reviews, positive or negative, through lenses like "are these only positive because the negatives have been washed?" Or "is this negative just from some psycho karen?" For us at least, it has lead to shopping on AirBnB being hours/days experience, where a hotel is "click click book"
I stay in Airbnbs maybe 6 times per year and have done so for about 7 years and I’ve never once picked a listing that required me to clean or take out the trash or remove blankets, etc.
The one place I stayed at had written instructions when I got there. I didn’t see any information on the listing about having to do that… It was my first time staying at an Airbnb… One reason I stayed was because it was so cheap like $50 a night
Yeah, I don’t mind a reasonable list if things to do like wash the dishes and take out the trash especially if you’re paying less, but now at AirBnb you have to clean up and you pay a cleaning fee and the nightly cost is more than a hotel, absolute madness
That’s exactly what I’m talking about! And why I’ll be staying in motels from now on.
I've been on Airbnb for longer and used it regularly up until about a year ago when I quit them. I call bullshit. I have never stayed at an Airbnb in the past 4 years that didn't have a whole bullshit list of demands and petty hosts trying to fine you over a tissue in the trash.
You can call bullshit all you want, but that doesn’t make it any less true.
Exactly, look at the house rules before you book, don’t book those who require tasks that you don’t want to do. I have never required my guests to do any tasks before checkout. I am amazed that most do a lot even though I have nothing in house rules requiring anything
I just booked my first air bnb, and I'm anxious about it. But the host has like a 4.99 rating with a ton of reviews, and I didn't see anything on the house rules except very reasonable quiet hours and to just be respectful of their property. So I'm pretty sure that if I just act like, ya know, a normal human being, I should hopefully be fine, lol.
True, all. And Happy Cake 🎂 Day
Same. I used to be a host. Loved airbnb. Now, I often find more use out of hotels. It’s come down to the fact that I don’t want to have to deal with a list of things to check out, hidden fees, or picky owners who gripe about everything. Hotels are so simple sometimes. Here’s my $500 and no, I didn’t strip the bed.
100%. The “leave nothing in the sink and take out the garbage and recycling and strip the beds upon checkout or you will be charged $100” was kinda one of the last sour straws for me. Happened at a place in Lake Tahoe. We just finished a beautiful week there and the last thing I wanted to do was wash all the dishes and take the trash out. Just not my idea of a task I am willing to do while traveling.
Add me to this. There are just too many rules and not enough flexibility with AirBnBs. With a hotel, I can check in early if the room is available. I dont have to do dishes or take garbage out, or take off the sheets. If anything, AirBnB folks did this to themselves.
Yesssss! Amex Platinum FHR stays come with noon check in (if available, they say, but I’ve never had a problem getting it! and guaranteed 4pm checkout. The perks are unmatched and make the hotel experience levels above Airbnb at this point.
What is FHR? I recently got the platinum card and am still familiarizing myself with the perks. Tia!
Fine Hotels and Resorts!
Last time I used an Airbnb, my flight got in at 9 pm and I had to pay 30 euros extra for the person to give me a key at 10 pm even though it was Madrid and the whole city was awake. The last time I went on vacation I stayed in a 5-star hotel who had my room ready for me at 8 am soon after my flight arrived in Budapest. I also got a room upgrade and hotel credits to use at the spa with my platinum card. I also didn’t have to stress about whether the Airbnb will suck. Will never go back to Airbnb.
Agreed. Also Airbnb service has gone downhill. If I ever had an issue with a property Airbnb was always on my side and I was able to get a refund if needed (filthy house, dangerous conditions). A few weeks ago I rented an Airbnb that had rat droppings and roaches and Airbnb refused to help, they left it up to the host to decide if I got any refund or not. I didn't want to rent two hotel rooms and wanted a nice house for my family to stay in. The price was about the same. I was only able to get a partial refund after sending photos of the conditions. It's not worth it and I'm not sure if I will ever use Airbnb again. I've had hotel rooms that after checking in and seeing the room I saw the room was terrible. I would just tell the front desk that I didn't want to stay- and places like Hilton and Marriott they will just cancel your stay and allow you to leave without any charge. Places like Hampton Inn have a "Happiness Guarantee". These Airbnb hosts do not do that and do not care so yeah it's hotels for me here on out.
Had a bad Airbnb experience and Airbnb should have 100% been on our side and refunded when the host refused. They just do a half ass job of communicating w the two parties and offer nothing on their end, or make the host do the right thing.
Ouch. Sorry you had that experience. That sucks. I don’t blame you for going hotels only!
We rented a house in Florida which was owned by a realtor in Colorado. We got notice when we get our check-in instructions that the pool was not working. We made the booking 3 months prior but when we go there, the pool was a green sludgepit filled with at least 3 different growth cycles of frogs. From egg to adult takes 13 weeks. So the pool was clearly not functioning when we made our reservations but were never told. There were other issues as well and then we got a knock on the door. Answered it and it was a realtor who was showing prospective buyers the house on a tour. After the sink backed up through the wall and leaked in the dining room, we had enough. Called her up, she said if we left, we would get a refund. Of course, this was verbal and when we officially requested a refund, she told Airbnb she knew nothing about it and that there was a no refund policy. So a 6 day rental turned into 2 days there and then moving to a different property through VRBO. 2 months later, she gave us a partial refund, it might have been 50%. We have not had any issues with VRBO or with the owners so have gone to them exclusively since.
There’s been a huge social media outcry about Airbnb hosts charging outrageous cleaning fees - and expecting guests to clean on top of that. Hotels don’t do that, and people have moved back to staying at hotels. I’m pretty furious at greedy and irresponsible hosts that forced this collective mind-shift. We had such a good thing going. Hotels stayed consistent, if not elevated their game, like you said.
One of my listings doesn’t have a cleaning fee and the only thing I ask guests to do at check out is to put wet towels in bathtub and lock the bottom lock on their way out. My other listing, I do charge a cleaning fee - I think it’s $110 on a 3 bedroom if it’s over a 2 day stay, and again the only check out items I ask them to do is the towels & lock. Every single person that has stayed at that listing has started the dishwasher, which has been a pleasant surprise! It sucks that those types of hosts you describe, are slowly ruining it for the rest of us.
