Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode
194 comments
·May 13, 2025levocardia
Maybe I'm in the minority but I've generally had very good -- or at least, "good as I expected" -- experiences at AirBnbs, even recently. Sometimes I've stayed with rich friends who book nice places, and the experience is, as expected, very nice. Many other times I have stayed at bottom-of-the-barrel places, which were, as expected, bottom of the barrel flophouses. But tolerably so, and true to the advertisement (funny how they all have that exact same fake black leather futon though).
People say hotels are as cheap, but they never have the same amenities, and the location in town is often worse. An AirBnb with a kitchen is essentially $20-30 cheaper per day than a hotel without one. Add to that laundry, more privacy, and other perks and it's not really a fair comparison. It does seem like there are more hotel resellers and leasing companies using it as a stopgap between tenants, which I understand, but hate.
I get why they want to be an "everything app" (rich people have more money to spend on "experiences"), but other commenters are spot-on regarding the dangers of taking their eye off the ball. Seems like a better use of company attention would be to really boost and reward the genuine hosts that put their heart into it, and at least put in a modest amount of friction to slow down the corporate resellers with barebones apartments in half-remodeled buildings.
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freddie_mercury
I think the people who say hotels are better than AirBnb aren't traveling with kids.
Having an actual kitchen when you travel with kids is great. Having actual separate bedrooms so we don't have to go to sleep at 8pm when the kids go to sleep is great. Being able to do laundry without tracking down a laundromat or pay exorbitant hotel prices is great. Having a living room or similar area with at least a few square metres of floor space where kids can sprawl is great.
chii
For the same price, airbnb usually provides more than hotels (but with higher variation in quality).
Hotels tend to be pretty consistently good when it is over a certain price point, and at any higher price point, all you get is better views/location (and may be some amenities such as gym or pool) - aka, quality caps out and just becomes expensive.
Airbnb prices are quite correlated to quality. High priced airbnb (for example, a holiday lodge) can be _very_ good for the price. But airbnb is a sort of buyers beware type deal.
analog31
Indeed, hell is being cooped up in a hotel with kids -- for the kids, the parents, the rest of the occupants, and the staff.
I think this is a huge factor in why my family always camped when I was a kid.
And to be frank, I don't like being cooped up in a hotel either.
plorkyeran
I don't even really understand the concept of comparing AirBnB prices to hotel prices? Unless you're literally just looking for the cheapest place to safely spend the night with zero considerations beyond that they just aren't the same product. Staying in an apartment or house and staying in a hotel are vastly different experiences.
jterrys
There's also...apartment hotels!
Want hotel quality and safety with apartment perks? Just go to an apartment hotel! It costs more than a hotel/AirBnB but you're also not at the whims of random hit-or-miss listings and shady shit. And they clean your room if you want them to!
jksflkjl3jk3
> There's also...apartment hotels!
They're not nearly as common as Airbnb apartments in most countries. I also trust Airbnb listings and reviews more than what I find on most booking sites.
zo1
The problem I've seen with those is that all those places have turned to using Airbnb to manage guests and bookings. The whole little industry that spawned is beyond bizarre to me. Like everyone wanting to hyper optimize and the uniqueness disappeared.
megablast
What a ridiculous comment. Along the lines of you can't compare iphone and android phones.
Most people just want somewhere to stay while they visit a city or relatives or an event.
Even if you want a kitchen many hotels offer some basic facilities.
In this way they are perfectly comparable.
jksflkjl3jk3
I think we're just the silent majority.
I've been a digital nomad for the last 9 years. Airbnb is a huge reason why my experience has been so great. How else can I show up in a city in a new country , spend 5 minutes the day before I arrive, and end up with a nice furnished apartment in a great location for a week's stay?
lacker
Yeah, I've had pretty great experiences with Airbnbs. I'm usually traveling with kids, hotel rooms are small, it's really nice to have a kitchen with kids, and a lot of airbnbs have amenities that the kids like.
sheepscreek
Chesky is having a Jobs moment, when Apple went from making Computers to smartphones and much much more. It didn’t happen in a day though. More importantly, by that time, Jobs had already built Next from the ground up, and supported and funded the growth of Pixar into an animation powerhouse. He had all the additional experience shaping his perception on what people want and how people will react to something.
