I’d shoot myself rather than using Airbnb again.
Airbnb will now show users the total cost of their stay right away
Submitted 11 months ago by Tea@programming.dev to technology@lemmy.world
https://news.airbnb.com/total-price-display-is-now-standard-globally/
Comments
Hyphlosion@lemm.ee 11 months ago
What. The. Fuck.
They haven’t been doing this from the beginning? That’s shady as all hell.
bitjunkie@lemmy.world 11 months ago
They had it originally and when they removed it is when I stopped using them. Like every other fucking “Uber of” tech company, they couldn’t compete with the traditional thing they were trying to “disrupt” once the VC money dried up, and tried to cover for that with deception. Fuck them, I’ll just book a hotel.
Ledericas@lemm.ee 11 months ago
the only way there were going to disrupt is offer a cheaper sustainable service, that turned out to be the opposite in the long run, and airbnb has even caused harm in housing too.
TheDeadlySquid@lemm.ee 11 months ago
In future news, AirBnB has gone bankrupt due to lack of bookings.
x00z@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Any alternatives? Especially European?
NotJohnSmith@feddit.uk 11 months ago
HomeExchange looks good and is European.
It naturally lacks the depth of listings that Airbnb does but will grow if people use them
cotlovan@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Booking.com they also have private hosts on their platform
Sighpolice@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Never book flights through booking.com, they use a third party company called GoToGate who have the worst customer service possible and do not refund, and only try to charge for more.
FiskFisk33@startrek.website 11 months ago
hotels/hostels?
acchariya@lemmy.world 11 months ago
If you are looking for a permanent place somewhere in Europe, it’s very difficult to quickly find monthly or weekly rentals with the appropriate monthly or weekly discount you will find on Airbnb. I don’t discount it’s négatives, but with the paperwork burden to find a medium or long term place in many areas in Europe Airbnb does the best job of cutting through all of that and getting you a place now
iopq@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Without airbnb more hotels would be built instead of apartment buildings. The tourists will get a place to sleep eventually, you just have to decide whether it’s in an apartment or a hotel. That will determine future construction projects
x00z@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Great point. Hostels seem very fun.
CmdrShepard42@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Not quite hotel space as I have yet to find a hotel that can accommodate several families traveling together with a shared space, including a fully stocked kitchen, washer and dryer, parking, etc. There’s definitely a demand for something like this that isn’t filled in any other way.
fritobugger2017@lemmy.world 11 months ago
too little too late.
SirEDCaLot@lemmy.today 11 months ago
This 100%.
AirBnB used to be cheaper than a hotel. Then it got so easy to tack on fees and ridiculous requirements that you’re basically paying more than a hotel to housekeep your own room. Mix in lots of shady hosts and most of the time I’d rather just stay at the Hilton for the same price.It can still be useful as a novelty, like book a party house somewhere or as easily cheaper way to house an awful lot of people. But for the most part, I’ll pass.
lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 months ago
Airbnb was started to offer up your free space to someone for a night for a bit of cash, and that was it. Then the morons found out and bought whole ass houses specifically to rent out on Airbnb.
People ruin everything.
fritobugger2017@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Yup. I used AirBnB when they first started and it wasn’t terrible but then it became a huge hassle. Don’t give me a list of chores and then I might get penalty fees if I don’t do them right. Plus all the other damn fees. I don’t even bother to look at ABnB any more
psycho_driver@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I stopped using their site for anything years ago. This was one of the main reasons. Too little too late for me.
NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone 11 months ago
(The cost was fascism)
BackgrndNoize@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Wouldn’t this mane Americans uncomfortable, they aren’t used to seeing the actual cost if something until one step away from checkout, or sometimes not even then.
Wimster@lemmy.wtf 11 months ago
DUMP AirBnB right away. They are kissing Trumps ass all the way. The CEO is very… very proud to be part of DOGE. Fuck them.
JovialSodium@lemmy.sdf.org 11 months ago
Gross. I didn’t know that. I do occasionally use AirBnB. I’m aware of their impact on the rental market, so I favor hotels most of the time. But there have been a few occasions in recent years where I was traveling in a larger group and an AirBnB made more sense. But no more of that.
