These are all self-inflicted wounds by AirBnB. I have used AirBnB a few times in the past, but these days opt for a hotel instead if I can.<p>They could take user feedback seriously, but chose not to. Case in point: we booked a place in Hawaii. We (2 people) arrived the day of, tired as heck from the beach activities. Place looked fine, except for the crumbs of food in the nooks and crannies of the kitchen. No big deal. We crashed almost right away, too tired to do anything else. An hour later, my wife jumped up, claiming some insect was walking on her legs. I turned on the lights sleepily, and lo and behold, there were cockroaches on the ceiling, scurrying about (and one had fallen and landed on my wife's legs). In the middle of the night, I contacted AirBnB help. They wanted proof. So I took a video and sent it, along with photos. Finally around 2AM they agreed that we should get out of there. We packed up and left for the beach, to wait things out.<p>My first reaction was: I should leave a review telling people about the roaches. But guess what? AirBnB cancelled our reservation, so there was no way to rate the place or leave a review! They did refund me, but we wasted a day trying to catch up on the lost sleep.<p>After that experience, I stopped booking AirBnBs if I could help it. They (and VRBO) are a last resort for me (no pun intended).
We stayed in one last week in Seoul, only because hotels are prohibitively expensive. (We book last minute.)<p>On leaving, the host offered us a discount on future bookings if we left a 5-star review. This 'beg for a 5-star' practice is common in every Asian business. We got it from a Hilton in Vietnam. (It's probably global. Our recent experience happens to be in Asia.)<p>In fairness, hotel ratings are the same. My SOP now is to ignore all 5-star ratings. Simply don't read them. Instead, sort by lowest and that gives you the true measure of a place.<p>Ratings are totally broken.
There seems to be the same by symmetrical issue going on as well. where guests who lie without proof can leave a retaliatory review when not getting a refund. For problems that never existed of course.<p>It happens to host with hundreds of spectacular reviews.<p>That's why Airbnb likes to get proofs.
You really take your chances with AirBnb. I have so many stories where I got burned by Airbnb. As a customer they are pretty lousy about handling snafus. From Airbnb’s perspective they are a marketplace so their users and both the buyers and sellers. These two groups interests naturally conflict. They need to balance this tension and they don’t want to burn the renter who make the platform work. That said they do a lousy job of building trust. You can never be sure a listing will have what you think it will and Airbnb does very little to investigate what a property offers. Having a kitchen and decent WiFi is nice, but hotels win in terms of reliability and service and often price.
I used to stay in AirBNBs all the time.<p>Toward the tail end of the pandemic, well after vaccines and the average person even remotely cared about it, I stayed in a small studio apartment.<p>The cleaning fee was $200.<p>The host gave me a list of at least 30 things I needed to do, including vacuum the floors & washing all the dishes and returning them to their exact initial positions - along with photos of where everything should go, exactly, along with a list of fines as high as $100 <i>PER ITEM</i> for each infraction the cleaning crew could find.<p>I have never stayed in an AirBNB since outside of hosting a large group, and I never will again.<p>They've banned this now.<p>What about all the hosts using AI to pretend guests trashed their place?<p>No thanks.<p>Hotels are just fine. I hope all these get-rich-quick scumbag AirBNB speculators get wiped out by high interest rates and lose every penny they have so that people who actually need housing can afford it, and people who actually know how to run a hospitality business can keep doing that correctly.
My extended family rents a beach cottage for one week (saturday-saturday or sunday-sunday) every summer at a family oriented beach in North Carolina. We have done this at the same beach since the early 90s. There are local vacation rental agencies that have offered one week rentals with various packages of linens under similar terms and seasonal pricing for decades. Over the last few years, fewer and fewer houses are available directly from these rental companies and more and more are only listed on Airbnb or VRBO, with nightly pricing that is much higher than the weekly pricing from the local rental agencies.<p>The vacation rental companies offer very consistent cleaning services and local contacts for any issues with the house, and were relatively cheap because they were typically able to fill these houses with weeklong rentals all summer.<p>With Airbnb and VRBO, sometimes they are just a marketplace for the exact same rental companies that already existed, under the same terms and conditions, but a higher nightly price, and sometimes they are far less professional operations, and it's not easy to tell which is which when you are initially paying.<p>Last summer we rented a house directly through a vacation rental company that was also listed on VRBO for a third of the nightly price it was listed on VRBO for. We're dreading the day when the only option left is VRBO.
