I don't think I ever had an excellent rental experience. There is always something broken. Something not as advertised. Pictures are often deceiving. It is often difficult to deal with the host, as some are trying to make it their primary income and managing several properties. The chore lists are pathetic.
I would rather pay more and get a consistent experience from a hotel/resort.
I had an absolutely terrible experience once that stems from AirBNB not inspecting any listings for things like bugs. It completely turned me off the whole system. VRBO seems to have a better system because they have regional managers in areas with lots of rentals, so there's a third party there who can deal with some issues you might have. Offloading all of that onto hosts leads to some pretty major conflicts of interest, where it's in AirBNB's best interest to pawn you off onto the owner, and it's in the owner's best interest to downplay any issues you might have.
You and me both. I love using them for large group trips when we can rent a mansion but the idea that a residential zoned structure built for mid to long term residents can be used as a de-facto commercial hotel is baffling to me. I cannot start a restaurant or bar in a subdivision, why would I be able to start a hotel.
This business need to be suffocated to death by local municipalities. Where I live, they just earmarked just over $1M to start tackling the problem. It's been illegal for a long time here but we have over 1500 illegal units operating in a town of 150k people.
FWIW, between my two sisters and my mother, they have 8 airbnb units. Love them dearly, want them to succeed, but nightly rentals are just contributing to the already fractured housing problem and it's only getting worse. We need to send a message that our homes we built for people to live in are indeed homes and not another financial instrument.
My brother and I were talking yesterday how govt probably won't solve the problem efficiently. We came up with the solution of a bounty program for ordinary people to collect the necessary info to turn in illegal op units and collect part of the fine assessed to the illegal operator. Self governing system.
I've had the exact opposite experience. I always book from well reviewed hosts and have never had a bad stay.
We always travel with our kids, so multiple attached bedrooms is important, and something you pretty much cannot find in hotels without spending obscene amounts. Most hotels won't even guarantee consecutive rooms, let alone attached.
Just dealt with this recently and up until then mostly had great experiences with hosts. When something goes wrong (ex: had a family emergency that blew up my travel plans a couple of weeks out), any refunds or resolutions are at the discretion of a host who is directly financially affected by the outcome. So there's never an incentive to be reasonable, and they'll often get hostile or combative - in this recent case pretty much immediately. I was able to easily alter/refund every single component of my trip, including a hotel stay, but couldn't do anything about the AirBnB because the host dug his heels in and started getting hostile.
I don't think I ever had an excellent rental experience. There is always something broken. Something not as advertised. Pictures are often deceiving. It is often difficult to deal with the host, as some are trying to make it their primary income and managing several properties. The chore lists are pathetic.
I would rather pay more and get a consistent experience from a hotel/resort.