Airbnb shares drop 12% as company flags weakening US demand | Hacker News Reader

Airbnb shares drop 12% as company flags weakening US demand

theguardian.com

56 pointsdonsupreme57 comments

I used to use Airbnb all the time but a single experience dealing with their customer service and a bad host was enough for me to never use them again. The lows of using Airbnb are 100x lower than the lows of hotels, and the highs are higher but not nearly enough to justify the risk.

Yep 100%. It took one experience being stuck on the street in London with my bags to never use AirBnb again. The negatives are just not worth the risk.

I’m an AirBNB host, so I get a $100 non-transferable coupon each year; so I stay at an AirBNB once a year, and never without a backup plan. I’d be thrilled to stay at a place like mine, but I don’t understand how to use the tools they provide to be confident in that outcome, so I book hotels with brands that I trust to be accountable instead.

The last occasions that I stayed at $200/night hotels, someone triggered the building fire alarms at 2:00 and 4:30 AM. Everyone was forced to evacuate until the fire department arrived (the alarm sirens were agonizingly loud). Still, I agree, the Airbnb roulette experience is often worse.

I’m pretty happy with them. I’ve booked over 12 trips with my family using AirBnB. Last year we got a bad one though, dirty house, a lamp was stuck in the socket using wires instead of a plug. I reported this to AirBnB and they cancelled the reservation and refunded.

The only disadvantage of the customer service is that although you can do everything in Dutch, once customer service is involved you get called from some weird US phone number, but get an Indian outsourced helpdesk on the other side of the line - who don’t always speak good English.

With all the hidden fees and exorbitant cleaning fees, I think it is much cheaper to book a hotel than an airbnb nowadays. No wonder demand is going down.

It tends to succeed in a few situations for me - vacations in backcountry areas, a backup to Hipcamp for campsites and getting a single room. I have found bizarrely it is not cheaper to find a comparable hotel unless the destination is popular.

It makes a lot of sense if I am traveling with more than two, staying more than two nights, and I want to cook my own meals and/or do laundry.

I’m traveling to upstate NY for a wedding during the fall. All of the shitty motels and hotels were $350/night and Airbnb was $400, but I ended up with a lot more comfort and creature comforts as well as it being 20 mins closer than any of the chain hotels; those are the only reason I chose it for a one-night stay.

It's like tech people have to relearn why we had age old things in the first place. We're starting to workout why hotels are a good idea now.

I saw Elon Musk questioning why we have medical regulations the other day, he was saying that it "slows down innovation" and so he thinks medical regulation should be abolished. He did the same for content moderation on his platform.

Well I don't agree that regulations stifle innovation, they might slow down the rollout of innovative products, but there is a very good reason why regulation was established in the first place. Could it be better? Yes.

>I saw Elon Musk questioning why we have medical regulations the other day, he was saying that it "slows down innovation" and so he thinks medical regulation should be abolished

Is he just posturing for his fans?

I see so many statements of this nature from him and I just can't believe that a person that successful can be so monumentally stupid.

“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” - Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night

I see many, many tech people take an extremely simple position on a topic contrary to general knowledge.

Then they say something like 'I believe in strongly held beliefs, held weakly'.

I'm so bored of debating people with opinions on things they've spent zero time researching or even thinking about. Just say you don't know. It's okay.

this is like complaining about small talk. small talk is meant to draw people in. same with saying outrageous things. no one wants to chat in depth immediately and saying wild things draws a crowd.

no one is going to talk with you if you're drawing out all the nuance of medical regulation (nearly an 5k essay to broach) with nuance.

> no one is going to talk with you if you're drawing out all the nuance of medical regulation

Then why should anyone talk with you about it? What would be the point?

As a 'captain of industry' and generally wealthy man, Musk is much more constrained by regulation than he is protected by it. Unlike the common man.

So he's responding to his incentives, railing at the constraints on the ingenuity and productivity of people like himself. Likely underdeveloped empathy does not help.

I see so many statements of this nature from him and I just can't believe that a person that successful can be so monumentally stupid.

Don't forget that he is an unapologetic, very public drug user.

Every time he says or does something stupid, I just assume he's high. It helps explain a lot.

> I see so many statements of this nature from him and I just can't believe that a person that successful can be so monumentally stupid.

Clearly, you're not a student of history then. The trope of folks being good at one thing and believing that this can be extrapolated to other things is based on an almost infinite history of humans doing this exact thing, from politicians, business leaders, engineers, scientists, artists and just ordinary folks. When you couple this with the amplifying effects of having the money to surround yourself with 'yes'-folks that continuously reinforce your 'brilliance', and having the power that results in politicians kowtowing to you, then it is incredibly difficult to break out of that supreme belief in your own genius. It is literally a trap as old as humanity.

Safety regulations are frequently written in blood.

If writing something in blood made it correct I'd keep a pot of mouse blood handy for math tests. The fact that safety regulation is written in blood is one of the tells that it is overdone - it should be written with a dispassionate and distant consideration of the costs and benefits.