I've used Airbnbs for group trips only. The past few years, I have been leaning towards hotels for trips. But the newer hotels with the "open concept" bathrooms are not great for sharing a room with a friend. As a consumer, these changes puts Airbnb back in favor for me.
I had two hosts cancel on me (last minute, both times around Christmas) and haven't dared to use Airbnb since (it was very inconvenient to find alternate accommodation last minute, to say the least.)<p>I understand that there can be exceptional circumstances. However, I've stayed in more hotels by a factor of at least 25, and this has never happened once. In fact, any minor inconvenience at a hotel is usually remedied promptly, and user reviews generally feel accurate.<p>Airbnb wouldn't share any information about why the host was allowed to cancel (I understand there may be privacy concerns, but I'm left wondering if they simply found a better paying private offer, given it was for the holiday season and booked well in advance). In one case I found an alternative in the same building, so there was no widespread issue.<p>Those two are enough to put me off Airbnb forever. I just don't want the additional stress of wondering whether I'll receive a last minute cancellation, even if they're exceedingly rare.
There’s also been documented cases of owners using AI edited images to claim guests damage. Airbnb has a systemic cultural issue.
They’re a two-sided marketplace where the parties are incentivized to be adversarial. Every renter want to pay less / get money back, every landlord wants to minimize cost and stick renters with extra costs.<p>There’s a reason municipalities have landlord/tenant laws, and Airbnb’s whole thing was offering hotel-like services at sub-hotel pricing, without hitting landlord/tenant.<p>They’ve arbitraged themselves out of existence (but not before making a nice profit for Airbnb shareholders).
I found some hair in my Mariott bed sheets. I didn't think it was a big deal but decided to see if I could get fresh sheets. The hotel changed it at 9pm within 10 minutes. Offered me points. Apologized profusely.<p>What do you think would have been my experience at Airbnb?
I stopped using AirBnB altogether because of the rediculous cleaning rules and fees. Probably not going back but at least they're addressing it.
I always much prefer a real hotel to AirBNB.
Thank god.<p>Call me lazy but I’ve always wondered why I need to take out the trash when a cleaning crew was coming in 10 minutes after I checked out.
Not only that, a cleaning crew that I'm explicitly paying for via the cleaning fee. It was ridiculous, and I'm sure it drove a lot of people to choose hotels over an equivalent Airbnb.
Same. I have consistently left feedback that even the idea of such policies makes me choose airbnb less. Haven’t used them in several years now due to the possibility.
Contrarian view here but honestly I can't imagine not cleaning up after yourself by default. Of course I am not saying that I do a deep clean at every place I stay but if I'm staying in an AirBNB the very least I do is to leave the place in a civilised way. For example, if I use kitchen utensils I either clean them or put in the dishwasher when available. I seriously never understood people that just leave completely dirty things behind, especially when they are travelling with their kids.
I would never be expected to clean my dishes after ordering room service in a hotel. The price of an AirBNB would have to be much cheaper than a hotel in order for me to do my own cleaning. And in my city at least, it never was.
I can see both sides of the issue, that is, hosts protecting themselves (to an extent) from dirty guests. I've seen once the huge pile of dishes in a shared stay, and it wasn't nice.<p>I think it's not a big issue for people who clean up after themselves daily, but on the other hand, sparing those last 10 minutes on the checkout morning... ;)
They're usually charging you over 100 for a cleaning fee and pitch them selves like a hotel stay.<p>I think if homes were presented as a home, not a residential hotel, along with lower prices, cleaning would be perceived differently.
You can still do that. The host just can't require you to do that - especially after charging a mandatory cleaning fee.<p>I mostly stopped using AirBnB due to the impact of their existence and lobbying on cities and affordable housing, but after my final few stays I was ready to quit over the huge fees, the fact those fees were hidden when searching, and the absurd rules BS.
It's interesting how Airbnb has diverged from its original vibe of "staying at somebody's house." When I "stay at somebody's house" I wash the dishes, take out the trash, etc. Essentially, leave it as I found it, if not a bit better. I also expect "somebody's house" to be cleaner than a hotel.<p>Granted, Airbnb has taken on the hotel industry, and so I'm not surprised that their rules have evolved.