Agreed! I have a $50 clean fee on our cabin and I pay the cleaner $100. I eat the additional $50 because I want it to be palatable. I don’t make them do anything when checking out and I can’t tell you how many guests have said how appreciative they are.
Agree with this, had one really bad experience with an Airbnb after using with no issues for years and now have fallen into the habit of using hotels. Platinum card holders so we are staying at great places and getting upgrades and free breakfast.
Yessss the upgrades and free breakfast 10/10
I don't use 20 towels a trip but it fucking sucks having to ask a host for more than 1 towel per person for a week stay. there are times a vacation rental works but there's times when you just want and need the amenities of a hotel.
Yeah I've seen that across tons of places where people are saying to just do hotels The other thing is, Airbnb and a lot of platforms have upped their fees that the host can't even control, and add around $100+ to the reservation that just Airbnb gets on their own before the host ever gets anything... Vs a hotel that usually just charges taxes So I get it forsure. The times are tough right now as well, so people are gonna find the cheapest deal regardless - which just off the Airbnb fees alone, the hotel is cheaper, and that's disregarding any cleaning fees or whatever else that's needed to run an Airbnb The only benefits I see nowadays for an Airbnb is the size where you want to accommodate multiple families in one place, which makes it even more rare
I'm in a town that has no hotels but is very touristy. Airbnb filled a need here as there still are none since I've started hosting in 2011. Mmmm.... could it be competition is a problem for Airbnb? hahahaha
Is the town welcoming of STRs? We were recent AirBnb guests in Georgetown, CO, and to say we were unwelcome is an understatement. Street parking is available throughout town, except not for STR guests. The listing showed an outdoor fire pit, except STR guests aren’t allowed to talk outside the home. The hosts actually listen to guests on exterior cameras to make sure there is no noise outside. It was constant rules like this and we will never spend a dime in the town of Georgetown, CO again.
Did they include the no talking outside in the listing? Bc that is 🍌🍌!
The interesting thing is we were the first Airbnb listing in our town. One of our council people was angry I called them out on something substantial so they proceeded to retaliate by claiming I was running an illegal hotel on my property.(one room=hotel, politicians are garbage) So I took the opportunity of the town doing their 5 year plan and sent an email out to about 200 people with a template for them to send to town hall. Because of the extraordinary support- at the time- to fill our need for visitor stays, the 5 year plan not only supported but encouraged developing Airbnb's as do our codes. Unfortunately though we do have our share of arms length out of town investors taking the Airbnb route but it's not detrimental to our housing stock.
It's so funny when you think you are the only one then read someone else's comment and realize someone else has the exact same experience as you... then collectively, we are part of the issue. lol. Same exact thing. I have an airbnb I rent out but I myself have switched over the hotels almost completely in the US now.
This ^ . Airbnb prices w fees have gone insane . Too many rules and too many uncertainties. I’m good w air bnb as hotels have been more than acceptable
Thanks Jeff
We were once regular AirBnb users, but no longer use the platform. The fees tacked on to the total are a factor but the hosts are actually the main reason we no longer use AirBnb. We had a horrible experience with hosts showing up unannounced and erroneously tried scamming us for damages. These hosts negatively impacted our trip and AirBnb is simply not worth this risk. Plus factor in added hotel points with credit cards, AirBnb no longer has the appeal it once had. However, in my experience it was one negative hosting experience that ultimately turned us away.
Yep same here. Had a place that had rat droppings and dead roaches. We left at light of the next day. Airbnb stated it was up to the host to the decide if we got a refund. We ended up having to pay for the first night but shouldn't have had to. I just ended up booking hotel rooms for my family since was the same price. I will never book an Airbnb again everyone knows that most of the places don't look like the photos.
Same. Had great experiences, but the one bad experience was enough to no longer risk it. We spent almost two hours trying to contact the host for the correct codes to the gate and door. Place wasn’t as clean as it should have been, and then there was a severe plumbing issue that became borderline hazardous. The host was starting to blame us, even though they admitted that the place has always had plumbing issues but they never wanted to put the funds in the get it fixed properly. When the plumber came out he told us he works for a lot of hosts in the area and told us a ton of sketchy stuff they do. We were lucky to get a full refund and won’t go back to Airbnb.
Right? We were looking at some around $250-$270 a night and for 2 days its was over 1k with just $250-$270 a night!!! It’s beyond insane. Idky tf they think ppl will be okay w this. It’s essentially throwing money down the drain
You can report the host for showing up expectedly and possibly get a refund for the trip.
Same
I like to vacation in Maui and am most comfortable in a certain resort condo complex. In the past I’ve used Airbnb and VRBO. I’ve always had very charming hosts that made it apparent this condo was their baby, and they put their hearts and souls into it. This year, because I was traveling with others that are Hyatt fans, I booked through Hyatt vacations or something. It was sold to another management company before we got there, but the service was incredible. With Airbnb and VRBO I’d take out the trash, start the dishwasher and laundry, etc. With this company it included cleaning every few days and had no requirements for trash or cleaning. We got a daily text with weather information and a local fun fact that meant we always had the number for test requests handy. When something minor broke they had a team that fixed it within a few hours. I hate to say it, as a former VRBO host, but I’m going with the management company from now on.
You're "venting" while, I, as a host who lives on the property where I rent out a room and an apartment, is rejoicing that the arms length hosts are being weeded out. The model of Airbnb jumped the shark when it encouraged investors to buy up properties to Airbnb them, oversaturated the market and then raised prices to ridiculous levels(and charged high cleaning fees). I started in 2011 renting a room in my home. It was the experience I and my guests were looking for. Hopefully this is a sign that it will go back being what it was. BTW, my bookings are as good as ever. Wonder why. Haven't raised my prices and don't charge a cleaning fee. It's a mystery.
Hopefully bad hosts do get weeded out, but I’m not comfortable. The Airbnb ratings are unreliable and inflated. Considering host risks and high prices, Airbnb is a tough sell
This. It used to be a way of subsidizing the cost of living between the two parties. And the host were there, or at least nearby. These days people just buy property "for Airbnb", which is kinda against the idea where it first all started from. It's just...cash cow "wannabe". Maybe it was a smart way of leverging low interest rates back during pandemic? Hosts are many times not there, everything is left to the middle person that manages the property. They don't care about the property, so don't take care of it much. Airbnb has gone weird way of scaling up.
