r/technology • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 • 8h ago

Society New Airbnb rules ban hosts from making guests wash dishes, do laundry & other checkout chores

https://www.dexerto.com/entertainment/new-airbnb-rules-ban-hosts-from-making-guests-wash-dishes-do-laundry-other-checkout-chores-3420832/
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u/crxsso_dssreer 8h ago

well, because that's exactly what most are, landlords skirting around local laws, especially in Europe...

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u/Heelincal 6h ago

What's funny too is like the idea was always a good one in small batches. It's nice to be able to rent out a whole house in a unique location so everyone in your party could stay in the same house.

But once people tried to convert homes into multi-tenant hotels where you do all of the work too they just immediately lost the plot. Especially since it's often more expensive than a hotel!!

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u/The_Hoopla 6h ago

Exactly. I haven't booked an AirBnB in years because it started getting fucking egregious. I had a host with rules about washing my own sheets.

What? That would be all well and good, I guess, if the cost of an AirBnB was significantly cheaper than a hotel. I'll wash my own sheets if it's $40/night.

$150-$200/night? Brother there better be a mint on my pillow when I get back.

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u/Jackski 5h ago

Yeah I used to use it a lot when it first started as it was handy as fuck. Usually cheaper than a hotel and in better locations closer to where I needed to be.

Now a hotel is cheaper and I'm not expected to wash the sheets and I don't risk being charged extra because I accidentally left a empty bottle on the table when I left.

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u/Clear_Broccoli3 5h ago

Airbnb has also tried to charge me or my friends for broken shit that was broken when we checked in. One time the lady was there to receive us, and she opened the door and walked us into the place and closed the door behind her when she left, and when we went out later in the day we realized the door handle was loose and the key jammed. When we reported it she tried to blame it on us.

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u/Sirsalley23 3h ago

Same here, it was over a crack in a hot tub liner. Which I don’t blame the owner for pursuing it, but if the cleaning team isn’t properly and extensively documenting the condition of everything between stays, then IMO you don’t have a leg to stand on to claim damages from a guest unless it’s something obvious like a window/door.

Or crazy idea, keep track of the conditioning of your own rental, and don’t just make claims when you’ve got no proof, it’s like a rental car, there should be a walk around and video/photo proof taken of the condition before/after with both parties present.

The owner actually had no proof of any timeline for the damages. So they just dropped the claim after we told them to pound sand, and prove the condition before and after our stay. My buddy that rented it was full ready to let them just lock his account and never use it again anyway.

And btw Air BnB needs to do something about people rigging cameras all over too. Got into a massive fight with an owner for unplugging interior cameras. Don’t rent your shit if you don’t expect for some potential losses or weird shit to occur.

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u/scarletwitchmoon 3h ago

In the rare event I stay in an Airbnb, I've started taking photos when I arrive/leave for this very reason.

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u/FourthLvlSpicyMeme 5h ago

Yeah same. It used to be better for me for travelling because instead of all of us paying like 5-8k for a resort stay and trying to get our rooms somewhat close to each other, was very silly when we could simply rent an Air BNB or VRBO where we were, often a beachfront or very close location.

It used to be a significant money and headache saver, now it's neither. Though maybe these new rules will make it a bit more normal, my expectation is the hosts will just triple the prices cuz they're pissy about this.

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u/pimppapy 4h ago

my expectation is the hosts will just triple the prices cuz they're pissy about this.

And if there are fools parting with their money for these new prices. . . then shit will stay the same, just everything got pricier instead.

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u/Clear_Broccoli3 5h ago

Same, I started booking hotels again a few years ago and was floored by how pleasant the experience was. I even got an upgraded room once I think cuz it was a dead season and I was nice to the night staff when I checked in. A couple places had a free "pick you up from the airport" service so I didn't have to deal with a car share or a taxi. And they were all cheaper than the available airbnb were.

I think the only time an airbnb is worth it is if 1) you NEED to be close to a specific location and there's no hotels in the area, or 2) you're going with a big group of people.

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u/PMmeyourmacncheese 4h ago

Agreed - I prefer hotels if it’s just me and my partner. But when we travel with two kiddos and my parents, airbnb is more convenient, especially having a kitchen.

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u/Francesami 3h ago

Even when I visit somewhere with a large group, I NEED a place to get away by myself and recharge my people battery. Being around the whole group 24 hours a day would totally exhaust me.