You do those things when you’re staying at a friend or family member’s place. But your friends and family aren’t charging you hundreds of dollars a night, plus a $250 cleaning fee.<p>It’s not just Airbnb the company that moved away from it, it’s the Airbnb hosts that moved away from it as soon as opportunists started becoming mega landlords renting out ikea-furnished party houses. It hasn’t been the original “person with a spare room for a weekend” Airbnb in a long, long time.
Staying with my family and friends and helping with common household chores, the same as I would be doing at my own home, is a completely different thing than paying $150-350 a night to some rando.
These things are banned because they became the Amazon equivalent of low balling rates and tacking on shipping fees.<p>The relationship to homliness really has nothing to do with this. Your friends never charged you to stay then charge 4x that because you left some trash.
I agree about how one should conduct themselves in someone else's home, but is it really that interesting how they progressed as a technology company? To me it seems like the tried and true formula of enshittification. It's the startup playbook.
You went by a "vibe" they wanted you to believe instead of the fact that you pay hotel rates to stay at these houses?
I've been an Airbnb host for the last 3 years. We've never expected guests to do any cleaning or washing of dishes (although it's always appreciated when they do!) We charge a small cleaning fee to cover the costs of cleaning our studio which only takes an hour. We also have maintained a really high rating over the last few years (currently at 4.96). I would hope that other rentals that have ridiculous rules and high cleaning fees would suffer from average ratings?
The market is more complicated than that, unfortunately. Some properties can sustain high ratings on their other strengths (e.g. location, decor, view, heritage) regardless of the host rules and the clientele that's interested in them. There's also a problem with the rental market getting very thin for some locations and property types (e.g. 3+ bedrooms), so ratings effectively stop mattering.<p>As a personal example, I once stayed at a place that charged a $150 cleaning fee, but also required dishes + taking the trash out and down the street, which wasn't known until we opened the door. And of course there was a threat that failure to do so would incur a fee. Also a bit of ceiling plaster fell on my wife during the night. Still had a fantastic rating because it was a castle and I'd stay there again if someone else paid.
Out of curiosity, why is the cleaning fee not included into the rental rate? Is it required to be listed separately or does that simplify accounting somehow?
Maybe to encourage longer stays? The cleaning fee is paid once per stay, not once per night. I get why it is a separate charge, since they aren't cleaning the place daily (like a hotel), only at the end of your stay.
It is a dark pattern causing the advertised rate to be lower so the listing will get included in more filters etc.<p>[edit] I checked and they changed this in April of 2025, as of then the fee is rolled up in the advertised rate.
For us, we charge the same cleaning fee whether you stay for 1 night or 7 nights. So I don't know how we can incorporate that into the nightly fee without either over-charging or under-charging for cleaning. Having it listed separately keeps it consistent and clear to guests.
That was entirely on Airbnb for presenting it that way. Hosts would enter in their per-reservation cleaning cost so it could be integrated into the price paid by guests, but Airbnb stubbornly itemized it on the checkout page for years. I believe they finally did away with it (in favor of building into the nightly rate) about a year ago.
In some locales, it is included
Because this way they can lie to you and offer low rates to pull you in until you go to check out.
The AirBnb model just fell apart with bad customer experiences. Customers want something closer to a hotel experience. The moment Airbnb started letting hosts treat guests like children doing chores they lost a huge chunk of the market.<p>It’s ultimately an issue of consistency. If I book with a name brand hotel I have some comfort knowing they have corporate standards that tend to be enforced consistently across properties. If a Hilton, Marriott etc hotel has issues it tends to get dealt with quickly because those brands know consistency is their brand. In extreme cases they will kick hotels out of their brand. That randomly named hotel that used to be a brand name was likely kicked out of the portfolio for compliance issues.<p>With an AirBnb it’s a total crapshoot. Sometimes it’s totally fine, other times you’d end up in the dirty lair of a psychopath.
