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Comment by analog31 | Hacker News Reader

It's interesting how Airbnb has diverged from its original vibe of "staying at somebody's house." When I "stay at somebody's house" I wash the dishes, take out the trash, etc. Essentially, leave it as I found it, if not a bit better. I also expect "somebody's house" to be cleaner than a hotel.

Granted, Airbnb has taken on the hotel industry, and so I'm not surprised that their rules have evolved.

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You do those things when you’re staying at a friend or family member’s place. But your friends and family aren’t charging you hundreds of dollars a night, plus a $250 cleaning fee.

It’s not just Airbnb the company that moved away from it, it’s the Airbnb hosts that moved away from it as soon as opportunists started becoming mega landlords renting out ikea-furnished party houses. It hasn’t been the original “person with a spare room for a weekend” Airbnb in a long, long time.

In Tacoma, a "party house" suffered an arson attack recently. The theory/rumors, etc., are that it was a neighbor, pissed off with the constant noise, traffic, etc. The home is right by the Narrows bridge, views, etc., and rentable.

The other part of the theory is since it is owned by a former NFL player (and a Seahawk, at that), that local police were reluctant to rock the boat too much. Neighbors got frustrated, and well, maybe?

I also expect "somebody's house" to be cleaner than a hotel. — Why would you expect that someone’s entire house is cleaner than a small hotel room that professional crews clean every single day?

Granted I don't stay in the most expensive hotels. But the "professional crews" may very well be overworked and understaffed, and not managed with sufficient attention to quality.

These things are banned because they became the Amazon equivalent of low balling rates and tacking on shipping fees.

The relationship to homliness really has nothing to do with this. Your friends never charged you to stay then charge 4x that because you left some trash.

Staying with my family and friends and helping with common household chores, the same as I would be doing at my own home, is a completely different thing than paying $150-350 a night to some rando.

Not sure what it’s like elsewhere but at least in Australia it’s not objectively cheaper to use airbnb than a hotel. So if you’re paying the same rate, you don’t expect to have to follow a bunch of extra rules that wouldn’t apply to the other

I recently used airbnb quite a bit in Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick and found quite a bit of that old vibe, ranging from a spare room in a young brother & sister's house, to more suite-style accomodation. I was very happy with all my stays, specifically the hosts who balanced privacy with friendly helpfulness.

I agree about how one should conduct themselves in someone else's home, but is it really that interesting how they progressed as a technology company? To me it seems like the tried and true formula of enshittification. It's the startup playbook.

You went by a "vibe" they wanted you to believe instead of the fact that you pay hotel rates to stay at these houses?

I thought the point was (at least initially) that you’re not paying hotel rates

The only way I ever saw a savings was by getting a lesser experience in terms of location, amenities, privacy, predictability, etc.

I find you get more space & amenities for the same price, but it's not much - if any - cheaper.

...and you believed that it was ?

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