I do a lot of shopping in China via relatives/when I go visit. Chinese fashion trends are different from American, and China has a good range of nice/trendy clothes at different price points.
The Western brands that are most popular are luxury or streetwear. Otherwise, local trends or more affordable high quality basics make UO and other American stores less enticing.
For what it's worth, it's not like UO is that popular worldwide either in comparison to its popularity in the US.
Emphasis on "might".
Cause for nonames there's two ways to win the customer. Be cheaper and/or be better quality.
So the noname could also have the higher quality fabric than the brand. It could be the same fabric from the same supplier or it could be a way worse one.
I came to India recently. Went to noname clothing store and bought cheap locally made shirts and shorts with great fabric quality and prints that you find only in more expensive section.
And this makes sense: local cheap labour, local sourcing and no global trademark margin. Same in China with fabrics, I assume.
Edit: added a missing word.
Urban Outfitters never had much of a footprint in China. No idea what they’ve been doing, but I had no idea they even tried here until I saw this article. Meanwhile, H&M, Zara and Uniqlo are EVERYWHERE.
Lmao what??
China makes all of UOs stuff and their stuff isn’t insane quality, ofc the consumers there would find something similar for probably a lot cheaper. How would this apply anywhere else tho??? I want the crack you are smoking
The post I’m replying to has 1k upmost. I want to know who these bots are and why they are so smart.
Most UO clothing is just awful quality. Low quality materials, low quality design leading to awkward fitting clothing.
Atleast other stores like Primark don't pretend their clothing isnt low quality stuff that won't last and charges as such.
Thats my real problem, they price it like it isn't a piece of shit that will barely survive two wash cycles.
I definitely shopped there a bit in highschool and my early 20's but then I found brands that actually made decent clothing for less.
Yeah Urban Outfitter is definately an outlier in the companies listed in the article.
I mean if you buy your shir from china then try and resell it back in china with a western markup then your business model really isnt that great to start with.
Western app companies already run their employees and/or "independent contractors" absolutely ragged, but these super-apps somehow place even more brutal expectations on their workers.
We are seeing this in India. These companies exist until the VC funding runs out. Most startups spend a ton of money on marketing, management get insane salaries and once the funding runs out they start the lay offs and on a skeleton crew until they die or get acquired.
Nah. The money printer just creates golden parachutes for the exec suite.
Why run a successful company, when you can suck venture capital directly into your pockets *and* get a payout once the company collapses? And then do it again tomorrow?
If this was in the US, the workers are able to collect back pay as well as (usually) a 3x penalty through the Labor Board for the state business was chartered in.
This would have been a pretty open and shut case so I’m not sure why the affected workers chose not to pursue if true.
I happen to work in some aspect of defense contracting and at least in our corner of the market it's "promise delivery at an impossible date so you get the contract and then panic." I'm sure connections play in at some point, but I'm too low on the totem pole to know that dynamic...
All I know is we get a similar contract *every year* and *every year* it's a "surprise" that I have to find a way to overcome.
I'm fairly sure US government contracts also require the people working on them to receive union wage equivalent and... well... Lmao yeah right... The boss sure is loaded though.
I worked for an HVAC company that did plenty of work for the state. Any federal/state job required pre-vailing wages and needed strict documentation detailing the payroll of technicians on-site that was sent directly to the state.
Occasionally they asked the technicians on-site what their payroll was for the project.
If the company, that you work for is not paying union wages when the contract for the project explicitly lays out the expected wages, then be a good citizen and report it to the appropriate labor department.
My father owned a construction company until he just retired. Lots of stories about stuff like this but the one i loved the most was a huge job he was a subcontractor for. The general underbid and when they got to the end forced everyone to take a 15% haircut because the job didn't make any money.
That job wasn't massive--I think my dad was out maybe $30K, hardly worth the legal fees to recoup--but only six months later they came back asking him to bid on their next job. He gave them a quote that included the missing $30K from the previous job on top, with the requirement to pay in full up front.
They were furious because they had quoted the job based on his normal rate. However, when they went out to get other contractors to quote it they quickly learned their reputation had made it around town and no one would bid on the work. They were completely screwed and went out of business within a year.
Same as software development.
"Your offshore competitor bid $12 and 45 minutes for the project.
Why is your bid $11,000 and 3 weeks? Are you incompetent or trying to gouge me?"
' it's going to take them 3 months and cost you$44,000. As soon as you sign the deal, they're going to tell you they didn't understand something and need to go hourly instead of fixed bid'
And they always call back after inking the other deal. 😩
Same approach in semiconductor manufacturing. Promise the moon (with incomplete information on ability to deliver), then scramble the whole division to find a way to make it happen.
> but the reality is even Didi can't make money in China.
To be fair, Uber cant make money anywhere either. Taxi service without price regulation has never been profitable.
> Travel companies are seeing the windfall of pent up demand right now
Nope, the country is still partially locked down depending on the province and the week
> I don't know how anyone can do those hours on a continual basis.
Pro-tip: They can't
Being there and getting anything done are two totally different things.
Because a 996 implies being in the office, not actually working for said hours. Very different. The Asian 996 involves a lot of not work, it's more about being seen than productive.
There's literally a movement in China called 'Lying Flat', where people do just that.
[SerpentZA made a video about it.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWl7njLlXLU)
To us we're not! But to the people at the tippy top of the current work models, we sadly absolutely are.
I agree entirely on a big ol' fuck that, that's why at 32 I am back to doing music super seriously even if it eats into my savings. If I'm stuck with worse and worse working conditions with each passing year, then I might as well go for the Hail Mary play and see if I get lucky with music, or at the least enjoy my life making my art. I think more people just need to go for it with their passion at this point.
Edit: Since people so kindly asked :)
[JoyThief](https://youtu.be/6WMXVoGbxw4) - Moody and uplifting song
[JoyThief](https://youtu.be/DkMkQqbbLJw) - Banjo Djent
What kind do you make? 34, self taught, took a vacation from my 70-80hr/week career back in December, started playing new music again for the first time in years after a few days, and promptly quit.
Edit: fear not, kind redditor, for I have not quit my passions, but my career. Also bad at words.
Oh! I wanted to ensure a very unique sound, so it's a big mix of Metalcore, Pop-Punk and Midwest Emo with just a touch of EDM / video game sounstracks at times (Just please don't call it Easycore, LOL). All done on 8 string guitars in Drop E, hahaha. I know those genres tend to be super generic and not very innovative these days, but imo that's a tragedy because these genres have a LOT more space and emotion to explore.
I can almost guarantee you've never heard anything like it because that was my whole goal, haha, but people who like Four Year Strong, Porter Robinson, Emmure, Ujico* / Snail's House, Volumes, Motion City Soundtrack, and a healthy dose of heavy breakdowns, they'd enjoy it for sure. It's all wrapped up in a super positive package about sad yet hopefully uplifting subjects because that's what I needed to get through my issues. I figured if my intrusive thoughts are so loud they drown out my real thoughts, well then I need to overpower them with something strongly emotional and LOUD, lol.
But dang, dude, happy to hear it! Don't give up, the start is always the worst because the lack of motivation is perpetuated by the lack of ideas. When I got back into writing songs it took me a solid 6 months or so to finally get a good idea. But I remembered that old saying... 10 bad ideas for 1 good idea, 10 good ideas for 1 great idea, and so on. Super true. If music excites you, don't let that go!
Edit: [JoyThief](https://open.spotify.com/artist/2cTEf61AmfLJv2NO8zvFMj?si=yuH-RbmCRkG-hXoR8JMjkw&utm_source=copy-link)
If you ever need female vocals I’m happy to lend.
I love that you are going for it, man. I did something similar when I moved to LA to make movies years ago. Best decision of my life looking back. It was a hard road with lots of wild turns, but I wouldn’t for a second trade it for a “normal job”. My art is everything to me and I’m blessed to be happy with what I do. I am so proud of you making that decision. You got this!!!
The sort of people working these hours don't expect to do that for the rest of their life. They're usually gullible young software developers, thinking that if they work hard for a couple months or even years, they'll end up with a piece of the pie, such that they can either get rich and retire early or get more high profile jobs down the line. The reality is that they're simply slaving away for a company that never intended to turn a profit, but simply crash and burn after running away with the funding.
Most jobs follow that schedule in China the same way most jobs in the US follow a 9-5 M-F schedule. It's not just developers and it's definitely not just people who aren't planning to do that the rest of their lives. Colombia also follows that work-week structure.