Enshitification at its best. I've used Airbnb almost since inception, but the degradation of offering quality has been so noticeable that I totally quit using this two years ago. Last time the host did not only ask me to do all house chores, and still charge a cleaning fee, but wasn't going to provide bed sheets without an extra fee (W(ho)TF thinks I'm renting and possibly coming with my own sheets), but didn't have the room officially ready until 5pm, and had me out at 10am. F*k this "industry"
As a host, I feel like this issue is mostly just ragebait for TikTok. Same for the cleaning fee complaints (which has been gone for over a year but you still see ppl talking about it). There are absolutely bad hosts out there (I've dealt with it as a guest myself), but most hosts are totally fine and the guest review system absolutely works to filter out egregious behavior.<p>There's also quite a big perception bias towards guests when it comes to discourse about Airbnbs. As a host I have to deal with so many unbelievably disgusting and disrespectful people renting my places on a regular basis, but nobody is ever talking about that. Social media would have you believe all guests are victimized angels and hosts are greedy and evil. I would love to see some of these people host and find out what it's really like. If you've worked in retail or hospitality you know.<p>Airbnb has actually gotten extremely sensitive about this perception the last couple years. They've changed a lot of policies to bend over backwards for guests to avoid the PR. Anyone guest you see complaining online about a recent experience should be taken with a _large_ grain of salt because Airbnb very rarely sides with hosts anymore and it likely means the guest did something very egregious to get penalized.
I travel for work a lot and was forced to use airbnb by my former company.<p>Nothing about this is ragebait. Clean after yourself was the norm, cleaning fees often a full days cost or more, and I had bookings that I never checked into make claims about stains or damage!<p>Most hosts were bad by hotel standards. I will never use one on my own volition.
There are far more guests than hosts so it makes sense that the discourse is mostly from the guests’ perspective.
You are a parasite.
From AirBNB <a href="https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/4168" rel="nofollow">https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/4168</a> (<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50188512">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50188512</a>)
"Airbnb" is a label that represents a massive range of situations. Different guests, different properties, different expectations.<p>I'm a host, I've had hundreds of stays over several years, and I have stellar reviews. It's a large house so there's a $250 cleaning fee. I ask guests to start the dishwasher and take their trash to the dumpster at the end of the street.<p>I'd say I have two types of guests. The first type is the 99% - they are friendly, grateful, and make the whole thing worthwhile. People who ask for recommendations on the area, leave a nice note in our guest book, and are grateful and respectful of our home. They never complain about taking care of a few things before they leave, and often ask what else they can do. It's honestly a source of positivity for everyone involved to have them stay in our home.<p>I can count on a single hand the number of times I've had the second type of guest. Exploitative people who have it out for us the second they check in and won't be satisfied until they've extracted money and apologies. As a host, I have literally zero recourse against these people. The system is set up to let them behave this way, and they make me more cautious and my home more expensive for everyone else.<p>Getting to my point - everyone comes to conversations about Airbnb with an enraged, polarized point of view. It's still a thriving platform with absolutely everything in a single place. The homes range from bare bones crash pads and neglected side projects to true luxury experiences. The guests range from people you are happy to have met to true predators.<p>Unfortunately, Airbnb and Vrbo have created an absolute race to the bottom. As a host I have next to zero ability to screen who stays with us, and I'm basically at the mercy of bad actors. They extract huge fees and are unhelpful to me and barely helpful to my guests. They introduce ham-fisted rules like this every few months and are revenue optimizing themselves off a cliff.<p>This is a market that could benefit from more choice.
> Utilities: Guests shouldn’t be asked to avoid using a listed amenity like air conditioning, but you can ask them to turn it off when they leave.<p>Turn it off and come back to a sauna that will take 3 hours to cool down. I'm not doing that.
I wonder if the bloom is coming off the Airbnb rose (probably not, because these kinds of things are always made a big deal of in tech forums but the company in question usually sees their revenue go up and up).<p>For me personally I only ever use Airbnb's now for big trips with at least 3-4 bedrooms needed. These types of Airbnbs usually have more professional management in any case. But otherwise I think Airbnb just offers a poor value:<p>1. For a long time Airbnbs skirted hotel taxes and other fees. Those days are long gone, so I often find Airbnbs to be just as expensive or more than hotels when you factor in cleaning and other fees.<p>2. Like this article points out, quality control and rules can be all over the map, and people are sick of it. With a hotel you usually know what you're getting, with an Airbnb it's always a crapshoot.<p>3. A huge benefit with a hotel is that if something goes wrong you can almost always be moved to another room, sometimes a different hotel. With Airbnb, while they may help you rebook it's much more fraught and you don't know what the next place will be.<p>So for me I use hotels for most stays now, though I am curious about house swapping for longer overseas trips. I have friends that have raved about it so it just seems like a better option.
