[HN Gopher] Airbnb May 2022 Release
___________________________________________________________________
Airbnb May 2022 Release
Author : talhof8
Score : 89 points
Date : 2022-05-11 13:04 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.airbnb.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.airbnb.com)
| agd wrote:
| Aircover seems a rebranding of the current policy? They already
| give a refund if the host cancels (as you would expect). And they
| already have discretion to find you alternative accommodation
| (although they never have for me).
|
| It's still useless if your long term stay is cancelled at the
| last minute as it's often impossible to find a replacement for a
| comparable price.
|
| This is the risk with using Airbnb for long term stays - last
| minute cancellations can (and do) happen.
| pikseladam wrote:
| I really liked the new design. It is really hard to do it this
| simple yet useful.
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| > In the unlikely event [we can't provide you the AirBnB you
| booked], we'll find guests a similar or better home, or we'll
| refund them.
|
| You had me until the refund. I understand it isn't always
| possible to find another place to stay last minute in a city -
| sometimes things are just fully booked. I get that, in that case,
| you'd have to issue a refund.
|
| But this doesn't give me the peace of mind they imply. It just
| tells me I can be stuck in a city with no shelter and left to
| fend for myself finding a place to stay.
|
| Peace of mind is AirBnB maintaining a reserve inventory by under-
| booking a city or maintaining relationships with hotels. Were
| they can guarantee an equal-or-better home or a refund and at
| least a studio apartment or hotel room.
| kumarvvr wrote:
| Looks like the transition to "experiences" is taking hold.
|
| Also, what the hell are "Grand Piano" homes ?
|
| Do people like to have big pianos in their vacation stays?
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| I think its the type of thing that might appeal to someone who
| wants a fancy vacation home of a certain style. If there is a
| grand piano the rest of the house is probably pretty nice.
|
| Does seem like an odd category but maybe its just a bucket they
| realized they could fill with high priced rentals.
| durnygbur wrote:
| Considering their user base is mostly millennials and younger
| who will never afford to buy housing, there should be category
| "elephant in the room".
| Zealotux wrote:
| I suppose if you're a professional piano player you might enjoy
| being able to train while on holiday, but I'm as curious as
| you, some of these prices sounds insane to me, $10k for one
| night?!
| jitl wrote:
| Maybe it's more about what kind of home has a ~$20,000+ musical
| instrument & a room big enough to hold it? That sounds like a
| fancy house to me.
| paxys wrote:
| Split stays is a fantastic feature. Limiting it to just two homes
| seems weird though. I'd love to be able to stay in a city for 2+
| months and change homes every couple weeks if I have to. At the
| moment finding places and timing all the dates is a nightmare.
| boringg wrote:
| Split stays? I don't understand how that changes anything...
| isn't that just bundling to stays and packaging it under one
| reservation?
|
| Or is it that you can get shorter stays under the minimum number
| of days required to rent from a place? If so isn't that just
| pushing the cost to the home owner who now has to pay for the
| turn over service?
|
| Airbnb -- super interesting company, great business model out of
| the gate -- as we start to get to the mass adoption stage the
| prices keep getting silly and the quality outside of the core
| offerings kind of slips. I don't see how they continue to keep
| growth going without some major sacrifices.
| ramimac wrote:
| I see the value just from a search perspective -- take as an
| example:
|
| * I'm looking to stay 8 days in Paris in fairly peak season
|
| * There is no good availability for a single Airbnb for 8 days
|
| * This lets me see good matches of "3 in spot one, 5 in spot
| two" as well as "4 and 4" etc. without needing to do a lot of
| filtering by availability and digging into individual listings
| boringg wrote:
| Got it - that makes a lot more sense.
|
| Instead of having to try and piece meal it yourself they give
| you great options.
|
| Actually now that you have clarified it -- it sounds pretty
| great once I test the functionality!
| numtel wrote:
| I'm guessing that it's so that when you search for a long
| duration of stay, many of the listings will be unavailable but
| with split stays they can make it easier to figure out how to
| plan a longer stay, so you don't have to look at the
| availability calendars of a bunch of different listings.
| [deleted]
| lysecret wrote:
| Just felt like I wanted to contribute something positive here. I
| have used Airbnb extensively for the past 5 years. I used to live
| 1 month at a time at one place and then switch. And I only had 1
| singe visit (for a daily visit) where the host canceled and at
| this time I got back my money + 80 euro.
| monkeydust wrote:
| I am not a heavy Airbnb user. Most of what I read on AirCover
| aside from the 24-hour Safety Line I assumed was part of the
| standard service.
| fangsout wrote:
| I'm a host for a cabin on airbnb and vrbo and I can say that it
| is remarkable that airbnb has achieved such a horrible reputation
| amongst hosts and guests alike. The truth is that the product is
| pretty great, until something goes wrong... Airbnb will refund a
| guest their money for seemingly any unverifiable accusation. I
| greatly prefer bookings from Vrbo despite their horrid tech
| simply because they are more reasonable when a guest sees a
| ladybug and wants a refund.
| snake_plissken wrote:
| I just happened to go to the website this morning ([un]ironically
| some friends are coming to town and their host cancelled on
| them).
|
| At least for me this new design is unusable. All I wanted to do
| is enter a city/zip and I couldn't figure it how to do it. It
| feels like they are really pushing those high end
| lifestyle/adventure/experience options.
| axg11 wrote:
| I don't understand what you mean by unusable. I just went to
| Airbnb.ca, typed in a postal code in the very big entry form at
| the top, chose the next two nights and immediately received
| relevant results.
