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I’m an early adopter of things like this and I’ve been using Airbnb since about Day 1. There was so much promise early. One of my best AirBnB memories was staying at a startup hotel in SF through AirBnB, the hosts had purchased a Victorian house to turn into a boutique hotel, seemed young and optimistic, and it was a fun, quirky experience. There was still construction and things happening, apparently we were one of the first few people to ever stay there under its new ownership.

So I’ve been using Airbnb regularly, travel regularly, and in the last 2ish years have moved all my work travel to Marriott. For scale, checking my Marriott app right now, I’ve stayed 77 nights in Marriotts this year so far. This used to be all Airbnb stays, but as you mention the hosts have become so unpredictable and listings do not match up to the experience that it’s more hassle and actively hostile to stay in Airbnb in a new city to get to know some quirky neighborhood on a work trip. And the usual complaint of basically a chore list to do at the end combined with huge cleaning fees on top of the chore list.

Currently my only Airbnb exception is that my partner and I have two airbnbs that we know to be good in resort towns and when we’re going there we book those Airbnbs if available, because they have known good experiences and good hosts. Otherwise we don’t even look at other options, particularly because we use those during vacations where we want to relax, and instead just book Four Seasons or whatever nice hotel is there because the experience will be good and consistent.

I really yearn for the early Airbnb days though when listings were more accurate and high quality and one could explore a new neighborhood (perhaps one without traditional hotels one might never stay in without Airbnb).

As an aside, I started using UberEats since literal Day 1 when they were driving circles around the city with a fixed menu, you selected your meal, one of them would drop it off to you within minutes. It was amazing. But now of course the hordes have descended and it’s 90% ghost kitchens serving slop in my city.

[ghaff]

If I'm traveling on business I mostly just want predictability. I might want somewhere I can leave my bag after I check out. I want to be able to get in at midnight if my flight is delayed.

Sure I like less sanitized experiences and I'll roll the dice a bit more on vacation--and it usually works out. But for routine business travel I'll do without the variables.