ribeirasacra

AirBnB that great sharing community ?
Or a huge business?
Professionals in the sector have displaced private landlords. (in Spanish)

The article mainly writes about the rentals in Galicia, Spain.

HelenaFatima

But they are, dear Mdam. Perdu! All are just platforms, and they are in all of them (well, at least most of them). I mean... there is no difference between the platforms, they just advertise your flat. So if you have (let's say) a room to rent to tourists, you can advertsise it in expecia, airbnb, bookingor even tripadvisor.

MmePerdu

I won’t confuse you with the facts then, HF (!), your mind is made up.

5alive

Actually Helen is more right than you realize. Booking.com is not just hotels. Far from it. I do a lot of hunting before choosing lodgings.

Booking.com has an extensive listing of apartments, and often you can find the same apartment on both platforms. The third one is Homeaway/VRBO, and sometimes I see an apartment there that is not on the other two. However, I got really good help on booking.com when things went awry--in one case, I was given the wrong unit. Booking.com insisted that the host refund the difference. And In the other, the driver almost left us at the wrong address and booking.com called the owner's cell and had her talk to the driver and work it out. So I am not sure that all the platforms will come through for you--or that booking.com will come through every time. On the other hand, if I find lodgings I like more on the other two, I would definitely take them.

I did not know that Expedia has a lot of apartments. I had poor luck when I tried to find them on Travelocity (a sister site to Expedia). I will take a look next time.

whitehall

Like it or not, Airbnb is here to stay. 150 million users; 650,000 hosts. Most people who use it love it, as evidenced by the reviews right here on this thread. It is very, very popular with the younger generation. But, surprisingly, surveys show seniors are flocking to it as well. As I indicated, there will continue to be some issues that local zoning and safety authorities need to address. And, yes, while there are safety regs for most hotels and other lodging places, they are not always followed by establishments, and enforcement can sometimes be thin. So, don’t ever assume that anyplace you stay, hotel or otherwise, is completely safe. We saw that last spring with the carbon monoxide deaths at that resort in Mexico. We now carry a portable CO2 detector with us when we travel.

And, MmePerdu is right. Very few airbnb apartments are listed on “booking”. Part of the reason is that “booking" has a much higher commission fee (15% vs. 3%) and that airbnb guests are rated, which allows owners the opportunity to refuse service. However, “booking” does have a lot of apartments and has more visibility. We are good tenants, so we prefer the airbnb platform and have found it works for us most of the time. We do use booking and HomeAway as back-ups if we don't find what we want, and have had good luck with all of them.

progol

<<This is fine except that, in Paris at least, Airbnb blatantly ignores local housing laws. The hotel industry this week has initiated a new lawsuit against Airbnb in an effort to force them to list only legally registered apartments. Booking.com has agreed to follow the law but Airbnb has not. The city also still has its case against Airbnb for noncompliance with illegal listings and renting apartments beyond the legal 120 day annual limit.>>

What about private rental agencies? I don't see any license numbers on apartments such as those listed by the ever-popular paris.perfect (https://www.parisperfect.com/apartme...ris/ladoix.php). I may be wrong about this, but it's hardly AirBnb that is guilty of listing unlicensed apartments. I recently rented very successfully through AirBnb a lovely apartment in Paris but I made sure it was licensed before I booked.

ribeirasacra

Post 64 AirBnB there is no customer service. It was great to read Booking.com came through. They have done for me too.

MmePerdu

Also untrue. Airbnb has come through for me and others I know who use the site regularly, immediately finding alternative, very good accommodation when needed and giving me an instant full refund when smoke from a fire made my destination less than pleasant.

nukesafe

I can support MmePerdu's evaluation of Airbnb's customer's service. When my wife found an Airbnb not as advertised in Portland, Oregon, (It was fraudulently listed by a renter without the owner's knowledge, and disgustingly filthy) Airbnb staff quickly arranged substitute accomodation in a hotel.

whitehall

Our son just texted us from his airbnb that was originally planned for Paris, but he switched to a more airbnb user-friendly little town outside the city near Chantilly. He texted a video of his beautiful and spacious old riverfront mill building conversion. And, he showed us a full refrigerator with all new food, all organic, that the owners left for them. He and his family of three are paying less than $100 for all their space and hospitality. This is one of the reasons we love airbnb.

ribeirasacra

Why is it untrue? My personal experience shows to me there was nothing. Plus I can give you loads of links reporting the same.
Like this form their own forum.
or this whole website.

Sarastro

Most of the Paris Perfect listings that I have seen do indeed have registration numbers. Any vacation apartment listing, be it on Airbnb, VRBO, Paris Perfect, or some other platform, which does not have the city required registration number, is illegal and can be forcibly removed from the market place by the city. City inspectors issue fines to owners of up to 50,000€ per violation and courts have been fining violators in ever increasing amounts.