I looked in to this a little, and Joe Gebbia is no longer the CEO, but he is still on the board. Still a good enough reason to boycott.
slaacaa@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I never stayed in an Airbnb, always found easier and/or better options at hotels, or an apartment at booking.com. People act like Airbnb came up with the concept of renting apartments, while websites like this have been doing this for a decade by the time it came around.
GenosseFlosse@feddit.org 11 months ago
Booking is also pretty scummy. There was a blog post a few years ago from a hotel that always showed up as sold out, even it had plenty empty rooms. In the end it was a “feature” where hotels could “promote” their business so it would show up first, but the competition would also be listed as unavailable to force visitors into the promoted business. The other thing is that booking will show “only one room left” to pressure you into booking right now, but what ot actually means is that a hotel might only allocate 20 of 100 rooms to booking, and still has 81 free rooms if you call them directly.
Zron@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Hotels have always been better in my experience.
Unless you want something like a fishing cabin on a river, but even then I’ve started to look at resorts because after all the fees, they work out to the same price as an airBNB.
BobSentMe@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Same price, fewer chores.
slaacaa@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Capitalism breeds innovation
GenosseFlosse@feddit.org 11 months ago
Yeah, just not on the consumer side 🙃
UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.ml 11 months ago
It’s not called “workingclassism”.
primemagnus@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
TOO LATE!
These companies are unbelievable. Create the most predatory system on the planet and when their bottom line tanks they turn around like they didn’t create the very thing they now want to “fix”.
Anyone have an ETA on the rocket to the sun?
UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.ml 11 months ago
Getting a rocket to the sun is easy. Getting it back is the hard part. For your use case, I think we can make it happen right now if we really tried.
stevedice@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
Even by space flight standards, getting a rocket to the sun is very hard.
OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml 11 months ago
before taxes
Why is the West like this
Sixtyforce@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
Unfortunately, Canada too. Very annoying.
Noodle07@lemmy.world 11 months ago
We always see prices after tax in the EU
standarduser@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Feeding on the simple minded and ensuring the feeling of taxes is like the devil.
4shtonButcher@discuss.tchncs.de 11 months ago
I share a lot of of the criticism towards AirBnB. However, I’ve often ended up using them either way. We travel with a dog and a toddler. They need to be allowed in the first place. And ideally we get a kitchen, a separate room so we can still have normal noise and light when the kid sleeps. Often we even find Airbnbs with toys, kids books, dog beds, treats on the table when we arrive, …
You simply don’t get that in hotels. At least not in a price range I’ve considered so far
slaacaa@lemmy.world 11 months ago
booking.com
4shtonButcher@discuss.tchncs.de 11 months ago
Tried that many times. It has given me the exact same place for slightly cheaper than AirBnB once. Other times it was more expensive but most often of simply had worse choices.
FunnyUsername@lemmy.world 11 months ago
i don’t think people need to justify Airbnb’s, it’s a great alternative to a hotel for many reasons including those you listed. What needs to be addressed is the damage the shareholders who are running the company are doing to society. let’s not give them too much credit about this choice: they are still sucking up homes from homeowners and removing money from the middle class. they only made this change because someone realized it will make them more money.
Ledericas@lemm.ee 11 months ago
especially corporate landlords are even worst, they are doing the same,.
lemmylommy@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I must admit that I am biased in that regard, but still I believe blaming Airbnb is mostly a distraction. Even in the worst of the worst places like Barcelona they reach around 10% of rental properties. Usually it’s a few percent in touristy places and much less everywhere else. Is it good for renters? Of course not. But it’s not the biggest factor, by far.
Now if I look at the whole rental market in my country, Germany, what’s on Airbnb is just a drop in the bucket. And still people are struggling to pay rent, especially in the cities. Even in those places that nobody in their right mind would go as a tourist unless threatened with serious physical harm.
Rents here started increasing uncomfortably after rental properties owned by local governments were privatized for a quick buck. Those new, publicly traded companies quickly raised rents sharply, because of course they have to earn back what they paid for the properties, plus a nice payout to investors. For the last two decades they have continued raising rents, neglecting maintenance and bought each other until now we the biggest company alone has almost half a million rental units, in a country of 80 million people. Of course, they don’t own three houses in villages here and there, but whole blocks in cities, with local market shares of up to 25%. That is much more significant than a few percent that are lost to tourism.
