11 Toughest Cities to Book an Airbnb

joelrunyon 10 years ago |

These charts always remind me of this graph - 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.

coolandsmartrr 10 years ago |

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.

abalashov 10 years ago | |

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.

davej 10 years ago | |

I'm back from a month in Berlin and found lots of reasonably priced apartments available. Price was generally lower than other European destinations that I've used Airbnb with. I booked the accommodation a month in advance of the trip though.

hugh4 10 years ago | |

Well occupancy seems to top out at 90% in the graph, so no doubt there's still plenty of availability out there.

stoev 10 years ago |

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.

pbreit 10 years ago |

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

cheepin 10 years ago | |

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

toomuchtodo 10 years ago | | |

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

potatolicious 10 years ago | | |

Might be a liability to their brand - major surges (say, around New Year's in NYC) also bring the most new customers.

Generally speaking that's a poor time to be flooding the market with inexperienced, new hosts and the requisite spike in bad customer experiences.

Hospitality differs substantially from Uber in the sense that quality of service is extremely important in a way it isn't on Uber (or at least, UberX).

ianmchenry 10 years ago | | |

Beyond Pricing is software to help hosts adjust prices based on supply and demand: http://www.beyondpricing.com

lucaspiller 10 years ago | | |

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

rajacombinator 10 years ago | | |

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%.

lucaspiller 10 years ago | | |

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).

pbreit 10 years ago | | |

Just simple price increases around known high demand periods or price declines closer to stay date. For starters.

I suspect they think it might be community-unfriendly and/or complicate the service.

mathgenius 10 years ago |

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

rejeeshmenon007 10 years ago |

Fargo, ND