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u/Somanylyingliars 2h ago

Have been traveling a bit and staying at hotels. So mad that private equity making their way to this sector too. My favorite, Extended Stay, was bought out. Service has gone down the drain. Hotels look like shit. Roach infestations, safety system alarms going off all time because not service. They've eliminated in just 4 shorts years: shuttles to hotels, porters that would help w luggage/ bags, daily room service, pools, full breakfast, things like razors, caps eliminated while controls set for basics like soap and toilet paper. They even LIE in their reservation system telling you they still have x.y, z. You only find out when youre at location stick like chick. Sucks they're now in toilet. Avoid them like plague.

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u/Tuxhorn 5h ago

Just came home from Japan. First time staying in hotels since I was a kid. Oh my god what do you mean I just hand my room key over when I check out and all I have to do is... not forget my own stuff.

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u/scarletwitchmoon 3h ago

Also, I bet Japan has fantastic hotel service. I can only dream. I can't wait to visit someday.

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u/avitus 3h ago

I've stayed in Airbnb's in Tokyo many times over the last 8 years or so. They are all regulated and have to operate as hotels, minus some niceties that hotels provide with front desk service. You won't get hit with the weird shit you see elsewhere. The benefit is that you often can stay in some really interesting parts of town.

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u/ladyhaly 4h ago

Same. They lost me when the rules started getting ridiculous with the price not justifying it. The host would often be rude and have no concept of professional boundaries.

I had a host interrogate me bec I had two work friends visit during lunchtime to say goodbye and help me pack for flying. The host knew I and my partner were moving countries and flying the next day. Would not have been a problem if I just booked a hotel... Or even a motel. I paid hotel rate for the damn place.

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u/adwarakanath 5h ago

I have never used Airbnb. Ever. Or any streaming subscription service. Since the beginning they smelled off to me. Vindication, years later, not just Airbnb.

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u/pimppapy 4h ago

A non-refundable cleaning fee too, on top of the nightly rates no less.

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u/Higher-Frequencies 2h ago

Make sure you tack on an extra chore day to your vacation!

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u/omnivorousboot 6h ago

It's like Private Equity all over. When it was just people listing their already owned home to make a little extra cash on a cool place while it wasn't in use it was great. Once it became all these people buying properties to use specifically for AirBnB it became a disaster. Because instead of it just being some supplemental cash to a homeowner it became a revenue generating vehicle for investors.

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u/dizzy_absent0i 5h ago

Don’t forget how it added to the pricing out young people from buying homes to live in.

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u/4KVoices 5h ago

yup, I've already come to terms with just never owning any property of my own. Unless I come into an extraordinary amount of money I'll just be renting.

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u/CaptainFeather 4h ago

If my partner and I had kids we absolutely couldn't afford to have bought our house. Also helps we're in the Midwest where things are below the national average. Could never afford to live anywhere desirable though.

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u/IHadTacosYesterday 32m ago

One thing I did, was live DRAMATICALLY below my means for 10 years, while simultaneously pumping every spare penny into Google stock. Paid off huge, but the decade I endured was absolutely awful. I essentially had no life for 10 years. Didn't go anywhere, didn't do anything and didn't spend any money

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u/TheGummiVenusDeMilo 4h ago

Can't afford to live in my butt fuck nowhere town because people from the city are willing to pay 1k a night for the vibe.

Like It's always been city folk retiring in rural areas with their many dollars compared to us locals, but it's gotten insanely worse when realtors are promoting houses as investment properties first and not a home.

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u/orange-yellow-pink 4h ago

Its impact is overblown. In NYC, they banned Airbnbs and hotels got more expensive due to less competition and rent continued to rise

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u/dizzy_absent0i 4h ago

NYC isn’t the only city in the world. Hundreds/thousands of small towns and cities, especially with strong tourist industries, saw housing stock for residents plummet as investors moved in to AirBNB them.

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u/cretinous-bastard 35m ago

Not just young people. In some cities like Paris and Barcelona, it severely distorted local housing markets, effectively taking a substantial share of previously available rental housing away from locals.

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u/N7Shep1701D 6h ago

Private Equity is going to lead the collapse of the American healthcare system. Both for you and your pets.

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u/386U0Kh24i1cx89qpFB1 3h ago

You think I can afford a pet in this economy? Lol not even falling into that money trap.

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u/Somanylyingliars 2h ago

Private Equity is going to lead (to) the collapse of theAmerican healthcare system. Both for you and your pets. There, fixed that for you.

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u/Black_Moons 5h ago

Ah yes, another industry ruined by Rent Seeking Behavior, where people with money demand more money just because they have money and you don't.