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| I recently had an experience where we locked ourselves out of an
| AirBnB by leaving my phone inside the apartment. The door code
| was in the AirBnB messages and protected by 2FA that required my
| phone - which was in the apartment.
|
| I got to another computer and couldn't log in. I tried to contact
| customer support - but it required an account. So I created
| another account and tried to message the host, but it wouldn't
| let me talk to them without a booking. So I entered all my credit
| card information into the new account and attempted to book with
| the host - but they had no bookings available. So I used the new
| account to reach out to customer service - they were unresponsive
| taking 30+minutes per message to respond. Given that what I was
| doing looked plausibly like a phishing scheme, you can imagine
| this would require a lot of back and forth, which basically
| rendered CS useless.
|
| I ended up solving the problem by checking the public records of
| the property to find the owners name. Then tried finding them on
| social media but all of their accounts were private. Luckily the
| AirBnB was in my (smallish) home town and I was able to find
| someone in my social circles that knew the host and shared their
| phone number.
|
| It was an absolute nightmare and I'm still not sure what I would
| have done had I not found someone who knew them.
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| Recent thread on Airbnb here
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31253306
| portlander52232 wrote:
| I've lived in Airbnbs full-time for the last two years. While the
| existence of the service has enabled a fun lifestyle for me, my
| opinion of the company has fallen and fallen over that time:
|
| * I've paid them tens of thousands of dollars in service fees.
| Yet the customer service experience is on par with an airline or
| cable company. Getting bounced from person to person every hour,
| having to explain the situation a dozen times (really, a dozen),
| and in the end they rarely help me.
|
| * Easily 90% of listings contain some kind of misrepresentation.
| Probably half it's something egregious. Airbnb doesn't seem to
| care.
|
| Hopefully they're trying to turn the ship here. We'll see.
| boringg wrote:
| They won't ever fund their customer service operations to a
| high level in that you get great client care across the board.
| It costs them too much money. The best you could hope for is
| some kind of tiered class care.
| joshuajill wrote:
| Good luck. Only for VIP's.
| bradly wrote:
| Check Vrbo for the same listing before booking on Airbnb. We
| have vacation rentals on both and we need to charge more on
| Airbnb to cover our their extra fees and charges.
| robofanatic wrote:
| Wonder how human support scaling is done for a business with
| potentially millions of customers
| mh- wrote:
| It was done just fine for decades by all manner of
| businesses...
| nikanj wrote:
| You've actually managed to reach people at AirBnB? And not just
| one, but enough to get bounced from person to person? That's
| better than my track record..
| kbos87 wrote:
| 100% agree with you that the fees are really substantial when
| you start to pay attention to them. I guess when you are
| invested in a particular property and already dropping $2,000,
| it's easy for them to tack on another $400 without a lot of
| people questioning it.
|
| On your second point, I think a lot of this has to do with the
| price point you are renting at.
|
| My experience - I'm usually staying with a group of people at a
| relatively expensive property as a vacation/splurge, and I've
| never had anything less than a 5 star stay. I'm pretty choosy
| in reading reviews (but don't expect someones' home to be as
| spotless or perfect as I expect a hotel to be) - nonetheless my
| expectations are always met on Airbnb.
|
| On the flip side, I've seen comments like this one from guests
| who have been deceived or disappointed, and also chatter among
| Airbnb hosts renting less expensive properties complaining
| about the constant stream of problem guests they have. There's
| a particular host on TikTok I occasionally get served who talks
| about her hosting experience and she's constantly dealing with
| issues (and as a result, micromanaging her guests.) Downward
| spiral.
| mox1 wrote:
| This is like the dirty secret of Airbnb. They have absolutely
| garbage customer service. The Reddit /r/airbnb is mostly
| frequented by Hosts, and there is a horror story posted there
| weekly.
|
| I get that people only kinda show up there to complain, but
| there is a theme amongst these stories.
|
| 1. Customer Service doesn't understand their own policies.
| Often, a host will need to read their own terms of service back
| to the CS rep to get some requested action (undo an instant
| booking, not allowing a pet, etc).
|
| 2. To get a promised refund / money owed / etc. you need to
| call and call and call, continue to ask the status, etc. etc.
|
| 3. Their $1 million host guarantee isn't worth anything. Their
| marketing on this vs the reality is comically far apart. Unless
| it results in bad publicity for them, they will stick very very
| strictly to all of the gotchas. (Claim denied, guest says it
| wasn't them, existing damage. Ohh you had another guest in,
| claim denied it could have been anyone.)
|
| The general recommendation is that as a host, you need to 100%
| look out for yourself and that the company does not have your
| back at all.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > They have absolutely garbage customer service.
