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Comment by krunck | Hacker News Reader

The problem is owners rent out their space and try to do all the work from afar. Cleaners are rented and just do what their told. No one really inspects the place between guests. No one maintains anything. It's just maximal profit extraction which turns everything into crap.

I would never rent out my home or extra dwelling without greeting the guests in person, being available for assistance, and maybe even showing up at checkout time.

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A huge advantage for these services is that I don’t ever have to meet you in person.

Availability for assistance is great, but otherwise I have zero desire to encounter you, as a “consumer”.

which is why your investment is not going to pay out. Or at least that's what the article is suggesting. You (and the rest) offered a crap experience. Customers wised up. They're no longer renting.

the main reason of etre of airbnb is to let him and others skip the law and not get a proper license to run a faux-hotel at their second homes.

then people can't afford nor rent nor buying homes in their homeplaces, due to these twats buying it all up to -profit-

this is one of those urban legends that seem to make sense but doesn't add up when you check the actual numbers.

i just need to check my neighborhood to know

classic mistake - assuming your anecdotes are data

well im still not going to an AirBnb if I can afford an hotel and avoid it

Then why not make a 6-figure investment in hospitality stocks instead of buying a house in a single neighborhood?

parent post reminded me of my experience living in Hilton Head and working for the local internet provider.

Storms and loss of power are really common in the area and we would get a flood of really belligerent callers with the following circumstances:

- Lives over 1000 miles away out of state

- Owns multiple AirBNBs in the area

- The locks for their doors required an internet connection and power to function

- They didn't have a local property manager

- Their guests were locked out

It was hilarious because they were screaming and hollering and demanding immediate service from the internet company to get their locks fixed because they were too cheap to hire a local to service the properties and reboot the fiber ONT after a power outage.

And this was about 15 years ago, so I think the "recent decline" of AirBNB is exaggerated and that these owners have always been on the platform, they're now just the _only_ owners on the platform.

Quite the take. We do one of the units in our apartment building as an AirBnB. It makes a bit more per month than just renting would.

It is cleaned and inspected very thoroughly between guests. We wouldn't do it if we couldn't offer great service.

Certainly would never want to show up at check-in/check-out though, and it'd probably freak me out if someone did that at one we stayed at. It's not a hotel and it doesn't need to be treated as one.

You say that now, but if you put yourself in the shoes of someone who had been doing that for a while, and likely has multiple properties, then you would very likely be singing a different tune.

> It's just maximal profit extraction which turns everything into crap.

Welcome to capitalism, it enshittifed hospitality (among anything else it touched)

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