- I own 3 units, 70m2, 170m2 and 235m2. Guests pay for exclusive access to the entire unit, no shared spaces or shared anything.
- No cleaning fees or other fees. Everything is included in the nightly rate.
- No subcontractors. I handle everything myself. Communication, cleaning, etc.
- Listing information and photos are extremely accurate for expectation management reasons.
Used to have listings out on Airbnb, bookingcom and vrbo, but vrbo doesn't integrate well with channel manager systems so I dropped the platform after a double booking. Airbnb accounts for under 20% of my total nights over the last few seasons, but as I'm not exclusive to that platform I can't really extrapolate any insights from that number.
Why is that? The race to the bottom for hosts. You essentially trade commission (the platforms' cut of your revenue) and exclusivity for promotion. The base commission is around 18% and then their bank charges around 1% for transferring the money. On top of this you have promotion programs that you can join. These programs give you better visibility in exchange for higher commission or discounted rates, so if someone else joins they outrank you in the algorithm despite having worse guest reviews. This is fortunately not a big deal for me as every season is barely 2.5 months during summer which is close to fully booked.
Who are my guests? Mainly families from the Arab peninsula (Saudi, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, UAE, etc.)
Where do I stay on vacation? Hotels
Same here. I short-term rent an entire unit that’s part of my two-family on the east coast for 5-8 months of the year and haven’t noticed any dip in booking rates or revenue.
The AlltheRooms data is bogus. Breckenridge CO down 37%? No frickin' way. I looked at rentals for CO for vacation this summer and people are gobbling up bookings like crazy. AlltheRooms has not responded to any media requests to substantiate their data. I suspect that someone was able to manipulate the results by using filtering, but we do not know what parameters were used to get those results.
The anecdote about some rich lady buying a huge house to use for a Airbnb is pretty worthless. Short term super high end rentals are a very specialized and finicky segment of the market. Unless you have a high end property in an area that has huge demand from the ultra-wealthy (Aspen, Telluride, Nantucket, South Beach, Fl, etc), it can be very hit or miss with a high end rental home.
Of course, that is not to say that the short term rental business is going to see constant growth for the next two decades. There will certainly be some leveling off of demand as post-pandemic revenge travel and people working remotely as Airbnb vagabonds goes back to a pre-pandemic normal. But at the same time, more and more people are moving from using hotels for vacations to short term rentals in order to be able to have a kitchen, bring pets, etc. And there is still room for growth if Airbnb cleans up issues like fees.
Finally, even a significant shakeout in the short term rental industry would not have that big of an impact on home prices and traditional long term leasing. Short term rentals are a very small segment of the real estate industry. If people sell or switch to traditional leasing, the current level of demand in most places will quickly digest any additional inventory. And Airbnbs are mostly either in resort areas or close in to major metro areas. Airbnbs are not out in the suburbs with the good schools that families fight over.
A viral tweet by the CEO of Austin-based Reventure Consulting claims that the city’s Airbnb reservations are collapsing, with revenue is down by 46.1%; however, another data firm claims that …
I think a lot of people jumped into the short term rental game coming out of Covid when interest rates were low. I’m in my mid 30s and have a few friends that got on the band wagon with mixed reviews.
Cash flow with AirBnB is unpredictable and a few repairs can set you back a months worth of bookings. It’ll remain super popular in resort areas and for groups.
Did a road trip with the family a few weeks ago and did all airbnbs. Multiple rooms at a hotel or 1 Airbnb… usually the later works out cost wise
Some cities and towns cracked down on air b and b and fined hosts who didn't own the property they were renting out. A lot of people were renting their apartments that they didn't own, for example.
First of all, the data in the OP doesn't support the argument that Airbnb is collapsing. It supports the idea that revenue per listing is down. Airbnb can still make tons of money while its hosts struggle as long as there are enough of the hosts to generate fees.
That said, I do think that Airbnb has gone way downhill and is less customer friendly than it used to be. I was an early adopter and used to be a huge Airbnb fan, but over time, the costs kept increasing and the experiences kept getting worse.
Last winter, I had an experience where a house I rented wasn't as advertised, and there was a huge construction project going on next to the house that the owner knew about, but didn't disclose, and was in general and rude and disrespectful host. I politely asked the owner to let us out of the reservation after a few days, and she refused. We complained to Airbnb. They assigned us a customer service representative in Singapore when we were in Costa Rica and we never overlapped in real time. There were other issues with the house, and the host ended up ghosting us. We gave her a bad review, which she more than earned, and Airbnb removed it. After researching the issue, I learned that owners can, and often do, get bad reviews deleted if they complain hard enough, for lots of spurious reasons.
