[cosbgn]

Airbnb is, in my opinion, one of the companies with the biggest negative societal impact.

Airbnb complementary destroyed some great places and rural cities around the world, because of them:

- Food/Restaurant prices go up

- Food/Restaurant quality goes down

- Real estate price goes up

- Dirtiness goes up

- Bugs and other animals thrive

- Quality of shops goes down, everything is disposable

- Quality of building/materials goes down, why install a wooden window if it's for an airbnb?

You could argue that it's not because of Airbnb but because of tourism, but I don't think so, Hotels are heavily regulated, they have strict cleaning rules, max occupancy and are built to host a certain amount of people, mass tourism wouldn't be possible without Airbnb.

[whazor]

Airbnb is great for smaller places though. I was looking at some smaller Italian cities and there are mostly traditional b&b's, plus a couple of hotels. So the Airbnb's blend in well, and I think it is too small to really destroy the city itself.

[BLenkomo]

We had already plenty of websites supporting real B&Bs because real B&Bs are registered and can use normal hotel searching websites and portals.

[isaacremuant]

> mass tourism wouldn't be possible without Airbnb.

Have you not travelled before Airbnb is a thing in a place? There were always similar alternatives?

The blame game with Airbnb is the most ridiculous thing ever.

Completely unfounded to try to blame so many things such as the housing crisis. Oh, that is just Airbnb. Just ignore that you still have problems due to taxes, government policies in places where there's virtually no Airbnb offera.

Hotels being regulated generally means nothing in places where there's a lot of tourism because you still get extremely poor services and experiences at times and Airbnb and other similar BnB services (this is not new, come on, is everyone <30 years old?) have provided much needed competition improving quality, which has otherwise been going downward steadily (cleaning, breakfast, bathrooms, etc).

You seem to dislike supply so youd problably want to ban low cost airlines so that less of the "rubble/mass tourists" would travel, right?

[ricardobeat]

There is a massive difference between a bed-and-breakfast and what AirBnB offers. Old-style B&Bs are (family) businesses, open all year round, and registered with tourism entities, much like a hotel.

[snowwrestler]

Vacation home rentals have been a thing for decades. As far back as the 1980s my family would book houses for vacation, usually in areas where lots of houses booked out that way.

In vacation destinations there are real estate companies that specialize in this. In the old days you would contact the local chamber of commerce for a referral, or look them up in the phone book. After that, there were websites like VRBO (still around, still works well). Now they put their stock onto AirBnB as well.

AirBnB did not invent short-term rentals. The parent is right that housing supply issues have a much deeper root cause than AirBnB.

[ricardobeat]

Vacation rentals are just as far from what AirBnB (originally) offered as a B&B. Usually handled by a property manager, entire home, nice location / popular holiday destinations and facilities as it is someone's second property. Much higher prices. This is a far cry from an "air bed" in a corner of a standard urban family apartment in São Paulo, which you'd find by the thousands in the early years before regulations caught up.

I think you're underestimating how much AirBnB as a platform opened up this market to the average traveller, including business travel, and yes, absolutely contributed to the housing crisis, though I wasn't even making a point about that.

[isaacremuant]

Experience wise for the customer, because I've been in both, not that much. Also there's a lot of Airbnb that are family businesses and BnBs that aren't so that's just a romantic moot point.

There's interest in painting these strawmen by people who didn't use the service or just tried to get cheap stuff and didn't pick good places, which can happen with booking.com or google maps. The govs love blaming their failings on apps and regulations mean market capture by certain entities.

It's funny how you can call for Airbnb's to be banned to solve the housing crisis but you can't call for stopping hotels being built everywhere which are then used to house refugees/socially disadvantage people in a beautiful money making cycle for government contractors, to just name one thing happening in at least a few European countries.

The anti Airbnb narrative is tired and dishonest.