And don’t get me started on cost of construction, the chronic lack of new buildings, empty real estate owned by speculators or money launderers,… or I might rant again 😉
4shtonButcher@discuss.tchncs.de 11 months ago
I guess: great concept, shitty company.
Like with so many “tech giants”, they had a great idea but greed is spoiling it. I wish we had more “public infrastructure” for this. I’d love to have OSS, tax-funded or at least heavily regulated SoMe, video sharing, home swapping/renting, local marketplace, … Those should not be industries, they should be part of our society’s fabric like the fire department or trash pick-up.
turmacar@lemmy.world 11 months ago
They’re footnote section is doing a lot of work.
1 In some countries and regions taxes are included in the total price displayed. The total price including taxes is always displayed prior to checkout.
They also either don’t know how notations work, or the AI they’re using to generate this doesn’t because it has a separate footnote with that same sentence later on.
I would be thoroughly unsurprised if some EU or other regulation came into effect that they have to do this, and now they’re taking credit for being consumer friendly.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
Exactly!
I have young kids, and airbnbs offer a lot that hotels don’t, and they don’t have the crap I hate about hotels (housekeeping, sketchy parking lot, etc).
Surely we can find a solution where you and I can get what we want, while residents get what they want.
blarghly@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Yeah, I mean, there is a solution. Liberalized zoning and Georgist tax policies. The problem is rarely that there is a lack of space to live - it is that that space is poorly utilized. And this is true because (1) it is illegal to build what people want where they want it in many places and (2) investors and homeowners speculate on land value without providing value to anyone else.
jqubed@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I’m glad to see them doing what they should’ve done all along, but doing what they should’ve been doing also doesn’t merit praise.
homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Is that because their founder joined trump’s team and they face a massive boycott?
brandon@lemmy.world 11 months ago
It’s because FTC regulations requiring this go into effect on May 10th. Everyone dealing with short term rentals and hotels in the US will be updating to this over the next few weeks.
karpintero@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Yeah they can improve their UX all they want but since their co-founder is part of DOGE and wants to mess with social security, it makes choosing alternatives easier.
A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Theres been only a couple times in my life where I considered an AirBnB over a motel/hotel.
Every time I ended up staying at the Hotel/Motel, because it ended up being cheaper.
I remember looking at an airbnb that was like 25 dollars a night, and went to check out… and had to do a fucking comic book double take because the 25 dollars a night (was only needing it for one night) ended up being like 250 dollars thanks to bullshit cleaning fees and other exploitative, hidden bullshit.
the motel I ended up at instead was only 75 bucks all in.
Lemmynated@lemmy.zip 11 months ago
For me it was about the tiny houses attched to the back of peoples properties in the forests and mountains. Hotels can’t compete with finding a spot out nature way.
But after finding out about the DOGE shit i wont eber be using them again.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
Are you traveling alone? If so, that makes a ton of sense.
I’ve had a really good experience w/ airbnbs, but we generally go as larger groups (i.e. 2-3 families, so 10 or so people). We check the fees and whatnot before signing up so there are no surprises, and generally speaking, it ends up cheaper for us vs a hotel.
0x01@lemmy.ml 11 months ago
5 years too late, hotels have been cheaper and better for a while now. All of these companies that touted revolutionizing industries have just become worse versions.
Netflix, airbnb, uber, etc all of them are worse for people than the things they replaced
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
hotels have been cheaper and better for a while now
Strongly disagree. Here’s stuff I hate about hotels:
- housekeeping - just leave me alone and clean up when I leave
- rarely have separate bedrooms - I have young kids, so we can’t use the room once they go to sleep
- parking lot is a crime magnet
- more expensive for larger groups - we often travel w/ friends, so there’s often 10 or so of us
- minimal included entertainment - usually just TV and maybe pool; airbnbs often have kids toys, private hot tub, etc
Airbnbs are essentially the inverse of all of that.
We occasionally go to hotels, but if we can find an airbnb that’s a similar price for the scale we need, we go for that every time.
0x01@lemmy.ml 11 months ago
For large groups I suppose airbnbs are more reasonable, though it’s honestly not that big of a difference in pricing for vacation rentals.
Housekeeping is easy, just put the little do not disturb sign up, they won’t bug you.
I don’t have an opinion on the other stuff though.
