I never expect service when I'm using AirBnB. I expect a room, or an apartment, that I can stay in, while the host and I both stay out of each other's hair.
If I'm staying for a long term (>1 week), I suppose I'd take it for granted that I'd at least have access to the laundry facilities, if not be able to just dump my bedsheets in a laundry basket and be able to pull clean ones out of the closet.
It was basic stuff like this that I had problems with. For example, the host was not there when I arrived the first evening, and neither was the person that the host had said would be present - something I find unacceptable. And then the host got confused and thought I was leaving a day before I was, which I had to then sort out over the phone. These are the sorts of things that I shouldn't have to think about.
Why judge all of airbnb from just one experience?
No, especially because nearly all hotels keep spare rooms for this eventuality - screwups are explicitly planned for. This isn't true for AirBnbs, where if something screws up you're literally out on the street.
That's really what we're discovering now. The expense of hotels is largely due to regulatory capture, but it is also because that one extra 9 in reliability costs money. It turns out that having a 90% probability of your lodging go off without a hitch is a lot cheaper than a 99% probability.
My own experience with AirBnb is that when things go great, they're great. When they run into edge cases or problems though it tends to quickly unravel. Hotels explicitly plan for this.
This is nonsense. If, for whatever reason, the apartment that I'm renting out on airbnb is not available, I would not put a person on the street. I would invite them into my own place. And if even that is unavailable, then I would pay for a hotel room.
Good service is not hard.