My biggest gripe with AirBnb is the search functionality. Sure, you are a premium product, so you can price gouge my millennial bank account all you want. But at least give me the functionality that I need. As a software engineer, I need a place with good wifi. Hosts always claim to have wifi, but no indication of quality. Before I knew how to be a super user, it wasn't uncommon to show up to a listing that claimed to have wifi and only find out that it was coming from the building next door and you could only pick up a signal while standing up in the shower tub.<p>The most reliable way to find out who actually had good wifi was by searching the reviews for the term "wifi". However, AirBnb refuses to implement the ability to filter your results by terms inside review. They claim that it's because it's too technically difficult to implement this. I am no search guru, but I have fired up an Elastic Search instance to make a-one-to many relationship searchable back in my day without too many issues. I guess AirBnb's "scale" is just too awesome to to do this? I mean damn... google indexed the whole internet. You can't index your own reviews?<p>Then, a few months ago, I noticed that AirBnb got rid of even the search functionality on the individual listing page, so now the only way to search a listing's reviews for the word "wifi" is to go to the listing, infinite scroll the list of reviews for a few minutes to load all of them onto the page, and then use the browser's search tool.
There was an article in NYT that was discussed here a couple months ago that talked about early employees losing their equity is AirBnB didn't go public by 2020. Does anyone know more details about that?
Pivoting into these more "essential" reasons for renting, like wanting to isolate from family, seems like a smart move, so long as AirBnB hosts are taking the necessary precautions to make their properties suitable for self-quarantine. Certainly a better option isolation-wise than, say, a hotel (even if you decline room service - and room service actually recognizes that you've declined it - the rooms are in close proximity to one another, often have some degree of shared air, and the lack of a usable kitchen means having to break quarantine if you want to eat anything other than microwaved food). I'd imagine partnering with local/state/national governments to provide housing for people being specifically quarantined would be another good use for AirBnB in a similar vein.<p>Another legit non-tourism-related use case I can see still being relevant is for people needing temporary housing, whether due to moving into an area or because of foreclosure/eviction or some other reason why they don't have permanent housing. I don't know what the process of renting or buying a home looks like with social distancing (thankfully I moved right before the outbreak and didn't have the "fun" time of finding out for myself), but I can't imagine it's particularly easy or quick. And likewise, while you'd hope that banks and landlords would have the slightest bit of human decency and be a bit lenient on late mortgage/rent payments, I strongly suspect there are plenty of assholes out there.
they're short-term doomed. long-term, (2021+) -> time will tell.<p>what they're planning now to do is to invent completly new business, utilising assets they have at hand (relations with hosts, but this is it).<p>their 'online experiences' is a lesson on 'wishful thinking' or 'painting the grass green'. Quoting article: "we have nearly 100 hosts offering experiences online and thousands more who’ve offered to host experiences".<p>Let me remind them, that they have at least THREE..FOUR ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE bigger hosts number (problem 1), there is no space in youtube/twitch area for that amount of content creators (problem 2), and most hosts can't do it (problem 3).
Airbnb must be making ZERO dollars right now. Wonder how long they can survive in this situation. They sure have a lot of funding but they were close to going public and returning money to their investors. If this continues they will need to raise more cash and that round is going to be severely discounted.<p>In general I am not sure how their business will pan out over the next year or so.
> TC: Are these spaces being offered at no cost?<p>> AS: They are donated or offered at reduced pricing.<p>This decision was made by the market, not by AirBnB, because they can't get anywhere near your former price.<p>> AS: Yes, like “Sangria mixing with Pedro,” which is a cocktail mixing show<p>This isn't going to work.<p>AirBnb's sole "value" proposition was exploiting a regulatory loophole to allow offering accommodation that has:<p>- lower to no safety inspection<p>- zoned in residential spaces often with angry neighbours<p>Does it have another idea like this, that allows them to extract value created by the community?<p>I don't see any.
Gotta give them some credit though for pretty rapidly releasing their "experiences" [i]. 𝖮̶𝖽̶𝖽̶ ̶𝗍̶𝗁̶𝖺̶𝗍̶ ̶𝗍̶𝗁̶𝗂̶𝗌̶ ̶𝖺̶𝗋̶𝗍̶𝗂̶𝖼̶𝗅̶𝖾̶ ̶𝖽̶𝗈̶𝖾̶𝗌̶𝗇̶'̶𝗍̶ ̶𝖾̶𝗏̶𝖾̶𝗇̶ ̶𝗆̶𝖾̶𝗇̶𝗍̶𝗂̶𝗈̶𝗇̶ ̶𝗂̶𝗍̶.̶<p>I'm highly unlikely to use the service but I still think it shows they can respond quickly to radical events.<p>[i] <a href="https://www.airbnb.ca/s/experiences/online" rel="nofollow">https://www.airbnb.ca/s/experiences/online</a>
Staying in sub-par accomodation with no standards, or potentially sharing it with an awkward host; who likes to talk about their vegan diet and pet pug, or with wifi spy cameras, is not really a product offering.<p>Sure they have disrupted the property market and inflated rent and property prices already, which are now ironically crashing a little bit.<p>Support good hotels and chains, who hire and invest in great staff.
Airbnb has always figured out clever ways to screw the hosts. When I first hosted guests were much more polite and clean. The last few years the ones I've gotten have been pretty messy and more likely to break house rules.