I travel a <i>lot</i>. I've had so many bad experiences with AirBnB. Despite their high fees, it's almost impossible to get their customer support to read any kind of complaint and give an apropos response. Their responses are usually non-sequitur: they don't give an on-topic response to the issue.<p>I switched to just using Bonvoy/Marriott and staying in hotels. Now I have a high status level (titanium), and they really do anything they can to make me happy. And actually, there is much rarely any issue for me to complain about: mostly they just get things right in the first place. And with high status, they give me room upgrades, free breakfast, late checkout, free nights and points.<p>Now I only use AirBnB for stays of a month or more.
Vice covered a similar scam (also in Nov. 2019)
<a href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/43k7z3/nationwide-fake-host-scam-on-airbnb" rel="nofollow">https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/43k7z3/nationwide-fake-ho...</a>
I think it's a cheap shot to call out "the Catholic church" in the subhead like that, implying they have any involvement in the scam simply because they are the freeholders of the land in question.
This is why when I do book with AirBnB I make sure that I'm booking with a superhost. It shouldn't have to be that way, but it is, and I'm happy to put a dollar amount on my sanity. There are stories of "bad superhosts", or rather bad stories of bookings with hosts that have superhost status, but they're measurably fewer.<p>Like every marketplace, there are going to be fraudsters taking advantage of it. It's the world we live in. No marketplace is immune to fraud.