|
| I'm not a customer of AirBnB; I'm the neighbour of an
| unhosted AirBnB flat, that is let for most of the year. They
| dump food-waste in my recycling bin; break the common parts,
| leaving me to fix the damage; come and go at all times of
| night; and they intimidate me if I'm unlucky enough to meet
| them.
|
| I'm OK with the old-style "couchsurfing" model. But the
| unhosted ultra-short letting model means that I don't have a
| neighbour, instead I live next to a glorified holiday chalet,
| except that a holiday chalet is usually let for a couple of
| weeks; this place is rarely let for more than 2 days.
|
| I want to see AirBnB banned from the city I live in.
| 10amxn10 wrote:
| soperj wrote:
| No one is going to want to stay at an AirBNB who's windows
| are constantly busted.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Yes, it's a damn shame those last guests were such party
| animals that they wrecked the entire place...
| bogomipz wrote:
| I'm curious how much time you estimate you have spent dealing
| with customer service per year or per month in those two years.
| That would be an interesting statistic given that you've been
| full time for two years.
|
| It's not uncommon to burn the better part of an hour with cable
| customer service calls with an airline or cable company. And
| it's hard to quantify them solely in terms of time as I think
| most people would rate those two businesses' customer service
| at the bottom of the heap in terms of experience.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Curious, where have you been staying with the egregious
| misrepresentation? What sorts of things were false?
|
| We've used Airbnb about 2x/year for a while now and the worst
| we've had is a house that's a bit dirty (but never to the point
| we'd leave). But, most of our stays are rural, smaller towns,
| or western Europe, so maybe it's a location thing?
|
| I dislike the pricing visibility (fees and taxes only shown
| later, and sometimes the feed are astronomical). That's
| probably my biggest gripe with the platform.
| doix wrote:
| > Curious, where have you been staying with the egregious
| misrepresentation? What sorts of things were false?
|
| The biggest offender I've seen is a "Dedicated workspace".
| Everyone seems to just tick that box, and it never really
| exists. I can see from the photos that it doesn't exist, but
| it makes searching really annoying. I stopped ticking it,
| because it just filters out otherwise acceptable places.
|
| I've also seen people tick stuff like gyms/pools when really
| they mean a commercial one is available a short walk away.
|
| What counts as a 'kitchen' is pretty debatable as well, I've
| seen places with only a microwave tick that box.
|
| I don't mind all these things, I know what to expect judging
| from the photos. I just wished there was some penalty for
| doing that to make filtering easier. In the current state,
| the filters are pretty useless (in my experience).
|
| Cleaning fees for dirty places also feels pretty bad. I don't
| mind paying the fee if the place is actually clean, but it
| seems people just set it to make extra money. I've had hosts
| ask me to take out the trash and put the bed sheets in the
| washing machine whilst also asking for $100 cleaning fees.
|
| I don't actually mind cleaning the place myself (if there's a
| vacuum/mop and washing machine), but charging for it and not
| providing it really rubs me the wrong way.
| golergka wrote:
| > The biggest offender I've seen is a "Dedicated
| workspace". Everyone seems to just tick that box, and it
| never really exists.
|
| Different people seem to have different understanding of
| what it means. To some, it implicitly means a separate
| room; to others, any table and chair are a workspace.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| AirBnB should explain to the people offering a room /
| house when they should tick it, or what the place should
| conform to in order to be allowed to check it.
|
| But that requires oversight from AirBnB, to the point
| where they have to send out inspectors or mystery guests,
| and they don't want to have to pay for that, they want
| the service to be self-regulating. So the people offering
| the rooms, if there are no negative consequences to
| ticking a box unjustly but there will be benefits, i.e.
| more people viewing the advert and renting it, they will
| keep doing it.
|
| The only way to fix it is with human intervention and
| Consequences. AirBnB would be a much better experience if
| it was curated, if people couldn't make their own
| listings, if there were Consequences for lying, or if
| they can't post their own listings but need an AirBnB
| representative to do it for them. With fines if they
| change something afterwards.
|
| But that requires money and to give up on some of their
| profits, they wouldn't want that. It's about volume, not
| the best experience for their users.
| alistairSH wrote:
| _The only way to fix it is with human intervention and
| Consequences._
|
| Or, remove the filter, as it serves no purpose and is
| effectively unenforceable.
| doix wrote:
| > To some, it implicitly means a separate room; to
| others, any table and chair are a workspace.
|
| I take it to mean a _dedicated_ table & chair. A sofa and
| coffee table are not a dedicated workspace. I don't
| expect a separate room, that would be an extra bedroom in
| my mind. Just a desk that isn't the single dining/coffee
| table is enough for me.
|
| Here's an example of what I mean [0]. That was the single
| desk like thing in the entire place, not even a coffee
| table. Calling that a dedicated workspace is clearly
| bullshit. That place was pretty convenient though, the
| perfect height for me as a standing desk :D.
|
| [0] https://imgur.com/a/B3mWc6j
| eliseumds wrote:
| It is absurd that some hosts will even consider high/club
| chairs next to a kitchen counter a suitable place for
| work. It is the most frustrating filter on Airbnb right
| now.
|
| https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Help/How-do-you-
| define-q...
