Airbnb Guests Like The Cleaning Fees And Chore Lists, Think Hotels Are A Scam
Airbnb Guests Like The Cleaning Fees And Chore Lists, Think Hotels Are A Scam
Complaining about Airbnb on social media is almost de rigueur. There’s so much to criticize about what Airbnb has turned into, which is light years from where the service began. But defenders of Airbnb seem to be having their day. Here’s a single tweet that has been viewed two and a half million times basically saying why would anyone ever stay in a hotel when there’s Airbnb?
Also, I’m not talking about being on vacations & resorts. I’m talking about just having to travel somewhere in general, and needing a place to stay for the meantime. Could be for business, to visit friends, a partner etc. nobody was even talking about vacations & resort life.
— The real is back🤷🏾♀️. (@MimaMilano) April 3, 2023
I have to wonder, where are you staying that doesn’t have TVs with streaming capabilities, and who does their laundry on a business trip or weekend getaway?
A lot of hotels do have refrigerators and microwaves. That’s standard in many brands. Extended stay brands often have laundry rooms and even full kitchens.
If you’re booking an Airbnb you absolutely must read all of the details of a listing, and all of the reviews, to figure out what you’re getting. So it doesn’t seem unreasonable to say that if you’re considering a hotel you should think about what features you’d want and book a property accordingly.
Airbnb and similar have use cases:
- Staying with a large group, need common space and multiple bedrooms
- Staying somewhere without a lot of hotels – say, the beach town where my cousin lives an hour outside of Brisbane or maybe Martha’s Vineyard
Those conditions make Airbnb worth the hassle of scams, chores and fees. What I was reminded, not just from this tweet but from its comments, is that there’s a whole subculture of people who just hate hotels and love the idea of staying in a rented home or apartment, and are passionate enough to warp the reality of hotels to conform to their preference model.
Hotels, meanwhile, squander the differentiation they do offer against home-sharing by cutting back on on-property services (restaurant hours, room service), eliminating daily housekeeping, and charging less than transparent add-on fees (resort and destination fees, fake environmental fees , fees for property taxes and even for lightbulbs).
since hotels have been undermining their unique selling proposition, someone needs to build a startup:
- Like Airbnb
- Where all of the rentals are in one building, centrally located
- You can check in at all hours, because they have staff there waiting for you
- You can get your room cleaned every day, and there’s no extra charge for it
- With a restaurant, bar, and even food delivery on premises
The problem is that this would be pitched as WeWork meets Airbnb and nobody would fund it. Then again maybe they would.