
Is It Cheaper to Stay in an Airbnb ‘Entire Home’ Rental or a Hotel? - himynamesdave
https://www.travelstatistician.com/2016/02/is-it-cheaper-to-stay-in-an-airbnb-rental-or-hotel/
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neuigkeiten
The problem with AirBnB is that they want you to scan your id card and send it
over the internet. Which is illegal here in Germany. I would not use a company
that wants me to do illegal things in the first place.

Additionally they want access to your Facebook account, which I find offensive
as well.

I travel a lot in Europe. Since I prefer to stay in apartments over staying in
hotel rooms, my approach is to look up local apartment rental sites. Usually I
find good deals this way. I only stay in hotels if I absolutely must.
Apartments are so much nicer.

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ucaetano
Don't think it's illegal, Number26 (a german bank startup) does it for ID
verification.

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realityking
It's illegal to make copies of the ID card unless required by law. Opening a
bank account is one of these things were the law requires a copy of the ID
card due to money laundering legislation.

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asift
I find that law even more ridiculous given those requirements. Making it
illegal to do X unless they force you to do X undermines almost all arguments
for criminalizing X.

~~~
rietta
Not entirely. The companies that must collect presumably have better security
safeguards than those just wanting it just because it's easy or customary.

I have a client that must collect and store drivers license copies for 2 years
by state law. The system encrypts with GnuPG, such that only an offline
private key stored on a crypto smart card can decrypt, and the encrypted image
into a cloud storage bucket with an expiration date. Unless they get a
spoliation order because the police come knocking no one ever sees the data.
After 2 years, the file auto deletes and a record is left indicating that the
record was "deleted in the ordinary course of business." The company does not
really want to do all of this, but its required by law and good infosec
practices.

Handling data breach material is expensive.

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noahlt
Comparing entire-home AirBnB rentals to hotel room costs seems like an unfair
comparison. Renting out an entire home on AirBnB seems much more akin to
getting a hotel suite, which is more expensive than a single room.

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madcaptenor
This is actually a problem I ran into last weekend. My wife and I were going
to a friend's wedding in the suburbs of Nashville and essentially all the
rentals available on AirBnB were whole homes, 3 bedrooms or so. The prices
were quite reasonable for such homes (and if we'd thought ahead of time we
probably could have coordinated with other friends of ours who were going to
the wedding) but we don't need all that space for the two of us, so in the end
we just got a hotel room. But last time we went to Nashville we were staying
in the city and AirBnB was significantly cheaper for a one-bedroom apartment
than a hotel room would have been.

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atwebb
Nashville's weird at the moment, hotel rooms are sky-high some weekends.
You're less likely to have living circumstances that allow a single room to be
rented out in the burbs as well. In town, it's a lot more common for a loft or
extra room to be available. Could be all the AirBnb Hoteliers around as well.
Hope you had a good weekend.

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imaffett
I was recently in vegas. You can get hotel rooms cheap, but they have the tax
and entertainment fee's that add up quickly. My problem with AirBnB was the
$200 cleaning fee for a two night stay.

So far, it's been extremely hit or miss for me. I've found VRBO/Homeaway to be
better for vacations.

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pc86
Aren't the cleaning fees set by the host?

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rouxdev
Yes. And it doesn't show up when you sort by price.

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arprocter
Reminds me of ebay back in the day - item price 1c delivery charge 10 bucks

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nadezhda18
The majority of my experience comes from staying in NYC for 3-4 days. I stayed
in Manhattan and Brooklyn, and each time I compared prices of AirBnB and
hotels. AirBnB always won. Getting a room (with access to kitchen) instead of
a whole apartment makes the difference even bigger. Apart from the price,
having access to a kitchen is a huge plus to me because I do not want to spend
on eating out all the time. Eating out is much more expensive than cooking at
home (not only in NYC). This should be taken into account too while doing the
price comparison.

~~~
mlrtime
I would argue that for one person it is cheaper to eat out in NYC if you know
where to look. The numbers change once you start cooking in advance (meal
planning) or cooking for more than one person.