| enos_feedler wrote:
| This is one of the reasons I believe that Apple will
| feature Airbnb as a launch partner for whatever kind of
| AR/VR device they might end up launching. Could easily
| see the user story of "know exactly what you are renting"
| on stage when they launch the product. Remember, Airbnb
| built their business on high quality image capture. The
| famous story of doing things that don't scale where they
| hopped from host to host capturing beautiful photos of
| their spaces. VR is the next leg and a meaningful use
| case. Imagine if every host could capture their own space
| by waiving their phone around their space? Big idea here.
| airstrike wrote:
| I find it hard to believe that Apple would associate
| themselves so closely with another company and put them
| on the stage, but I could be wrong
|
| They could present the same story but keep it generic to
| get the same value without towing airbnb along
| enos_feedler wrote:
| Apple does this all the time. Here is a link to the Apple
| Watch hardware launch which shows off use cases made by
| developers (Twitter, American Airlines, City Mapper, BMW,
| Nike):
|
| https://youtu.be/bdyVH5LqneU?t=2043
|
| I would actually be very concerned if Apple launched the
| device (still an if for me) and didn't have 5+ 3rd party
| partners to show off the capabilities.
|
| These companies weren't on stage, but they have brought
| many partners on stage for various reasons (Verizon CEO
| for mmWave in the phones, I believe Epic games, and a few
| other games-related partners as well).
| dazc wrote:
| Anyone claiming to have a dedicated workspace can easily
| include a picture of it. Those 99.9% that don't do that
| can easily be discounted as liars. And if they are lying
| about having a workspace, well they can just as easily be
| lying about everything else too - such as:
|
| The place is very quiet (except for dogs, nusiance
| neighbours and constant building work). Is walking
| distance to the beach (if you consider a 5 mile treck
| nothing but a stroll). Has nice views of the park (if you
| stand on the 5th rung of a step ladder). Has fast
| internet (provided the local bar has not changed the
| password recently). Etc, etc
| yeputons wrote:
| And for lots of hosts "a table" is either a kitchen
| countertop or a coffee table, while "a chair" is a small
| sofa next to it. Et voila, "a dedicated workspace".
| alistairSH wrote:
| Ah, dedicated workspace. I can see your problem, and agree.
| I'd expect that to be a proper desk and chair, not the
| kitchen table or similar. I've never tried using that
| filter - the one time we booked for a working vacation, we
| knew it would be a massive compromise for the duration.
|
| And totally agree on the cleaning fee - that should be
| baked into the nightly cost, along with the taxes. It's a
| cost of doing business, no different than other running
| costs (mortgage, etc). Our expectation for departure is to
| quickly sweep the floor, wipe counters/sinks, and put
| sheets/towels in a laundry basket. Basically put the place
| in a state where the cleaning crew can do their job without
| having to clean up our messes.
|
| EDIT - my other pet peeve is the lack of pet pricing
| transparency. There's a pet filter, which works, but pet
| fees aren't part of the Airbnb pricing model, and hosts
| have to add them manually after the fact. Completely
| ridiculous oversight.
| amf12 wrote:
| > Curious, where have you been staying with the egregious
| misrepresentation
|
| One thing I recently noticed was, including "sofa bed" as an
| actual bed. Screwed up with my filters so much that I had to
| verify from the pictures that they actually had the number of
| beds I was looking for.
| shiftpgdn wrote:
| Airbnb could _EASILY_ fix the issues by two tiering their
| market place and having a HUMAN BEING validate listings and
| holding hosts to a very strict set of standards.
|
| Unverified listings could be in the tier two marketplace. The
| problem would sort itself out.
| bkfunk wrote:
| They do this. It's called Airbnb Plus [0].
|
| [0]: https://www.airbnb.com/plus
| bckygldstn wrote:
| Interesting, I didn't know about this.
|
| I've wondered before if Airbnb could do a Guest Plus:
| instead of paying a massive service fee (which likely goes
| towards insurance and customer support) and cleaning fee, a
| guest could clean the house to its original standard, wash
| the sheets, put the bins out on bin day, sharpen the
| knives, etc. You'd also get a late checkout as the host
| wouldn't need to get a cleaner between guests.
|
| See also: that Black Mirror episode where everyone rates
| each other.
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| I don't believe they would do that. They know we know there
| are both honest and dishonest hosts, but they prefer that it
| is us who take the risk. Based on the reviews, apparently.
| shiftpgdn wrote:
| That behavior is going to drive their company to ruin as
| they slowly poison their own well with bad experiences.
| alexashka wrote:
| That's not what happens when you're a monopoly. What
| happens is the people just eat it.
|
| You can see it more clearly in politics. Does _anyone_
| think politicians have the people 's interest at heart?
| The answer is it doesn't matter, because people have
| proven that they'll just eat it, for decades.
| airstrike wrote:
| > That's not what happens when you're a monopoly.
|
| But they're not a monopoly at all. There are countless
| other ways to find lodging, whether short term or long
| term, and even the market for app-powered short term
| letting like airbnb has very low barriers to entry so
| someone with enough capital (harder in the current
| environment, but eventually doable) can come in and
| outcompete them
| yeputons wrote:
| > There are countless other ways to find lodging
|
| Would you mind sharing some? I only know of Booking.com,
| the rest are country-specific billboards at best. E.g.
| Craigslist in the US, Bazaraki on Cyprus or Avito in
| Russia. In all of them you'd better view the apartment in
| person first, and you manage your own contracts and
| payments.
| shoulderfake wrote:
| Its not a monopoly at all. In europe booking.com is more
| prevalent and for example florida rentals most ppl use
| vrbo
| alexashka wrote:
| If I live in a town with one internet service provider,
| it doesn't help me that they have a different provider in
| Europe.
|
| There is a monopoly on internet service, _in my town_.
| Get it?
