Economics

It's become a terrible company. I say "become" because like many tech-era enshittified companies, it started out as an actual good idea.

Pre-2015, we stayed in a beautiful home in Paris and had nice conversations with the live-in owner, some friendly extra-room places in Brooklyn, an adobe home in New Mexico, and other places that were actually really people just renting out spare rooms or buildings and trying to be efficient/friendly with their extra space.

But now it's entirely "passive income"-obsessed real estate mogul-wannabes who bought up properties and are now bleeding them for the maximum profit. Zero-amenity empty properties with Walmart art on the wall and the smell of dog pee, cleaned by a service and run by a company who owns 300 of them.

The last straw for us: Last year in Spain, we had a host threaten physical harm to us before check-in. We saved screenshots of the messages with the actual threats, and AirBNB support said they would rebook/refund on a recorded line. Then inexplicably AirBNB reversed course, refused to actually issue a refund, just repeated the same BS about needing to cancel in the contract timeframes, and when we threw up our hands and reversed through AmEx, AirBNB disputed the reversal 7 times before finally giving up. AirBNB is just awful.

Stick with hotels: (usually) cheaper, better amenities, and no drama.