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u/16semesters 5h ago

The problem is when Airbnb stopped making space usage more efficient and started making it less efficient.

When it started, renting a spare bedroom, or someone's lake house on a weekend they aren't using it, is a great idea. This takes space that would otherwise be vacant and puts it to good use.

The second someone however buys a property just to Airbnb it, the entire thing is flipped. Now we have what should be someones home, is instead a bizarre barely legal pseudo-hotel with limited protections for the consumer.

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u/nebula_masterpiece 5h ago

Exactly this - the initial pitch was to capture unused spare bedrooms, not to build and buy homes just to use as hotel replacements

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u/TopVolume6860 2h ago

The initial pitch was just a lie to get millennials to try it out. The goal was always to lose money and undercut hotels until hotels went out of business then jack prices way up and cut costs (enshittify the service) with their new duopoly status like uber/lyft did to cabs only they found out hotels are way more resilient than cab companies were and it backfired on them

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u/Sudden-Purchase-8371 1h ago

The other difference is that the two industries, hotel and taxi, taxi is by far the worst of the two. Taxi cabs had way more regulatory capture that led to terrible service. I hate Uber/Lyft for their labor practices and fuck the gig economy but the Taxi companies had it fucking coming in spades.

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u/Schonke 3h ago

The second someone however buys a property just to Airbnb it, the entire thing is flipped. Now we have what should be someones home, is instead a bizarre barely legal pseudo-hotel with limited protections for the consumer.

If we want to have owning a house as a viable dream for the middle class, there need to be some serious rethinking of property taxes.

For example: First residential property you own is barely taxed at all, mainly just the capital gains tax once it's sold. That way no one should be forced to sell cause their house increased greatly in value but their retirement income is meager.

Second residential property (like you buy a small summer cabin) gets taxed at a leisure house rate which, in addition to capital gains tax when sold, also includes a yearly tax to the local governmental bodies for the increased load during high season and diminished tax base during off-season. This might mean some have to eventually sell cause they can't afford it any more, but since it's just the second property no one should be forced to move or become homeless.

Once you get a third residential property, then all your residential properties get taxed as if you're a landlord and they're your way of making income. This way you can't play any creative tax games by deciding which property is main, second and third and so on. Then you have to choose between keeping that tax rate or fold some of the properties into the ownership of a corporation you start.

And all corporate ownership of residential properties should be taxed as if they're owning to rent and profit off it.

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u/masterlich 5h ago

I used to Airbnb a room in my house. It was BARGAIN BASEMENT cheap. Like, I think I put it up for $25 a night.

I stopped bothering when I would get entitled guests who were offended at the smallest things. Brother, you're paying $25 a night. If you wanted the Taj Mahal, you should have paid more.

I imagine that's the same thing that happened to all the other small time hosts. It wasn't worth the hassle for the tiny amount of money you get. So now we're all we're left with are the professionals renting out for more than hotels.

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u/Somanylyingliars 2h ago

You might consider VRBO which has a more down to earth crowd.

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u/Somanylyingliars 2h ago

AirBNB was start of market disruptors. Come in w cutesy idea, skirt local laws, decimate competition. A model repeated over and over. A model w little regulation leading to multiple deaths all over US. We need regulations over all these disruptors and have them pay into UBI plus more

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u/ChepaukPitch 29m ago

And that is because a company should always grow. If the original idea has reached its limits you have to do something or the other to keep growing.

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u/WhoPoopedMyPants420 5h ago

The issue is that vacation rentals have been around for a long time. That wasn't the innovation, AirBnB just did to vacation rentals what Uber did to cabs

Finding a way to scale that business into a volume-driven, slop-filled feeding frenzy was the idea

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u/DiamondsInHerButt 5h ago

This is just Silicon Valley in a nutshell. Take an existing business sector that's existed normally for decades and "disrupt" it via app that basically only offers a search engine that tends to get intentionally worse over time while offering no customer support because the whole point of it is just taking their piece of the pie.

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u/Mediocre-Writer6635 4h ago

Eh, they provided better services than stagnant, shitty industries that thought they had customers by the short hairs. Good for them. People use uber over taxis because taxis suck.

They were often filthy, constantly trying to scam you, they weren't available in some areas, of course no app or other modern basic conveniences. Talk about customer service? what customer service did taxis have?

Uber is just enshittifying same way but that just means it is not great. It's still better than taxis. Otherwise people would just use taxis.