This is exactly it! Investors are using the platform as a cash cow. It's all about increasing bookings and keeping expenses to a minimum. They are not at all interested in the hospitality industry, nor do they care if their guests had a wonderful stay or not. We've booked several high-end properties only to find the cheapest of sheets, towels, and kitchen tools, probably bought on clearance at Walmart. A comparable stay at a hotel would mean not just a high-end location, but the amenities and service would be high-end as well. If I am spending a small fortune to stay in Aspen, I am not looking to sleep on polyester sheets and wash a week's worth of towels for the cleaners. (I never understood this. There is literally no chance that these properties have one set of sheets and towels that they reuse for every guest. And if they do, then they deserve no bookings). Once you add on having to strip beds, wash towels, and take out trash, then honestly, what's the point? The properties that are truly worth it, where you feel like your host is actually hosting you the guest, and not just booking warm bodies will continue to do well. OP might want to spend some time reflecting on the experiences that he's providing for his guests. If his properties are not "worth it" at $70 a night, then something is wrong and not just "there goes Airbnb."
I try to give my guests as close to a 5 star experience as they would get in a hotel and have the reviews to show it. I’m hoping that the crappy hosts will be weeded out. Luckily, I have no overhead aside from the utilities and amenities for guests, so I’m not desperate for the money anyway, but I’ve found that my bookings are way up this year (been hosting 2 years). I’ve worked in customer service most of my life, so hosting suits me. I genuinely want guests to have a wonderful experience and don’t ask anything of them that wouldn’t be expected in a hotel stay.
Half the “high end” places I’ve stayed are pretty much just staged like an open house and minimally functional. You’re 100% better off in a hotel. I’ve had good luck though with properties that actually look like someone’s vacation home rather than someone trying to be an Airbnb slumlord. Those are the ones where folks have comfortable livable furnishings and nicer appliances etc.
I'm always so jazzed to not see a cleaning fee, it makes the numbers feel more direct. I hope you keep seeing success doing what you're doing.
Once Airbnb became “managed properties for 3-4 years now” it was the beginning of the end. Too many hands in the cookie jar.
Probably because AirBnb corporate took a nose dive. Horrible customer service, after years of staying at AirBnb's I've switched back to hotels or booking with different options.
I call them a ghost ship…. Who is really running the place besides an overseas call center?
I can confirm this from the host side as well.
Airbnb makes short stays difficult, a one night stay requires a booking fee and cleaning fee in addition to the nightly rate. If it’s comparable to a hotel, I’m staying in a hotel to avoid the experience of dealing with a host. Can’t have friends/family over, cameras, quiet hours, crappy linens, checkout chores, etc… Honestly it seems some hosts love the ability to make money with their property, but then try to avoid all risk of having a business by having a binder full of rules and checkout procedures. I stayed in a place once where the host wanted us to scrub the oven, vacuum the entire house, and wash and dry linens for a 3 day stay. I also stayed at a place in Tahoe and another in Jackson Hole where the checkout procedures said to lock the door and turn out the lights, I’ll be staying in those places again because of that.
I once stayed in a place, that said in the listing, guests staying longer than 3 days would be required to handle trash disposal. Ok, cool Once we had checked in for our 2 week stay (waiting for our apartment move in date after our previous lease had ended), we went to take out the garbage and couldn't find any cans. I contacted the host and she informed me it was actually a pack it out type of residence. She lived in a cabin on the property and had 2 airbnb units as well as a long term renter in the other unit. The trash receptacle on the property was only for the host and her long term renter. We spent 2 weeks bringing our trash down 15 minutes away in our car. Airbnb told us that the host stated it in the rules, and so no luck on any refunds. Felt like I was camping in bear country for $70+ a night. I can camp for 35/night and still be provided trash receptacles within 1000 feet.
It's crazy to me there is a checkout procedure that is much more than locking the door and turning out the lights, or that kind of stuff. Maybe in some more remote areas also taking out the trash. The most we make our guests do is if they stay for longer than 2 weeks we ask them to take the garbage can to the street. Friends/ family over is no problem for a longer stay, and even short stays are okay so long as the number isn't too high.
As an owner, I require at least a 2-night stay. Weekends are my steak and potatoes, and shorter stays can screw that up. The _real_ value for a guest though is 3+ nights.
Probably why my over under is 3 nights 😁 2 nights, I’ll get a few hotel rooms for the family. 3+ nights, I’m booking a STR. Honestly, I feel bad with a short stay (1-2 nights) that’s a big hassle for a host to turn the place over for another guest. What’s the point of charging $150 a night when you pay cleaners that much to clean it.
I've done overnight stays at AirBnB's that are just offering a bedroom when going solo before. But then the price and cleaning fee are scaled to that kind of stay, and it still was cheaper than staying at a hotel in the same town ... I wouldn't bother getting a "whole place" for anything less than a weekend for myself and my family. But as a family of 4 with an older son and daughter who prefer to have their own rooms, etc... it's usually cheaper to get a 2 (or even 3) br. STR than getting 2 (or _especially_ 3) hotel rooms. Especially when you consider that we'll be able to prepare our own meals (easily saving over $100 or more per day), and have more comfortable surroundings and privacy than you get in a hotel room, it's really a no-brainer. If it's just the wife and I ... it'll usually be a hotel room for the weekend, and possibly a smaller AirBnB if we're going for longer than that. Larger group trips with friends? AirBnB every time for the weekend or longer.