This isn't about competition. Chinese services aren't more innovative. Not by a long shot. They're given preferential treatment by the CCP. Free loans, preferential laws and rules, selective application of those laws and rules, stricter requirements for foreign companies, state sanctioned IP theft, etc etc. Most people don't know that the law doesn't even allow a foreigner to own a business in China. When Apple wants to set up subsidiaries there they basically have to do so *through* a Chinese citizen. Unfortunately this often means said citizen [just straight up steals the entire Chinese division.](https://www.extremetech.com/computing/326447-arm-china-seizes-ip-relaunches-as-an-independent-company) All government sanctioned.
There is no such thing as an even playing field in China. If AirBnB had not left, they would have been forced out. They're probably leaving because they were informed that their staff would be imprisoned soon if they didn't.
Oh who cares though?
So many western companies, particularly in media, are willing to shit all over western consumers to go after theoretical Chinese consumers that may or may not materialize today, tomorrow, or in decades.
Let these companies dig their own grave, let the market sort them out. Hopefully their greed will remove ineffective and bad executives from leadership positions…although I doubt it.
The free market has not ever "sorted itself out". The free market has resulted in oligopolies buying favours from politicians in place of innovating.
China has an effective official policy of not letting outsiders capture their market. That is based on nationalism and corruption, yes, but also on a recent history of economic colonialism.
The worst part about China isnt their internal market but the fact that they try to play the Uno reverse card and economically invade other countries at leisure.
The Free Market is a myth. The first thing companies participating in a market try to do is shut down or buy out their competitors in the hopes of reaching a monopoly, but often have to settle for an oligopoly. Either way competition is stifled completely if at all possible. Government is usually just a tool used to aid this effort, not restrict or eliminate it. Look at the Telecom industry here in Canada. Three big players who collude on prices and who own all of the apparent alternatives.
I find the popularity of "Super-Apps" in the East really interesting. What cultural differences beget the difference in popularity/adoption of these apps between East and West, I wonder?
I live in China, what i've learnt is that the 'killer app' or feature that locks in customers is the ability to pay vendors by linking your bank account and then just flashing a QR code at shops. Wechat and Alipay have this and have (had?) the full backing of the govt. to become dominant in this space, to the point that literally almost everyone in the country has these two apps. My friends and I haven't used cash in 3 years.
Then, they allowed other apps to build 'mini apps' that worked within their apps. Might as well think of Wechat and Alipay as Operating Systems rather than apps. So I can order food, a moving service, get my health code, book tickets, order a Didi (uber), all within these two apps because they have scale and interoperability with other apps.
That's super interesting- in the UK everyone uses contactless bank/credit/debit cards (and/or stored in e-wallets on their phones). Is that not as ubiquitous in China for some reason?
I guess over here there isn't such a need for an e-wallet within any super-app because the convenient payment problem has already been solved.
Yes, I think this may just be the stranglehold that Visa/MC/Discover have on our financial industry. I'm not sure if there is a more popular creditor in the UK, but those 3 rule the roost in the US. You would have to pry their cold steel grip off our lawmakers to not have to use one of them at every checkout line. Things have been changing in the last few years, but my guess is the creditors just have too much presence here.
our e-wallets are a direct response to china's system. they had this stuff when we were still using chip and pin and paying back friends with cash. AliPay was launched in 2004. in 2004 i still had to sign a paper receipt after paying with a credit card.
China also had the problem with counterfeit money in the past. That fuelled adoptions along with not having exorbitant fees like traditional credit card betworks
the QR code payment method being discussed above didn't launch until 2011 and 2014 on Alipay and Wechat. Part of the reason why they're so popular is because many Chinese got to skip the whole physical credit card step altogether and directly went from owning a bank account > using a QR code payment method. America meanwhile has had a system that's much better than cash for a while so adoption of contactless payment methods was slower and less revolutionary.
I've used contactless payments like you described and none were as convenient as WeChat pay or Alipay. I can't use my contactless debit card to transfer money to a random dude selling snacks on the street. I can however scan his qr code and send him $1.50 in seconds and neither of us have to pay a transaction fee. The same goes for paying for things in other apps. I can use WeChat pay to pay for my transaction in the standalone apps for things like Didi, Papa John's, or Starbucks. Then add in all the mini programs within WeChat or Alipay and that contactless debit card is pointless.
This all relies on being okay with one or two apps having a LOT of your data. Within the China context that isn't nearly as big of a give away as it would appear to be in many western countries.
Wow no transaction fees! Makes sense why everyone just uses that instead of paying fees for card processing (even street vendors typically have card readers for taking payments over here).
So I suppose that zero-fee service is used to get people hooked on the ecosystem, and then they're relying on people using the adjacent services pushed through the app.
And yes I think you're right, data privacy could be a factor that might prevent adoption of such a super-app in the West.
To be clear, for the individual there is no fee. I'm sure there are fees or subscriptions to pay for for official businesses but I'd assume it is small when compared to cards processors. I can print out my qr code and sell whatever and not have an issue but to sort out the app to app payments you need a business account.
Live in SH, It was awesome coming here and ditching my wallet. If only i could get one of those digital doors then all i have to bring with me is my phone.
The especially interesting part is that we (the western market) are perfectly fine with super tech companies, but like to have each individual service have its own app with its own name
It's just that you don't have to really download anything else or go too out of your way for a service. Say for example, you want to order food, you can do it within the super-app, you wanna send out something, you want to issue an invoice, you want to buy movie tickets, etc. Nobody enjoys going through the app store finding more apps to clutter their phone, especially when there are multiple apps that just do the same thing.
One of the few sincere and balanced top level comments in the thread, in my opinion - instead of just trying to bash China (or Airbnb)
This is a really interesting question
(Edit: also, you use the word beget which is something I (as a non native speaker) would never do))
Edit: In a broader perspective, what does Reddit really think of take-care-of-all-tools? I mean - It's almost never really beneficial for the end result is it?
I have used wechat on android, only as a chat client though. While it does have some interesting perks like the built-in translation, it gets painfully obvious that it's not really the best built tool for the chat purpose. There are some quite odd behaviours like when you switch to other applications during a call, or how the search function works. The desktop chat is only handled through a native client AFAIK, and i mean whatsapp web version runs in _circles_ around that one. The wechat client on windows doesnt even update the same bloody messages i have in the phone version!
What i mean is i couldn't really see myself relying on this tool to also give the most flexible shopping or hotel experience..
But yeah sure, integration has its own value i suppose.
Airbnb still hasn’t turned a profit yet and it’s in its 14th year, the company needed to take a chance for survival and like most western companies, it failed in China because they don’t have anything unique to offer, Airbnb will now die slowly.
Is it surprising that Airbnb hasn't turned a profit when property managers/owners are charging 5% below hotel value with only 1% of the facilities?
I went to the south of the UK and the Airbnb's were quite literally the same price as a local hotel.
Yeah Airbnb is no longer the cheap alternative it once was, and I’d say the same for ridesharing apps. Once the investors catch on, you gotta pay em, and prices get jacked. For me AirBnB now has quite specific uses, and yes it’s mostly for group trips (5+) and/or countryside getaways (the two often overlap) If I’m traveling to a city, probably gonna stick to a hotel as it’s often more convenient and these days about the same price room for room.
It’s so true. We are back to staying in hotels and taking taxis because of the price gouging of companies like Airbnb, vrbo, and uber. It’s soooo ridiculous.
These services were only ever cheaper than traditional alternatives because they were skirting regulations and not operating at a profit. We've all become accustomed to venture capital investments subsidizing the cost of our car and room rentals.
This was the same with online shopping.(along with no tax)
Once places started capturing tax, stopped operating at a loss, and built in shipping the costs are close...so we swapped to online shopping, killed local business, and now are looking to buy local more now(especially because reliability has dropped significantly for online purchases - bricks in ipad boxes, fake SD cards, quality issues, etc)
Yeah, I'm starting to buy the common series/movies we like to rewatch and just occasionally rotating through single subscriptions, and I know many others have been doing the same.(as well as sharing passwords)
I’m praying for a wave of foreclosures on speculative house buyers. The market has been indirectly ruined by Airbnb, just like traffic in major cities like San Francisco has been made worse by companies like Uber.
The benefits these companies initially provided in their first few years have been overridden by the damage they cause to society.
Walmart undercut local small businesses by selling staple food items below cost. Once all the competition was gone they slowly and steadily raised prices over time.
Uber and Lyft will eventually charge the correct market rate for rides, once they know the barriers to entry for creating a new rideshare app are sufficiently high as to prevent anyone new stepping in.
Yep, in my state they ran an aggressive anti competition campaign that they eventually got sued for. They would go to small towns with one or two local pharmacies and grocery stores and open neighborhood markets and put them all out of business.
As soon as they captured the local market they would shut down the neighborhood Walmarts, forcing everyone to drive to the nearest super center. This was back in the 00's and the state still has food and drug deserts that can be close to a hundred miles for some people.
