I find it sad how Airbnb has taken a market that worked (in many places) and re introduced all the problems that have been resolved through decades of regulations being put in place for hotels etc.
Chances of finding a camera in a hotel room are near zero while at Airbnb you have no idea what kind of pervert the renter is. At this point prices for Airbnb have rissen so high why not get a hotel?
It's like we don't learn at all from history or just like to forget so we can make an extra buck.
Next they need to ban giving my personal info to 3rd party services.
It's becoming common now to upload guests' personal info into cloud property management systems, and set up things like wifi with services that offer a discount if you provide guest info. It's gross and when I complain about it to AirBnB they do nothing.
I feel like a grumpy old guy every time I read about AirbedAndBreakfast, because that is how it was initially pitched on this site. If people would just keep thinking of it as a way to get an airbed and sleep on someone’s floor, they would have appropriate expectations.
I’ve never used the service, because I prefer real beds cleaned as required by the local health department.
I'm worried this ban will only affect honest hosts.
Anyway, what Airbnb should really ban is hosts charging a mandatory cleaning fee when also requiring their guests to do the cleaning.
We just stayed at one this weekend, and like almost all our previous bookings, the host asked us to:
- Take off all bedding and towels and start a load of laundry
- Do all the dishes and start the dishwasher (but required to hand-wash some items)
- Collect and take out all the trash to the curb
- Clean the grill/stove/oven
And we still had to pay a $200 cleaning fee when booking the place. A hotel would never require this of us or charge us extra.
> Hosts can’t use outdoor cams to keep tabs on indoor spaces
That might be easy to game either way. Hosts can claim they didn’t keep tabs, just had a hunch to come over and check; and guests can claim the camera in the yard could see some part of the interior through a window and ask for a refund.
One interesting effect is that now hosts with hidden cameras can't offer the footage as proof during disputes.
Not sure how AirBnB has a $100 billion market cap. The use case for an AirBnB, which is mostly large group travel, seems limited when comparing to the use case for a hotel (every other type of travel). Marriott and Hyatt combined have a lower market cap than AirBnB.
I’m stunned people still use AirBNB after most hosts turned their high paying customers into unpaid housekeepers.
Amazing that this even needs to be stated
Imagine for a second, that you checkin at a Marriott/Hilton/Fairmont and there was a camera in your hotel room. It's amazing it even lasted this long with airbnb.
One more rule written in blood. How much abuse has it taken to reach this point? Incalculable.
This is how you do it. Come in as a "disruptor," ignore all the rules the establishment has already learned the hard way, and make shitloads of money for as long as you can without pesky old oversight or constraints.
Eventually, you wind up with the same rules the establishment had, if not more. Your catalog gets clogged with cottage enterprises that game your algorithms to steal your customer equity. While you're neck-deep in customer complaints and bad press, you're reduced to a clearinghouse for someone else's business -- little more than a classified ad service. You lose, your customers lose, and -- unless, god forbid, they get organized -- your original suppliers lose. Everyone loses except the scalpers and the scammers. Except now you've run out the competition, and consumers have little other choice.
In this example, why use AirBnB when all you get is either a Sonder that is more hassle and no better than a hotel, one of a dozen apartments leased by the same weirdo, a retirement-home-in-waiting in a bland suburb, or a sketchy individual's greasy rathole?
In the end, welcome to niche status. You do actually have a unique product (in this case, places for big groups to stay for several days), but the market for that isn't big enough for perpetual "growth," so you're on track to be acquired by a hedge fund, rolled together with your former competitors, soaked with debt, and then put out to pasture. But your founders are long gone, booking corporate speaking engagements between yacht voyages. Some "vice president" decides your labor pool stays cheapest if you disincentivize things like career development. Eventually everything is parceled out altogether. What's left of the value of your brand gets smeared over commodities. "Welcome to AirBnB, powered by Motel 6 (an SV Capital Partners, LLC experience)."
> The change comes after numerous reports of guests finding hidden cameras within their rental, leading some vacation-goers to scan their rooms for cameras.
Checking for cameras seems like a smart move no matter what their policy is. You just never know.
Airbnb did previously allow indoor cameras?!
I had one once in my living room. I was pissed. The host told me it had written about it in the description. Sure enough it was there when I looked carefully. Still what the heck. In a Boston Airbnb with my parents visiting from abroad. I ended up leaving a one star review, and he begged for me to take it down. I explained long and large how wrong what he did was and left my one star review. Felt good.
I almost forgot how annoying Airbnb is until I started staying in hotels again.
I will gladly take a smaller property in exchange for dealing with people that have actual hospitality training, daily room cleaning, room service, etc. Hotels are just a nicer experience. I don't want to spend my vacation cleaning the room or worrying about a "host."
Good to see that they are also thinking at least one step ahead:
>> Hosts can’t use outdoor cams to keep tabs on indoor spaces, either, nor can they use them in “certain outdoor areas where there’s a great expectation of privacy,” such as an outdoor shower or sauna.
There are certainly hosts who would instantly put a camera in the tree looking in the windows.
They'll still do it, but they can't use the pictures without incriminating themselves.
The arms race continues, but slightly better for guests.
Definitely always scan your rooms. I volunteer with helping women who were filmed involuntarily for sexual purposes and the level of voyeuristic content from AirBnb hosts has been skyrocketing.
Are they also banning the host practice of renting out multiple rooms to guests who are strangers to each other? I would prefer indoor cameras as protection from other guests.
How about we just ban Airbnb and solve part of the housing crisis while we're at it?
Pablum. Near impossible to enforce.
This reminded me that AirBNB is a crap service. I wanted to delete my account but never got around to do so.
So I did it now!
Making small changes to policy like this will continue to have no effect on the negative externalities of AirBNB rentals.
Will this improve guest privacy? No, hidden cameras are too difficult to detect and too easy to install.
Will this prevent AirBNBs becoming party houses/apartments in residential areas? No, obviously not, since that's apparently already banned.
Will this collect commercial taxes from investment property owners illegally renting out AirBNBs in residential zones? Of course not.
Et cetera.
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Typical BS reasoning. The hidden cameras are already against policy. Do they really think expanding the policy to all indoor cameras is going to stop those actions? If anything, people looking to protect their property will now have more incentive to place hidden cameras if there are no options for allowable ones.
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I'd put this under "enshitification".
I've had plenty of complaints in the past about terrible airbnb hosts, but this seems to me to be clearly motivated to bring more money into AirBNB at the expense of the hosts and neighbors. Just like Paypal made conscious decisions to ignore customer fraud and hold sellers liable for everything, now AirBNB is trying to squeeze more out of the hosts by supporting and enabling bad behavior by guests, removing options for hosts to control or respond to terrible customers. I stopped using AirBNB several years ago, but then I noticed that hotels have copied AirBNB's shitty policies, like the price doubling on the last page due to unexpected fees. They're enshitifying the whole hospitality industry.
Signed on just to say, like that Figma post garbage quickly moving off the main page... Forget AirBnB- These businesses lacked justification to begin with and followed the selfish whims of their boards. Abandon these paid dog food products and go out and build/support open replacements for them.
In my experience Airbnb isn’t even cheaper, just has more “interesting” housing available.
Back to the topic - removing listings isn’t a sufficient enough punishment imho. And how would you even prove it from the guests side? Take a picture I suppose? But how do you stop bad actors?
Not sure what the correct solution is. Someone who wants to spy can purchase a spy camera which is very abundant these days.