[mg]

Every time I travel, I spend insane amounts of time browsing AirBnB to find a suitable place.

For example, I miss a "good table" option on AirBnB.

I have to manually discard over 90% of the listings after looking at the images because there is no table suitable for work. That is so time-consuming.

It's not that I want to work at home all the time, but still I need a proper table to put my laptop on. A proper chair and a monitor would be golden of course.

And there are a bunch of additional things I do manually too. For example reading the reviews. Meanwhile, I am pretty good at predicting the quality of a place by reading the reviews. The stars are somewhat of an indication. But not reliable at all. I had really bad stays at places that got 100 reviews and an average of 4.7 stars. Hosts have too much influence on this metric.

Here are two examples of positive signals that help me find nice places:

1) How long the reviews are.

Hosts can remove bad reviews. And they can manipulate their guests into writing 5-star reviews. But they cannot really manipulate them to write long, enthusiastic reviews with many details.

2) How many of the reviews say "I have stayed at many AirBnBs and this one was one of the best".

This is something I usually write when I particularly liked a place. And it turned out a good signal to find nice places.

I often wonder if one could build a business by creating a site that lists a small subset of AirBnBs that are manually vetted like this. I already wrote my own web based tool to organize and sort AirBnBs that I am interested in. So it would not be a lot of work to make these lists public.

[eezurr]

Hotels have solved this problem. Each brand more or less offers the same quality across the US. You only need to see a few photos to know what options you have. Most of the rooms are the same design, same furniture. And its common for them to have desks and computer chairs. Consistency.

Why are you still using airbnb?

[chronofar]

They also very rarely have kitchens or washer or dryers for long term stays, or monthly discounts (advertised at least). If you’re just there for a few days stay over sure hotels are a fine choice, if you’re staying for a while they often won’t be particularly well suited, and finding one that is will take just as long as searching AirBnB.

Like the person you responded to I also spend a great deal of time searching for suitable long term stays. I think there is a large gap in the market for reliable brands/services with solid customer service (which AirBnB lacks) and amenities for modern longer term tech travelers (desks (ideally standup), fast wifi, kitchens, suitable space for 2 to work separately, washer/dryer, etc). If I could just look in a city and say “oh there’s a X there around an area I want to visit, I’ll just book that” it would be oh so nice.

[splonk]

Serviced apartments (and to a lesser extent extended stay hotels) try to cover that niche, but they're pretty thin on the ground outside of major cities. I think Sonder was also trying to do that kind of thing but I have no idea if they've expanded outside of SF and one or two other cities, or for that matter if they've shut down in the past couple years.

[chronofar]

Yeah I've tried that route but the lack of reviews and difficulty finding usually ends up not working out. Sonder has expanded, but has fairly mixed reviews whenever I chase them down. It does seem promising though so I do continue to include it in my searches, it just hasn't been able to provide a great solution yet for what I've been looking for.

[WorldMaker]

Many "extended hotel stay" chains offer amenities likes kitchens and laundry. Most have "Extended Stay" somewhere in their brand name. Marriott's relatively common brand in many major cities is Residence Inn. To my experience Residence Inns are quite reliable.

[chronofar]

Yeah Residence Inn is the most common one I look for as well of this type, though they're not all like this, and the ones that are often aren't price or review competitive, thus it rarely wins out. I do definitely look down these avenues though, and if they were more common or at least consistently highly reviewed (I'll pay a premium for reduced cognitive load if the experience will be reliably positive) I would do them more often, but it's just not common enough to be a reliable solution from what I've found.

[lambic]

If I want a clinical office space style room I'll use a hotel.

If I want something different or fun, or a place that's shared so I can talk to people, I'll use airbnb.

Airbnbs also tend to be cheaper for longer stays (more than 4 nights).

[mg]

Can you link to an example?

The type of standardized hotel room you describe sounds like the small rooms that are made to sleep during the night and leave during the day. Not for "living" in a foreign city.

[astura]

Homewood Suites is designed to accommodate longer term guests. I spent around 2 months in one years ago - full kitchen, separate living room and bedroom. Laundry onsite.

I believe Candlewood Suites is the same, but less "upscale."

[bin_bash]

I’ve had decent luck with Residence Inn. Full kitchen and separate bedrooms.

The sofa mattresses are terrible though.

[otterley]

I’ve never experienced a good sofa mattress. Have you?

[bin_bash]

Not that would be comfortable for an adult, but the newer Courtyard King Size rooms have single-person pull-outs that I think are a lot better than what they have at Residence Inn.

[eezurr]

If you don't need a kitchen, DoubleTree by Hilton typically have desks. Some locations have full sized ones (4-5 feet).

[arcbyte]

Because for the same quality, hotels are easily 3x the price. Consistently.