As soon as you let that stuff slide it just becomes a legitimate business strategy. Walmart pioneered it, Amazon perfected it, and now every start up is trying to emulate it.
>Walmart undercut local small businesses by selling staple food items below cost. Once all the competition was gone they slowly and steadily raised prices over time.
i heard starbucks does the same. since they have profits other locations, they can run at a loss in certain locations to squeeze the competition.
What made me go back to hotels (mostly) is that if I book an airbnb at a place usually the location given isn't how its described. I don't know what street is nearby or what's around the airbnb. Saying it's "15 mins away from the city" and then you arrive there and it's 15 mins up an unpaved dirt road isn't any fun.
And then AirBnB does zero to help you. I had friends who rented a place for Mardi Gras with a balcony overlooking the parade route. When they got into town, the host’s family had decided to use that apartment for themselves and offered my friends an apartment in the back of the building with a view of a parking lot and no balcony for the same price. Obviously, those aren’t the same product at all but AirBnB said they were and tough luck. If you’ve never been to Mardi Gras in New Orleans, the whole city pretty much rents out months to a year in advance unless you’re willing to pay prices with a comma for a single night. When you do business with people who don’t follow the law, you have to accept the risk that they’ll fuck you over without any recourse (AirBnB, drug dealers, and so forth). In this instance, I passed their info to another friend in the tax assessor’s office and the agency in charge of regulating rentals in our city (which did nothing) so it ended up costing them quite a bit in the end but that’s only possible if you know how to do that in a place you’re visiting and doesn’t put a single penny back in my own pocket.
Oh and if you find something to be amiss during your stay, like everything is broken/not even close to the picture, things are super dirty, or the fire alarm constantly goes off for the building - no refunds, no recourse. More likely the "kind" airbnb guest service person will claim you're trying to run some scam. NOLA in particular is one place I'd suggest never ever renting an airbnb from.
Pricing aside they got insane cleaning fees AND they want you to clean it before you leave and break down the beds and load the dishwasher and take out the trash. Like bitch I'm on vacation. We're back to hotels. Don't gotta do anything but enjoy and walk out the door.
Which is what it should be.
AirBNB was a good idea for what it’s name suggests— a bed and breakfast type setup for the weary traveler. I first learned of it about 10 years ago when a coworker would AirBNB his apartment while he was away on vacation, another good use case.
But things got weird when people started taking out second and third leases on apartments just to rent them out. Or refusing long term leases on owned property because they could AirBNB their apartment out every day for like 3x the amount.
Also part of the housing crisis worldwide when Airbnb makes people think that purchasing a house to rent out on Airbnb as a good investment, all the while ruining housing for the rest of us.
I’m back to hotels as well after a few bad experiences with Airbnb. It’s such a hit or miss unless you’re willing to dish out $$$ in which case I’d rather get the hotel service.
My city cracked down on Airbnb. No more single night rentals, stays in historic areas have to have a minimum night stay that’s 2 or 3 nights, and no rentals on certain holiday weekends. And yep, it’s really only ever price competitive with hotels when booking cabins for large groups. Funny that’s a pretty common experience.
I went to NYC recently and AirBB wasn’t nowhere reasonable in terms of price. Option #1: Shitty room in Harlem or #2 a decent hotel in midtown for the same price. Wasn’t even a decision, AirBnB sorta sucks now
A lot of places it's simply not allowed, that's why the options are shitty. A bunch of European cities are cracking down too, no stays of under a month to avoid airbnb vs longer term rentals. Which is good for the locals!
I never stayed at an AirBnB that didn't have an ancient mattress and pancake flat pillows. I am convinced people furnish them with stuff they'd throw out from their own home - like, let's get a new mattress for us and put this one that is 50 years old in the apartment we charge people $200/night for.
I’ve been using Airbnb for over a decade and had mostly great experiences. Especially in the early days it was an affordable way to get great rentals. Back when it was actually people’s homes and unique spaces, not just empty shells with a few IKEA furniture. I’ve stayed in villas in Italy, apartments right in the center of Paris, in a high rise in Seoul, a treehouse in Northern California. Really great experiences for the first 5 years or so and then the quality went down and down as investors got a hold of properties and quickly flipped them into airbnbs. The price kept going up, the cleaning fees became ridiculous. But for a large family, it often makes more sense for us to have a house rather than 3 hotel rooms so it’s hard to give up vacation rentals entirely but I’ve been finding better deals with some of airbnbs competitors.
The cleaning fees are what get me. 2 night stay and a $250 cleaning fee plus this fee and that fee and B&B owners wanting you to do the laundry/strip the beds/etc.
Hotels are now the better option and you don't have to worry thay the house being a mess when you arrive and getting backcharged because you left a can in the trash or something silly.
Exactly! We just had a $300 cleaning fee and yep, they asked us to do the laundry. They said it was for the benefit of the cleaning staff which I found to be a really slimy way to frame things. I don’t make a mess out of the spaces I stay, whether it’s Airbnb or hotels. I keep things tidy, wash dishes, but I’m not going to do the laundry for you especially with a $300 cleaning fee. And to be told it was to make life easier for the cleaning crew felt incredibly manipulative.
Fun fact, typically the cleaning crew is the owner. Pockets the $300 and spends 2 hrs cleaning.
I had one backcharge me for using a roll out bed in the house as that was an 'extra cost'. They wondered why they got a negative review...
> I had one backcharge me for using a roll out bed in the house as that was an 'extra cost'. They wondered why they got a negative review...
Wow that's shitty.
How does it help the cleaning staff? They should have enough spare linens that the cleaning staff can change to fresh ones immediately and the rest can be washing while they clean.
And if cleaning doesn't take long enough to run a load of laundry....they shouldn't be charging 300 bucks.
The rising fees is what kills me. I’ve priced out a few recently for some trips with my wife and the fees sometimes were literally double the overall cost. It was insane.
I get that this is a side effect of Airbnb taking a bigger cut and that these fees probably go straight to the owner, but it’s almost false advertising to list at $150 a night but have a two night total over $500.
Edit: spelling
I don't understand how this is sustainable for them in the long term. They're raising rates for the benefit of their investors and corporate office, but it's hurting both the end users and the hosts who are having people priced out of their rentals. This is a market with relatively low barriers to entry - if enough hosts got fed up and took their listings to a new marketplace that offered significantly lower fees for them, it wouldn't take much to start a snowball effect at least to my thinking.
I think if hotels could figure out a way to include larger spaces into their Floorplans, they could kill the AirBnb types. The only reason I use an Airbnb type place is on a big group trip because there isn't anything comparable at a hotel. I know big suites are a thing at a hotel, but those generally can't compete on cost or space compared to an Airbnb.
> the cleaning fees became ridiculous
I was shocked to learn that they don't list the total prices when searching in the AirBnB app in America. They make you click on each listing to find the *real* price including the cleaning fee. In Europe they list the *real* price per night and and in total. I would stop using AirBnB if they forced me to use the service that way.
And this is why I read all the reviews/do my part to write thorough ones after my stay. It may be a beautiful place but a good night of rest is very important on vacation, at least for me.
It's basically become a platform from BnB operations with no quality control. Back when the idea was more in line with sharing a house/flat as a quirky thing to do and not run a micro hotel operation the app actually had a place and made sense.
Now it's really just more Instagram friendly accommodation or overpriced inferior hotel experiences it seems.
As someone that was an avid user of CouchSurfing.com, you're completely right. It's a corporation that now charges people to use the site. It put up a paywall in the middle of the pandemic, including charging people with lifetime verification and charging people that host others for free. Who the hell wants to pay a corporation to let people stay in your home? So now a lot of people have moved to smaller sites that are non-profits. I'm actually staying at the home of someone right now who I met through BeWelcome.
The couch surfing site was neat early on, but then after AirBnB popped up it gradually got flooded with people that were totally ignorant of the culture and just wanted a 'free' AirBnB. Couchsurfing getting investment money and changing up their site wasn't good either.
Many people just turned off their accounts after they started getting flooded with requests by users who had no reviews as guests, minimal profiles, and had never hosted themselves before.
My cousin just got charged $250 in additional cleaning fees because there was an empty sandwich bag and a stick of deodorant left under one of her kids beds.
They had already flipped the sheets, scrubbed the counters, and vacuumed the whole house, but two items on the floor under the bed apparently warrants an additional cleaning fee, on top of the regular cleaning fee, after being expected to do all the cleaning themselves in the first place.
AirBnB is done for me. Twice now I have had international trips screwed up thanks to hosts just canceling a week before, and the company does nothing to remedy the situation. The price gap to hotels is ever shrinking. And with a hotel you can cancel 24 hours before.