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| > That's not what happens when you're a monopoly.
|
| Fortunately, that's not exactly correct. After getting
| burned a few times with AirBnB I now use booking.com
| mostly. Of course they are evil in their own ways, but
| the percentage of incidents is much lower for me.
| joshuajill wrote:
| They have underpaid, undertrained human beings.
| dominotw wrote:
| I cut my reservation short according to host's cancellation
| policy. Host wrote a review on my page that I was racist to
| her. I never even met the said host or anyone at the airbnb.
| WTF.
|
| I explained this to airbnb but they said they have policy that
| reviews cannot be be removed/modified. So now I have that on my
| reviews. Great!
| ravedave5 wrote:
| Same experience I had constantly misrepresented, especially
| internet/quality of A/C which are not minor things.
| mh- wrote:
| Air conditioning is my pet peeve. Surprised I didn't see more
| mentions of it.
|
| Book a large-ish house that says it has A/C. What it really
| has is a single small window unit in one of the bedrooms.
| estensen wrote:
| I've stayed in multiple Airbnbs avg 6 weeks since January. The
| first one had mold everywhere. Took two weeks to get refunded
| by Airbnb. Talked with like 10 customer service people.
| Customer service found alternatives that was 50% more
| expensive, but we couldn't afford that, so had to book
| something not-so-great ourselves. Got a small coupon as
| compensation.
| loceng wrote:
| They're optimizing for profits and not allowing a buffer of
| higher costs in the short term for support, which would support
| higher profits in the long-term by maintaining a good
| relationship with people in the present. It's an externalized
| or delayed cost they don't seem to be accounting for.
|
| I think a competitor will pop up before they fix themselves,
| just the right conditions have to occur and Airbnb's market
| share will quickly sink - they likely will have exited and
| dumped the risk and unsustainable platform onto the general
| public by that point though.
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| Agreed, I haven't lived in them full-time but I use the service
| quite a lot and have spent many many months in Airbnbs and
| definitely think it'd be a great idea if they had some sort of
| preferred service in the same way airlines do for frequent
| fliers that gave additional support. I luckily haven't had the
| same issue with you on the scale of misrepresentation for
| listings but agreed that many of them at least leave things out
| that would have been desirable to know (e.g. one in Armenia I
| stayed in was great, but while it technically had an elevator
| it looked pre-Soviet and liable to plummet to the bottom of the
| shaft at any minute, not to mention the rats in the trash
| room).
| yeputons wrote:
| On the other hand, it's still the only website I know of where
| one can find and pay for a short/mid-term apartment online in
| lots of countries. Booking.com is mostly pricy hotels. Local
| bulletins are even cheaper, but typically have worse
| interfaces, awful listings, and require that you are already in
| the town to view the place in person.
| agloeregrets wrote:
| > * Easily 90% of listings contain some kind of
| misrepresentation. Probably half it's something egregious.
| Airbnb doesn't seem to care.
|
| This. We stayed in Philly and got a nice looking AirBNB. What
| wasnt mentioned was that the nice pictures were of the owner's
| kitchen that is shared with their family room and that the room
| reserved for us in a 'private apt' was just a room off to the
| side with a glass door and a camera pointed at the door.
| dominotw wrote:
| They use a 'dark pattern' where they don't really make clear
| how much you are actually paying for night till you are on the
| checkout page. Lots of hosts use this pattern and make their
| listing real cheap buck tack on a huge 'cleaning fee' and there
| are whole bunch of local taxes, service fees ect which you only
| know at the end.
|
| They count on people to just go through with checkout since
| they spent a whole bunch of time to get through that point.
| Compare this with kayak which shows you final price right on
| the search screen.
|
| And then there is a problem with reviews where a guest is not
| really motivated to write a bad review even if they have a bad
| experience because people are usually conflict avoidant. So
| almost all airbnbs have positive reviews 4.9 review average
| making the whole review section useless. Also, there is no way
| for user to sort reviews in ascending order of star rating.
| jitl wrote:
| Book on https://airbnb.com.au where law requires showing the
| total (inclusive of all fees) in search results. You can set
| the price to USD or whatever other currency you prefer.
|
| (disclaimer: I was an Airbnb employee)
| lrae wrote:
| How do you change the currency without logging in? Because
| as soon as I log in on .com.au to do that, I'll get the not
| so transparent pricing again :(
|
| Edit: It's just in the footer and I was blind. Thanks,
| that's actually awesome!
| btoro wrote:
| On the footer of the page.
| lrae wrote:
| Wow, how did I miss that earlier... and googling it tells
| you on two different 3rd party airbnb blogs that you'd do
| it in your profile settings.
|
| Thanks!