Most visitors now know that the registration requirement is in place. Those who choose to rent illegal apartments generally understand the added risks.

ssander

AirBnB does, indeed, provide good service. We once had an owner in Berkeley, CA, back out a few weeks after we had booked -- claiming an "accidental" double booking.

As stated above, many owners list with multiple services. This one either (a) didn't update her other listings, or (b) found a higher-paying replacement for us. She tried to shift us to another "nearby" property of hers, which was actually miles away. The owner must have thought we (a) didn't know the area well -- which we did, and (b) couldn't read a map -- which we could.

AirBnB gave us a $100 credit toward our replacement rental, and claimed to have disciplined the owner somehow.

ssander

progol

<<Most of the Paris Perfect listings that I have seen do indeed have registration numbers. >>

Then I must be blind because I couldn't find any on the 10 or so 1-bedroom apartment listings I looked at. My point is that there are still many places, certainly not just AirBnB, that are continuing to offer rentals that are not licensed.

<<Most visitors now know that the registration requirement is in place. Those who choose to rent illegal apartments generally understand the added risks.>>

I'm not sure that this is true; I suspect that there are many people who are occasional tourists who rent apartments that are just not aware. Anecdotally, we met a couple last month who were unaware of the law, yet are regular travelers to Paris. And unless one is on a board such as this, or follows these issues, I don't see how most people would "know" about the registration requirement. Certainly, it's not posted on any rental site!

AJPeabody

Aha! A flaw in the law. Now if Paris required all listing agencies include a statement about the requirement for a registration number . . .

ribeirasacra

They (Airbnb) can say what they want. No proof of if anything has been undertaken.
Your post leaves a lot of questions unanswered.
How much was the booking worth and how much was lost by you?
How quick did take the website to respond?
How long before you got you credit?
Was that to only be spent on another listing on Airbnb?
Was there a time or location limit given to your credit?
How long before you was due to stay was the cancellation notice given to you?

5alive

I had excellent experience with booking.com. They were very easy to work with in getting my refund, and it was a refund on my credit card. And when I was discussing the refund with them, they said in passing that they would have found us a different lodging had we needed to move, and that they would have paid for our taxi to get there as well. But that wasn’t something we needed to use. The other instance where I needed help was also well done.

Still, I think Ribeirasacra has misunderstood me. At no point did I say that Airbnb would not assist you or that they give no customer service. I don’t have that experience, good or bad. What I said in post 64:

5alive

In response to Whitehall:

Unless we had some kind of webcrawler that could snapshot both sites and then run a comparison, we will not prove this point. I did not keep my notes but I was surprised when I planned my trips in 2015 and 2016, how much overlap I saw between booking.com and Airbnb. Homeaway did not seem to have as much overlap as either.

whitehall

We stayed in 12 airbnbs this fall. I will regret this test, since both airbnb and booking.com "spy" on my search activity and will follow-up asking me to book locations I checked. But I did check on each of the 12 to confirm what I said.

Only ONE of them was also listed on booking. More than half of them also were listed on HomeAway or VRBO. One of the landlords has an identical apartment next door, and they list ours on airbnb and the other on booking. I did notice that the one that was on both sites had a cheaper price on booking for the dates I checked, despite the higher commission rate charged by booking. The difference was $20 or so per night, so it doesn't hurt to do a secondary search before making a final booking.

So, I continue to support Mme. Perdu. They are two very different platforms, with different pricing structures for guests, different commissions and varying cancellation policies, which makes it a little more difficult to simply list across all platforms. Also, as I indicated, airbnb allows landlords the opportunity to refuse guests (I.e. guests must ask permission to stay if landlord selects this option); booking does not offer such a feature. Airbnb's rating of guests is unique as far as I know and is not a part of the "booking" system, and this is popular with with some landlords, and, at least in our case, some guests. There are some software providers who, for a fee, will help with connectivity to various platforms, and we have seen a growth in the last few years of more apartments getting listed on several platforms. But for now, the places we book, by and large, are NOT on "booking."

ribeirasacra

The higher costs to list on Booking can be justified as you the customer do not pay anything. Why should the customer pay to towards advertising costs? I cannot think of another business model where you the customer pays for part or these costs.
BTW Booking's fees are a lot higher than 15% AirBnB fees are getting for the same when you include the fee they charge the customer.
When I purchase something I want to see the full costs, never the headline cost.
Rating of guests is not a professional way of working. Again there is no other business model that allows that.*
AirBnB want your personal data. That is clashes with the privacy laws in Europe. Again that is your choice but not one I wish to take.

* Guest ratings: I have just remembered that UBER allow the driver to rate a passenger. But we all know that UBER is not a company that can be trusted to work within the legal regulations set out by the various licencing authorities either.