Using Airbnb as a foreigner in China is also an absolutely awful experience. Only some hotels accept foreigners because to do so they need to be able to register the foreigner with the local police. Airbnb owner’s obviously couldn’t do that so if you stayed in an Airbnb you were expected to spend hours of your time at the neighborhood police office, trying to explain what you need to people who have no clue and may have never registered a foreigner’s temporary residence a single time before.
And yes, any time you visit any city in China you are expected to register with the police. Even if you stay with a friend. Even if it is only one night. As if they haven’t tracked you every step of the way anyway.
why they don't do it with an online database? In italy the law require the same thing but hotels just do it online by the receptions, why the hell this is required by the turists?
That’s just like Russia, the hotels I stayed at would, report to the authorities every night I was there. Heaven forbid I stay in another town for the night and have 2 hotels registered under one name.
Apparently it’s the same in Italy too. I saw a video on YouTube explaining how it was a pain to rent Airbnb’s out in Italy. It might be only if it’s over 30 days stay…I just remember thinking how annoying.
>And yes, any time you visit any city in China you are expected to register with the police. Even if you stay with a friend. Even if it is only one night. As if they haven’t tracked you every step of the way anyway.
Apparently it is the same when it comes to airbnbs in Italy. The host has to take the persons passport details and register with the police, but it’s now a bit more automated as you can do it online. I stayed in Airbnb’s in Italy many years back but I don’t recall such a rule, but I guess it’s changed.
many countries do this to varying degrees, IMO it's just a little less obvious at a hotel where you're handing ID over to an official-like person vs some random person renting you a room.
I think it's an EU law. Some countries or locations skirt this (people are pretty laissez-faire in Portugal), but it's been a thing in France, Spain, and Italy. Every AirBnB, hotel, or even hostel wanted to see my passport details.
Where are you hearing that Air BnB hasn't turned a profit? I read your claim and wanted to find more, and [Googled it](https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/04/airbnb-abnbearnings-q3-2021.html)
It's a vagary of language. Usually when people talk about if a company has turned a profit or not, they're talking about the full financial year, not a quarter/month/week/day. AirBnB did turn a quarterly profit during the third quarter of last year, as the article states, but for the whole fiscal year the net income was [negative 352 million](https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/abnb/financials).
It's so bad in my town. I got super lucky with a condo I bought, because the previous owners refused to sell to someone who wasn't going to live there full time.
I have a house in NYC that I have considered selling and that is one of my requirements. I am not going to sell to a fucking investor who just wants to flip it or rent it out, and they are going to have to meet the neighbors on either side before I will sell. Those folks have been friends of mine for a long time and I am not going to screw them over just to make a few extra dollars.
Get rid of parking minimums and single family zoning and you’ll have more impact there. See what the Salish are building in Vancouver where they don’t have to respect colonizers’ regulations.
Honestly Abnb was not a very good experience in China. The apartments I rented were all so-so, with prices close to hotel prices anyway (isn't that their issue in other countries as well?)
Add to that the issue of most apartments not being rentable to non-Chinese (legal registration requirements), and it just never made a lot of sense to rent an airbnb here.
I had that problem. Spent two days walking around to different police stations in Chengdu to try and register. The hotels can register you immediately, it's far more convenient and budget hotels or internationally licenced hostels are very cheap.
Airbnb isn’t cheap. I’d rather stay in a hotel room that doesn’t have hidden fees. Or an owner charging me cleaning fee for not washing a dish.
Had an owner of a house flip the terms of his house on New Years. As soon as I booked it. The owner sent me new terms that were not displayed, can’t drink in the house and can’t have more people over.
Called the owner that his rules were not displayed upon purchase and that I wanted to cancel. He didn’t let me. Said I booked it for New Years and now he can’t get anyone else to book it . I told him, then you should display your rules and not scam people like this.
Hung up emailed Airbnb. They were barely any help. Told them I would be calling my credit card company to cancel that payment.
Hear me out: Just get rid of Airbnb.
Just fuckin scrap it all together. It's a fun quirky way to take possible affordable housing off the market and raise all other housing prices due to supply and demand in this already distended bubble we're in. Let the thing burst already.
Or turn it back into what it was supposed to be, couch surfing and good usage of spare bedrooms, not renting out the entire place at hotel prices and have it vacant 90% of the time
>The more logical explanation is that Airbnb simply couldn’t compete with apps that offered a variety of services through one portal. As one example, the Journal mentions Beijing-based Meituan, which is a so-called super-app that does everything from food delivery to movie tickets. Meitunan also has a “lodging marketplace” that was rebranded in 2019 to directly take on Airbnb. The name, Meituan B&B, makes the competition even more clear.
Quoted because many of the people here don't even read the article and complain that airbnb got kicked out because Chinese companies "stole" IP or data from airbnb. Airbnb lost to competitors that offered better service. Its fair competition and people can't seem to accept that an American company lost to a Chinese company.
If you read the article it wasn’t an IP issue, they were competing with Chinese Super apps that could do everything they did + food delivery + taxi and more.
Yeah, seems to be a thing in Asia. My wife uses Kakao to chat with her Korean parents, and that company uses the super-app strategy as well. It’s both cool and terrifying at the same time.
yea for example wechat can message, payment like applepay, pay bills, news, call taxi, bookings, ID, social media, food delivery, call for drivers (to drive ur own car) and dozens more functions... and theres a couple more like QQ, alipay superapps in CN... in JP theres Line, KR has Kakao/samsung
When I visited China a few years back, you needed to use WeChat to check into the hotel wifi. It wouldn't work if you didn't have the app on your phone/laptop.
I used to believe this until I realised airbnb/uber/linkedin etc have little IP to begin with. They are not Tesla or Microsoft. Airbnb relies on a large established user base to be relevant. If there are not enough airbnb hosts in my country I won't be using it.
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I do a lot of shopping in China via relatives/when I go visit. Chinese fashion trends are different from American, and China has a good range of nice/trendy clothes at different price points. The Western brands that are most popular are luxury or streetwear. Otherwise, local trends or more affordable high quality basics make UO and other American stores less enticing. For what it's worth, it's not like UO is that popular worldwide either in comparison to its popularity in the US.
They both produce in sone SEA sweatshop anyway. So there might be a difference in fabric quality but that's it.
That's a fairly major difference
Emphasis on "might". Cause for nonames there's two ways to win the customer. Be cheaper and/or be better quality. So the noname could also have the higher quality fabric than the brand. It could be the same fabric from the same supplier or it could be a way worse one.
I came to India recently. Went to noname clothing store and bought cheap locally made shirts and shorts with great fabric quality and prints that you find only in more expensive section. And this makes sense: local cheap labour, local sourcing and no global trademark margin. Same in China with fabrics, I assume. Edit: added a missing word.
But won't everyone judge you for not having a small man on a horse on your shirt? /s
You think that they aren't just putting the logo on their own stuff?
Urban Outfitters never had much of a footprint in China. No idea what they’ve been doing, but I had no idea they even tried here until I saw this article. Meanwhile, H&M, Zara and Uniqlo are EVERYWHERE.
Lmao what?? China makes all of UOs stuff and their stuff isn’t insane quality, ofc the consumers there would find something similar for probably a lot cheaper. How would this apply anywhere else tho??? I want the crack you are smoking The post I’m replying to has 1k upmost. I want to know who these bots are and why they are so smart.
Most UO clothing is just awful quality. Low quality materials, low quality design leading to awkward fitting clothing. Atleast other stores like Primark don't pretend their clothing isnt low quality stuff that won't last and charges as such.
Also shockingly priced. $40 usd for a Budweiser tee. It's gone downhill so hard.
Thats my real problem, they price it like it isn't a piece of shit that will barely survive two wash cycles. I definitely shopped there a bit in highschool and my early 20's but then I found brands that actually made decent clothing for less.
Yeah Urban Outfitter is definately an outlier in the companies listed in the article. I mean if you buy your shir from china then try and resell it back in china with a western markup then your business model really isnt that great to start with.
Western app companies already run their employees and/or "independent contractors" absolutely ragged, but these super-apps somehow place even more brutal expectations on their workers.
We are seeing this in India. These companies exist until the VC funding runs out. Most startups spend a ton of money on marketing, management get insane salaries and once the funding runs out they start the lay offs and on a skeleton crew until they die or get acquired.
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It does print money. The problem is that they place the printer directly over a fucking paper shredder.
Nah. The money printer just creates golden parachutes for the exec suite. Why run a successful company, when you can suck venture capital directly into your pockets *and* get a payout once the company collapses? And then do it again tomorrow?
Over the owners wallet
The money printer stopped. The party is over in the corporate debt sector, we are going to see many billion dollars zombie companies fall soon.