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| OMG thanks so much for this! You should post this as its
| own submission.
|
| I am amazed that ABNB has this dark pattern as I don't see
| how it benefits them and it clearly pisses off users and
| makes searching so much more work than necessary.
| owlninja wrote:
| The cleaning fee and service fee is under the rate off to the
| right, and it lists your total before taxes.
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| The point is that the total should be what is shown in
| search. As it is, search is meaningless.
| dominotw wrote:
| yea i know you can see it but it shouldn't be a subtext.
| You cannot also search within budget because it searches
| for listing rate not the final rate making price filter
| totally useless. I also don't understand why they can't add
| taxes ( which are significant these days) in the listing. I
| really think this is a dark pattern designed to trick
| users.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Currently, it's hidden in a collapsible widget, not in the
| main view.
|
| Ideally, cleaning fees and similar shouldn't be allowed -
| they're a cost of doing business and should be rolled into
| the nightly. Heck, taxes too for that matter - no reason
| they need to be hidden from the main view.
| lolinder wrote:
| The fees should be included in the list price. Instead you
| have to open each listing in order to compare real prices,
| which disadvantages hosts who don't play games with the
| fees. The last time I stayed at an Airbnb we found a host
| with reasonable fees, but they were buried under a bunch of
| "cheaper" listings that were all actually $100+ more
| expensive.
|
| The way things are is bad for guests and bad for honest
| hosts.
| enos_feedler wrote:
| It makes sense for the user to have this feature. The
| ticketing app Gametime has a settings flag that says "all
| in pricing" and it's so much better when turned it. It
| keeps me off of other platforms like ticketmaster. I
| guess the problem here is: who are they competing
| against?
|
| There are a few reasons to keep it the way it is: Airbnb
| is probably aspirational about its userbase: they don't
| want people to choose based on price comparison, it's
| more about the unique space. Or maybe this even speaks to
| actual measured user behavior. Airbnb invests a lot in
| data science so I would assume they have either tested
| this or have data to show the performance impact of such
| a change. They also might want to one day reduce or
| eliminate such fees using a membership program of some
| kind. So a perk of this membership would effectively be
| "all in pricing"
| jackcarter wrote:
| Does anyone know if there's a secret advanced option to search by
| keyword?
|
| Some Airbnbs have free bicycles available, but there's no
| "bicycle" filter (possibly for liability reasons). There's _also_
| no way to search for homes that mention "bicycle". Instead, I
| have to comb through every listing.
|
| I think this used to be an option, but they took it away. This is
| the only feature I've ever wanted from Airbnb search.
| medymed wrote:
| A redesign is nice but please consider a secure Airbnb app-
| controlled electronic door lock. Hardware is hard but it could
| reduce entry/exit and check-in friction and confusion.
| jitl wrote:
| Door hardware is harder than most kinds of smarthome gadget by
| a substantial margin. Failure has a much higher liability - a
| failed door (failing open _or_ closed) renders the entire house
| worthless. Can't say the same thing about an internet speaker.
|
| I have an electronic door lock and it needs monthly fiddling to
| stay in alignment, and I need to push the door in to allow it
| to unlatch. The door system as a whole needs to be fixed here -
| but if such issues happen for a guest trying to check in, and
| the door is Airbnb branded - who is gonna get blamed? Even
| worse - a door that fails to latch for the night, and no one
| notices...
|
| I think Airbnb has concluded (correctly) that this is a losing
| game.
| medymed wrote:
| And yet somehow many electronic door locks exist as
| commercially viable products. If Airbnb wants a turnkey
| solution, then a product that works like turning a key would
| be a big step.
| jitl wrote:
| ...but none with the liability relationship that an Airbnb
| branded lock would imply. Probably the best path to defray
| the risks would be for Airbnb to partner with lock tech
| groups like Kivo for API-side integration, and then gently
| suggest hosts use a partner-supporter lock.
|
| From my eye the available commercial products are just
| beginning to be "good" - for example, NFC locks entered the
| market this year, so smarthome locks can finally provide
| the hotel-room authentication experience, if not the hotel-
| room unlatching experience.
| damian2000 wrote:
| Not to mention improve the safety of guests...
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-06-15/airbnb-sp...