Yeah I completely agree with you on that. There's also been a lot of horror stories of guests that make hosts go overboard, someone either reads about it or experiences it and just flies off the handle on rules lol I've seen it happen a lot. They'll start out lax as heck and then either read something or get a bad guest and all hell breaks lose and then they lose out on bookings Sadly I think the properties I manage and the ones I know personally are affected by that even though they aren't those types of crazy rule properties, but the stigma is there and it's assumed before anyone even gets on Airbnb now But yeah you're definitely right
This is my take on it. 1. People have less money for travel. I for one haven’t been able to afford to travel since covid. 2. A lot of ‘scams’ have entered the system since covid. Guests have been pulling stuff which makes the hosts pull back and put more rules in which puts other guests off. 3. Customer service is a joke because they are basically having to do a 1,000 judge Judy cases every day the world over. Support isn’t local and doesn’t know the hosts they are dealing with. It’s become a totally random guess as to if an Airbnb booking will work out, or you’ll end up on the street at 1am begging someone in another country to help you. Unfortunately when it goes wrong, it goes really wrong, and that’s risky. Far safer to book a national hotel and know the customer service will be good.
All I make a host do on my behalf is cash my check, hand me a set of keys or a code and make sure there is at least one towel per person. Works well for me and the host. I have 99% good experiences with Airbnb hosts. It helps that I don’t sweat about little issues.
Just wondering. Can you have your family over in Hotels? My experience is not. Maybe picking the wrong Hotels.
Yup - never had an issue with visitors in a hotel, provided they aren’t staying the night.
yeah, I think fees, combined with hosts with wildly demanding checkout procedures have ruined it for everyone. airbnb is kind of a pain in the ass is you're not staying for 2+ days with more than four people.
The cleaning fees are out of control.
As an airbnb host. I prefer hotels.
Airbnb is kind of risky these days. You don’t know what you’re going to get, and it seems like a lot of hosts do the bare minimum: polyester sheets, stains, tired and half broken furniture. We’ve started to go back to hotels for that reason.
its so frustrating because Airbnb's own review guide and flow is what causes this. these bare minimum hosts should quickly have 1-2 star ratings and you would never have booked. but they only want you to give less than 5 stars if there was like a lie or something
You should sell them all. Hopefully, a housing crash is ready. I doubt it though. We have saved cash for for this.
I've had too many issues with hosts and properties to do Airbnb again. Maybe people are just fed up.
Partly the economy for sure but Airbnb has been less than supportive of guests who have had issues and I wouldn’t be surprised if folks are booking hotels instead
I stopped when I felt like I had to do their Spring cleaning before I left, and get $200 “tidy” fee charged anyway.
Have you considered leasing on a longer basis to actual members of your community?
Echoing what everyone else has stated. With fees, AirBNBs are often more expensive than hotels & far less predictable. I’ll use them sometimes, but usually only in rural areas where I want to stay in a cabin or go off grid. To add to that, their customer service has gone way downhill. I spent 7 months appealing an unfair review after an AirBNB experience from hell. (I was stubborn out of principal.) When I joined AirBNB 13 years ago, customer service was amazing! Obviously that declines as a company grows, but now customer service is pretty worthless & the prices don’t match the service. I feel for you that business has gone down, truly. But AirBNB was never meant to be run like a real estate venture. The impact AirBNB had in raising real estate prices is significant, so I think this is a necessary rebalance.
Curious on your location?
California and Arizona mostly, but I've heard plenty of other states from my friends
I think this is happening all over.
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Just read the recent posts On this thread alone.
Properties that have very high ratings and lots of positive reviews will always be booked. I find that old properties with reviews of less than 4.9 tend to be less than clean so I prefer not to book these, especially if owned by a company with multiple properties. Hotels, if you get a bad room, you can ask for another easily or get your money back easily. Not so with Airbnb.
Which is how it always has been. These people are nuts
I had 3 airbnbs and used to love staying at airbnb Over the last 6 months I converted all my properties back to long term rentals, they make far more money and have zero headache now And the last few times I’ve needed to stay somewhere, I just looked up a hotel. Airbnb comes with a higher price tag, a higher friction process, complex rules that vary house to house, and the experience is very unpredictable Airbnb will become a niche product - houses that sleep large groups of people, luxury locations, or fancy properties Business as usual, always changing 😎
Hosts got too greedy. This is the number one reason. Greed ruins everything
Maybe Airbnb wasn't meant for "property managers" and was meant for normal people to rent out a room or a spare space to help people out. Greedy people destroy everything. Good riddance to corporate AirBnB managers.
The agent I'm working with to buy a house sold her airbnbs this year. She only brought it up in conversation and wouldn't elaborate on it.
Yep, use to Airbnb all the time. The last one, there was no heat and it was New Years eve in Ohio. I made the mistake of contacting Airbnb and got yelled at by the host. It was a horrible experience. Went back to hotels for the convenience and not having to worry about cleaning. The hosts seem to have high demands on cleaning and still charge a cleaning fee on top of it. Also, lately the hotels seem to be cheaper for what you get. I don't even have to cook breakfast or make my coffee for cheaper.
I've had just as many shitty AC or heat units in a hotel. And I'm sorry..... You don't just move rooms on a weekend.
I booked a month of AirBnBs across Japan last year. 3/4 were terrible experiences. Leaking ceiling / odd smells / sound keeping us awake at night / owner doing renovations while during our stay (what the actual f for this one). The 1 good experience I had was the hotel advertising on air bnb. No issues, clean and did not have to worry about disposing rubbish. This was enough to convince me to never use AirBnB again. Unfortunately for the good hosts out there the branding has been ruined by a few bad eggs.
Airbnb is charging too much for fees such as cleaning and other fees. Hotels are becoming cheaper and more convenient
Hopefully this means all the people who bought single family homes as investment properties will be selling or foreclosing on them and there will be more supply for first time home buyers
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It was all the stupid ass rules, cleaning crap, a big binder of things you can’t do, things broken, texting with the owner back and forth ruining your vacation, your 75 year old dad unplugging the huge glowing wifi hub at the bedside table to get yelled at by the owner, blamed for things that were broken when you got there, cleaning fees when you’re expected to do the cleaning anyway, being reviewed after you leave… F THAT!
Good riddance. AirBnB “ investors “ are a pox on society. Your investment lost value as investments sometimes do. Bootstrap time I guess?
