Airbnb is adding cleaning fees to a new ‘total price’ of bookings in search results after people complained listings were misleading::Airbnb’s CEO said that he’s heard guests “loud and clear” that pricing on the platform isn’t transparent and “checkout tasks are a pain.”
And yet when I looked at places in Vegas, they were all shittier and more expensive than actual hotels. I really wanted to save money, so I really tried to give it a chance, but nothing that came up was worth it when I could just get an actual hotel. And the more I thought about it, I’m also just not comfortable using AirBnB as a single woman. Maybe other people have felt totally safe and had nothing happen and that’s great. But I know I would never feel one hundred percent certain there’s no cameras, and that whoever’s renting it wouldn’t just walk right in.
I’ve also seen those AirBnB management companies renting out rooms in the larger LV casinos for the same price, with the same amenities, and with the same resort fees. That one’s a total mystery to me.
And now they’re advertising AirBnB “rooms” or whatever it’s called where you sleep in a bedroom in the same house as the owner? While the owner is just…there?! That would just be so uncomfortable and awkward to begin with, but it also just kind of seems like a matchmaking app for serial killers.
Airbnb was originally the room concept, it’s was for couch surfing! Now it’s used to jack up housing prices for the profit of the few, naturally!
From what I’ve been able to work out - AirBnB doesn’t make a lot of sense in the US at this point - it often costs as much or more than an actual hotel or resort or more traditional house rental, and there’s all these extra gotchas with it that make it really… well - not interesting to me because of uncertainty, and that’s just financial and if you’re actually going to have a place to stay when you get there. Some of that was potentially worth it when it was 1/3 the cost I guess, but now that it’s popular, people aren’t doing it “for cost” or “to get a little extra for an unused room or whatever” but as a business. And guess what? Hotels, being competitive, already have close to the cheapest IT CAN BE in a given area to stay as a business venture.
On the resorts rentals, it’s really weird, but many places have partnered with AirBnB to I guess get them listed there also - basically like companies that have listings on eBay, Amazon, Walmart online, NewEgg for the same thing. It’s just a place people go more than say expedia. Of course, I do wonder how many people who are inclined to stay in those resorts are going to AirBnB anyway, vs just direct to the resort or more traditional booking methods.
Edit: Remembered - I’ve been told it’s very different in Europe still, so I guess it pays to check when traveling to other countries. If you’re ok with the tradeoffs for the savings.
Can’t speak for Vegas, that’s on an entirely different continent. But it helped that there were 5 of us.
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