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| Of the changes while I think that the design categories are cool
| (who wouldn't want to stay in a Le Corbusier designed space at
| least once?) the "AirCover" stuff is probably most impactful and
| mitigates a major pain that I've had/been concerned about with
| booking (and from other threads on Airbnb sounds like others have
| too)
| joshuajill wrote:
| I wonder if they allow the same lifestyle to their own
| subcontractors?
| Olphs wrote:
| I thought "AirCover" was already the standard? Also this still
| doesn't address the issue that host can cancel your stay at any
| time and then you are left without any kind of accommodation in
| the middle of nowhere or unknown area
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _thought "AirCover" was already the standard?_
|
| Nope. Rented an Airbnb in Austin. Pool was a mess to the point
| of being unusable; host was noncommunicative. Complained to
| Airbnb. Gave the host five stars, but left them a note. Host
| left a negative comment on my profile. Airbnb refused to
| remove. Refused to provide even a modicum of a refund.
| agd wrote:
| As I understand it, Aircover is for cancellations by the
| host, it wouldn't apply for the scenario you describe.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Aircover is for cancellations by the host, it wouldn't
| apply for the scenario you describe_
|
| The Get-What-You-Booked Guarantee claims to cover if
| "listing description wasn't accurate about significant
| things," though it's unclear if something like a pool being
| unusable would qualify.
| agd wrote:
| Ah yes. Although that doesn't seem to be new either? Of
| course if something is completely off (bedroom missing)
| they have to give you a refund for the remainder of the
| time.
| agd wrote:
| Yes. I think it's just a rebranding of the current offering.
| tr3ntg wrote:
| Categories look identical to the top-tabs they already had, no?
| Even their "OMG" tag is simply a rename of the previous
| "Offbeat". I don't get it.
| Varqu wrote:
| The AirCover policy looks like a game changer that elevates
| Airbnb basically to hotel-like level of service.
|
| Just wondering if they won't default to "we will just refund you"
| in case the host cancels (1st scenario)
|
| In that situation, if I get the info 1 day before arrival and
| just a refund, then I am screwed anyway since the prices on the
| market will be sky high.
| MoSattler wrote:
| > In that situation, if I get the info 1 day before arrival and
| just a refund, then I am screwed anyway since the prices on the
| market will be sky high.
|
| "Sorry, we didn't find a equivalent alternative. Enjoy sleeping
| under a bridge!"
| sixhobbits wrote:
| exactly - how is this not a baseline expectation? "I bought a
| service and you didn't provide it", "ok you'll get your money
| back"
|
| Unless they mean that I as a guest can choose between the
| refund and the rebooking, but they should definitely clarify
| the wording if that's the case.
|
| > Booking Protection Guarantee
|
| > In the unlikely event a Host needs to cancel a booking within
| 30 days of check-in, we'll find guests a similar or better
| home, or we'll refund them.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| skilled wrote:
| I was actually going to make a comment about the refund part.
| That sounds absolutely terrible and doesn't match the tone they
| were trying to go with by saying "Only on Airbnb.". I mean the
| whole paragraph doesn't make any sense.
|
| > If a guest can't check into their home and the Host cannot
| resolve the issue, we'll find them a similar or better home for
| the length of their original stay, or we'll refund them.
|
| This implies that the guest is already at the doorstep. Yeah,
| enjoy your stay in a shitty overpriced hotel, in the meantime
| we will try and refund the money over the next couple of days.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| alach11 wrote:
| AirCover just sounds like a rebrand of their existing policy.
| They've always offered an "swap for similar or refund" policy
| when hosts cancel.
| dilap wrote:
| Yeah that was my thought too. "Or we'll refund you" is not that
| great of a guarantee.
| stevehawk wrote:
| Hotels overbook just like airlines, though, so I'm not sure
| how AirBnB is much worse in this situation? I recently lost a
| room due to overbooking and being the easiest guest to get
| cut (I was only staying for one night).
| ohyoutravel wrote:
| Airbnb isn't a hotel, it's a person renting out their
| house. Not a fungible thing like a hotel room. When I book
| Marriott I don't care which room in the class of rooms I
| booked that I get. When I book an Airbnb I very much care
| that the house I selected is the one I stay in.
| joshuajill wrote:
| Airbnb is to a great extent hotels and property managers.
|
| The cosy little family business is not so common to come
| by.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| The AirBnB that is my "neighbour" is run by a property
| manager - they run a chain of apartments on behalf of the
| owners. They aren't letting a room in their home; they
| live in another city. The owner seems to be an investment
| banker who lives overseas, and never comes here.
|
| From a landlord's point-of-view, their proposition is
| attractive: guaranteed monthly rent, they handle all
| admin, they hire cleaners.
|
| From a guest's point-of-view, it's good too; they have a
| full schedule of bookings and get rave reviews (this is a
| very attractive location). The standard of decor is high.
|
| But from my point-of-view it sucks, because they've
| degraded my owner-occupied home into a hotel suite,
| except with no concierge, no mailroom (the visitors have
| access to my mail deliveries), and no onsite manager.
| yeputons wrote:
| > the visitors have access to my mail deliveries
|
| How does that happen? Don't you have a lock on the
| mailbox at the very least?
| [deleted]
| CaptainZapp wrote:
| I stayed in literally hundreds of hotels and that never
| happened to me.
|
| Sure, it can happen on very rare occasions, but what a
| hotel will do then is "walk" you to a hotel in the vicinity
| of the same category or better.
|
| They don't put you on hold for hours.
| bushbaba wrote:
| Happened to me a few times. The hotel booked me a room in
| a different hotel a few blocks away, refund my entire
| stay, and provide points for the troubles.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| And when they walk you, they pay for your stay elsewhere
| and for transport to and from. And usually other perks
| like snacks or rewards points or hotel credit.
