This. They help destroy housing markets.

While Air B&B has done irreperable harm to the housing market, I'm not 100% convinced it should be banned. I propose if a house operates as an enterprise, it be taxed according to commercial rates, not residential. It would go a long way to resolving the inequities.

Yep instead of lowering rent because your unit is unaffordable you just buy up and rent them all out creating housing scarcity and prices will increase right up until the point ppl can't afford to vacation anymore... Which is pretty much now anyway. Queue up all the BS stories. "Millennials/zoomers don't 'want' to vacation anymore"

The Snake is going to eat it's tail.

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.

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.

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. This is basically dumping but the regulation hasn't caught up.

Step 4: become the monopoly and suck as much money as possible from your customers to generate "shareholder value"

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?

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.

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.

We always see prices after tax in the EU

Unfortunately, Canada too. Very annoying.

hotels/hostels?

Airbnb turns potential living space into hotel space and thereby helps driving up housing prices. The whole concept is inherently problematic.

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 other hotels could "promote" their business in a city 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.

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.

Depending on country, that might be the law.