Experts say hosts’ lack of customer focus has tarnished Airbnb’s reputation.
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Travelers appear to be abandoning Airbnb due to high costs, excessive fees, and poor host service.Airbnb was once a disruptor offering affordable stays but some say it has lost its charm.Experts say hosts’ greed and lack of customer focus have tarnished Airbnb’s reputation.
As the founder of a travel site, Michael Rozenblit and his partner Maggie have stayed in hundreds of Airbnbs over the past decade.
“We love the convenience of having our own space,” Rozenblit told Business Insider. “Particularly when it comes to cooking our own meals and having a bit more comfort than is found in a typical hotel room.”
But after recent trips, Rozenblit said they have both “fallen out of love” with the platform. They claim places to stay on Airbnb are more expensive now than hotels, and hosts are not even providing toilet paper, trash bags, and coffee anymore.
Rozenblit said cleaning fees are also extortionate, despite hosts demanding that guests do the chores. One host previously told BI he charges $400.
“There are almost always over-the-top cleaning requirements for check-out, often including the requirement to take out the trash and strip the beds at the minimum,” Rozenblit said.
Travelers have become wise to this apparent shift. Airbnb was once hailed as a major disruptor of the vacation industry, allowing people to stay in cities all over the world in comfort and at a price tag much lower than costly hotels.
But the pendulum has swayed the other way, with some holiday-makers now tired of the endless fees, and difficult hosts who can make their stays miserable, say experts.
Locals in tourist hot spots, including Barcelona and Athens, have also protested overtourism this year, taking aim at the platform’s hosts buying up properties and pricing them out.
Airbnb warned investors of dwindling customer demand in an earnings call earlier this month, BI reported, and lowered its projected earnings for Q3 from $3.8 billion to between $3.67 billion and $3.73 billion.
The company’s revenue is also down 15% compared to this quarter last year, from a net income of $650 million to $555 million.
Airbnb’s stock has since tanked, falling 14% in one day earlier this month.
Meanwhile, hotels have bounced back, with former Airbnb fanatics returning and some seeing pre-pandemic levels of occupancy, according to Statistica. The industry is expected to see an annual growth rate of 3.72% until 2029, when it is anticipated to be worth $511 billion, according to Statistica data.
Experts say hosts have a lot to answer for in Airbnb’s downfall.
All about profit
Grace Moser, the owner of the women’s lifestyle blog Chasing Foxes, has been a full-time traveler since 2016 and believes hosts have played “a huge role in Airbnb’s crash.”
“Airbnb essentially allows anyone to sign up to be a host, which will always prove to be problematic,” she told BI. “Because when you have people flooding in year after year who are seeing it as a way for them to make quick cash, you’re going to be met with bad customer service.”
Moser believes that the majority of hosts now aren’t prioritizing the guest — “it’s just another income stream where they do the bare minimum and know nothing about customer relations.”
“There’s no training, only feedback to the host after the fact,” she said. “If that customer either leaves a positive or ambiguous review, or none at all, they probably won’t improve for the next person.”
Jessica Dante, a travel expert and the founder of Love + London, told BI it was the personal connection that guests and hosts would make that made Airbnb such a success in the early days when it launched in 2008.
“Most listings were with hosts that would be staying in the property with the guest or who were leaving for a few days and renting their place for a bit of extra income,” Dante said. “Hosts would leave binders filled with local recommendations, be there to help with anything that guests needed, and you’d hear stories of guests and hosts that became great friends after a stay.”
These days, she said, the majority of hosts are staff or property owners who are “solely focused on maximizing revenue.”
“They charge cleaning fees while asking for chores to be completed, they aren’t readily available where there’s a problem, and they see guests as just a number,” Dante said. “The personal connection has been lost.”
Nightmare hosts
Stories about bad Airbnbs frequently hit the headlines, in part because wronged guests can go viral on TikTok with their experiences.
In January, one traveler said the trailer she rented was so cold she could see her breath. Another described his “Airbnb from hell” as “the most pathetic excuse for a house” he’s ever stayed in, with the toilet not attached to the wall and a bed in the garage.
Last year, a woman booked a New Orleans Airbnb for Taylor Swift’s Eras tour this fall, but the host later tried to triple the price when they realized they could charge a premium.
Other horror stories include a guest saying their host dumped all their belongings, including their passport, into the street after mixing up the checkout date and a woman saying her host didn’t refund her booking when she had to cancel it after learning her mom was dying.
Duncan Greenfield-Turk, the chief travel designer at Global Travel Moments, told BI that hosts “without a doubt” have played a big part in Airbnb’s unpopularity.
Inconsistent quality and service have led to growing dissatisfaction and a lack of trust in the platform, he said.
“Unlike hotels, which generally adhere to industry standards, Airbnb experiences can vary widely from one property to the next,” Greenfield-Turk said. “While some hosts provide excellent service, others have been accused of being greedy or neglectful, focusing on maximizing profits at the expense of guest satisfaction.”
Stories of unreasonable rules, hosts cutting corners, and being unresponsive when issues arise are only becoming more common, Greenfield-Turk said.
“These negative experiences contribute to a tarnished reputation for the platform as a whole, making the reliability of traditional hotels more appealing,” he said.
Hotels are bouncing back
When Airbnb was new, it offered authentic, community-driven travel experiences, Greenfield-Turk said. But now, it’s full of full-time, profit-driven businesses, meaning the original charm is gone.
Airbnb’s loss is the hotel industry’s gain. The industry is making the most of the backlash by offering more personalized services and often matching or undercutting Airbnb prices.
Rozenblit said travelers are more aware of the problems that can come with Airbnbs and see the benefits of hotels, where they have “little of these requirements placed upon them.”
For Airbnb to regain its footing, Greenfield-Turk said it will have to implement stricter guidelines for hosts, enforce transparency with its pricing, and reconnect with the community-driven values that set it apart in the first place.
“This shift toward commercialization has alienated a segment of travelers who were drawn to the platform for its promise of unique, personal experiences,” Greenfield-Turk said.
“Instead, they are now often met with impersonal, hotel-like stays — without the consistency and reliability that hotels offer.”
BI has reached out to Airbnb for comment.
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