|
| And a half decent hotel will call you or email you in
| advance to notify you of the situation so you do not
| waste much time.
| draw_down wrote:
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| I used Airbnb significantly last year (several 1 month+ stays
| in 4 different countries across 3 continents) and I found that
| they usually started with pitching me on other Airbnb instant
| books in the area; most of them I had already seen and wasn't
| interested in but I'd guess that this 24hr line will do that
| first before refunding you and maybe in the situations where
| there is a sub 20-25% differential (whatever cut airbnb takes
| these days) they might just true up the difference for a more
| expensive booking than the one you had to keep you in the
| airbnb ecosystem. I am a little surprised they aren't also
| offering a more literal aircover add on with flight insurance
| for if your flight is delayed or cancelled and you miss part of
| your stay but maybe that was too out there.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Absolutely. This happened to me and cost us thousands of
| dollars. A refund is expected when services are not provided.
| But in practice if you are not able to get a similar service
| for the same price than a refund is not an actual solution.
| pbourke wrote:
| We used Airbnb almost exclusively 5-10 years ago. We're now back
| to nearly 100% hotels, with Airbnb as a backup option if there
| truly is not a suitable/available hotel.
|
| 1 out of 3 airbnb stays was deficient to the point of affecting
| the trip in some way: didn't match the description, overbearing
| rules, maintenance/cleanliness issue that was difficult to
| resolve with absentee hosts, etc.
|
| The costs became equal to or more than hotels once you added in
| fees, and the experience was guaranteed to be less consistent
| than just booking a familiar hotel brand.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| I agree. If I didnt need a kitchen I would stay in hotels. So
| many airbnbs lie in ways that are smalll but important. Their
| "office space" is the kitchen table. Renting the "whole house"
| means you get one floor and while the helicopter owner gets the
| upstairs or a shed out back or the basement.
|
| This type of stuff is so common but there is no real way to get
| a partial refund or screen for it ahead of time.
| kilroy123 wrote:
| Same exact situation. I've used airbnbs almost exclusively for
| the past 6-8 years. I've spent 10s of thousands. It has become
| such a shit show. Especially, in other countries, and cultures.
|
| I don't think a redesign is what they need at all. The problems
| run far deeper.
| reacharavindh wrote:
| >Check-In Guarantee If a guest can't check into their home and
| the Host cannot resolve the issue, we'll find them a similar or
| better home for the length of their original stay, or we'll
| refund them.
|
| Were they not doing this until now?! I never had such an event
| occur to me, but I assumed if I can't enter the place I booked,
| the least I should expect is my friggin money back.
| d3nj4l wrote:
| This happened to me before and I got a full refund, so it's not
| a new thing at least.
| tr3ntg wrote:
| My thoughts exactly. Every single new guarantee sounds like the
| bare minimum customer service capabilities I already assumed
| they had in place.
|
| When I pay Airbnb for a stay, I already expect: 1. to be able
| to freaking check in 2. to get what I paid for
|
| That's... what it means to pay for something, no? And if the
| promised service isn't delivered, some reparation is made.
| Either a full refund or something in between.
|
| That makes the whole "only on Airbnb" tag sound so funny. It
| sounds more like "Promised absolutely last by Airbnb"
| reustle wrote:
| They did this before but it has gotten extremely hard to work
| with customer support for things like this. Bad CS alone has
| driven me more towards hotels for even longer stays.
| [deleted]
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| Airbnb experiences are cool but for every other normal vacations,
| I prefer hotels. Turns out regulations do matter.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Cool blog. I dont think the four coverages will change anything.
| I've been nomading from airbnb to airbnb across the USA for over
| a year now. Airbnb has been meh to poor everytime we have had to
| use their CS.
|
| The worse case was a home that we rented in Denver for a month
| (during peak renting summer months) was sold less than 30 days
| before we were to arrive. We'd booked it 90+ days in advanced.
|
| Airbnb told us they would help us find a similar or better home
| in the area. Very similar to their policy they just announced.
| But because it was summer and less than 30 days from our booking
| and we were looking to stay for ~35 days, there were no similar
| cost homes. The equivalent homes were 3k-5k more for the same
| time period in the same location.
|
| Airbnb said okay. Here is a refund and a $200 coupon to help you
| find another place. A refund is great but if all other similar
| homes are booked you could end up spending thousands more for a
| similar place like we did.
| TekMol wrote:
| How is it possible that a website is so slow like AirBnBs?
|
| Everything I do on the site makes me wait. Even when I click on
| the calendar, it opens the widget and then slowlay paints the day
| numbers one by one.
| seydor wrote:
| isn't that true for basically any website these days? spinner
| gifs are the trademark of this decade
| thimkerbell wrote:
| Any category for "basic but secure"?
| seydor wrote:
| I 'd like to see airbnb move to long-term rentals.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| I used to let a flat through a property management company;
| 6-month lets. It turned out they were using AirBnB as an
| advertising platform.
| thebiglebrewski wrote:
| Lmao at the example "split stay" - oh yeah, the average person is
| going to spend ~$14K for a month of travel at some national
| parks. Way to stay in all of those Airbnbs and see what it's like
| for an "average user" Brian!
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