As a tourist, I’ve used Airbnb quite a bit, but only for short stays, say, no more than a week and often only two or three nights when visiting several cities. The last time I booked a hotel was in 2010, I think. Back then, Airbnb hosts would let their own places. I remember our first Airbnb stay in Colorado, the house was absolutely perfect and the listing fotos had been taken by the owners, so no deceiving wide angles, no decorator arrangements that look great in the pix and turn out to be cheap crap in person.
We really enjoyed our stay in that beautiful house. I remember that we found some cash around, imagine how trusting those people were.
Anyway, by the late 2010s we noticed that, when people started buying apartments and houses to turn them into Airbnb rentals, the whole system changed for the worse. And since the goddam pandemic, very few long term Airbnbs are worth the money they list for.
For the past several months, we have been renting long-term and have had mostly bad experiences. It is not that our expectations are too high, but when you are willing to pay 80-100 dollars/night you expect some level of comfort, like chairs and sofas that allow you to watch a movie without killing your back but we’ve found the opposite; also beds with badly sagging mattresses, “fully equiped” kitchens that don’t even have a frying pan or a bowl to make a salad, stoves and ovens that don’t work, closet doors that don’t stay closed, stained bed sheets and towels, etc.
Right now we are staying in a gorgeous old building in an exclusive area of a beautiful cosmopolitan city. We chose this place because it is a large penthouse (no noise from neighbors from above or the sides) and very spacious. The mattresses are brand new, the building has a huge generator that kicks in if/when there are power outages so you can even run the A/C. BUT… there’s no one chair, sofa or armchair, where a person of normal hight and weight can feel comfortable - they are as old as the building itself and no one has ever thought of restoring them. Even the desk chair I’m sitting on is horribly uncomfortable (so much so that the host placed a cushion on it, which doesn’t help at all).
What has been your experience?
As an AirBnb host I appreciate that it is really difficult to choose a long term rental via AirBnb. I’ve had various long term rentals where after a while the guests realise that my place doesn’t suit their needs due to location etc.
The best experiences I’ve had is where a guest rents short term one year and rents long term some months later (usually outside of AirBnb)but this isn’t feasible for many guests.
There are ways around AirBnb’s block on direct guest-host contact prior to reservation - but it’s completely understandable that AirBnb want to eliminate direct reservations which escape their commissions. Where I am in Mexico the guest pays AirBnb 18% commission +16% tax on the total cost that makes an AirBnb long term reservation 37% more expensive than a direct rental.
Probably the best approach is to initially rent AirBnb then look on Facebook Marketplace or local agencies for a longer term rental. In the unlikely event that your AirBnb is available for your dates you can make a deal direct with the owner - I should add that from my point of view as a host an AirBnb rental is far simpler, lower risk with guaranteed rent payment and equivalent income compared with a direct rental - the main beneficiary financially is the guest.