Their customer service is HORRENDOUS. I Think it’s also mostly because they outsource to countries were the people, even though they might mean well, have absolutely no idea what customer service means or have a very different concept of it (which is just to apologies without really practically solving the problem or making things right. Their making things right is just being polite and apologizing).
But AirBnB knows this. They make exorbitant amount of money yet offer shi**y service. Why hasn’t another company taken over yet?
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You’re not really an AirBnB customer. You’re a customer of the host. Airbnb is just the middle-man marketplace that provides some protections for both parties. If you want good customer service, stay in hotels.
What kind of protection and is it really worth almost %20?
A lot of the legal and insurance protections I believe. But also, AirBNB is who brings in the people, just like Fiverr charges 20% because they connect the people to your services in a rather seamless platform.
What I understand is that Airbnb was profitable from almost the beginning, but they needed extra funding to grow as fast as possible. I agree with the rest that you wrote.
But you are a customer of Airbnb. There’s laws about this in the EU.
That’s why the EU is becoming more and more irrelevant, and very little innovation happens there
The only company I’ve seen really trying something different is https://livekindred.com/
It’s kind of like a really upscale couchsurfing. It’s like a members-only network where you have to be a host too.
It costs a lot more than couchsurfing because you’re getting a whole house and you pay for the cleaning, but since it’s all home swaps there are no “professional hosts” and it still ends up being way cheaper than an Airbnb or a hotel.
The customer service reps you’re running down are only implementing the policies as laid out by Airbnb. They do as they’re told or get fired They’re not just making it up as they go along lol.
Airbnb policy is the problem not the reps themselves. Basically it’s cheaper to screw you over then provide good service.
This isn’t true at all. Most of the policies are ok, trying to protect guests and hosts fairly. The problem is it’s a complete crapshoot getting a rep who knows the rules. I’m a host for 6 years with 1000s of reviews, and about 50 stays as a guest, I have never had a good interaction with support, where I don’t have to argue, send them screenshots of their own policy, then do that again 3-4 times when the chat person goes on vacation, I get a call from them, then an email. All from different supper people, all who don’t have to review what’s already been going on with the case. Their support is SO poorly trained and just gives platitudes but 90% of the reps don’t listen/ read/ understand the issue.
Because the next company will try to do the exact same. Any company will try to lower their cost to increase revenue, one of the tools to do so is outsourcing to lower-paid countries.
It’s going to be. Check out Orcapass.com
A friend of mine is building it and moving fast. Tell him I sent you and you get a discount
+1 for Orcapass. Great founder, too.
$1,600 min for COLOMBIA?? Umm, i’ll pass.
Yeah it does seem a bit expensive. Don’t even look at the U.S. ones. Hopefully it will get cheaper though once he gets more hosts on board.
The call centers are in India. Morality is a luxury over there, they don’t give a fuck if you get screwed by a host.
There are other services out there making headway. They just haven’t become household names yet.
For example I really like Flatio as a digital nomad. It’s geared towards short to mid-term stays. They mostly just have European listings so far but seem to be growing!
https://www.flatio.com/Check out https://thewirednomad.com. We’re actually partnered with Flatio and have all of their listings that possess internet speeds. You can search by speeds and/or location, wherever you’re interested in traveling in the world.
Like most companies this size they probably just buy any company they see as possible eventual competition
Good question OP. I think its a combination of two things. Airbnb has gotten market saturation so its very difficult to topple that. And secondly there is no alternative that will give the customer better prices or customer service. All the third party booking sites will leave you high and dry in the event of an issue because solving it costs them money.
Facebook market place, groups. If you start another competitor it will grow again and become a monster like Airbnb is now full of legal bsht and so big that it becomes so expensive to run - fees. Do it organically, directly with the owners via Facebook or local ads.
Airbnb for travellers, in exchange for their high fees, do not offer any protection or support - found out about it on multiple occasions when my host cancelled on me day before my month-stay or Internet, advertised as fast, was non-existent and caused me trouble at work. I may as well just deal with it directly with owner as Airbnb is useless in such cases.
Most of the time, I just book few nights and do business directly with the owner - Airbnb charges me and host, so generally you do it directly for 50-60% of what Airbnb would charge you for the reservation. After few years of travelling I generally have WhatsApp numbers of the hosts in place I generally travel to and book it with them directly.
