
11 Toughest Cities to Book an Airbnb - ianmchenry
https://blog.beyondpricing.com/11-toughest-cities-to-book-an-airbnb
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joelrunyon
These charts always remind me of this graph -
[https://xkcd.com/1138/](https://xkcd.com/1138/)

As far as surprising places where AirBnB is hard to book - I'm surprised
Boulder, CO isn't on the list. For as tech-heavy their city is, I recently
went for a short consultancy there with a startup and found it nearly
impossible to find any airbnbs anywhere. I think there were 3 with _some_
availability in the whole city.

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coolandsmartrr
I just came back from Berlin, and was able to book an AirBnb during the high
season of August in just a few days in advance. The price seemed reasonable
for around $40 per night. I’m wondering if booking is as difficult as the
author describes.

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abalashov
My wife and I had immense difficulty finding an Airbnb rental in Prenzlauer
Berg/Mitte in late May/early June, and the number of properties on offer
seemed greatly diminished compared to my prior four visits. However, my prior
four visits were always off-season (October, Feb-April, April again, etc.).

Moreover, hosts told us that there have been recent regulatory changes and new
registration requirements which seem to have had the effect of limiting
supply.

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stoev
SE Asia is one of the most difficult places to book a decent AriBnB in. Most
of the apartments are just guesthouses in disguise, the hosts have no concept
of quality accommodation (lacking basic things such as towels or sheets,
overbooking houses, not cleaning up between guests), and displaying completely
the wrong location on AirBnB's map. And this is unrelated to the pricing, as
you can get a better daily price for the same quality of accommodation in most
highly developed countries in the world.

To my surprise, AirBnB is very eager to send refunds for bad experience,
instead of concentrating on removing the bad hosts and guaranteeing a minimum
level of quality. I really hope that they will work harder on this, because if
a first-time user tries their service in SE Asia, chances are that he or she
will never consider them again. Booking and the like are far more reliable in
that region.

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pbreit
You would think AirBnB would get more involved in pricing (like Uber).
Perhaps, though, it considers stable prices more community-friendly?

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cheepin
Curious what demand based adjustment you would suggest. It seems hard to do
since people set their own rates

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toomuchtodo
Financial incentives to new hosts when supply is constrained in a geographic
region would be one idea (similar to surge pricing with Uber).

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lucaspiller
Airbnb only charge hosts 3%, so there isn't much they can do in that
department.

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rajacombinator
I see a lot of Airbnb employees regurgitating this but it's not really true.
Whether you nominally assign the fee to the guest or the host, it still comes
out in the difference between what the guest was willing to pay and what the
host receives. The total fee comes out closer to 10%.

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lucaspiller
That's a good point, but I'd assume most guests just compare the nightly rates
on the search screen which don't include these fees (and also don't take into
account weekly / monthly discounts).

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mathgenius
Shortest day in sydney (mid-winter) is 10 hours.. Not at all "7 hours of
daylight" this article claims.

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rejeeshmenon007
Fargo, ND