The major argument for rolling back most safety regulations is the fact they are written in blood during what was, effectively, a moral panic. Just tightening the regulations every time something goes wrong leads, ironically, to bad outcomes. The optimum state is to tolerate some level of risk.

The popular talking point is the FDA slowing things down. The large criticism given by most is the FDA not allowing drugs already approved by other large foreign medical regulation to be used, like the NHS or Australia's review body.

There is moderation on Twitter today things do occasionally get removed like death threats and the ilk.

You're likely misremembering his 'medical regulation = bad' arguments, and misremembering his twitter content policies as well.

I think it'd be hilarious if it wasn't so on-brand for Elon that he has a company that is designing brain-computer interfaces as an implant and while, to be clear, Neuralink obviously has medical and research leadership, not one of them is flagged on the company's website. Their "company" section is literally Blog and Careers.

You can use the Australian AirBNB site to see all-fees-included prices, sort by them, etc.

If you just need a room for the night, sure, of course you should book a hotel. Airbnb never made sense in that case to begin with. For a slightly higher price, however, Airbnb gets you a 1 bedroom apartment (or 2-4 rooms for an entire group) plus a living room, functioning kitchen, multiple bathrooms, and depending on the property a private patio, pool etc. No hotel can compete with that.

> If you just need a room for the night, sure, of course you should book a hotel. Airbnb never made sense in that case to begin with.

That was literally the origin story and first iteration. "Crash on someone's couch or in their spare bedroom."

People still put spare rooms in their house on Airbnb, and you can still book them. It will be a lot cheaper than a hotel. But that's not what anyone really means when they are talking about Airbnb anymore. The vast majority are looking for a private space.

I've found Airbnb to be good for 6-10 people in a large house. Over our 10 ~trips every host has been normal to good.

I probably wouldn't use them for a single or couple stay, nor in extremely high demand tourist areas and holidays.

That’s the one use that I would see go to AirBnB for.

But for me it’s not longer even an option if hotels are available. The last few years have only turned up places that cost the same as a hotel or more.

It feels good as a consumer to finally see companies face stock price consequences for tanking quality while jacking up prices. Though its a wildly different market the same is happening for Starbucks and McDonalds.

It's all fun and games until businesses just stop ceasing their already-hobbled services instead and start to shed employees... oops now you have a deflationary spiral with decline of quality of life.

I'll rehash some of the complaints others have mentioned. Unless its a larger group, it really doesn't make sense to use vs. a hotel. Even if price is constant, there's just a bit more friction with AirBnB. Sometimes its easy, but other times you're trying to find the code that you have to enter for the key. Then I have to find the rules for the property to make sure I cleaned it according to their standards (while paying a cleaning fee?). At a hotel, I go up to the front desk, they give me a key, and then I return it at the end.

One thing that is not ever mentioned is that there is no reward (that I am aware of) for being a frequent user of AirBnB's. If I go to Marriott/Hilton/Hyatt hotels regularly, I can earn benefits and travers up their tier list for benefits. Not sure I have seen anything like that with AirBnB.

The big difference for me is that Airbnbs have kitchens. Any trip more than 1-2 days in length is greatly improved when I can buy basic groceries and cook rather than have to eat every single meal at a restaurant. Because of that the overall cost works out to be cheaper as well.

Traveling with small kids, having a kitchen makes the difference between being able to actually feed the family vs scraping together insane combinations of whatever sliver of restaurant meals the kids can eat and packaged food.

That's a fair point. But for me, thats more friction. Now when I get to my destination, I also have to go grocery shopping and then spend even more time cooking and cleaning the dishes after. Personally, if I am going somewhere new, I'd prefer to spend a bit more money to not do all of the the tiring things I have to do at home so I can spend that time actually exploring. I will add, I don't have kids and can see how my viewpoint may change when they do come into the picture

There are extended stay hotels with stovetops and ovens (and outdoor grills) with low-grade used (ugh!) cookware included. It's usually not much more expensive than regular midtier hotels: possibly cheaper, if you can negotiate a longer term stay.

Most of the complaints you hear about Airbnb come off as off-the-shelf repeats of things people have read on social media. If you read reviews and pay attention to the listing there's little risk of having a bad experience or being surprised by a fee (which is extremely common at hotels.)

All that being said, if you actually get to the point where you need to engage Airbnb or Vrbo for help, they are actively harmful to the situation. The people on the other end of the phone or live chat don't have a single clue what is going on.

They deserve a correction.

Imoortant data point: NYC anti-airbnb law came into effect 9 months ago[1] This has destroyed airbnb listings in nyc to the joy of hotels everywhere. I believe bookings made before the law came to be survived, so they stayed on the books as revenue, assuming a lead time of avg 6 months, you'd exoect the hit to be happening in Q2-Q3 of thia year.

There are also regulations that came online ij all of BC and some other cities in CAN as well.