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goldbrick
You are absolutely correct. Not only are groceries disproportionately
expensive in NY, economies of scale kick in, as well as intense competition in
an already low-margin industry drive the price down for restaurants. A high-
quality and tasty meal that I might enjoy at a neighborhood pub for ~$11 would
definitely cost me over $20 if I was to recreate it at home, plus I would have
the opportunity cost of the time spent making it and cleaning up.

You may not notice this effect if you are only in town for a few days and eat
mostly at tourist-friendly spots in midtown. Not to mention several math-
impaired people seem to believe they only spend $1 a meal. Where do they live,
India?

~~~
nadezhda18
>> intense competition in an already low-margin industry drive the price down
for restaurants.

Isn't the same thing true for the grocery stores? They are located in the same
areas as restaurants and have to pay pretty much the same expensive rent, no?
meanwhile, their expenses may be lower than the ones of a restaurant.

anyway, could you tell more info about what your neighborhood pub - for
example, what neighborhood is it? what meal did you eat?

I can share my numbers - and sorry I did not tell in advance I went with my
BF, so there were two of us eating cooked food.

So, I ate at Cafe Aroma in Manhatten and I paid about $17 for a plate with
rice + fish + some salad.

the same day I went to a grocery store on Myrtle Ave in Brooklyn to buy supper
for 2. I paid about $27 for tortellini, some chicken ham, a small watermelon,
and some beer. It was enough for us for supper + some leftovers for breakfast
(beer haha ;). The day after I found an even cheaper store where I bought
supper for the other two days at once.

$17 for a cafe meal seemed too expensive for me, so the next days I tried to
eat cheaper cafe lunches. So I ate sandwiches for ~ $10-12; however, they
contained a much smaller amount of proteins so I felt hungry much faster
after.

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goldbrick
> Isn't the same thing true for the grocery stores?

Not nearly. Groceries stores have higher margins and vastly less competition.

I'm most familiar with North Brooklyn (Williamsburg/Bed-Stuy) where most bars
and unfancy restaurants have dishes that will make a full meal for $10-16. My
experience is that LES and East Village are a touch pricier, but not much.

My question to you is how much do you think a restaurant would have charged
for your tortellini/processed chicken/watermelon meal? I mean no slight to
your culinary abilities, but I suspect it wouldn't have passed muster at most
restaurants.

~~~
nadezhda18
the initial discussion was about the price not the fanciness of food

And this is one of the main reasons to buy your own food - you have a choice
of what to buy! While eating out, your choice is much smaller.

You pay for some extras you may not like but you cannot remove it from the
menu. Even if you can - would it affect the price? I doubt so.

Composing my own meal gives me the flexibility of choosing only the things I
like + saving money.

On the top of that, the nice extras like tea/coffee/dessert/fruits come with
increased margins.

Especially fruits due to their short shelf life in cut form.

Let's look at the following example; though it does not involve the restaurant
prices, I still think it is representative.

In IGA (a Canadian grocery chain) a fruit salad comes for $1.30 / 100 G. A
mini watermelon is $5 each, and its weight is ~2.72 kg (6lb) with 70% of it
being edible. This gives us the cost of $0.26 / 100 g.

The fruit salad margin is like 500% ??? Isn't it crazy. Of course, there are
other fruits in the salad but the one can easily satisfy their sweet tooth
with eating one fruit instead of eating many.

(the prices are in Canadian dollars)

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sniuff
cached:
[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:HihU1Z...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:HihU1ZK1BgEJ:https://www.travelstatistician.com/2016/02/is-
it-cheaper-to-stay-in-an-airbnb-rental-or-hotel/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk)

From personal experience it's much cheaper to stay in airbnb with large (6+)
group of people instead of getting 2 or 3 hotel rooms.