Viri4thus@feddit.org 11 months ago
Richard Wolf had a very good take on all of these Silicon Valley “disruptors”. It’s basically been the neoliberal US american MO for the past quarter century:
Step 1: get a bunch VC money by promising the moon Step 2: “disrupt” by undercutting the established moon due to lack of regulation. Even though it’s an inferior product, it’s VC subsidised, so it’s cheaper than the established businesses. Step 3: due to lack of regulation, your business drives established operators to bankruptcy. Step 4: become the monopoly and suck as much money as possible from your customers to generate “shareholder value”
refurbishedrefurbisher@lemmy.sdf.org 11 months ago
It’s almost like capitalism is an inherently broken system or something
Coyote_sly@lemmy.world 11 months ago
American business practices summed up for pretty much my entire lifetime right here. No wonder we live in such a shit hole - society as a whole has mortgaged and undercut for an entire generation.
criss_cross@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I’ve been the weird one in my friend group because I’ve refused to use Airbnb. Why would I want a less guaranteed place to stay that doesn’t have amenities and now costs more?
mbirth@lemmy.ml 11 months ago
Yep, the one time I’ve tried to use AirBnB I had booked a nice place way in advance only to get it cancelled a few weeks later b/c the owner apparently needed it for something else. Or realised there was an event during that time where he could get more money.
Contrary to that, when the hotel we had booked for some time during Covid realised they weren’t open for the public yet, they moved our booking to a nearby higher tier partner hotel and they then even upgraded us. You won’t get this with AirBnB, I guess.
jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 11 months ago
I read that airbnb lead to rents rise, because it made it so easy for landlords to run their property like hotels. I don’t use them, and kind of think lowly of people that are like “well it’s convenient so i don’t care”.
iopq@lemmy.world 11 months ago
It means there’s not enough construction. If apartments were used as hotels, then more construction would offset increase in prices
freeman@feddit.org 11 months ago
I think it shouldnt be on the consumers but on the lawmaker. Tax airbnbs like real bnbs or like hotels or there are many other levers that can be pulled to make it less profitable than renting to locals
shark_phenomenon@lemmy.world 11 months ago
It was a nice concept in the 2010a when it was like an advanced version of Couchsurfing or a digital version of a homestay. Then of course it became an unsustainable business model and went to dogs when it became a money making scheme for finance bros to buy up housing and charge 4-star hotel prices.
Ledericas@lemm.ee 11 months ago
partially right, but its usually the corporate real estate companies doing this, they buy up the HOUSES and just air bnb, or rent them forever, without even selling any of the houses.
hornedfiend@sopuli.xyz 11 months ago
don’t forget the rudeness of some people. they behave like the whole building is a hotel and they can do whatever they damn well please.
If it were up to me, I would obliterate this concept. Hotels are for holidays, not people’s houses where everyone brings along their holiday brains and are being generally disrespectful towards the communities.
mbirth@lemmy.ml 11 months ago
In Paris, France, government officials went around the inner city area and forcefully removed all unofficial key safes from buildings. That’s how all cities should handle this.
However, some years ago there was a news story going around about one person that owns various different places in Berlin, all listed under different names on AirBnB and that person barely visits those places as he has cleaning people do everything in between bookings. They only pocket the huge amounts of money while doing nothing. And the description to find the door key was like “find the public bicycle rack and look for the broken bike with a pink frame, the key will be under the saddle” and there were specific instructions to not talk to anyone in that building. So they definitely knew that this was kind of a grey area…
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
Hotels suck.
holiday brains
Not sure what this is, every time I use an airbnb I treat the place as if I lived there, because that’s why I’m selecting an airbnb instead of a hotel. We often leave the place better than it was when we got there.
Surely there’s some way to preserve the benefits of airbnb while cutting down on the abusers.
Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org 11 months ago
Total price display? Always been there. Always been a legal requirement.
(Not in your place? LOL)
fyzzlefry@retrolemmy.com 11 months ago
I stopped using them the minute they said they had to store a copy of my ID.
SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I remember when things like Uber and Air BnB came along the media was saying it was the death of cab companies and hotels. Well enshittification marches on and they’ve both become bogged down in costs, fees, rules, etc.
Ledericas@lemm.ee 11 months ago
and it has mostly reversed, now cabs/ or other rideshares and hotels are lower costs.