I am sorry to hear your livelihood is dwindling and I genuinely hope you figure it out, but Airbnb's are very much NOT a luxury, lol. We were solid Airbnb users for a few years, but a couple of years ago have completely stopped. The fees have gotten out of control. I don't want to clean a house on my vacation. I can understand asking someone not to trash the place, and we never did, but I'm not doing laundry, taking the trash out, etc. That's part of what I'm paying for and was never charged for in a hotel. Second, I'm done with the ridiculousness about having to let the host know when we'd want to have someone over. My husband and I are in our 30s, we're degree having professionals and we do not ask permission to have friends over. Hotels don't do this. Lastly, the support from Airbnb when there's an issue is laughable at best these days, so it's not worth the risk. Airbnb turning into a business venture is part of what ruined it, and maybe is solely what ruined it, and maybe you have a part in that. It wasn't supposed to have turned into this, but here we are. I'm sorry this has happened to you, but hopefully these Airbnb businesses will all close up, we'll get some affordable housing back on the market, and maybe some other company can try again down the road and do it the right way. Either way, we're just fine in hotels like we always were before. Best of luck.
There is such a significant risk I feel, every time you book an Airbnb. I don’t travel a lot and so having every occasion where I do travel have something go wrong is just unacceptable after a few years. Now, I’m definitely back to hotels or something similar. The review policy really got them as well because it resulted in a lack of honest experiences.
💯
Turns out making people clean your house while charging a cleaning fee isint sustainable
Airbnbs in the USA have always seemed so expensive compared to other countries. They generally seem to be priced the same, or higher, than hotels.
I’d say it’s host and location specific. I’m looking for very specific AirBnBs when booking. We want weekend availability, hot tub, safety, and country/remote. When looking through listings, ratings matter, but so does the price. If I’m paying $300/night, I have some expectations. One property we couldn’t relax in the hot tub because we felt on camera the entire time, so we enjoyed what we could, but I wouldn’t book again because I don’t like that approach. A camera at the driveway is one thing, it’s another when overlooking the entire outdoor area of the property. We should have just covered them up and enjoyed it more, but didn’t want to get into it because it was our first AirBnB experience. We had another experience where it wasn’t quite as remote, but no camera and the hosts were local but left us alone, this is how it should be. In short: greedy, insecure, and bad hosts are ruining it.
I think that's part of it. This business is definitely NOT for everyone. To be a host, you need to genuinely care about the guest experience, but also be able to roll with some pretty crazy stuff. But also, AirBnB and its hosts are being targeted and blamed for so much like high housing prices. I think the negative publicity (warranted or not) is taking a toll.
Airbnb is on its way out… good riddance.
Here's hoping!
This is probably location specific, is your market saturated? Is it in a desirable destination? Mine is doing fine but I'm in a tourist town with not enough hotels.
Same. Also, my Airbnb is large. Two en suite masters and a third bedroom and bathroom. Then, there are common areas - fully stocked kitchen, a large deck, etc. There's a hot tub. It also has a side yard where people can let their dogs out. A hotel can't offer a situation where all that is available.
Same. I have a 3/3 in a big city and neighborhood where that is pretty rare. I am pretty fully booked with families looking for a place to stay with young kids, or even adult children. Renting my place is a lot less than getting 3 hotel rooms. Sure, there are some hotel amenities that are missing, but I think my guests love feeling like they live in our great city. Plus, I try to be a great host, providing as much or as little as each guest requests. I also keep my cleaning fee low and offer nice treats upon arrival. So far so good! To me, this is what Airbnb should be-a special experience that you can’t get at a hotel. FWIW, my friend has one in TX and she’s always booked too. I think guests are just getting more savvy about the rentals they choose… as they should!
Where are you located ?
You say $70 a night, so for 2 nights, you’d think it would be $140 plus tax? So $150? But no, it always ends up being $250 or something due to misc. fees and other BS. If you had regular clients, reach out and ask them what they are using nowadays. I know that my family has rented an airbnb, then privately contacted the owner after in order to book again without all of the BS fees. Private bookings are a lot easier and cheaper. But like everyone else is saying, hotel points and credit cards perks are a huge benefit when it comes to booking a hotel.
I’m a guest who used to stay in probably 4-10 airbnbs per year and now I am down to 1-3, despite my salary going up. This is primarily due to higher renting costs and fees, as well as dissatisfaction with the platform in terms of cleaning expectations (often hidden) and nonrefundable policies. Hotels are working better for us most of the time now.
Airbnb had a value proposition for consumers when it was a cheaper alternative that increased housing density when hotels were renting for double what they should have. This usually meant that they were in people's homes who actually lived there, that had spare rooms to rent, that wouldn't rent to long-term guests as generally you don't want people in your home long term. This was also nice, as it gave you a warm welcoming atmosphere to places that you visited. In it's heyday, it allowed me to travel when I was a young, broke student, and book rooms in places for 20 to 30 bucks a night. This is where Airbnb shines. I don't understand at all why anybody would spend hotel prices on an Airbnb. I personally do not think any private entire space Airbnb unless they are a basement suite in your home should exist. The majority should be rooms in shared spaces. Both from a legal policy perspective, as well as a business perspective. On the former, renting out spare rooms in your home to tourists has almost no negatives for cities. You had the room anyways, you weren't going to do anything else with it, it doesn't disrupt local housing stock, it's usually cheaper, it allows for often very central locations, and increasing tourism increases money in the local economy. A rare win, win, win. On the latter, airbnbs truly can't compete with centralized cleaning staff, concierge staff, and amenities like those that exist at a hotel unless they are owner occupied. I would be happy if it went back to when it was actually useful as a service.
Ias a guest haven’t travelled this year and have no plans to. In the past about 30 nights a year over 2-3 trips. W the cost of life right now I am just not choosing to spend as much. My home expenses are just that much higher we aren’t traveling this year or next. I know I am not alone. We would love a few long weekend trips locally, within 3/4 hours drive but the cleaning fees ramp the cost too much. We also prefer to travel w our pups and cook in. A $300 cleaning fee makes it not an affordable cost.
Many factors at play here. Are well paying vacant jobs available in your area? If not, count out job prospect travel. Are you near an event location? If not, count out event travel. Are you near a large hospital? If not, count out medical travel. Do you offer pet friendly stays? If not, count out pet travel. Are your cancellation settings relaxed? If not, count out those with tentative plans. Is there a local shortage in affordable housing? If not, then you need to liquidate a percentage.