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spurgu
With Airbnb you usually get a kitchen where you can cook your own food and
save lots, compared to staying at a hotel and eating out every day.

~~~
superuser2
This is true, but I can't imagine why I'd pay thousands of dollars to travel
somewhere and spend the time cooking instead of eating at that place's unique
restaurants.

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mrgordon
Because going to the grocery store and cooking local food is a major part of
the journey?

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st3v3r
I don't know how to cook the local food anywhere near as well as the locals.

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mrgordon
I don't claim to either. But its super fun to just go to the grocery store and
the ability to actually try to replicate a few dishes with local ingredients
(as opposed to whatever substitute is available back home) is really fun for a
lot of people.

For example, I've taken cooking classes in places like Thailand where they
even take you to the market and show you what to buy. Since you know what to
buy and you've already been taught to cook several dishes, its not that hard
to go back to the same market the next day to whip up some more Pad Thai.

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eveningcoffee
I use Booking.com ([http://www.booking.com/](http://www.booking.com/)).

They have mostly similar offers (in EU) as airbnb.com and I consider them more
trustworthy (as they have offered the service for longer time as airbnb).

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mojuba
Except some hosts told me that Booking.com is a rip off, plus it doesn't
handle their accounting like Airbnb does.

From the user's point of view, Booking.com is a horrible cluttered web site
with 1990'ish approaches to design, usability and online marketing. I don't
trust them at all.

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collyw
I can confirm this. We booked a hostel in Patagonia in December through
booking. We decided to stay in the same place a week later after doing a trek.
She charged us 20 or 25% less as she didn't have to pay Booking.com

~~~
pc86
How is this any different than working on oDesk (or whatever it's named now)
once then working outside of it and splitting the difference in fees? I don't
see how that makes Booking a rip-off.

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guy_c
I've travelled extensively for the last 2.5 years using a combination of
Airbnb, hotels (booked via Agoda & Rakuten Travel) & apartments arranged via
local classifieds (Craigslist, Gumtree etc.).

At the beginning airbnb was my main choice, because of the experience it
delivered. Not because it was cheaper. I used to stay in houseshares and the
vast majority of the time the host was amazing, sociable and generous. But I
think as airbnb has gone more into the mainstream and hosts get more
experienced, the host cannot maintain that level of service. Now the best
hosts are professional, but without the friendliness of the early days.

What works best on price depends on many factors: the time of year, the
country, the length of stay, big events or festivals, number of guests.

I now make my choice based on the price and quality. I've recently found last-
minute hotel bookings via Agoda have worked well.

Hotels in cities work especially well in off-seasons. They have staff cost and
vacant rooms, so have a strong incentive to get any revenue they can. Prices
can sometimes be lower than anything that an airbnb host would be willing to
accept[1]. Also hotels work well for 1 day stays. Many airbnb hosts want 2 day
minimum stays. Also airbnb hosts often add a cleaning fee, which can
significantly bump up price for very short stays.

Conversely airbnb can work great when your visiting a city/area during an
extremely busy period. Hotels are obviously aware these peaks and have
adjusted prices accordingly. Experienced airbnb hosts have done the same. But
novice airbnb hosts will often have much lower prices.

[1] I used to be an airbnb host in a UK city. During the winter months it just
wasn't worth competing with the budget hotels (EasyHotel, Premier Inn etc.)

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chx
Cheaper is one angle. But did anyone mention the location problem? Simply put,
there are way way more places where people live than hotels are. I have
visited Tel Hazor and Tel Megiddo both and I challenge you to find a hotel
near either (note: I don't drive).

~~~
atwebb
True in a lot of cities as well, many of my AirBnbs stays have been because
there isn't a hotel within a reasonable distance of my true destination.

~~~
chx
Yes! Look at the region south of A57 in Manchester, UK (Hulme and the
University for example). There are like 1-2 hotels in pretty big regions vs
dozens north of A57.

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prostoalex
"This analysis does not take into account Airbnb’s additional fees charged per
rental (Service Fee) and any charges optionally imposed by the host (Cleaning
Fee)"

This is pretty significant as some hosts encourage long-term stays (or
deliberately game AirBnB results) by lowering the per-day price while raising
the cleaning fee.

Cleaning fee amortized over short stays tends to add significant markup, and
at this point many hotels do come cheaper, as daily cleaning in their case is
already taken into account and is cost-efficient.

Edge case for AirBnB is family travel. Booking anything 1-bedroom and larger
somehow seems to signal to the hotel industry that you've finally made it to
the Forbes list and therefore no expense will be spared. I'd venture to say
that any decent 2-bedroom (and up) apartment/house on AirBnB would be
[significantly] cheaper than a 2-bedroom (and up) suite at the hotel.