If you can't trust the reviews, and if you can't get out of bad experiences, and it's more expensive than hotels, then it's no longer a good service for users.
When you have a bad experience at a hotel, you can go to the front desk and deal with it. And you can usually leave early, worst case scenario. When you have a bad experience with an Airbnb, good luck to you, my friend.
Since that experience, I've been building up my Marriott and Hilton rewards points.
First of all, the data in the OP doesn't support the argument that Airbnb is collapsing....
This is a typical jamin troll thread. He starts a thread and never comments again as jamin. Several of the comments are the posting under other names. Please do not feed the troll who gets off watching people fall for his garbage threads.
That's revenue, not profit. I would guess that 90% of AirBnB hosts were cash flow-negative even before this crash (They wouldn't admit it or don't know how to do proper accounting).
You have no idea what your talking about as always. You're the same person that predicted a housing crash a year ago. I'm still waiting......................
First of all, the data in the OP doesn't support the argument that Airbnb is collapsing....
This is a typical jamin troll thread. He starts a thread and never comments again as jamin. Several of the comments are the posting under other names. Please do not feed the troll who gets off watching people fall for his garbage threads.
This poster is 100% right. Benjamin does it all the time. I can't believe the site owners allow it.
First of all, the data in the OP doesn't support the argument that Airbnb is collapsing. It supports the idea that revenue per listing is down. Airbnb can still make tons of money while its hosts struggle as long as there are enough of the hosts to generate fees.
That said, I do think that Airbnb has gone way downhill and is less customer friendly than it used to be. I was an early adopter and used to be a huge Airbnb fan, but over time, the costs kept increasing and the experiences kept getting worse.
Last winter, I had an experience where a house I rented wasn't as advertised, and there was a huge construction project going on next to the house that the owner knew about, but didn't disclose, and was in general and rude and disrespectful host. I politely asked the owner to let us out of the reservation after a few days, and she refused. We complained to Airbnb. They assigned us a customer service representative in Singapore when we were in Costa Rica and we never overlapped in real time. There were other issues with the house, and the host ended up ghosting us. We gave her a bad review, which she more than earned, and Airbnb removed it. After researching the issue, I learned that owners can, and often do, get bad reviews deleted if they complain hard enough, for lots of spurious reasons.
If you can't trust the reviews, and if you can't get out of bad experiences, and it's more expensive than hotels, then it's no longer a good service for users.
When you have a bad experience at a hotel, you can go to the front desk and deal with it. And you can usually leave early, worst case scenario. When you have a bad experience with an Airbnb, good luck to you, my friend.
Since that experience, I've been building up my Marriott and Hilton rewards points.
^^This. The entire value of any sharing app, whether it is AirBNB, Uber, Lyft, etc. is a mutual review and rating system which can be trusted. But, ratings are no longer pure and mutual - they are manipulated.
First of all, the data in the OP doesn't support the argument that Airbnb is collapsing....
This is a typical jamin troll thread. He starts a thread and never comments again as jamin. Several of the comments are the posting under other names. Please do not feed the troll who gets off watching people fall for his garbage threads.
Yup, I'm starting to think Jamin is just a troll bot. Been on this site for years, and I have never seen him reply back to his own thread. People try to engage with him all the time, but there's never a reply. I also think he has 5-6 names that he posts under.
travel is such a ripoff, it's a wonder the market insists on any level of fanciness in accomodations.
If I have to stay somewhere for 2 days, it can be a little room with a cot, a sink and a toilet for all I care, if I save a few hundred bucks. I didn't go there to spend much time in my sleeping quarters.
No tv needed, thanks. No AC either. No pool, no ice machine. I didn't come all this way to see the hotel
This post was edited 4 minutes after it was posted.
Reason provided:
Like worrying about what the airport's like
This is a typical jamin troll thread. He starts a thread and never comments again as jamin. Several of the comments are the posting under other names. Please do not feed the troll who gets off watching people fall for his garbage threads.
Yup, I'm starting to think Jamin is just a troll bot. Been on this site for years, and I have never seen him reply back to his own thread. People try to engage with him all the time, but there's never a reply. I also think he has 5-6 names that he posts under.
have always noticed this about him. he doesn't engage. very boring, low-level poster. not sure why everybody brings him so much.
travel is such a ripoff, it's a wonder the market insists on any level of fanciness in accomodations.
If I have to stay somewhere for 2 days, it can be a little room with a cot, a sink and a toilet for all I care, if I save a few hundred bucks. I didn't go there to spend much time in my sleeping quarters.
No tv needed, thanks. No AC either. No pool, no ice machine. I didn't come all this way to see the hotel
Maybe you could save yet a little more with no internet. Give us all a break. You know, a win-win.
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