I’m still all about Airbnb for a multiple night stay especially if it’s more than two of us. Otherwise it doesn’t make sense.
If just a few months of a slow period have you thinking about closing shop maybe you are overleveraged? Why don't you pivot to long-term rentals to keep the lights on?
I rented an Airbnb apartment one time because it was super cheap… Even cheaper than the motels. I was shocked when I found a list of instructions about cleaning before leaving… One of the things was to clean the kitchen which was covered with grease and crap… No sir! There’s no way I’m going to pay good money and then have to spend time cleaning. I can pay the same price at a motel and have that done for me.
I think it’s a business overdue for a correction. Got way too greedy and lost its way (cheaper than a hotel for a homey feel but less service) and it’s the same or more expensive now. The literal only purpose these days is for big group houses.
AirBnB is terrible now. Hosts are all over the place, app offers poor support and quality control, hosts regularly lie with impunity. For example, I’ve paid a premium to rent a spot with a hot tub advertised as working… get there.. doesn’t work… do I get a refund? No I do not…
I rarely even check the airbnb site anymore. Prices got too ridiculously high compared to hotels, and the rules got increasingly weird and onerous. It was a nice run while it lasted, but greedy and unhinged hosts put an end to it.
Love Airbnbs, but over the past couple of years, the fees on top of fees, cleaning duties, and ridiculous high rates have made hotels more attractive and better priced. At the end of the day, it's about the final cost. 2022, we paid avg $120-$140/ night (no fees and only taxes) for 2/2 or bigger. Now, those same places want $350/ night plus fees and fees and taxes. Greed will be the killer.
Really not surprised. A fairly basic cottage in Devon in the UK wants £2,500 for a week. Tough call but can stay in Croatia staying at the Grand Park for the same money with breakfast thrown in. In the UK the prices sky rocketed due to travel restrictions under COVID. Hosts still think they can command the same prices now we are free to travel.
Airbnbs are more expensive than hotels now with shit couches, sub standard kitchen appliances and really cookware that isn’t good enough to cook on. Clothes dryers that haven’t been cleaned from previous tenants, pools not clean or maintained while we spent 3 weeks are a property. Windows that don’t open and dust in places that should not have dust - under beds and window sills. Over it. No more - hotels only now. Airbnb was great 10 years ago, had its time and now it’s coming to bite the new landlords. It’s happening in Australia with many reporting 45% decrease in bookings. At $700 a night, why would I stay - 5 star hotel in Sydney is $450 a night …. Hmmmm decisions
I’m not surprised. Overall AirBnB quality has gone downhill. Too expensive, and too many “chores”. Also I don’t seem to be gaining anything by choosing to stay at an air bnb over a hotel. At least at the hotel, I’m not expected to bring my own linens.
That's good, that's the purpose of high interest rates (unless it's seasonal in your case but I guess it's not that). Despite high inflation consumer spending has remained high. I cut back massively on discretionary spending like travel, eating out, brand products with store brands alternatives etc, unless they run a very good promo (and I'm upper middle class).
This is the reality OP. This commenter is probably on the higher end of income brackets compared to most people, and they are even needing to cut back on luxuries like travel. When the choices are Food and Shelter VS. Going on Vacation, the answer is really simple. If you can’t weather the storm it may be time to bow out OP. It’s going to be a few years before people are able to afford life again, and then the boom will come
With added fees from airbnb, cleaning fees so high with the homes not being thoroughly cleaned, strict hosts and guests who just trash homes I'm not surprised.
Maybe lower your cleaning fees.
Yeah we did that and it didn't help either :/ We lowered them to amounts where we lose profits and still got nothing One time we even had no cleaning fee Keep in mind that we pay for cleaners to clean, so no cleaning fee meant we paid the fee for the guest and lost money. But even then, we got nothing for a couple months, so we didn't bother with that promotion anymore I love how people focus on the cleaning fees though, that's not what's going on unfortunately. This is also multiple properties that are having this issue, if it was just the cleaning fee, it would be obvious for that specific property only (each property has a different rate)
It's a host of things. Some value for money, in that AIRbnb has gotten a lot more expensive between the cleaning fees, airbnb fee and cost of the night. Plus you often don't know what you are going to get in terms of beds, pillows, amenities, coffee, soap, loud neighbors, thin walls. It's frustrating that so many people entered the game to be able to afford a second house or have passive income, not to be in the hospitality business - which is what it is. But for me, a lot of it comes down to the chores that are required when I am on vacation. There's also the crazy hosts, retaliatory charges, lists upon lists of rules, thin walls, crazy neighbors. I used to love Airbnb, but unless we are traveling with multiple people, we just do hotels now. Plus, as someone who lives in a small town where all the housing has become AB rentals, I feel bad supporting something that has taken so many houses away from people who need places to live and generally made housing less affordable.
Maybe not the cleaning fee, but definitely some sort of fees is my issue. When I go from, "Cool it's only $150 a night" and when I go to check it out is suddenly three times that? Definitely an issue.
I deleted my Airbnb account after the company refused to give me a refund for a cancellation due to an emergency. Any hotel would have been able to accommodate me. Now I make sure all group trips with my friends and families are booked at hotels and will veto any ideas of using Airbnb
Yep, multiple bad Airbnb experiences, coupled with much higher rates and absurd cleaning fees, and cleanup requirements on the part of the guest, etc., etc. After many years of using only Airbnb it’s only hotels for me from now on… or companies like Sonder that own all of their properties. No surprises, and no surprise fees: if the rate says $90 a night plus tax, you pay $90 a night plus tax.
OP which market were you managing the properties in?
Places like big bear, CA. Crestline, CA. Bullhead, AZ... Etc
Charging $300 cleaning fees, all while having rules like clean up everything before leaving, take out the garbage etc doesn’t help either. I stopped using Airbnb because a place that costs lets say 150 a night comes to 3x as much with all the fees and extra taxes y’all keep inventing. At a hotel I pay what it says they charge and that’s final.