If this is happening in more major markets, maybe that's the reason for the fall?

[1] https://slate.com/business/2023/09/new-york-city-airbnb-new-...

Frequent AirBnB user here. Never had a problem. Yes some hosts charge stupid fees. Don't rent their places. No they're not more expensive than hotels if you have 4 people and need 3 bathrooms. Perhaps for one person they are.

Perhaps demand is dropping as the pent-up post-covid demand dissipates?

To note there's a spectrum of options between standard hotels and AirBnB.

When traveling with a whole family or two, weekly aparts were the best value we ever got. They were in more remote areas requiring a car, but professionaly cleaned, well adapted to the purpose with perfect transparency on the price and the contract.

I've mostly switched to VRBO for the group house situations. I find the prices are usually a wee bit better and the cancellation policies much, much better for the same houses. Although YMMV of course.

$2.75B revenue, up 11% YoY. $555M net income (20% margin). $1B free cash flow. $75B market cap (after the dip).

Yes they may have missed analyst expectations, but AirBnb is still a very solid business. Not on its last legs as everyone here seems to be convinced.

Interesting. We're not taking into account the intangibles, aka people's perception. People are angrier than usual since they feel (and rightly so) they're being displaced from their places. Look at Portugal and Spain.

Something else not mentioned here - there’s a strong incentive for both guests and hosts to use Airbnb as a way to find each other but not to book. I’m a host and I regularly get direct reach-outs from people who have found my listing on Airbnb, googled the name of my house, and reach out asking to book directly with me. Returning guests who did book through the platform always come back to me directly. Airbnb doesn’t deserve $200 from them and $100 from me for doing next to nothing.

This isn’t a sign that STRs are in trouble, people have been renting their second homes for a hundred years. This is a sign that the platforms are reaping what they sowed.

British Columbia has effectively banned whole house Airbnb rentals Province wide, and it's no longer possible to buy a condo and rent it out 24/7 as if it was a hotel.*

Have any other States enacted rules this severe? Are any about to?

Various cities have enacted Airbnb regulations, but it's at the State/Provincial level where enforcement would start to have real teeth and Airbnb would genuinely start to be in trouble.

* Exceptions: Municipalities below 10k and those with rental vacancy above 3% can opt out of the rules.

This law looks nice on paper, but in practice is another thing. I don't know how the enforcement it's done, but anecdotally a friend moved from Calgary to Vancouver for work and the company rented him an Airbnb apartment, the whole place for him, even the building have signs that the Strata forbids Airbnb.

It's pretty much a brand new law (as of May 1) so we're yet to see what the level of enforcement is.

Vancouver has had its own Airbnb bylaws (that the Provincial rules crib from) for years but bylaws are easily ignored and Vancouver's enforcement ability was very low. No real surprise to hear that someone in Vancouver was breaking the Vancouver Airbnb bylaws.

The Province does have much more ability to enforce the law that a city. So will be interesting to see.

After being scammed by host using a "final price" ("tax on top") scheme in 2015, I don't use Airbnb. So even though for a public company the stock price is not really connected to anything except shareholders wealth, I still welcome the recent dropping of their share price. Just considering them allowing many scammy practices (yes, Airbnb support does not help in most cases).

A reason for Airbnb I’m not seeing in the other comments: traveling with a dog is much easier with Airbnb than a hotel. I can find a fenced backyard and also have lots of indoor space.

I also choose airbnbs for cooking. We almost always choose a place with a grill, since our apartment doesn’t have one, and often a fire pit, too.

Never used it again after being stranded by a host that canceled the day before new years eve

I’ve decided to never use them again. I’ve had horrendous experiences with hosts and while Airbnb does do something it’s never actually made anything right.

There are great hosts out there, and then there are scammers and inconsiderate jerks with ridiculous house rules a mile long.

They need to do better at the downside management. I literally sent them a video showing it was in fact not the same apartment as the listing and they offered 20% off. The same host lied about sending someone to fix the broken hot water. Airbnb offered 30% instead of 20%. Laughable.

In Europe Airbnb seems to be much less popular, most people I know just use Booking.com which list private properties too. I use these quite often when I travel with my family and we intend to cook rather than go out (which is generally more healthy and less expensive, and when everybody helps, it doesn't take that much time).

I haven’t seen the “reverse image search” issue mentioned. It is pretty common knowledge now that you can take photos from AirBNB listings and many times find a direct booking with the company that is listing. Not always, but this has saved me thousands across two trips so far this year. *weeklong stays in Maui, San Diego

Morbid thought of the evening: If there is a meaningful broader downturn I wonder if they'll benefit from people losing stable housing and turning to ABNB for itinerant shelter.

If I were a betting man, I would bet more people would lose overleveraged mortgages on their Airbnb properties before Airbnb gets a jolt from people in unstable housing situations.

Yes this will be the case.

Maybe is due to all the complaints and people start shying away

No surprises, they’re late stage enshittification.

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