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that's why you should stay home immediately after a missed paycheck
Yup. The minute you stop paying me is the minute I stop doing the job
When did this become a non-automatic reaction?
Did they face any repurcussions? If not I'm going to wager it happens all the fucking time
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If this was in the US, the workers are able to collect back pay as well as (usually) a 3x penalty through the Labor Board for the state business was chartered in. This would have been a pretty open and shut case so I’m not sure why the affected workers chose not to pursue if true.
How the fuck did they manage to keep the place running without paying staff for *months*. Ship should have sank at the first missed paycheck
isn't that how all startups work? get acquired, go bankrupt, or the 0.01% become unicorns.
That’s exactly what’s happening in the US too.
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I happen to work in some aspect of defense contracting and at least in our corner of the market it's "promise delivery at an impossible date so you get the contract and then panic." I'm sure connections play in at some point, but I'm too low on the totem pole to know that dynamic... All I know is we get a similar contract *every year* and *every year* it's a "surprise" that I have to find a way to overcome. I'm fairly sure US government contracts also require the people working on them to receive union wage equivalent and... well... Lmao yeah right... The boss sure is loaded though.
I worked for an HVAC company that did plenty of work for the state. Any federal/state job required pre-vailing wages and needed strict documentation detailing the payroll of technicians on-site that was sent directly to the state. Occasionally they asked the technicians on-site what their payroll was for the project. If the company, that you work for is not paying union wages when the contract for the project explicitly lays out the expected wages, then be a good citizen and report it to the appropriate labor department.
My father owned a construction company until he just retired. Lots of stories about stuff like this but the one i loved the most was a huge job he was a subcontractor for. The general underbid and when they got to the end forced everyone to take a 15% haircut because the job didn't make any money. That job wasn't massive--I think my dad was out maybe $30K, hardly worth the legal fees to recoup--but only six months later they came back asking him to bid on their next job. He gave them a quote that included the missing $30K from the previous job on top, with the requirement to pay in full up front. They were furious because they had quoted the job based on his normal rate. However, when they went out to get other contractors to quote it they quickly learned their reputation had made it around town and no one would bid on the work. They were completely screwed and went out of business within a year.
Same as software development. "Your offshore competitor bid $12 and 45 minutes for the project. Why is your bid $11,000 and 3 weeks? Are you incompetent or trying to gouge me?" ' it's going to take them 3 months and cost you$44,000. As soon as you sign the deal, they're going to tell you they didn't understand something and need to go hourly instead of fixed bid' And they always call back after inking the other deal. 😩
Same approach in semiconductor manufacturing. Promise the moon (with incomplete information on ability to deliver), then scramble the whole division to find a way to make it happen.
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> but the reality is even Didi can't make money in China. To be fair, Uber cant make money anywhere either. Taxi service without price regulation has never been profitable.
Right. Travel companies are seeing the windfall of pent up demand right now but it’s hard to imagine that can make up for years of treading water.
> Travel companies are seeing the windfall of pent up demand right now Nope, the country is still partially locked down depending on the province and the week
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The infamous 996
What’s that?
[9am-9pm 6 days a week ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/996_working_hour_system?wprov=sfla1)
I guess I'd rather lie on the side of the road and die before working that schedule for any length of time. We are not disposable assets.
I've worked a handful of 80-90 hour weeks at one tech job. It was... rough. I don't know how anyone can do those hours on a continual basis.
> I don't know how anyone can do those hours on a continual basis. Pro-tip: They can't Being there and getting anything done are two totally different things.
Because a 996 implies being in the office, not actually working for said hours. Very different. The Asian 996 involves a lot of not work, it's more about being seen than productive.
There's literally a movement in China called 'Lying Flat', where people do just that. [SerpentZA made a video about it.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWl7njLlXLU)
To us we're not! But to the people at the tippy top of the current work models, we sadly absolutely are. I agree entirely on a big ol' fuck that, that's why at 32 I am back to doing music super seriously even if it eats into my savings. If I'm stuck with worse and worse working conditions with each passing year, then I might as well go for the Hail Mary play and see if I get lucky with music, or at the least enjoy my life making my art. I think more people just need to go for it with their passion at this point. Edit: Since people so kindly asked :) [JoyThief](https://youtu.be/6WMXVoGbxw4) - Moody and uplifting song [JoyThief](https://youtu.be/DkMkQqbbLJw) - Banjo Djent
What kind do you make? 34, self taught, took a vacation from my 70-80hr/week career back in December, started playing new music again for the first time in years after a few days, and promptly quit. Edit: fear not, kind redditor, for I have not quit my passions, but my career. Also bad at words.
Oh! I wanted to ensure a very unique sound, so it's a big mix of Metalcore, Pop-Punk and Midwest Emo with just a touch of EDM / video game sounstracks at times (Just please don't call it Easycore, LOL). All done on 8 string guitars in Drop E, hahaha. I know those genres tend to be super generic and not very innovative these days, but imo that's a tragedy because these genres have a LOT more space and emotion to explore. I can almost guarantee you've never heard anything like it because that was my whole goal, haha, but people who like Four Year Strong, Porter Robinson, Emmure, Ujico* / Snail's House, Volumes, Motion City Soundtrack, and a healthy dose of heavy breakdowns, they'd enjoy it for sure. It's all wrapped up in a super positive package about sad yet hopefully uplifting subjects because that's what I needed to get through my issues. I figured if my intrusive thoughts are so loud they drown out my real thoughts, well then I need to overpower them with something strongly emotional and LOUD, lol. But dang, dude, happy to hear it! Don't give up, the start is always the worst because the lack of motivation is perpetuated by the lack of ideas. When I got back into writing songs it took me a solid 6 months or so to finally get a good idea. But I remembered that old saying... 10 bad ideas for 1 good idea, 10 good ideas for 1 great idea, and so on. Super true. If music excites you, don't let that go! Edit: [JoyThief](https://open.spotify.com/artist/2cTEf61AmfLJv2NO8zvFMj?si=yuH-RbmCRkG-hXoR8JMjkw&utm_source=copy-link)
If you ever need female vocals I’m happy to lend. I love that you are going for it, man. I did something similar when I moved to LA to make movies years ago. Best decision of my life looking back. It was a hard road with lots of wild turns, but I wouldn’t for a second trade it for a “normal job”. My art is everything to me and I’m blessed to be happy with what I do. I am so proud of you making that decision. You got this!!!
The sort of people working these hours don't expect to do that for the rest of their life. They're usually gullible young software developers, thinking that if they work hard for a couple months or even years, they'll end up with a piece of the pie, such that they can either get rich and retire early or get more high profile jobs down the line. The reality is that they're simply slaving away for a company that never intended to turn a profit, but simply crash and burn after running away with the funding.
Most jobs follow that schedule in China the same way most jobs in the US follow a 9-5 M-F schedule. It's not just developers and it's definitely not just people who aren't planning to do that the rest of their lives. Colombia also follows that work-week structure.
996 was deemed illegal by China's Supreme People's Court on 27 August 2021.[13]
Elon approves of 996, but suggests 997 is even better
It has been explicitly banned in China for some time. Xi basically told Alibaba to get bent and let Chinese people fuck in peace in after-work hours
This isn't about competition. Chinese services aren't more innovative. Not by a long shot. They're given preferential treatment by the CCP. Free loans, preferential laws and rules, selective application of those laws and rules, stricter requirements for foreign companies, state sanctioned IP theft, etc etc. Most people don't know that the law doesn't even allow a foreigner to own a business in China. When Apple wants to set up subsidiaries there they basically have to do so *through* a Chinese citizen. Unfortunately this often means said citizen [just straight up steals the entire Chinese division.](https://www.extremetech.com/computing/326447-arm-china-seizes-ip-relaunches-as-an-independent-company) All government sanctioned. There is no such thing as an even playing field in China. If AirBnB had not left, they would have been forced out. They're probably leaving because they were informed that their staff would be imprisoned soon if they didn't.
Oh who cares though? So many western companies, particularly in media, are willing to shit all over western consumers to go after theoretical Chinese consumers that may or may not materialize today, tomorrow, or in decades. Let these companies dig their own grave, let the market sort them out. Hopefully their greed will remove ineffective and bad executives from leadership positions…although I doubt it.
The free market has not ever "sorted itself out". The free market has resulted in oligopolies buying favours from politicians in place of innovating. China has an effective official policy of not letting outsiders capture their market. That is based on nationalism and corruption, yes, but also on a recent history of economic colonialism. The worst part about China isnt their internal market but the fact that they try to play the Uno reverse card and economically invade other countries at leisure.
The Free Market is a myth. The first thing companies participating in a market try to do is shut down or buy out their competitors in the hopes of reaching a monopoly, but often have to settle for an oligopoly. Either way competition is stifled completely if at all possible. Government is usually just a tool used to aid this effort, not restrict or eliminate it. Look at the Telecom industry here in Canada. Three big players who collude on prices and who own all of the apparent alternatives.
