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Comment by airza | Hacker News Reader

As an alternative theory... A lot of the airbnb and hospitality industry got annihilated in the last few years. An adaptation to this state of affairs has been more and more hotels or AirBNBs where travelling to the hotel. In Japan there seems to be quite a lot of this[1]; maybe they are the most pronounced example hotels needing to evolve or die.

I am not deeply sold on this idea as a whole, but it seems like having a very low-maintenance van has its advantages right now compared to a hotel room which has probably sat empty for the majority of the last few years. As you say, it seems unlikely that airBNB is explicitly pushing them at the expense of other listings; more likely, it just is a consequence of the world we live in.

[1]https://prtimes.jp/main/html/rd/p/000000586.000030117.html (Detailing a niche hotel where you get to pretend to operate a main tokyo train line and be woken up by the same device train conductors use)

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Been using Airbnb on and off for 10 years and I'm really not convinced it's a better model than traditional hotels. Maybe it's because I'm always looking at the cheaper end of the scale but when browsing Airbnb I can't help but feel suspicious at most listings, based on previous experiences. It's ALWAYS shittier than the pictures. Often there's a feeling of "oh well could be worse, we'll just deal with it" after walking in to these places.

I just checked a bunch of normal boutique hotels and their listing inspire much more confidence and are actually cheaper. At this point I have no idea what Airbnb offers that hotels don't do better.

booking.com is often cheaper than directly booking with a hotel.

I've worked for a hotel chain in the past. They're using the same rate codes you could be using booking directly with the hotel. They just know how to show the lowest rate code possible.

If you look at hiltons on booking.com and booking at hilton.com you'll see different prices, until you go through the hilton.com process and select non-refundable/non-cancelable rates, then they're the same rate, expect if you book via booking.com you don't get any points with the hotel chain.

> I have no idea what Airbnb offers that hotels don't do better.

As a business? They avoid tons of regulations there for zoning, public safety, etc. That leads to higher profit margins.

To a consumer? I'm not 100% sure anymore. Except some places where hotels are booked through AirBnB to gain better access to customers

In my personal experience Airbnb is good when you are travelling with a large group of people (6+) and/or with children. You can get a house with 3-4 rooms, a few bathrooms, a functional kitchen, laundry area, etc, for about half the price as it would be if you got double rooms at hotels for the same number of people, and it's much more convenient since you're not spread across different floors.

For solo travel tho, I'd rather book a hotel sight unseen than use airbnb, since too many people try to make their couch in the corner look like a nice private room in the listing.

It's really easy to find an airbnb that accepts dogs and really hard to find a hotel that does.

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