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Airbnb in North America is awful. More expensive than hotels, often dirtier, greedy hosts try to offload their own expenses to tenants. Hotels all the way!

Oddly enough though, when my wife and I went to Japan, it was the opposite. All the Airbnbs we stayed at were much more affordable, way cleaner, and the hosts were incredibly kind and respectful. The hotels we stayed at were average. Not sure what’s keeping the service so nice over there, or if we just lucked out at 3 different places

Airbnb doesn't protect the tenant enough.

I've been charged for a locksmith because the instructions state "leave the key on the table" but the dumbass landlord doesn't have a spare key.

I only find it helpful for renting homes during group trips. Otherwise I'll always go to a hotel.

Similarly, I will always use cabs in NYC, never an Uber.

AirBnB is great for large groups, when all the hidden fees and cleaning duties can be split up between a dozen people. It actually works out to cheaper than a hotel, and it's much more intimate to be together in one place with big private common areas. Plus, those big 6+ bedroom AirBnBs aren't exactly hurting homebuyers by being off-market.

But for just a few people? Hotels all the way.

AirBNBs are not hotels. I guess that should be obvious, but my sister booked one for her family and me to attend a wedding. They technically did have an iron as claimed, but it was broken and the steam setting didn't work. Oh, and there was no ironing board, which it turns out is pretty key to the process. Every single hotel in the country has this basic amenity... Spent twice as long trying to iron on the top of the dryer, burned my slacks (ruining them), and I look bad in photos.

The whole point of AirBnB was that they were cheaper than hotels, but you had to clean yourself.

Now it’s just as much as hotels with shittier service.

TBF, almost all of this applies to VRBO too.

The new requirements to be verified, even with over a decade of perfect review is astonishingly dump. I just stopped using it.

It's funny - I'm often in charge of booking the stay for large family get togethers and trips, and I exclusively used AirBnb. However, after using their service for 6+ years, they ended up canceling a reservation I had had for months THE NIGHT BEFORE OUR TRIP. I didn't even realize they had canceled on me til our plane had landed.

Turns out, they suddenly had a problem with a misdemeanor I had been charged with 8 years prior when I was 20 (minor possession of marijuana). They disabled my account and said I couldn't rent through them anymore because of my criminal history. I reached out to them and offered an explanation, as well as reminding them that this was an old conviction of a minor drug possession. I don't have a criminal record beyond that, and had been an avid customer of theirs for many years with raving reviews. They still denied me, and I'm still banned to this day. So yeah, they can go fuck themselves.

I won't use them again. It's morally questionable to support that business model during a global housing crisis.

I never did get into Airbnb: there was always too much room for unpredictability that I don’t want to deal with when traveling. Since then, we have the rise of chore lists and they’ve lost the price advantage in many places, so I don’t really see a point. Even worse, AirBnB has been around long enough that we all probably know someone who had a bad experience

It's as if people don't want to pay to be personal maids of hosts.

Airbnb is expensive. It also is often awkward, I always seem to get places where the owner wants to give me a tour of the place when I show up. Checkout time is always a massive stress, trying to figure out where the outside bin is, how to start the dishwasher, and remembering to return all the furniture to it's original position, lest we break a rule and lose our deposit. You don't get mini bars or room service or daily housekeeping, and you have no idea if the host is secretly keeping tabs on you somehow. It's just so much more work to stay at an Airbnb than a hotel, with none of the cost benefits as a trade off.

The other week we stayed at a Hilton and I checked in and out without speaking to a soul (via the app). It's a no brainer at this point.

I stopped looking at ABnB a few years ago. It stopped making financial and quality of life sense. The costs became nearly equal or greater than that of hotels I cross shopped.

The hassle though is what really killed it. The inconvenience of dealing with a host that was not on-site and often not available to deal with issues plus the long list of chores required and the potential penalties of not following them perfectly just made it not worth doing.

An extended stay hotel is predictable and more than good enough. AirBnB has a consistency problem. To include pricing and hidden fees.