I think Airbnb will have a branding issue. By transitioning from rentals to offering a wide range of services, they might dilute their brand before people have the chance to fully embrace and experience the new offerings.
Perhaps they should reinvent themselves as a platform that manages travel and stays, emphasizing that their “airbnb certified experience” includes access to specific facilities and guarantees. This way, users can choose from other service providers in their marketplace with their own standards. That way, expanding to more services over time would seem like an organic expansion.
Essentially, Airbnb could transition from managing services to a marketplace model that also hosts managed services and other providers. However, by maintaining a focus on “stays” or “travels” and slowly adding more ancillary services would prevent dilution before their metamorphosis is complete.
csomar
It is really location specific. For some locations, the hotel experience is better/cheaper and hotels (serviced apartments) can have kitchens/privacy.
The problem is not much of the hotel/apartment but rather the platform. AirBnb manipulates search results, prices and UX to squeeze harder. It now wants to up sell "experiences" that it puts in your face every-time you open the app. It is just exhausting as the rest of everything on the internet that is taking the same path.
jrowen
I think the core value prop of Airbnb is (or should be) to provide a different experience than a hotel. It may have been "cheaper than a hotel" at one point and idk what the numbers are on how people are using it but in my experience it excels for larger groups or for people just looking for a more house-like experience than a hotel. Being able to stay in a nice house with a bunch of friends in any city is an amazing thing they made a lot more accessible.
Doesn't really make a lot of sense to me to just shop on price and then compare the experience to booking a hotel room, it's totally different.
dreamcompiler
Airbnb made the same mistake Google did: They screwed up their core service. I used to be a steady ABB customer but now hotels are almost always cheaper, offer better service, and are more predictable.
Not to mention that hotel websites are typically easier to navigate and contain a lot less React-sludge that makes every click take forever to respond.
cobertos
I had this experience too. Booked on AirBnb with someone who was about the same price as the hotels. Turns out the hosts were just employees of some letting company. They wanted photo ID, a deposit, and sign a second contract in a _separate website_, which I declined. Contacting AirBnb support they said this was fully allowed and I should have read the description harder. I did get a full refund but was told it was only because it was "my first time" and I've never had other issues.
I'm glad I turned around and booked with a hotel. It was very personable, good value, and better than what I would've gotten for the same price on AirBnb for that city.
bsimpson
There are too many shady middlemen in the vacation rentals space. I refuse to rent any place that has a separate lease, but they're no longer unheard of.
To some degree, I understand the businessification of rentals - it's uncomfortable for both parties if you're trying to get a grandma to meet you to exchange keys after a late flight. But also, that person-to-person charm is a big part of why people chose Airbnbs in the first place. If it's just an IKEA flip of an old apartment, why bother?
I've actually noticed that my taste in interior design has been impacted. The "pastel and sculpted veneer" aesthetic that took over Airbnb, "modern" coffee shops, and supposedly adult furniture brands like West Elm disgusts me now. I suspect it would have appealed to me if it hadn't been badly copied with shitty materials so many times. Now, I associate it with hollow experiences, poor craftsmanship, and attempts to get me to pay more for a "quality" I won't receive.
vishalontheline
What city was this booking for?
stavros
Not the OP, but happened to me in London.
cobertos
This was in Manchester, UK
fasthands9
I disagree. In the long run there was never a way for individual hosts to compete with hotels on price. Hotels have economy of scale so of course they are going to be better bang for the buck in places where both are options.
I think airbnb is still the better option in many situations - such as when you are willing to pay a premium to be in nature or you going on vacation with 6+ people.
I don't really see how better tech would ever prevent this outcome. Perhaps this disappointing in terms of continual growth, but I think it was inevitable and still provides a good path for the company to be uniquely useful.
darkerside
The only way to compete against the economy of scale was the original thesis of AirBnB. People were renting out their primary homes to bring in an extra stream of income. It was never going to be mainstream profitable to buy a normal apartment and rent it out on AirBnB.
lotsofpulp
> there was never a way for individual hosts to compete with hotels on price.