The only thing Airbnb is good is the reviews of a place, maybe Facebook should add it somewhere, like a new feature or something. Or a little service for advertising apartments with reviews and giving you contact number or something max. Something very lean.
Ah and forgot about booking, in Europe I generally use booking com and filter search by apartments - way more apartments and way cheaper than Airbnb.
AirBNB’s customer service is PURPOSEFULLY bad. Make no mistake, it goes way beyond the service workers communication problems. They have tightened their policy to screw the customer and side with the home owner 99% of the time, even WITH proof, even WITH video evidence. I dread using them in case something goes wrong bc I know I won’t get any restitution. They screwed me out of $400 for what was supposed to be a luxury Christmas present get away. The place was NOT clean, everything was disgusting, I had proof. Ofc I get no refund, and they allow the host to harass me over messages. Fuck AirBnB.
I stayed in a place where the host hadn’t declared dangerous animals, in this case, 3 dogs that lived there which were highly territorial and would attack anyone coming into the property. The host knew they were a problem and warned me that they would be aggressive for a week or two until they knew me, but left them unleashed anyway.
Airbnb promised they would do something, and did nothing. They repeatedly apologised that I felt the way I did and did nothing. Eventually they said I could get a video of the dogs being aggressive so I did, which nearly resulted in me getting attacked again. They then had an expert in who questioned if they were even dogs or on the property. They then basically asked me if I could get a video of me being attacked by the dogs with the property in the background so they could verify. After numerous threats to go to the press and start legal action did they try and offer me a partial refund. Only when I’d been threatening them with legal action and told them I’d filed a chargeback did they cave in and gave me a full refund and I immediately deleted my account. They did send me a few customer service surveys after that
Have you tried using chargeback? I currently have one opened :) fuck airbnb
Yup
Because in order to make something like Airbnb, you need to get a lot of hosts and guests. Hosts won’t sign up unless there are guests and guests won’t sign up unless there are hosts.
These kinds of marketplaces are very difficult to get any traction.
1st mover advantage
No. It’s the network effect.
No the network effect is what makes it difficult, the first mover advantage is what makes it near impossible for a competitor to compete, here.
If there’s nothing, the platform can start to exist without strong network and grow.
But if there is a paltform with the network, why would anyone use a different network?
For any competitor to dislodge AirBnB, it would need to be an order of magnitude better.
And here is the tricky part:
An order of magnitude better for people who don’t have issues with AirBnB today.
People who complain tend to think their experiences are the norm, because they can easily find so many other people complaining. But that it just an outcome of scale. Majority of their customers are most likely using it infrequently and relatively happy with the service.
Outcompeting any service like this takes a lot more than just fixing problems. You need to significantly up the ante on the value generation side as well.
Yeah, I’ve never had any awful experiences, lies, etc.
Just a kind of general “not quite as nice as depicted” or “it’s not great, but also it is what the ad said and it’s cheap”
Amazing question
What, like Marriott?
Not sure eif just hotel joke, but Marriott does actually have an AirBNB competitor platform, but with stricter acceptence.
Lmao. I chuckled. If I had gold, I’d give u one.
I’ve got a brilliant idea.
What if, instead of having hundreds of individuals rent rooms of their house, we had a few people operate a large structure with hundreds of rooms in one space?
We could even offer ones with kitchens and multiple bedrooms for families and other larger groups?
Think of the savings on things like maid service! We wouldn’t need to charge Airbnb crazy cleaning fees.
We just need a name for these new multi-unit-short-term-rentals…
Ho, tell me what you think a good name would be
Honestly i find it hard to find hotels with a kitchen and most of the time airbnb still is cheaper in many regions of the world
Marriott’s residence inn brand, could be a fit!
Whaaaat? I don’t see how you could compare the two. They are worlds apart.
Airbnb and all Airbnb competitors are drawing on the same housing inventory. There’s not something clever or cute a competitor can do to “hack” it because property owners are unlikely to move to a competitor that offers less compensation
But property owners do routinely list units on multiple platforms, the same way one driver can work with both Uber and Lyft in the same car
Posted this somewhere else in the thread already, but I have seen one company doing it differently https://livekindred.com/
It’s a member’s only home swapping network, so it’s more like fancy couch surfing than Airbnb.