Digital Nomads

You're not really an AirBnB customer. You're a customer of the host. Airbnb is just the middle-man marketplace that provides some protections for both parties. If you want good customer service, stay in hotels.

Because the next company will try to do the exact same. Any company will try to lower their cost to increase revenue, one of the tools to do so is outsourcing to lower-paid countries.

It’s going to be. Check out Orcapass.com

A friend of mine is building it and moving fast. Tell him I sent you and you get a discount

The customer service reps you're running down are only implementing the policies as laid out by Airbnb. They do as they're told or get fired They're not just making it up as they go along lol.

Airbnb policy is the problem not the reps themselves. Basically it's cheaper to screw you over then provide good service.

There are other services out there making headway. They just haven't become household names yet.

For example I really like Flatio as a digital nomad. It's geared towards short to mid-term stays. They mostly just have European listings so far but seem to be growing!
https://www.flatio.com/

The call centers are in India. Morality is a luxury over there, they don't give a fuck if you get screwed by a host.

Amazing question

Airbnb and all Airbnb competitors are drawing on the same housing inventory. There's not something clever or cute a competitor can do to "hack" it because property owners are unlikely to move to a competitor that offers less compensation

Good question OP. I think its a combination of two things. Airbnb has gotten market saturation so its very difficult to topple that. And secondly there is no alternative that will give the customer better prices or customer service. All the third party booking sites will leave you high and dry in the event of an issue because solving it costs them money.

Because in order to make something like Airbnb, you need to get a lot of hosts and guests. Hosts won't sign up unless there are guests and guests won't sign up unless there are hosts.

These kinds of marketplaces are very difficult to get any traction.

Honestly I think it was because for some reason, airbnbs were a decent level of quality before this recent burst of everyone trying to own one.

The owners have gone downhill and airbnb just doesn’t have a great quality assurance practice in place. Thus people go into 4.8+ rated properties that are infested with bats, etc.

You have to find local rental companies that have cleaners and maintenance people that travel to each property and understand proper procedure for high traffic cleaning and maintenance. Not an airbnb owned by a travel nurse who knows nothing about owning a vacation rental. The travel nurse owner who just sprays Lysol and changes sheets and doesn’t even check under the bed or behind the curtains for trash.

Real answer? Economies of scale. It's hard to compete with companies like airBnb due to their size. They can afford to take short run losses, whereas most startups can't.

Customer service is horrendous? More like the owners are horrendous. I had an airbnb where the 'mattress' was actually just a thin duvet placed on top of a cheap wooden bed, and nothing else, and wrong check in instructions. The worst offenders are those 'remote' landlords who own multiple listings. They don't give a fuck, and it shows.

I'm guessing from your follow up posts that you were a total asshole to whatever CS rep had to deal with your entitled whingeing so they probably just wanted to get rid of you.

This is not to exonerate AirBnB, they're useless if something goes wrong.

Like most companies this size they probably just buy any company they see as possible eventual competition

For a little while we were done with the weekly anti-AB crybaby posts. Seems like y'all got bored again during the slow season lmao.

How and why does this have anything to do with, you know, actual DNing? It doesn't. Go post this in the AB sub if you are looking for an actual discussion, not dopamine fueled back-pats and upvotes from angry non-DNs sitting at home not doing shit.

Writing this from the toilet in my AirBnb in Medellin.

Lmao I've used Airbnb for 8 years and I've never had to contact customer support. What's your situation??

They are a monopoly. The competition makes better services concept doesn't apply here.

What’s stopping you from starting a competitor to AirBNB?

For any competitor to dislodge AirBnB, it would need to be an order of magnitude better.

And here is the tricky part:

An order of magnitude better for people who don’t have issues with AirBnB today.

People who complain tend to think their experiences are the norm, because they can easily find so many other people complaining. But that it just an outcome of scale. Majority of their customers are most likely using it infrequently and relatively happy with the service.