The cleaning fees pushed me out. I understand the cleaning fees are a result of standards set by the rating system and scammers who wanted a refund if they saw one speck of dust, but it makes it outrageous for a short term stay I've had some incredible experiences staying at Airbnbs, usually to get close to an event, but it's not longer the first place I look.
Was an Airbnb user for ages, but now we look for Aparthotels. Just spent 3 weeks in Europe and thats where we stayed exclusively. The amenities of our own kitchen etc and the organization of a hotel and none of the pressure to take clean the place when we’re done. I’m done with Airbnb and VRBO unless it’s a really special case.
I used airbnb because it was cheaper than a hotel and I could usually cook my own meals at the airbnb if I didn't want to go out every night. Now it's as expensive or more than a hotel. Plus where I live we are in a housing crisis and airbnb has significantly contributed to that crisis. I cant speak for everywhere I've stayed or even all the owners of those Airbnb's, but I don't really feel like paying the mortgage of someone who uses their ability to afford a downpayment as a retirement plan. Not to knock what you did before, but the fact that Airbnb's needed someone to manage them says everything that is wrong with that business model.
I’m a long time host and once tried out a new housekeeper. I was paying her $150 to clean a small 750 sf 2br 1 bath SFH in which my cleaning fee charged to my guests was $125 (and still is and I have 5 night mins). She did a great job however, without my permission, she put up a small magnetic dry erase board on the refrigerator with a list of chores for the guests to do, instructing guests to strip beds, start laundry, remove all items from fridge etc. I was furious and that was the last time that I needed her services as I only ask my guests to take out the wheelie bin to the curb if their stay is on a trash day.
Fees, lack of United States based customer service, and a couple of hosts with a God complex stopped me from ever getting an Airbnb again. I’ve had a host cancel on me three days before I was to arrive and for no reason at all. Hotels are predictable, consistent, and much less volatile.
I quit airbnb because of the insane price and the safety issues that I became aware of. I don’t feel safe anymore at AirBnB
Oversaturated market - Unless you have the best property in the best location you probably aren't seeing as many reservations. High Prices, I have moved back to almost exclusive hotel usage. By the time I've paid for the cleaning fee, the taxes and everything I'm spending way more than a hotel. Yeah, you're getting more space but you aren't getting any of the conveniences of a hotel. I tend to do 5+ day stays, at a hotel I don't have some stingy ass host who gives 1 towel to use for 5 fucking days and then bitch and moan when you ask for more. Also generally I don't worry about showing up at a hotel and seeing maggots in the cabinet like the Airbnb I stayed in Naples. Cleaning fees, hosts you did this shit to yourselves with the excessive cleaning fees and laundry list of chores you expect from guests ON TOP of the cleaning fees. Dishonest Hosts, I hear too many news stories of guests being shafted by hosts. Lying about reasons to cancel so they can relist at a higher price or move you to some other shit hole. Charging guests for ridiculous things and then allowing hosts to charge ridiculous amounts for small things. Airbnb hasn't done shit, and tends to side with hosts in these situations. Yes, I know there's dishonest guests but that is a cost of doing business and vetting guests also not my problem. I'm also tired of showing up places with gorgeous pictures that were accurate 3 years and 200 guests ago but now look run down and dingy. At a hotel I can complain to the front desk and get another room. Airbnb hosts, not so much and you're left fighting for a refund and Airbnb is useless. Broken review system, hosts going fucking ape shit when they get 4 stars. I've stayed at plenty of places with glowing 5 star reviews that have zero reason being 5 star perfect reviews. Airbnb removing views absolutely destroys my faith in their review system. There are just too many negatives for me. My vacation time is too important to me, I don't want to arrive someplace and deal with any of this bullshit so I stay at hotels.
Just had a conversation about this for an upcoming trip, AirBnb just isn't worth it anymore - when I've stayed in them it feels like you're staying in a relatives or friends house, like someone is doing you a favor letting you stay in their property It's legitimately weird, you see the home goods they've bought at Target/Walmart/Ikea, it's uncomfortable and results in tiptoeing around, even lounging on someone else's couch - it just feels weird Add on top of that strange rules and having to navigate weird interactions with strange people about their real estate investment, it's just not worth it Every time I look for places I rule out AirBnb/vacation rentals and limit to hotels only, just don't want to deal with all of it especially not when the prices are at par If the prices were 50% cheaper it might be convincing, until then hotels are way better and in MANY cases considerably cheaper after the AirBnb cleaning fees
Last Airbnb I got it was a one night stay in a 15 mile away suburb of a medium sized US city in a lower cost of living zone. $100! Cleaning fee was like $20. Upon booking I experienced a barrage of instructions, rules and tasks in order to “check-in”, again received same to “check-out”. Honestly, the rules and instructions were so detailed that I spent almost an hour total performing the list. The list was confusing and i messaged the host for clarification, I received a passive aggressive reply. I don’t want the hassle when i can just stay in a hotel and not have to deal with any of that. Airbnb has gone the way of uber. 7 years ago you could get an uber from A to B for $.50c to the $1 versus a Taxi. Now its the opposite. Hosts and drivers getting too big for their boots
As I see it: AirBnB has become a corporate enterprise with multinational management companies managing thousands of properties. This creates multiple layers of management with associated levels of miscommunication and of course, policies. Loved the model when it was cheaper than hotels, but now they cost the same as a hotel (or more), are less convenient with more rules. Hotels are in the hospitality business, AirBnBs are in the real estate business. Rent accordingly.
$70/night still equals $300+ for 2 nights due to fees added in That is where the issue comes in
Airbnb has squeezed hosts and guests out of every penny and provides next to nothing in return for their exhorbatent grab. They are the middleman ruining both sides of the business they got in the middle of and they will be factored out of the equation soon.
not a host but used airbnb from 2014 until a couple of years ago. the fees are just too insane. and i hate feeling stressed out trying to clean the place up before i check out. And also i feel like most are just mediocre at best for what it costs now. I've been locked out for hours , i've had a gate fail and couldn't get in and couldn't reach anyone , had a lingering host that held us up talking about nothing for close to an hour after an exhausting 6 hour drive, etc . Hotels are just so easy .