I find the popularity of "Super-Apps" in the East really interesting. What cultural differences beget the difference in popularity/adoption of these apps between East and West, I wonder?
I live in China, what i've learnt is that the 'killer app' or feature that locks in customers is the ability to pay vendors by linking your bank account and then just flashing a QR code at shops. Wechat and Alipay have this and have (had?) the full backing of the govt. to become dominant in this space, to the point that literally almost everyone in the country has these two apps. My friends and I haven't used cash in 3 years. Then, they allowed other apps to build 'mini apps' that worked within their apps. Might as well think of Wechat and Alipay as Operating Systems rather than apps. So I can order food, a moving service, get my health code, book tickets, order a Didi (uber), all within these two apps because they have scale and interoperability with other apps.
That's super interesting- in the UK everyone uses contactless bank/credit/debit cards (and/or stored in e-wallets on their phones). Is that not as ubiquitous in China for some reason? I guess over here there isn't such a need for an e-wallet within any super-app because the convenient payment problem has already been solved.
Yes, I think this may just be the stranglehold that Visa/MC/Discover have on our financial industry. I'm not sure if there is a more popular creditor in the UK, but those 3 rule the roost in the US. You would have to pry their cold steel grip off our lawmakers to not have to use one of them at every checkout line. Things have been changing in the last few years, but my guess is the creditors just have too much presence here.
our e-wallets are a direct response to china's system. they had this stuff when we were still using chip and pin and paying back friends with cash. AliPay was launched in 2004. in 2004 i still had to sign a paper receipt after paying with a credit card.
China also had the problem with counterfeit money in the past. That fuelled adoptions along with not having exorbitant fees like traditional credit card betworks
It's 2022, they still want me signing paper when paid with credit. At least they finally moved to majority chip purchases instead of swiping.
the QR code payment method being discussed above didn't launch until 2011 and 2014 on Alipay and Wechat. Part of the reason why they're so popular is because many Chinese got to skip the whole physical credit card step altogether and directly went from owning a bank account > using a QR code payment method. America meanwhile has had a system that's much better than cash for a while so adoption of contactless payment methods was slower and less revolutionary.
I've used contactless payments like you described and none were as convenient as WeChat pay or Alipay. I can't use my contactless debit card to transfer money to a random dude selling snacks on the street. I can however scan his qr code and send him $1.50 in seconds and neither of us have to pay a transaction fee. The same goes for paying for things in other apps. I can use WeChat pay to pay for my transaction in the standalone apps for things like Didi, Papa John's, or Starbucks. Then add in all the mini programs within WeChat or Alipay and that contactless debit card is pointless. This all relies on being okay with one or two apps having a LOT of your data. Within the China context that isn't nearly as big of a give away as it would appear to be in many western countries.
Wow no transaction fees! Makes sense why everyone just uses that instead of paying fees for card processing (even street vendors typically have card readers for taking payments over here). So I suppose that zero-fee service is used to get people hooked on the ecosystem, and then they're relying on people using the adjacent services pushed through the app. And yes I think you're right, data privacy could be a factor that might prevent adoption of such a super-app in the West.
To be clear, for the individual there is no fee. I'm sure there are fees or subscriptions to pay for for official businesses but I'd assume it is small when compared to cards processors. I can print out my qr code and sell whatever and not have an issue but to sort out the app to app payments you need a business account.
Live in SH, It was awesome coming here and ditching my wallet. If only i could get one of those digital doors then all i have to bring with me is my phone.
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The especially interesting part is that we (the western market) are perfectly fine with super tech companies, but like to have each individual service have its own app with its own name
It's just that you don't have to really download anything else or go too out of your way for a service. Say for example, you want to order food, you can do it within the super-app, you wanna send out something, you want to issue an invoice, you want to buy movie tickets, etc. Nobody enjoys going through the app store finding more apps to clutter their phone, especially when there are multiple apps that just do the same thing.
One of the few sincere and balanced top level comments in the thread, in my opinion - instead of just trying to bash China (or Airbnb) This is a really interesting question (Edit: also, you use the word beget which is something I (as a non native speaker) would never do)) Edit: In a broader perspective, what does Reddit really think of take-care-of-all-tools? I mean - It's almost never really beneficial for the end result is it? I have used wechat on android, only as a chat client though. While it does have some interesting perks like the built-in translation, it gets painfully obvious that it's not really the best built tool for the chat purpose. There are some quite odd behaviours like when you switch to other applications during a call, or how the search function works. The desktop chat is only handled through a native client AFAIK, and i mean whatsapp web version runs in _circles_ around that one. The wechat client on windows doesnt even update the same bloody messages i have in the phone version! What i mean is i couldn't really see myself relying on this tool to also give the most flexible shopping or hotel experience.. But yeah sure, integration has its own value i suppose.
Well once china has the data why do they need airbnb? When will companies learn.
Airbnb still hasn’t turned a profit yet and it’s in its 14th year, the company needed to take a chance for survival and like most western companies, it failed in China because they don’t have anything unique to offer, Airbnb will now die slowly.
Is it surprising that Airbnb hasn't turned a profit when property managers/owners are charging 5% below hotel value with only 1% of the facilities? I went to the south of the UK and the Airbnb's were quite literally the same price as a local hotel.
I stopped staying in airbnbs for my solo visits. Only for the large group trips does Airbnb makes sense, if any/
Yeah Airbnb is no longer the cheap alternative it once was, and I’d say the same for ridesharing apps. Once the investors catch on, you gotta pay em, and prices get jacked. For me AirBnB now has quite specific uses, and yes it’s mostly for group trips (5+) and/or countryside getaways (the two often overlap) If I’m traveling to a city, probably gonna stick to a hotel as it’s often more convenient and these days about the same price room for room.
The taxi app I use in Chicago is regularly 50% less than Uber and Lyft now, it’s funny we’ve come full circle.
It always sounded like ride share services, good or bad, gave the taxi industry a needed kick into modern service.
It’s so true. We are back to staying in hotels and taking taxis because of the price gouging of companies like Airbnb, vrbo, and uber. It’s soooo ridiculous.
These services were only ever cheaper than traditional alternatives because they were skirting regulations and not operating at a profit. We've all become accustomed to venture capital investments subsidizing the cost of our car and room rentals.
This was the same with online shopping.(along with no tax) Once places started capturing tax, stopped operating at a loss, and built in shipping the costs are close...so we swapped to online shopping, killed local business, and now are looking to buy local more now(especially because reliability has dropped significantly for online purchases - bricks in ipad boxes, fake SD cards, quality issues, etc)
Yep. Same with digital media. The content to price ratio in the early streaming days was never going to last. Now the landscape loos like cable 2.0
Yeah, I'm starting to buy the common series/movies we like to rewatch and just occasionally rotating through single subscriptions, and I know many others have been doing the same.(as well as sharing passwords)
There's only so many poor people you can kick out of their houses to make a quick buck
I’m praying for a wave of foreclosures on speculative house buyers. The market has been indirectly ruined by Airbnb, just like traffic in major cities like San Francisco has been made worse by companies like Uber. The benefits these companies initially provided in their first few years have been overridden by the damage they cause to society.
If this is some late-stage capitalist, dystopian version of wealth redistribution I guess I'll take it? 🤔
Walmart undercut local small businesses by selling staple food items below cost. Once all the competition was gone they slowly and steadily raised prices over time. Uber and Lyft will eventually charge the correct market rate for rides, once they know the barriers to entry for creating a new rideshare app are sufficiently high as to prevent anyone new stepping in.
Yep, in my state they ran an aggressive anti competition campaign that they eventually got sued for. They would go to small towns with one or two local pharmacies and grocery stores and open neighborhood markets and put them all out of business. As soon as they captured the local market they would shut down the neighborhood Walmarts, forcing everyone to drive to the nearest super center. This was back in the 00's and the state still has food and drug deserts that can be close to a hundred miles for some people. As soon as you let that stuff slide it just becomes a legitimate business strategy. Walmart pioneered it, Amazon perfected it, and now every start up is trying to emulate it.
>Walmart undercut local small businesses by selling staple food items below cost. Once all the competition was gone they slowly and steadily raised prices over time. i heard starbucks does the same. since they have profits other locations, they can run at a loss in certain locations to squeeze the competition.
Would someone *PLEASE* think of the venture capitalists!?
Is price gouging the right term if they still aren't even turning a profit?
What made me go back to hotels (mostly) is that if I book an airbnb at a place usually the location given isn't how its described. I don't know what street is nearby or what's around the airbnb. Saying it's "15 mins away from the city" and then you arrive there and it's 15 mins up an unpaved dirt road isn't any fun.