Outcompeting any service like this takes a lot more than just fixing problems. You need to significantly up the ante on the value generation side as well.

Facebook market place, groups. If you start another competitor it will grow again and become a monster like Airbnb is now full of legal bsht and so big that it becomes so expensive to run - fees. Do it organically, directly with the owners via Facebook or local ads.

Airbnb for travellers, in exchange for their high fees, do not offer any protection or support - found out about it on multiple occasions when my host cancelled on me day before my month-stay or Internet, advertised as fast, was non-existent and caused me trouble at work. I may as well just deal with it directly with owner as Airbnb is useless in such cases.

Most of the time, I just book few nights and do business directly with the owner - Airbnb charges me and host, so generally you do it directly for 50-60% of what Airbnb would charge you for the reservation. After few years of travelling I generally have WhatsApp numbers of the hosts in place I generally travel to and book it with them directly.

The only thing Airbnb is good is the reviews of a place, maybe Facebook should add it somewhere, like a new feature or something. Or a little service for advertising apartments with reviews and giving you contact number or something max. Something very lean.

Ah and forgot about booking, in Europe I generally use booking com and filter search by apartments - way more apartments and way cheaper than Airbnb.

AirBNB's customer service is PURPOSEFULLY bad. Make no mistake, it goes way beyond the service workers communication problems. They have tightened their policy to screw the customer and side with the home owner 99% of the time, even WITH proof, even WITH video evidence. I dread using them in case something goes wrong bc I know I won't get any restitution. They screwed me out of $400 for what was supposed to be a luxury Christmas present get away. The place was NOT clean, everything was disgusting, I had proof. Ofc I get no refund, and they allow the host to harass me over messages. Fuck AirBnB.

Vacation rental hospitality service is nearly impossible to scale. It's insanely fragmented, there are just too many particularities between customers, properties, and hosts.

Airbnb has been able to scale because they are a marketing platform, not a hospitality service. They are there to connect you with a host. It is no surprise that they would offer minimal customer service to manage the relationship beyond facilitating the initial connection. It is also no surprise that they would tend to side with the host in any dispute. That's their customer, that's their money, and having a large inventory of hosts is exactly what draws consumers in. If you leave, it does little to impact their business. If hosts leave, there isn't a business.

They're the best in the business. You answered your own question.

The core issue is scale.

Once you reach a few hundreds users and more, all the tiny unlikely corner cases because daily occurrences. Fraud, risk, getting users, managing the legal landscape, improving the product, incorporating product feedback, managing and leading the people that help you, making money, and the list goes on. It adds up really really fast.

Sounds like you've had some frustrating experiences. Maybe a new platform will emerge that better meets travelers' needs.

And what does customer service means to you? Doing everything that you want? LOL. Please understand that Airbnb doesn't own the property. They just own the platform itself hence representatives needs to reach out to both parties (guest and host). They mediate between guest and host. Btw, there's VRBO oooorrrrr book yourself a decent hotel. 😉

because the math doesn't add up. Such as with Uber and most of the other similar apps. They are only holding on because they are extremely big and still backed by cash injections

Because AirBnB is for people who want shitty portal with shitty service, otherwise they'd choose reputable law abiding hotel.

Booking.com has apartment options. I always use them

Airbnb does it can to protect gosts, not guests. In egregious circumstances I would go thriughnyour credit card company or at least threaten a charge back and see what they do then

Because its an awful business model. It replaced city-based services, which was workable. This is not and never will be.

Airbnb succeeded on a ask-forgiveness, not permission model of undercutting the legal requirements of hotels and city tenants rights around the world--and then they fought the legal battles after they had billions in their pocket and brand loyalty.

You dont get a 2nd shot at a blitzkrieg against an industry and cities. Everyone is prepared now.

Critical mass is hard to achieve and compete with a existing entrenched international tech company.

Airbnb has great service, you’re probably just an asshole

I use Interhome in Europe 🙃