I've never been a host but I can't see why this would be a problem that AirBnB should make a call on. I've travelled to places where they have different social norms and visitors should adapt to local culture.
Oddly this will probably let prices be raised, even though there's a cleaner usually there right after..<p>Most guests of AirBNB like clean homes, and usually tidy up pretty well themselves. Maybe there's a way to incentivize those who choose to, or want to and offer a discount if they want it.
<a href="https://archive.is/SLOVG" rel="nofollow">https://archive.is/SLOVG</a>
They were making <i>guests</i> wash dishes? That would've been a real problem.<p>My maid service will not wash dishes. They need me to clear the sink every time before they arrive. It's often a point of contention, because I leave dirty dishes quite often, and I simply forget what needs to be done. I don't have a problem with doing it for them, I just forget.<p>But I believe that the reason they will not wash my dishes is because of food safety. In a commercial kitchen, even the dishwasher needs to hold a Food Handler's card or certificate. The sanitizing of dishes and utensils is serious business. If they're not clean enough to eat from, you could be passing foodborne illness.<p>I would never want to stay at a place that didn't professionally wash its dishes. I've never stayed with AirBNB and I plan to keep it that way. Thankfully, the hotel industry is still a quite viable business, and hotels have staff, insurance, and regulation on their side, even now. I recently had a "staycation" in a 98-year-old classic hotel, and it was so wonderful, worry-free, and pleasant, and cost-effective. I am thankful that they are still operating like that.
A maid service does not require a Food Handler's card to wash dishes. They won't do it by default because they can charge more if they offer it as an addon.
They literally will not do it at all. They refuse, and they will make me pick up the dishes and move them out of the sink.<p>Yes, if it were an add-on service, they would ask me for permission and then go ahead and charge me for the service. That is something they do with cleaning the oven and such other things. They simply will not wash dishes at all, period, full stop.<p>It's got to the point now, where if I forgot and left dishes in the sink, I will take them out and hide them somewhere, like the fridge, before the team arrives at my door. And then, hopefully I do not forget to retrieve them and properly clean them immediately.
AirBnb is camping. I have been travel camping with and without people for 50 years. The longer you camp the better the experience. Almost all of the first 25 years involved a tent (or bivy sack), and maybe a camp kitchen. Then you surface again, happy minded, into a world where people travel but they expect everyone touching their utensils or even maybe food(?) have a "Food Handler's card or certificate". Whatever that is. Back into the bush.
When I rent a shore house for a week on the east coast (direct from owner rental, not Airbnb), it’s been customary for at least 30 years to clean the house and wash the dishes you use for the next people. We would usually wash them anyway when we arrived because I’m crazy.<p>When we had little kids we used disposable plates because we didn’t want to break the plates in the house. I don’t do Airbnb but disposable plates might be one way if you needed to stay in a short term rental.
I think that AirBnB just <i>feels</i> much more annoying because of the fee structures. Yes, renting private homes at a lake cabin, shore house, timeshare or ski lodge have their own customs. AirBnB feels much worse (to me) because you select $200 a night, and end up paying $400 after all of the fees. So it used to make it difficult to search for places in your price range because of all the absurd fees piled on top most of which is cleaning. Then you have to clean yourself via a list of chores they give you, then you could be fined by them. All the while a massive corporation makes a ton of money simply matchmaking. It is much different when you are paying it forward in a small community. I didn't articulate it well, but for me the feeling is entirely different. Less that you participate in a community and culture and more that you are disposable labor for what is increasingly a luxury experience typically provided by a rich landlord.
For the last 30 years were they charging a mandatory $150 cleaning fee, even if you're only staying 1 night?
> We would usually wash them anyway when we arrived because I’m crazy.<p>We wash the dishes (and sheets, if there is a dryer) when we arrive, and descale the electric kettle and the coffee machine. I guess I'm crazy too.