That way was to skirt laws around obtaining hotel permits and zoning and paying all the relevant hotel taxes and business insurance.
xdfgh1112
Exactly. Airbnb was much cheaper than hotels when it started because of this.
gsf_emergency
>same mistake Google did
This made me realize that their original strategy was to extract the promise from the fat long tail of their respective supply ("unique experience" for abnb, "relevant search results" for goog). But then the Septembers are apt to become eternal if you can't keep it at a level manageable by humans, like a dang-or-2
From TFA
>I want to be a luchador!” he tells me, then immediately regrets it.
(dang is probably quite great at minimizing regrets a la Jeff, the insta ones most of all)
>Leave it to the subconscious to highlight what matters.
Gigachad
Shouldn’t it expected that a hotel would be able to provide a better service considering they are doing it in bulk and specialise in it. Vs a bunch of individual untrained hosts.
Seems more like Airbnb ran out of money to burn and hotels lifted their game.
manwe150
In corporate lingo, I think their “core business” is any vacation rental? Partnering with hotels could perhaps have been a viable path for them to grow that and still fit with their business acumen. But I use other platforms for that service now.
lolinder
What kind of partnership with hotels could they have made that would have set them apart from the dozen options I already have for booking hotels?
jen729w
> Chesky figured that Airbnb’s experience in attractively displaying homes, vetting hosts, and responding to crises could make it more trustworthy than competitors and therefore the go-to option for virtually anything.
Online reviews are totally broken. I recently spent a week at an Airbnb in the Gold Coast, Australia. The property was rated 5* but was tired and worn. The photos must have been 5 years old before a soul set foot in the place.
I rated it 3*. Shortly after, I got a phone call from the owner. He had my number because I'd had to call him because one of the two toilets in a five-bedroom 14-guest 'villa' was blocked. As in, overflowing with fecal matter blocked.
He essentially tried to bribe me to raise my review. I refused. The house is currently listed as 4.9* with those same photos. A preposterous exaggeration of its quality.
makeavish
I too had similar experience. I booked a 4.9 rated property with 30 reviews. But experience was really poor and I rated 1 stars post checkout. The propery owner reachout to me asking for explanation but I wasn’t in any mood to discuss.
Hours later they filed fake complaint to Airbnb that I rated poorly as I wanted late checkout and asked money to remove review. Airbnb removed my review post that. I had a flight to catch so I couldn’t checkout late anyway. I shared even flight details with Airbnb but they didn’t reinstate review and added a strike to my account. I expect host did this previously as well to improve their rating.
monster_truck
Have had some insanely bad experiences with AirBNB and swore them off forever.
People listing mcmansions they cant sell in a state of disrepair, lies about amenities and internet. Had to relocate several people repeatedly in the middle of the pandemic lockdown and it took months for the refunds to process.
Had another host try to pressure me into a cash deal and then claim damages to extract fees when I turned it down. After supplying their text messages and proof that the place was fine I had to wait 18 months for a refund and was locked out of renting a safer place.
I can't imagine trusting them for anything else. I now exclusively use craigslist and other sites that allow you to directly deal with property owners and have been really impressed.
standardUser
I used to be a big defender of AirBnB due to the many amazing experiences I've had with them over the years. But since then I've had several experiences that matched the negative feedback I had been hearing from other people, especially with US-based rentals, and now I'm a skeptic at best.
The CEO knows exactly what the problem is because he spells it out in the article...
> Chesky explains that historically, people used Airbnb only once or twice a year, so its design had to be exceptionally simple.
It's true! I've probably averaged no more than 1-2 AirBnB stays per year for a lot of years. But the average host is probably handling 50+ guests per year. That means the host is the AirBnB customer, not me. I'm about as important to them as their cleaning service. The hosts and the execs are all just trying to make some money, and my dumb ass is in their way asking for extra towels and late checkout. Hotels are essentially just as hostile, except they are good at it. And since the cost savings have essentially disappeared I'm inclined to go with the pros and only look at AirBnB when the location or context give me some reason to choose the complicated option.
BrenBarn
In addition to stuff people are saying about AirBnB reviews in other comments, as far as I can tell there is no way to leave a review or otherwise provide public feedback in cases where the host cancels the booking before you get there. This seems to grossly incentivize scamming.
