[southphillyman]

I have started using hotels more lately after almost exclusively booking with airbnb for several years. 1 thing that I really appreciate about Airbnb still is that it allows you to stay in areas that usually don't have a lot of hotels, like Manhattan Beach CA or some other mostly residential area that also makes sense for tourist to stay. I would hate for them to fail and lose those options on a large scale

[notyourwork]

I stopped because the quality went way down. I used to get real hosts and now it’s mass scaled corporate rentals without a front desk to go talk to. Hotels at least have a front desk to go get help from and they are consistent in quality.

[southphillyman]

Yup, this is why I'm using hotels more now. Too many random problems, hosts who are in another country when I'm trying to solve issues, and accommodations that are often inconsistent with what was portrayed in the listing.

With all of these factors I really need a good deal for it to be worth the hassle

[tw04]

VRBO worked just fine before Airbnb was a thing.

[Kluny]

I've never heard of it before this thread, so I guess they had a marketing problem. But I will definitely check it out next time I have reason to.

[celestialcheese]

Site note - VRBO is owned by Expedia through its acquisition of HomeAway. Just last year Expedia consolidated it's homeaway/vrbo products into just VRBo and noticed the experience got significantly better (Booked twice though them for large groups in the last 6 months)

[thedance]

VRBO was Airbnb years before Airbnb decided to take their business model and add white-collar crime on top. Just like computer-dispatched car services existed for decades prior to Uber.

[hn_throwaway_99]

Not quite. VRBO was (and I guess mostly still is) focused on vacation rentals in traditional vacation destinations (beaches, ski resorts, etc.), and even before that there were of course local property-manager managed rentals for decades.

AirBnB was originally about shared rentals in urban destinations. Of course they both grew to overlap in a lot of areas, but AirBnB had a huge advantage in that their business model was much better suited (renters paid a fee for each booking, while VRBO had owners pay a subscription fee) to a Google AdWords dominated world.

[thedance]

Right, VRBO focused on vacation rentals, i.e. places where short-term stays are welcome, customary, and legal. AirBnB decided to apply the same model in cities were the practice is unwelcome, novel, and unlawful.