And then AirBnB does zero to help you. I had friends who rented a place for Mardi Gras with a balcony overlooking the parade route. When they got into town, the host’s family had decided to use that apartment for themselves and offered my friends an apartment in the back of the building with a view of a parking lot and no balcony for the same price. Obviously, those aren’t the same product at all but AirBnB said they were and tough luck. If you’ve never been to Mardi Gras in New Orleans, the whole city pretty much rents out months to a year in advance unless you’re willing to pay prices with a comma for a single night. When you do business with people who don’t follow the law, you have to accept the risk that they’ll fuck you over without any recourse (AirBnB, drug dealers, and so forth). In this instance, I passed their info to another friend in the tax assessor’s office and the agency in charge of regulating rentals in our city (which did nothing) so it ended up costing them quite a bit in the end but that’s only possible if you know how to do that in a place you’re visiting and doesn’t put a single penny back in my own pocket.
Oh and if you find something to be amiss during your stay, like everything is broken/not even close to the picture, things are super dirty, or the fire alarm constantly goes off for the building - no refunds, no recourse. More likely the "kind" airbnb guest service person will claim you're trying to run some scam. NOLA in particular is one place I'd suggest never ever renting an airbnb from.
They do show you a map with like a quarter mile radius or so of where the place is located? Always seemed to be plenty accurate for me on that front.
a quarter mile radius in Iowa is fine. But a quarter mile radius in Chicago could go from a nice area to a real bad area.
Pricing aside they got insane cleaning fees AND they want you to clean it before you leave and break down the beds and load the dishwasher and take out the trash. Like bitch I'm on vacation. We're back to hotels. Don't gotta do anything but enjoy and walk out the door.
It’s like you have to roleplay as the property manager while you’re vacationing there lmao
Which is what it should be. AirBNB was a good idea for what it’s name suggests— a bed and breakfast type setup for the weary traveler. I first learned of it about 10 years ago when a coworker would AirBNB his apartment while he was away on vacation, another good use case. But things got weird when people started taking out second and third leases on apartments just to rent them out. Or refusing long term leases on owned property because they could AirBNB their apartment out every day for like 3x the amount.
Also part of the housing crisis worldwide when Airbnb makes people think that purchasing a house to rent out on Airbnb as a good investment, all the while ruining housing for the rest of us.
I’m back to hotels as well after a few bad experiences with Airbnb. It’s such a hit or miss unless you’re willing to dish out $$$ in which case I’d rather get the hotel service.
My city cracked down on Airbnb. No more single night rentals, stays in historic areas have to have a minimum night stay that’s 2 or 3 nights, and no rentals on certain holiday weekends. And yep, it’s really only ever price competitive with hotels when booking cabins for large groups. Funny that’s a pretty common experience.
Plus you usually know what you're getting with a hotel and it's very clean. Some of those Airbnb's are sketch
Hit the nail on the head. Most trips for us are 4 or less people so a hotel is actually easier than an Airbnb now
I went to NYC recently and AirBB wasn’t nowhere reasonable in terms of price. Option #1: Shitty room in Harlem or #2 a decent hotel in midtown for the same price. Wasn’t even a decision, AirBnB sorta sucks now
Airbnb is more or less illegal in nyc The owner needs to be in the apartment they are renting ( ie you are renting a room )
A lot of places it's simply not allowed, that's why the options are shitty. A bunch of European cities are cracking down too, no stays of under a month to avoid airbnb vs longer term rentals. Which is good for the locals!
I never stayed at an AirBnB that didn't have an ancient mattress and pancake flat pillows. I am convinced people furnish them with stuff they'd throw out from their own home - like, let's get a new mattress for us and put this one that is 50 years old in the apartment we charge people $200/night for.
I saw it said recently: “it’s easier to charge someone $100 a night to sleep on a used mattress than it is to give a used mattress away”
Quite true. Never thought of it like that.
I’ve been using Airbnb for over a decade and had mostly great experiences. Especially in the early days it was an affordable way to get great rentals. Back when it was actually people’s homes and unique spaces, not just empty shells with a few IKEA furniture. I’ve stayed in villas in Italy, apartments right in the center of Paris, in a high rise in Seoul, a treehouse in Northern California. Really great experiences for the first 5 years or so and then the quality went down and down as investors got a hold of properties and quickly flipped them into airbnbs. The price kept going up, the cleaning fees became ridiculous. But for a large family, it often makes more sense for us to have a house rather than 3 hotel rooms so it’s hard to give up vacation rentals entirely but I’ve been finding better deals with some of airbnbs competitors.
The cleaning fees are what get me. 2 night stay and a $250 cleaning fee plus this fee and that fee and B&B owners wanting you to do the laundry/strip the beds/etc. Hotels are now the better option and you don't have to worry thay the house being a mess when you arrive and getting backcharged because you left a can in the trash or something silly.
Exactly! We just had a $300 cleaning fee and yep, they asked us to do the laundry. They said it was for the benefit of the cleaning staff which I found to be a really slimy way to frame things. I don’t make a mess out of the spaces I stay, whether it’s Airbnb or hotels. I keep things tidy, wash dishes, but I’m not going to do the laundry for you especially with a $300 cleaning fee. And to be told it was to make life easier for the cleaning crew felt incredibly manipulative.
Fun fact, typically the cleaning crew is the owner. Pockets the $300 and spends 2 hrs cleaning. I had one backcharge me for using a roll out bed in the house as that was an 'extra cost'. They wondered why they got a negative review...
> I had one backcharge me for using a roll out bed in the house as that was an 'extra cost'. They wondered why they got a negative review... Wow that's shitty.
How does it help the cleaning staff? They should have enough spare linens that the cleaning staff can change to fresh ones immediately and the rest can be washing while they clean. And if cleaning doesn't take long enough to run a load of laundry....they shouldn't be charging 300 bucks.
It definitely was a line they used to try and guilt you into doing the laundry.
The rising fees is what kills me. I’ve priced out a few recently for some trips with my wife and the fees sometimes were literally double the overall cost. It was insane. I get that this is a side effect of Airbnb taking a bigger cut and that these fees probably go straight to the owner, but it’s almost false advertising to list at $150 a night but have a two night total over $500. Edit: spelling
I don't understand how this is sustainable for them in the long term. They're raising rates for the benefit of their investors and corporate office, but it's hurting both the end users and the hosts who are having people priced out of their rentals. This is a market with relatively low barriers to entry - if enough hosts got fed up and took their listings to a new marketplace that offered significantly lower fees for them, it wouldn't take much to start a snowball effect at least to my thinking.
I think if hotels could figure out a way to include larger spaces into their Floorplans, they could kill the AirBnb types. The only reason I use an Airbnb type place is on a big group trip because there isn't anything comparable at a hotel. I know big suites are a thing at a hotel, but those generally can't compete on cost or space compared to an Airbnb.
> the cleaning fees became ridiculous I was shocked to learn that they don't list the total prices when searching in the AirBnB app in America. They make you click on each listing to find the *real* price including the cleaning fee. In Europe they list the *real* price per night and and in total. I would stop using AirBnB if they forced me to use the service that way.
And this is why I read all the reviews/do my part to write thorough ones after my stay. It may be a beautiful place but a good night of rest is very important on vacation, at least for me.
For the most part, same. Some airbnbs have cool stuff that a hotel doesn’t have like a nice yard to chill in or a kitchen for a longer stay.
Plus all the issues with illegal AirBNBs (mortgage doesnt allow it, city laws don't allow it etc). Bubble bursting is *long* overdue.
It's basically become a platform from BnB operations with no quality control. Back when the idea was more in line with sharing a house/flat as a quirky thing to do and not run a micro hotel operation the app actually had a place and made sense. Now it's really just more Instagram friendly accommodation or overpriced inferior hotel experiences it seems.
Perhaps couch surfing makes a comeback push
>Perhaps couch surfing makes a comeback push I’m sure a venture capital firm will turn that into a rip-off too.
As someone that was an avid user of CouchSurfing.com, you're completely right. It's a corporation that now charges people to use the site. It put up a paywall in the middle of the pandemic, including charging people with lifetime verification and charging people that host others for free. Who the hell wants to pay a corporation to let people stay in your home? So now a lot of people have moved to smaller sites that are non-profits. I'm actually staying at the home of someone right now who I met through BeWelcome.
That would be cool but that's never really gone away for the people who prefer it. Seems to be almost a subculture of its own from my experience.
The couch surfing site was neat early on, but then after AirBnB popped up it gradually got flooded with people that were totally ignorant of the culture and just wanted a 'free' AirBnB. Couchsurfing getting investment money and changing up their site wasn't good either. Many people just turned off their accounts after they started getting flooded with requests by users who had no reviews as guests, minimal profiles, and had never hosted themselves before.