I reserved an AirBnB months ahead of time to see the eclipse in Dallas last year, and the host canceled it the day before I was to arrive, with no communication (even when I tried to message them). I got a refund, but that's pretty cold comfort. Without any disincentive to do this, it's pretty easy for hosts to screw people over.
csomar
They added a penalty a while ago. So it is very unlikely for hosts to do that now.
RHSeeger
Its worth noting that hotels do this kind of thing, too; just rarer, for bigger events. Its specifically been known to happen for things like Taylor Swift concerts, etc.
financypants
I believe there is a penalty for the host
speedbird
Half the airbnbs I try to book these days turn out to be resellers of un booked hotel rooms. Try to book, get a message from “host” just checking availability… silence for three days then sorry, not free … it’s a deeply flawed experience and Airbnb need to get a lot better at policing their platform
bcoates
A nugget in this that seemed significant:
Quote
“I don’t know if I want to call it a social network, because of the stigma associated with it,” says Ari Balogh, Airbnb’s CTO. So they employ a fuzzier term. “We think of it as a connection platform,” he says. “You’re going to see us build a lot more stuff on top of it, although we’re not an advertising system, thank goodness.” (My own observation is that any for-profit company that can host advertising will, but whatever.)
End quote
Launching a communications tool in 2025 that isn't one of the two overly trod spaces (the advertising-hyperengagement loop of instagram, etc. or the people-you-already-know of whatsapp) is a genuine moonshot in a way that "what if airbnb but for manicures" isn't, and it's something that an incumbent like Airbnb could do that would be impractical for anyone else.
iambateman
I love ABNB and I hope they can find a long-term business that works. Their original promise was so interesting and exciting…but reality has kind of caught up.
They’re kind of like Uber, in that way. But where Uber has become faceless and quiet, Airbnb wants to be a leader, and I respect that. Certainly there’s lots of cool things that _could_ happen with experiences, and I hope they do.
tonyarkles
Yeah, Uber has pretty much got it dialled in. I remember the early days when “taking an Uber” was a weird mysterious thing. Now it is, for me, the most normal thing in the world. I’ve had one mediocre experience: I had a 60 mile one-way trip from an airport and multiple drivers accepted and then cancelled. I went and talk to one of the taxis at the taxi stand and they were asking double what Uber was… so I waited another 15 minutes or so and found a driver. Otherwise it’s been a completely satisfying experience.
Airbnb has definitely gone the opposite way. My first Airbnb experience involved getting woken up by the daughter of the family that lived downstairs asking me if I wanted breakfast for 5€. I was getting whole apartments for 30€/night. Now it’s just as expensive as regular hotels, half of them expect you to wash all of the linen before you leave, and it’s totally unpredictable what you’re going to get. I just book with Hilton instead. There’s free bottled water and snacks waiting for me when I get there, it’s a pretty consistent experience, and free good breakfast at most of them.
scarface_74
Uber is a lot better than AirBnb. I use an app and the person picks me up and drops me off. If the driver cancels I automatically get another one scheduled, they don’t check my ratings or care if I have never used an Uber before, don’t have to worry about the Uber not picking me up because of the color of my skin.
The AirBnb may be illegal, there is no consistency with how you get in and you can’t even find out the address until after you reserve. Hidden fees, weird policies, you never know what you are going to get or have any recourse if they cancel on you
callc
I’m curious, what has made Uber feel safe for you in terms of racism?
And also did you have a problem with AirBnB based on skin color?
bsimpson
With lodging, they have the risk of people finding a listing off-platform and paying cash, but because lodging is such a key aspect of a trip, people are often willing to pay the premium to have everything vetted/supported by Airbnb.
With personal services, they're risking having that problem at a lot bigger scale: are you willing to pay your barber or masseuse 18% extra to cover Airbnb's commission? I suspect a lot of people would use Airbnb to find a reputable provider, and then make contact off-platform.
darkwizard42
People said the same thing about Wag. Ultimately if the platform acts as good lead gen and offers other protections and benefits it will work out!
pests
Didn't Homejoy fall victim to this? People would just contract directly with any cleaners cutting them out completely.
bsimpson
I'm surprised they're not launching with more coverage. I just spot-checked what was available in NYC - it's a handful of unappealing tours. Some categories, like massage, are totally empty.
Are they abandoning NYC as a market since rentals are restricted there, or did they just not put enough effort into recruiting before launch?
https://archive.is/yYdut