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ghaff
>Booking anything 1-bedroom and larger somehow seems to signal to the hotel
industry that you've finally made it to the Forbes list and therefore no
expense will be spared.

It depends. Absolutely for a typical downtown hotel, their relative handful of
suites tend to be oriented toward being used as business meeting rooms or by
people who are really price insensitive. You can sometimes get deals on
weekends and the like but, yeah, it's a bit like business and first-class
pricing on planes.

It's far less true of the residence style hotels though (e.g. Marriott's
Residence Inn). In suburban/sprawl locations I often favor these because it's
nice to stretch out on a sofa. Some locales, such as Vegas, also have suites
as a pretty standard offering.

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fiatjaf
AirBnb is often more expensive than a real cheap hotel in my town.

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abannin
As a host, I typically rent out an entire house at 50-70% the price of 2 rooms
at the Hilton.

The SF numbers are way off. First, you need to consider size/number of beds.
One home may be equal to 2 or 3 hotel rooms. Second, there is no consideration
for quality. The only way those SF hotel numbers are that low is by including
the rather unsavory single room hotels. Third, there is no consideration for
amenities. AirBnB's will often give away a lot of amenities, where as hotels
charge for everything. It's common to charge $30/night/room for Wifi in SF,
those fees must be considered as well.

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jontas
I can't see the images/charts since the site is down and I am reading the
cache, but this analysis seems a bit suspicious to me. They are comparing AB&B
prices without taxes and fees (and website + cleaning fees can be quite
expensive) to hotel prices with taxes. The conclusion is that AB&B is more
expensive, but I suspect if the additional fees were factored in, the
difference would be even greater.

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afishisafish
Airbnb offering / culture differs from city to city. I was just scanning
Berlin yesterday and the city has crazy good Airbnb offerings.

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cosinetau
Just being a fussy mathematician, but I didn't see anywhere where in the
article where it discussed the time of year where these figures were pulled
from.

In addition to other chargers other folks are pointing out, it's not hard to
see how that can affect the model to portray AirBnB or Hotels one way or the
other.

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pnut
For me, depends on the length of stay.

If you book Airbnb for a month, it's usually around the same price as a 2 week
stay, and the nightly rate cannot be touched by hotels, particularly for the
size and location.

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thecourier
I don't deny you can get cheaper hotels rooms than airbnb rooms. nonetheless,
I have visited Japan, US, Caribbean and in many cases the airbnb proposal is
way better for the same money.

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ChrisDutrow
AirBnb seemed to not have good prices for off-season beach rentals. I was
checking there a few weeks ago and found way better prices for off-season
beach rentals on traditional rental sites... sometimes for exactly the same
property. I assumed that individual property owners tended to forget about
off-season pricing or just didn't want to rent their properties at off-season
value. Perhaps I was doing something wrong in the search though?

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betaby
Can't find that true for any EU city with 500k+ population assuming the same
neighborhood. Hotels are even more expensive during high season.

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alistairSH
An odd analysis, given most hotel rooms don't have kitchens. Or space for more
than 2 people.

I recently booked a trip to Florence, Italy. While hotel rooms and single-room
apartments were on par price-wise, Airbnb offered larger apartments, many with
nice balconies and view, that were not available in the hotels. And the
apartments were generally less expensive than hotel suites (with kitchen).

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lnrdgmz
The first graph shows that hotels are cheaper in New York: the difference
between hotels and AirBnb is -29.5. However, the graphs further down the page
show that AirBnb is cheaper: the difference on these charts is 66.

The fourth graph on the page is mislabeled, which adds to the confusion.

Is the New York data a simple mistake, or is all the data on this page
suspect? Or have I just read something incorrectly?

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goldbrick
I noticed that too, there is definitely a shortage of attention to detail
here.

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mewfree
Another article about the subject: [https://www.busbud.com/blog/airbnb-vs-
hotel-rates/](https://www.busbud.com/blog/airbnb-vs-hotel-rates/)

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rietta
Seems that the site has been slashdotted (or is that Hacker Newsed) - "Error
establishing a database connection".

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matwood
More than 2 people, usually yes.

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Hydraulix989
Error establishing a database connection

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jdhawk
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it-cheaper-to-stay-in-an-airbnb-rental-or-hotel/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

