Airbnb Host Drags Greedy Renters Back To Earth: “Treat This As A Business Or Get Out”

If you’ve ever had to travel, you’ve likely dealt with short-term rentals; and while some ensure an excellent stay, others provide more headaches than anything else.

Members of the ‘Airbnb Hosts’ started a discussion about the ins and outs of renting a property after redditor u/Comprehensive_Link67 shared what she thinks about some of her fellow hosts. She stated that people in the hospitality business should be hospitable or not be there at all, and her views started quite a buzz in the comments.

Looking for short-term rentals can be exciting and tiresome at once. It often means adventure time, if you’re planning a long overdue vacation, for instance, but scrolling through endless listings trying to find a suitable one often sucks the joy out of making travel arrangements. Despite that, according to Statista, over 393 million nights and experiences were booked via Airbnb in 2022. (An increase from 193.2 million and 300.6 million during the covid years of 2020 and 2021 respectively.)

Airbnb was founded in 2007 as an alternative for hotels, which was based on people opening their homes for those looking for short-term rent. It all started when a couple of hosts welcomed three guests in their dwelling in San Francisco, and now, there are over seven million active listings worldwide and more than four million hosts.

With such a huge number of listings, there ought to be at least a few bad apples. That’s why even when you think you’ve found the perfect home away from home, certain things can be far from what was advertised or you might meet other unexpected—often unfortunate—scenarios, which typically result in regret and other negative emotions. Research suggests that Airbnb users’ negative emotions deriving from an undesirable experience can even negatively influence their mental health.

Sometimes it’s not the amenities or unmet expectations that upset the guests the most, but the owners of the property. According to a 2019 study, hosts' unpleasant behavior was one of the two main sources of distrust for Airbnb users, accounting for over 10% of all bad reviews.

The OP—a host herself—pointed out in advance that she might be downvoted for her opinion, but she felt that certain aggravating things hosts do needed to be called out; for example, expecting guests to clean after charging them a cleaning fee.

Quite a few users of Airbnb appear to be unhappy with such fees, and the company’s CEO, Brian Chesky, seems to be well-aware of the problem and working on solving it. During the Skift Global Forum in New York City just last week, he spoke about the ways to deal with it, one of which has been implementing a toggle button, allowing the guests to see the total price with fees included instead of the latter being added as users proceed with the booking.

“It’s the first thing you see. It’s larger type than the search box,” the CEO, Brian Chesky, pointed out when talking about the tool, Skift reports. He also added that, “This upfront pricing model, with ranking the best total nightly [rate], is essentially very close to the perceived elimination of cleaning fees.”

On his X (formerly Twitter) account a couple of weeks ago, Chesky revealed that since launching “total price display”, nearly 270,000 listings have lowered or removed their cleaning fees. He added that nowadays nearly three million listings are cleaning fee-free.

Be that as it may, the cleaning fees for short-term rentals are just one of the several points the OP made; and whether redditors agreed with her or not, it sure got them talking.