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Comment by Karunamon | Hacker News Reader

>It's funny to me, because AirBnB runs in to all the same problems we had with hotels a hundred years ago.

To a point. I find it a bit silly to regulate a single person renting out their house occasionally for short stretches (read: most users of AirBnB) to a corporation with multiple purpose built, million dollar facilities on expensive commercial property with their own staff and so forth.

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I've been looking at AirBNBs recently for a vacation. The small guy is an outlier anymore. Most of the listings are obviously professional, ie they do it for a living and have multiple properties and property managers. The network is hard to unravel since the companies behind the "hosts" create many profiles, but it is easy to see that its not just Carla or Emily or Cody offering up their apartment while they go on holiday. I've been on AirBNB for more than 6 years and have hosted as well, but the rules as well as the standards have tilted heavily to favor the big players.

The last few AirBnBs I've stayed at have all been filled with "stock" goods. The cheapest handsoap, the cheapest paper towels, etc. Basically it looks like they went to the dollar store and filled their house with what's in it, which makes me believe that people don't actually live in there.

Unless AirBNB solicits more fine-grained reviews to elicit feedback on such things, or enacts a policy around consumables, this is the direction many hosts will go. As long as it doesn't reflect in the photos, corners will be cut.

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