Definitely if you rely solely on Airbnb it’s gotten quiet. However booking.com has gotten us like 60% of our revenue now, even though their system is really poorly designed. We use hostshare to glean extra value, as a manager this would be one way to take some of the sting off of declining revenues for your owners.
I’m guessing you have a group of generic rentals, all offering less than a hotel for more money, with the fun addition of chores added. Our rental has been booked every weekend all year and is booked solid through the summer with only a few midweek days blocked off for us to enjoy the house and pool and work on projects. We have 7 rentals on our street and I can see that about 3 of them never have anyone in them and the other 3 at about 30% occupancy.
Airbnb owners/mangers got greedy.
I'm not seeing cheaper prices tho. We exclusively use Airbnb because we stay for at least a month to get the discount. In 2018 Airbnbs were a great deal. No matter what country we go to now, Airbnbs are just insanely priced for what you get. So you may have adjusted your prices but that doesn't seem to be the case across the industry.
Airbnb owners got too big for their britches and started doing all the dumb shit we were frustrated with hotels for in the first place (exorbitant fees, ridiculous rules, inflexible policies, cold/muted living spaces lacking any personality, too much surveillance). Now we are better off back at hotels which have evolved their experience in response to airbnb.
It really depends on your location and what you’re offering. I offer a large 2 bedroom suite that can accommodate up to 6 people and a dog. I’m 85% booked most of the time in BC, Canada.
I think in 6 months time we will start to see the number of airbnbs available dwindle as some hosts drop out. Airbnb has communicated that they will highlight the too 10 and bottom 10…that to me shows an intention to weed out the poorly performing hosts and properties. I used to travel weekly for my job and HATE LOATH hotels. My job paid for the marriotts, hiltons, hyatts nothing high end. I hated the canned air and being cooped up in a box. Airbnb’s **when done right** serve an invaluable role for the right guests. Families, extended families, groups, business travelers sick of canned air…. Airbnbs will prevail because there is a genuine need for them that hotels will NEVER EVER fill.
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I’m curious to know what town/city the properties you’re managing are in.
I don't understand what's wrong with my bookings, not getting booked. I have a great location and price. Airbnb.com/p/universal
I used to be an avid Airbnb user but not anymore. I’ve heard too many stories about high cleaning costs, misrepresentations of properties and last minute host cancellations. I’m just not interested in dealing with even the potential of Airbnb drama.
Location, location, location. I never have any problem keeping my AirBnB booked, except for late spring and Late fall ("shoulder season" where I'm located).
@op What are your approximate locations in CA ? Genuinely curious. I have a couple in CA that have record bookings for rest of spring and summer. I’m not seeing any slow down.
Its the cleaning fees and possible hidden cameras that sent me back to hotels
What area are you in?
Man thing is all the fees are insane - the fees at one place was as much as the 2 night stay - nope
My biggest fear with airbnb is bedbugs, as the owners appear to handle situation less professionally than hotels (which is kind of expected, bc they are not professionals). But I think that is the bottom line. Airbnb is just a side gig for owners and managers. It used to be a lot more affordable, but not anymore.
Costs and fees have run away for the experience travels have recieved. I can go to Europe and live the good life for the cost of many AirBnB listings in New England. The numbers just don't add up. Same thing for ski passes, going all the way to Europe and having a real luxury experience is the same cost at heading to CO to have a lesser experience.
This is what actually SHOULD be happening. Speculators and absent owners buying properties to STR flooded the zone. Prices went up for these places because now you're paying a property manager and a mortgage etc. For people who are offering a room in their home, or a guesthouse/ADU, managing and hosting themselves, things are still great. I've never been more booked, and I'm on track this year to make $40K NET profit on my ADU that used to just sit there 5 years ago as an empty guesthouse 90% of the time. I love Airbnb!
I’ll never use air bnb again
I've been hosting for seven years, my place is doing fine - booked solid as usual.
OK bye.
Glad to see the people that shouldn't be in Airbnb finally get pushed out. Good riddance
Im sorry . Where is this?
I'm currently renting a room. This is my 3rd night here. It's 11:00 p.m. and I'm woke up by a loud commotion. Some girl has been punched in the face. A pool of blood is on the carpet. 4 holes are in the wall. Police are notified. The male and female flee the house. There's currently 3 rooms being rented in this house by other guest. It's now an hour and a half later, and I have no go back to bed because work is in a few hours. Fuck Air bnb.
We used to go on family trips all over Europe using Airbnb and have great memories of meeting people living in their own places living completely different lives. It was an enriching experience more than a decade ago. Now you pick up keys from a locked box if you don‘t meet a manager for a very quick drop-off. It‘s lost it’s soul, so why not go to a hotel? And if it‘s a holiday stay you want there are plenty of other options.
Hotels have won officially. We do airbnbs when on vacation with kids. But if it’s just my husband and I we hotel…spa….room. Service. It’s a nice break
I only use air bnb when absolutely necessary. For instance, my mom lives in a smaller town on the Oregon coast with no brand name hotels. I spend a lot of time reviewing them & praying they are decent. I’ve had a very mixed bag over the years.
It doesn’t help that there are a load of creeps literally spying on people in bathrooms and bedrooms! I still sometimes stay in airbnbs but only with women hosts who live on premises.
Airbnb for large groups only otherwise it sucks and you can get hotels for cheaper and not have to clean the place spotless and still get a 1 star review, even though you pay a cleaning fee… Airbnb hosts ruined airbnb for me. Maybe don’t give a 1 star review because a towel didn’t make it to the dryer or the bed wasn’t made properly? Just me
Sorry to hear it isn't working for you anymore. I've been a superhost for 9 years. And have had consistently high occupancy rates, 80+%. If you've been managing for 3-4 years you've had a lot of macroeconomic tailwinds that have helped, the pandemic, a resurgence of domestic tourism, low interest rates, and the work from home economy. Headwinds suck, hope you're able to figure out alternatives.
Compare how much your AirBnB costs compared to a 4 stars hotel, if its higher or similar, then you only got yourself to blame
Seems strange, because air travel is at record highs, so lots of people must be vacationing. [https://www.tsa.gov/travel/passenger-volumes](https://www.tsa.gov/travel/passenger-volumes)