[bradstewart]

This has not been consistently true for me. Maybe for long-term stays (week+), but certainly not for for a day or two after adding in all of the cleaning fees, etc.

[bin_bash]

It may be true if you have a large family and stay for a while. A 4-5 bedroom house would be a lot cheaper (and more convenient) than 4-5 hotel rooms.

Of course, large families are the exception not the rule nowadays.

Personally I don’t have a large family and the inconsistently with Airbnb means we don’t use it often at all.

[arcbyte]

I traveled extensively in 2021 and routinely I can find weekend stays on Airbnb, for the entire place, between 250 to 350. Two star Hotels (la quinta, HIE, etc) routinely want 400-600+. It's total insanity.

[gbear605]

Where are you traveling that hotel rooms are that expensive!? Up and down the US east coast, there are plenty of perfectly good two-queen-bed rooms for under $100 per night. I recently stayed in downtown Boston in a boutique hotel for $130/night and the surrounding hotels were all under $175/night.

[astura]

What hotel is this? If you don't mind me asking.

[zdkl]

> I often wonder if one could build a business by creating a site that lists a small subset of AirBnBs that are manually vetted like this.

s/AirBnB/lodging --> A travel agency?

[breakfastduck]

It's hilarious to me how many people deep in tech think they've come up with a new idea but it's literally the entire proposition the new tech destroyed.

[bena]

Yes, all of these disruptors rediscovering the core issues with the segment they're in and why the sectors they disrupted operated as they did.

[breakfastduck]

And then they 'solve' it by setting up a company that does the same as they used to. But actually they've just destroyed an entire industry and replaced it with a single company that now has a monopoly on everything.

[baxtr]

Nah, not true. Travel agencies controlled the access to the booking systems. That was their only role in the value chain. So basically, they would put in your dates, look for options and then make a booking with your detailed info.

Help, guidance, recommendations, curation were MOSTLY off the table. They are and were of course exceptions. But in the end, quality selection IS a new proposition.

[breakfastduck]

I don't think this is the case at all. Curation was the entire purpose of a travel agency.

[ISL]

In the 80s/90s, travel-agents had a terminal that would allow them to search for and book travel much as one would do with Google Flights/Expedia/Travelocity today. Access to those networks cost real money, so travel agents became middlemen.

Many agents did curate trips (or sell packages), too. In the best case, if your trip went sideways, they could also assist in rebooking/other options.

[iamtheworstdev]

yup. curation is the whole reason I still use travel agents

[peterfa]

I've seen many of these curates websites. Hard for them to get significant traffic that would attract supply (hosts).

Recently saw a little project from Czech Republic curating cottages with workspace: https://pracujvprirode.cz/

[mancerayder]

> Hosts can remove bad reviews.

Yes and this is so frustrating to me that I'm going to force myself to use hotels more.

What people don't understand is how one manipulates information not from what one says that's false, but in what one omits.

We know for a fact it's easy for a host to remove bad reviews. Take a look at the AirBNB subreddit, which is run by hosts. They actively tell each other how to get rid of reviews. Biggest tip: find something in the review that is 'not something the host has control over'. Boom, success, the entire thing is silently canned, and the writer will never get notified.

I got burned a lot with crappy experiences the last few years. My biggest issue was unexpected noise never mentioned in 20 reviews. One apartment had a bedroom attached to the top floor of an elevator shaft, making clanking noises. Another had THREE restaurant courtyards literally in the yard.

Caveat emptor with AirBNB, because you won't get to leave early and get a refund, whereas hotels are often negotiable.

[pat_erichsen]

I ran into basically these exact issues (and a few more) while living/working from Airbnbs for 6 months last year.

So, I built a Chrome extension called Offie that helps other remote workers using Airbnb view info about Wifi and workspaces from the search page:

https://www.offie.co/chrome-extension

After launching the Chrome extension we realized that to actually solve these problems will require a managed marketplace where all properties are vetted to have fast, reliable Wifi and high-quality workspaces.

We're working on launching an MVP marketplace for that in Austin, TX by mid-May. We've got a waitlist on the site to be notified when we launch if interested!

[el-salvador]

> I had really bad stays at places that got 100 reviews and an average of 4.7 stars.

One red flag I always look for is a stream of comments mentioning only "good location" and nothing else.

[geoduck14]

>One red flag I always look for is a stream of comments mentioning only "good location" and nothing else.

You say that, and I believe you mean it, but that could actually be a good sign. Example: I'm looking for a place to stay that is close to the beach. I need the location to be good - if the interior of the BnB is bad, that isn't a big deal.

Additionally, my definition of "close to the beach" is unusual. There are plenty of places "10 minutes away", but we need to read the reviews and look at maps for public access. I have a lot of small children, and my wife and I are mapping out how far a walk it would take to "get sandy"

[wyclif]

He's not saying that good location isn't a good sign. He's saying that a stream of copypasted "good location" comments are common in reviews, and if you see loads of them on a single listing it's meaningless and not an authentic review. However, a few isolated "good location" comments are more likely to be authentic.