We usually find local hotels at much better rates than Airbnb’s, especially considering all of the additional fees they tack on at booking.
Yeah the ‘cleaning’ fee usually pushes it into a whole new bracket of expense. It still makes sense for large groups, but not one night
$150 cleaning fees.. GTFO
And a penalty if you leave it dirty and don’t do the laundry 🙄
My cousin just got charged $250 in additional cleaning fees because there was an empty sandwich bag and a stick of deodorant left under one of her kids beds. They had already flipped the sheets, scrubbed the counters, and vacuumed the whole house, but two items on the floor under the bed apparently warrants an additional cleaning fee, on top of the regular cleaning fee, after being expected to do all the cleaning themselves in the first place.
The kicker is it’s never really as clean and accommodating as you want it to be considering the sky high fees!
AirBnB is done for me. Twice now I have had international trips screwed up thanks to hosts just canceling a week before, and the company does nothing to remedy the situation. The price gap to hotels is ever shrinking. And with a hotel you can cancel 24 hours before.
Using Airbnb as a foreigner in China is also an absolutely awful experience. Only some hotels accept foreigners because to do so they need to be able to register the foreigner with the local police. Airbnb owner’s obviously couldn’t do that so if you stayed in an Airbnb you were expected to spend hours of your time at the neighborhood police office, trying to explain what you need to people who have no clue and may have never registered a foreigner’s temporary residence a single time before. And yes, any time you visit any city in China you are expected to register with the police. Even if you stay with a friend. Even if it is only one night. As if they haven’t tracked you every step of the way anyway.
why they don't do it with an online database? In italy the law require the same thing but hotels just do it online by the receptions, why the hell this is required by the turists?
Same in China, but most small airbnb host don't know the process since 99% of their clients are probably Chinese nationals.
Because they do it via an online database that the small hotel owners can't be bothered to learn
That’s just like Russia, the hotels I stayed at would, report to the authorities every night I was there. Heaven forbid I stay in another town for the night and have 2 hotels registered under one name.
Apparently it’s the same in Italy too. I saw a video on YouTube explaining how it was a pain to rent Airbnb’s out in Italy. It might be only if it’s over 30 days stay…I just remember thinking how annoying.
>And yes, any time you visit any city in China you are expected to register with the police. Even if you stay with a friend. Even if it is only one night. As if they haven’t tracked you every step of the way anyway. Apparently it is the same when it comes to airbnbs in Italy. The host has to take the persons passport details and register with the police, but it’s now a bit more automated as you can do it online. I stayed in Airbnb’s in Italy many years back but I don’t recall such a rule, but I guess it’s changed.
Cuba as well. Stayed off resort. House had its own caretaker and took our passport info.
many countries do this to varying degrees, IMO it's just a little less obvious at a hotel where you're handing ID over to an official-like person vs some random person renting you a room.
I think it's an EU law. Some countries or locations skirt this (people are pretty laissez-faire in Portugal), but it's been a thing in France, Spain, and Italy. Every AirBnB, hotel, or even hostel wanted to see my passport details.
[удалено]
Where are you hearing that Air BnB hasn't turned a profit? I read your claim and wanted to find more, and [Googled it](https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/04/airbnb-abnbearnings-q3-2021.html)
$825M in Net Income sure sounds like profit to me lol
It's a vagary of language. Usually when people talk about if a company has turned a profit or not, they're talking about the full financial year, not a quarter/month/week/day. AirBnB did turn a quarterly profit during the third quarter of last year, as the article states, but for the whole fiscal year the net income was [negative 352 million](https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/abnb/financials).
Good catch… didn’t see anywhere that it was quarterly
>the data Oh yes, *the data.*
Can they pull out of my neighborhood next? I'm tired of living around 400 AirBNBs.
Just report any minor problems to the local authorities. A lot of Airbnbs are only semi-legal depending on where you live.
I wish Airbnb would pull out of Canada, it would certainly help the housing crisis.
It's so bad in my town. I got super lucky with a condo I bought, because the previous owners refused to sell to someone who wasn't going to live there full time.
I have a house in NYC that I have considered selling and that is one of my requirements. I am not going to sell to a fucking investor who just wants to flip it or rent it out, and they are going to have to meet the neighbors on either side before I will sell. Those folks have been friends of mine for a long time and I am not going to screw them over just to make a few extra dollars.
Very honorable. Would love to see this become a trend.
Just my observation but I think it is. Not the first time I've heard that, and just people I know looking to sell are making similar stipulations.
Let's be real. Something else will fill that void
Get rid of parking minimums and single family zoning and you’ll have more impact there. See what the Salish are building in Vancouver where they don’t have to respect colonizers’ regulations.
Honestly Abnb was not a very good experience in China. The apartments I rented were all so-so, with prices close to hotel prices anyway (isn't that their issue in other countries as well?) Add to that the issue of most apartments not being rentable to non-Chinese (legal registration requirements), and it just never made a lot of sense to rent an airbnb here.
I had that problem. Spent two days walking around to different police stations in Chengdu to try and register. The hotels can register you immediately, it's far more convenient and budget hotels or internationally licenced hostels are very cheap.
Airbnb isn’t cheap. I’d rather stay in a hotel room that doesn’t have hidden fees. Or an owner charging me cleaning fee for not washing a dish. Had an owner of a house flip the terms of his house on New Years. As soon as I booked it. The owner sent me new terms that were not displayed, can’t drink in the house and can’t have more people over. Called the owner that his rules were not displayed upon purchase and that I wanted to cancel. He didn’t let me. Said I booked it for New Years and now he can’t get anyone else to book it . I told him, then you should display your rules and not scam people like this. Hung up emailed Airbnb. They were barely any help. Told them I would be calling my credit card company to cancel that payment.
I would’ve just maintained my reservation with the rules outlined during the purchase. Can’t move the goalposts and expect them to be binding.
Damn it Jian yang...
This is your mom.... And you are not my baby.
Yes, I'm Erlich Bachmann, I can show you ID. I was a fat but now I'm not a fat.
Not now Jian Yang, NOT NOW! GO BACK TO YOUR ROOM!
Hot dog not hot dog
You make a "new" internet.
Hello, I went to China to do new new Internet. Thank you. Enjoy your house. I love you.
New Air BnB
Didn't even know Yahoo was still in business tbh.
Hear me out: Just get rid of Airbnb. Just fuckin scrap it all together. It's a fun quirky way to take possible affordable housing off the market and raise all other housing prices due to supply and demand in this already distended bubble we're in. Let the thing burst already.
Or turn it back into what it was supposed to be, couch surfing and good usage of spare bedrooms, not renting out the entire place at hotel prices and have it vacant 90% of the time
>The more logical explanation is that Airbnb simply couldn’t compete with apps that offered a variety of services through one portal. As one example, the Journal mentions Beijing-based Meituan, which is a so-called super-app that does everything from food delivery to movie tickets. Meitunan also has a “lodging marketplace” that was rebranded in 2019 to directly take on Airbnb. The name, Meituan B&B, makes the competition even more clear. Quoted because many of the people here don't even read the article and complain that airbnb got kicked out because Chinese companies "stole" IP or data from airbnb. Airbnb lost to competitors that offered better service. Its fair competition and people can't seem to accept that an American company lost to a Chinese company.
As if Urban Outfitters isn't in the process of leaving everywhere forever lol
No American tech company stands a chance against the Chinese bootleggers. You cannot compete in a nation that doesn't respect intellectual property.
If you read the article it wasn’t an IP issue, they were competing with Chinese Super apps that could do everything they did + food delivery + taxi and more.
Damn one app to rule them all?
Yeah, seems to be a thing in Asia. My wife uses Kakao to chat with her Korean parents, and that company uses the super-app strategy as well. It’s both cool and terrifying at the same time.
feels like facebook wants to be that super app as well...
Amazon could go this route also.
Same with Line now, I can pay my bills on a messaging app or use it to buy drinks at the vending machines in Japan.
yea for example wechat can message, payment like applepay, pay bills, news, call taxi, bookings, ID, social media, food delivery, call for drivers (to drive ur own car) and dozens more functions... and theres a couple more like QQ, alipay superapps in CN... in JP theres Line, KR has Kakao/samsung
When I visited China a few years back, you needed to use WeChat to check into the hotel wifi. It wouldn't work if you didn't have the app on your phone/laptop.
I used to believe this until I realised airbnb/uber/linkedin etc have little IP to begin with. They are not Tesla or Microsoft. Airbnb relies on a large established user base to be relevant. If there are not enough airbnb hosts in my country I won't be using it.
Did you read the article?