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u/rufud 3h ago

I think you are glossing over the enshittification of uber/lyft. They are entirely the same as other cab companies. Cab companies have had to adapt to the new technology but remember how uber was way cheaper and you didn’t have to tip? Not anymore. It also eviscerated the zipcar industry into those crappy scooters/bikes you can rent. It was originally envisioned as what if two people going to the same place just happen to ride share? Then, just like air bnb, the drivers just wanted be like cab drivers but for the gig economy. We swapped out a bunch of crappy things about the cab industry for a different set of crappy things.

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u/Own_Back_2038 2h ago

You definitely don’t have to tip an uber.

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u/Geminii27 2h ago

Encourage its use while providing absolutely no accountability or adherence to actual laws, then scoop up the profits of other people's crimes and claim no knowledge of said crimes.

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u/ChepaukPitch 28m ago

The other innovation of tech is that they skirt the existing laws and get to take no responsibility for anything. That is the biggest innovation.

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u/wimpymist 4h ago

The original pitch of Airbnb was awesome. Paying someone $100 to sleep in their spare bedroom while traveling when all you needed was a place to sleep was awesome.

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u/DaBingeGirl 55m ago

I refuse to use Uber or Lyft too, just taxis for me.

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u/USA_A-OK 5h ago edited 2h ago

Multi tenant hotels with none of the regulations

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u/MilkChocolate21 5h ago

I used some private rentals long before Airbnb and agree. I once met a woman who facilitated holiday rentals on a small scale, and she visied them all before promoting them. I personally used a simple European holiday rental site. However no one was trying to get rich or engage in housing arbitrage. I rented from a woman who was herself spending several months in the US. Many listings were definitely temporary and very seasonal. On that small scale, the neighbors knew strangers were coming and were very nice too.

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u/DisplayThick4882 4h ago

Yeah. We came from a 5 star hotel for €150 a night and landed in Madrid in what seemed to be an old big apartment near stadium converted into many small apartments and shared kitchen.

None if this was advertised clearly on shared apartment. Everything was Ikea and tiniest bathroom ever and hard small bed. Like probably 10sqm room. Cost 189 euros per night. There was no football or anything and city was dead as winter and cold. Apartment was super noisy and paper thin walls and as everyone essentially enters in from only apartment door it gets noisy.

I gave 1 star review on Booking.com with fair reasons on size, price and false advertising and as I left and owner messaged me to complain saying its bad for them and will ruin them. They had like 4.5 stars from thousands others. Reviews were good but no mentions of small size or bad quality. I assume due to football fans wanting close stay during games.

Found it baffling like he thought it was good value. If it was advertised accurately would have booked hotel instead for cheaper.

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u/MyneIsBestGirl 2h ago

Same business model as Uber, start out the services very cheap and accessible with investor capital, and once people get hooked to the idea (and you kill out a few good competitors), then you jack down the quality and jack up the price.

Unfortunately for AirBNB, their service was too involved to get away long, especially since hotels were barley displaced. It's as easy as ever to just ignore them compared to airports where taxis can still be way overpriced or unaccomodated.

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u/powercow 5h ago

It's also one of the big reasons rent went up so much. It takes supply off the market and when your landlord sees they can make more renting your place by week, they are going to want to raise rent.

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u/FreshChocolateCookie 6h ago

I travelled for the first time in an air b n b. I have serious OCD and would take literally everything including my bed with me. That’s incredibly weird to do in a hotel.

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u/FauxReal 5h ago

I stayed at a place in New Orleans like that, large single story house with 6 rooms all rented out via ABnB.

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u/spentchicken 5h ago

Exactly. Early few years of air bnb was amazing. The money you saved and the neat places you could find was great. Then it got infested with the type of people you described and it was ruined

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u/Oboro-kun 5h ago

Arent more of this services and apps away to just skip throught laws and taxes?

"No i am not a taxi, I offer rides on Uber!"

"No i am not a landlord I just rent my place throught Air BnB!"

Like even this services ride on it. Uber fought a lot to not make its user employee because it would bankrupt them.

While I am all for competency and maybe having some less restriction in some stuff like Taxis, its seems just a way to skip Taxes and draw the community dry.

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u/DrAstralis 5h ago

in my city they loved buying up entire floors of new apartment buildings (during a housing crisis no less) to then run them like a hotel, but because the laws hadn't caught up they did this to avoid paying the taxes entities like hotels need to pay that supports the advertisements and programs that being locals / tourists into the city.

They were of course also douches to all the actual residents who live there but I feel that goes without saying at this point.