[el-salvador]

What also came into my mind is that only the location is good about the place, and there are other issues like noise or cleanliness.

[peterfa]

I used to go through a very similar process while booking longer stays for remote work trips. Now it gets even more complex as I have a baby, what means more parameters to consider.

What I found useful is this Chrome plugin that automatically searches in reviews keywords like "wifi": https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/roamer-airbnb-inte...

Curating Airbnb listings ideal for work (desk, office chair, good internet) in interesting travel destination can be actually a good MVP. Something like crowdsourced (and cheaper) version of https://wander.com/

[GordonS]

The most annoying things for me are:

1. If I set a filter, use it! As it is, it will show results matching filters first, but then also shows those that don't, and it's not obvious enough

2. When hosts have claimed to have amenities they don't have, and when hosts don't properly set what amenities they do have - makes it difficult to use filters to find what you actually want

[jmyeet]

The filters thing is a general problem with search because it's really difficult to distinguish between:

1. X is a must-have; and

2. X, Y and Z are all on my wish list so I want to see the most matches first.

Even Google is kind of awkward with this. It used to be you could add + to a term (before the Google+ boondoggle). Now you have to quote things.

Other sites will do so for specific criteria. Take a real estate portal: the bedroom numbers will be absolute but it may include surrounding areas to what you specify. Or there may be an option to turn that off.

It is frustrating but I can see why sites err on the side of caution by treating it as a ranking suggestion vs a hard requirement.

[fairity]

> I often wonder if one could build a business by creating a site that lists a small subset of AirBnBs that are manually vetted like this

A couple questions:

Why wouldn't Airbnb build this vetting process as a feature of their service if/when you're successful?

Once you've reached scale, what would make your service more valuable than Airbnb's attempt at copying it?

[sva_]

> Every time I travel, I spend insane amounts of time browsing AirBnB to find a suitable place.

I absolutely dread having to go through the airbnb search. Just a better (lag-free) interface would already go a long way. The map is just awful. A neater way to search through listings would be nice.

Maybe something like nitter (for twitter), but for airbnb.

[postsantum]

I think it could be implemented as a browser extension. 8/10 people found this property has a suitable workplace. The lenght of the average comment is 56% shorter than usual

[peterfa]

Great idea. You should submit it here: https://twitter.com/bchesky/status/1477764672640073728

[mg]

Where would the "8/10" number come from?

[postsantum]

From other users of this extension

[mg]

So crowdsourced data.

Certainly worth a try.

The tough question is the business model of the whole thing.

[sincerely]

Why does a browser extension need a business model?

[jdrc]

airbnb needs to categorize listings by purpose rather than popularity. They have a huge network of users that have already solved the issues that other users will face.

[erezsh]

Another thing I always look for in the comments is quiet/noisy.

Sometimes I will look for that before even looking at the pictures.

[mg]

Exactly! And it is also important to check for noise especially in recent reviews (which AirBnB does not let you find easily) to avoid staying next to a construction site.

[r_singh]

Do you also spend insane amounts of time while searching websites like Amazon or BestSecret?

[lenova]

> Hosts can remove bad reviews.

That part isn't true. Airbnb doesn't allow hosts to remove negative reviews.

I used to Airbnb my place, which was well reviewed. I had one negative review from a problematic guest that I felt was unfair, and when I contacted Airbnb to have it reviewed, they were very explicit about not removing reviews regardless of the situation.

[Rels]

As a counterexample, I've had the only bad review I've ever left removed after a couple of days. I don't know how frequent it is, but it made me lose a lot of trust towards Airbnb.

[rjh29]

There is 'laptop-friendly workspace' as a checkbox, but not always accurate.

[mg]

Yes, but every host who has a wonky, round kitchen table made from plastic checks those. So it does not help much.

[peterfa]

Would be actually a useful filter if a kitchen table doesn't count as 'laptop-friendly workspace'

[dazc]

Or your own lap.

[thelittleone]

Hosts can remove bad reviews? Never worked in my years of hosting.

[mg]

One way I witnessed is that a host deleted their premise after a bad review and then relisted it.

[sva_]

I sometimes wonder, who are the brave and adventurous people that choose to stay at an airbnb with 0 reviews (in a foreign country).

[krn]

I have done this in Ukraine when the host had other properties with many positive reviews, and offered a 70% discount for the first stays at the new property with zero reviews. The experience was great, and I even ended up extending my stay.

[dazc]

I did, once I realised that the only reason Airbnb reviews exist is to make amazon reviews look authentic.

I have mentioned elsewhere in the thread that this actually worked out as my best ever stay. OK, I got lucky that time.