Some hosts are threatening to strike, while others are plotting ways around Airbnb’s new restrictions. Guests, meanwhile, are celebrating.

AIRBNB HOSTS ARE melting down over a new policy banning them from making guests complete tasks that “would typically be performed by a cleaner,” like “stripping the bed, taking trash offsite, or washing and putting away dishes.”

The change, which applies to all bookings made on or after November 20, quickly sparked outrage after it was announced in an email to Airbnb hosts on Wednesday. Many began fuming online about losing the right to make their guests clean up after themselves.

“As hosts, we have a responsibility to protect our investments, our homes, and, in many cases, our personal living spaces,” one person wrote in Airbnb’s official forum for hosts. “The problem is that Airbnb increasingly expects hosts to accept the risks while limiting our ability to protect ourselves.”

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[–] 117 points 2 days ago (13 children)

As hosts, we have a responsibility to protect our investments

That's not at all what the word "host" means.

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  • [–] 65 points 2 days ago (11 children)

    It sounds more like "landlord".

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  • [–] 38 points 2 days ago (3 children)
  • [–] 12 points 2 days ago (6 children)

    It's like landlord small man complex.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 days ago* (5 children)

    Landlords are far more productive and beneficial pieces of complete trash than the utter parasites that are AirBNB hosts could ever wish to achieve.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 days ago* (4 children)

    There's plenty of value in the base idea, I think. People deserve real vacations and there's no reason hotel chains and cabin rental agencies should be the only games in town.

    The problem starts when you start running your cabin rental agency through AirBnB and pretending guests should pay the same rates while doing all the housekeeping.

    I definitely don't agree that an entitled luxury service seller can be as bad as someone driving up the cost of necessities while providing nothing at all

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  • [–] 2 points 2 days ago

    Yeah, the premise is solid in principle, but I don't think anyone was prepared for how quickly or thoroughly people would go all in.

    Ultimately, all rentals charge far in excess of the mortgage or base rate for the space just at cost. Which is fine. But then it became almost trivially easy to rent substandard spaces for more than they were worth, which didn't solve any problems, but rather inflated the cost of housing since rates might be so high, a space can sit empty 40% of the time.

    Housing isn't as flexible a good as ubers and drivers.

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  • Well, yeah, if the systems and incentives for the owner class weren't absolute shit and literally the only considerations economically and socially that anyone gave a fuck about then things could operate without being the absolute worst version of what they are for every part of life as a whole.

    That’s not what happened, though.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 days ago (1 child)

    You're right, there should be some kind of service for people to rent out unused rooms in their house for people to use short-term. Something that shuts out people who buy a whole ass house or groups of houses.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 days ago

    They are called "Bed and Breakfasts" or "Boarding houses".

    I'm not trying to be shitty here. Bed and Breakfasts existed alongside boarding houses for a good long time before AirBnB.

    The problem is AirBnB generally doesn't have these listings anymore. The incentives made it into a "Buy a home cheap, rent on AirBnB for exorbitant prices".

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