[jeofken]

PMS as in Pantone Matching System or Premenstrual Syndrome?

AirBNB can be equally frustrating for users as well. Recently ended up at night in a new city in northern Japan where the host told me the listing was at a different address, where I found nothing, and got only radio silence from the host. Every hotel room in town was occupied that night. Airbnb support, seemingly in far away India, told me to try contacting the host, and that was that.

Also recently stayed at a place with a dog that shat inside due to the owner not taking them out; due to politeness no one had complained in the reviews.

Also Airbnb lists one price but when booking it always ends up being way more with more fees added.

I’m using hotels.com with a filter for “has kitchen” these days, which was the only reason I used Airbnb in the first place

[appreciatorBus]

PMS - Property Management System, aka what actual hotels use to manage room inventory, bookings, etc.

IMO most of the things that people like about AirBnB vs hotels is downstream of the failed experiment of urban planning. If we want hotel operators willing to "spend" floorspace on kitchens and other niceties, then legal floorspace can't be scarce or special, but most of the current planning regime is oriented around enforcing limits on floorspace. Ditto for having options of places to stay that aren't tourist traps or commercial areas.

[ghaff]

I suppose hotels can have a few rooms with kitchens but I'm guessing a vanishingly few people care about kitchens when traveling outside of maybe a microwave and a small refrigerator. AirBnB that are larger (e.g. houses) can also be nice for groups but that's more outside of cities than in a city center. Hotels tend to optimize for the 90% case.

Where I'm staying at the moment is a "serviced apartment" and does have a couple burners but that's unusual and I mostly stay here because I like the location in London.

[huevosabio]

Yes, this is spot on. The more lax the regulations for hotels, the less appealing Airbnb is.

[huevosabio]

PMS as property managements software :).

And yes, I use Airbnb as a guest as well, but I gauge the risk of having a bad host into the decision making.

We also get all type of horror stories from guests that had a bad experience and found themselves trying to find a last minute place to stay.

The problem is that the Airbnb app heavily disincentivizes "professionalization". They have a small cartel of PMS providers that can actually hit their API. I can't build my own systems on top of their API, I have to go through a middle man or use the their crappy app.

Their app is so incredibly obtuse that it puzzles me how people shower Airbnb as a "great product design company". It's a beautiful app sure, but incredibly clunky. It's like a call center phone menu made into an art piece.

[hintklb]

I never even understood why people even think Airbnb is a tech company.

They basically operate a pretty simple website. Most of their busines is about arbitrating issues when they come. This has nothing to do with tech.

I would bet that United Airlines or American Airlines website handles way more queries than Airbnb.

But for some reason they managed to market themselves as a "design driven" "Tech company".