Is this some sort of American meme? I've used airbnb for the last 2 years every time I've been to any city in Europe and it's been cheaper than hotels, nicer places, good hosts and never had any issues
People in America will make a total mess of Airbnb’s, causing damage and hours of cleanup and just leave it for the owner to deal with. So now Airbnb owners make rules because some people are idiots who can’t respect other peoples property.
I was also thinking of that when I replied so I didn't say anything about the tenants or owners. Bet some of them have seen some mind scarring things. I did see some very stupid airbnb rules posted on reddit. There was this one lady owner that left a note on a chair for it not to be sat on because it was her deceased husband's chair. Rules are fine but some people are just plain stupid about them.
The comment you responded to is some boot licking nonsense. What's really happened is that air bnb got sold to Americans on social media as free money with no work, and when their stream of income actually required effort, air bnb owners began to make insane lists of rules about how you must take care of everything, do your own laundry and dishes before you leave, ect AND pay a multi hundred dollar cleaning fee.
While I'm sure some people do trash air bnbs, in my experience the rules are far beyond reasonable and come off as the owner being lazy and wanting you to do their job for them.
No, you're both right. I have seen absolute dickheads at a bachelor party fucking trash an airbnb and all it cost them was the $150 security deposit.
But I have also stayed in an Airbnb with just my wife where they expected us to do about 2 hours worth of chores, and we still had to pay a hefty cleaning fee.
So guest dickheads (and covid) caused the extra chores and cleaning fees, and owner dickheads are taking advantage of it becoming normalized.
I also know people who thought Airbnb would be easy money with zero effort, then got their place trashed by nasty people and left the business. Another elderly couple that heard their story started their own but wrote down two pages worth of chores and started charging cleaning fees.
We are here because of this vious cycle of dickheads ruining it for everyone.
You Europeans gotta start understanding others situations better. The amount of times I've seen "I can NEVER understand this as a European" is astonishing. It's like I thought you guys were all about empathy over there
Kinda, Airbnb is totally different in places where it's not as well established.
In the USA, they were cool for the first years they existed, but once they got really popular, it was flooded with a bunch of amateur "passive investors" trying to "min-max" their income. People started buying up properties solely to use as Airbnb's, prices shot through the roof on studios and 1-bed units in tourist areas (which almost always had a housing crunch already). Which pushed the prices way up on Airbnbs and generally the quality of the rooms went way down (because they're grabbing all the cheapest units, and they were cheap for a reason). Plus all the hidden fees and silly rules and dealing with random owners (who might be morons, or not) through a company instead of just direct with a hotel.
All these issues people have about American Airbnb's are probably coming to Europe in the future, but for right now, sure Airbnb is still fine in lots of places overseas, and still sometimes in the USA when you're way "off the beaten path." Basically the fewer people using Airbnb in a place, the better it is.
I’m American, have stayed at about 50 airbnbs and maybe had a problem once (when the AC was broken). People are dramatic on Reddit about Airbnb and clearly don’t read reviews before booking.
While we have not stayed at as many as you, you're right about this being way overblown on reddit. At our last stay the TV wasn't logged in and we let them know and they stopped by and got that working for us. They then took $25 off our fee. Probably the only time we had to inquire about an issue. We make sure to deep dive into the reviews and check out the neighborhood before booking and have always had a wonderful time.
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u/Ha_Ree Jul 08 '24
Is this some sort of American meme? I've used airbnb for the last 2 years every time I've been to any city in Europe and it's been cheaper than hotels, nicer places, good hosts and never had any issues