“The ‘Airbnb effect’ is crumbling,” warned TheStreet.com in 2023, as evidence mounted that homeowners had seen collapses of as much as 47% in key U.S. vacation markets following the end of the post-Covid back-to-travel period.
Airbnb’s stock value has declined by about a third from its five-year high, and as more cities place curbs on homeowners who want to use their real estate for short-term rentals, it seems that the home rental app’s heyday is over.
Real estate investors have their own reasons to feel less bullish on Airbnb, but travelers are growing disillusioned with the app, too.
Instead of being a place to swap home rental success stories, Reddit’s busy Airbnb forum has turned into a fright show of consumer train wrecks and crowdsourcing gone wrong. Every few hours, someone adds a new personally observed outrage to an ongoing litany of allegations, accusations, and perceived swindles.
While Frommer’s cannot verify that everything users are posting about their Airbnb nightmare experiences is true, it seems obvious that the honeymoon with Airbnb is over—and we have a made a list of all the reasons why.
The problems on this list could, on their own, each be a reason enough to abandon the platform. But seeing Airbnb’s failures issues piled up in one place like this is enough for us to wonder why the brand still holds onto its popularity when other outlets arguably do vacation rentals so much better. We would never accept such a long roster of routine pitfalls from a new company vying to win our business, so why should we endure them from an established one trying to keep it?
Even Airbnb’s double-barreled marketing budget can’t outgun the fact that the app’s service has wandered so far from its original promise that there are now too many negatives to ignore.
Fees are crazy.
Airbnb’s fee policy is willy-nilly, historically leaving far too much up to the unchecked whims of the hosts. That frequently results in wild add-on charges that can total several times more than the base rental fee. Cleaning fees, service fees, management fees, extra guest fees. Fees for not leaving units to the host’s exact specifications even though a separate cleaning fee is charged. Fees for leaving lights on.
Airbnb allows customers to dispute fees after the fact, but who wants to have to do that? We much prefer being protected from the start of a transaction, as most other vacation rental agencies do with firm policies and careful selection procedures.
The risk of fraud is persistent.
You’ve never made a booking at a hotel only to arrive for your stay to find out the hotel isn’t there. Yet this scenario is common enough among Airbnb users that both consumer advocates and the company itself have had to set up pages telling you what to do if your booking turns out to be a scam.
In 2023, the company admitted that in that year alone, it had removed 59,000 fake listings and prevented another 157,000 from being posted.
The company help center solicits customers to alert them to fake profile reports. When Airbnb was founded, maybe it was a good idea to let customer reviews police the authenticity of listings, but in the years since vacation rentals turned into a Gold Rush for real estate investors, that type of word-of-mouth validation feels dangerously slipshod and provides weak reassurance. The annals of customer rip-offs are full of instances when Airbnb users were lured off site by fraudsters, tricked by fake images, scammed by false damage claims, and duped by a host of other traps for fraud. That’s not something it would need to do if its platform was fully cleaned of risk.
Booking on Airbnb has become a hassle because you don’t feel like you can always trust what you see advertised there. It’s a sure sign that something is wrong when, nearly 20 years after Airbnb first arrived, we’re still having to think of new ways to protect ourselves when we use it.
Too many booking hassles.
Even when listings are authentic, that doesn’t mean a host will accept your booking request. In busy cities, confirming accommodation on Airbnb can require days of back-and-forth communication. Basta!
Airbnb offers bureaucracy instead of personal service.
We’ve all heard horror stories from friends. If you run into trouble using Airbnb—a situation that the company says is rare—then good luck navigating its bureaucracy. First you have to try to contact the host. That could take a while—and some never hear back.
Then, you could find that obtaining a quick resolution from Airbnb’s customer service phone line can be a cumbersome nightmare requiring meticulous documentation, and pleading. Even after these steps, the company too often defers to the position of the host rather than of the customer. (“It depends a lot on who you get as a service rep,” wrote one reviewer.)
And if you run into trouble during check-in, you’ll need even more luck to find alternative accommodation quickly. At least when you stand on the doorstep of a Wyndham Inn without a working reservation, you can simply book a different room and go inside.
Airbnb’s prices aren’t competitive anymore.
When Airbnb began as AirBed&Breakfast in 2007, its name was intended to refer to actual air beds. The point of the site was to give people a forum where they could rent out spare rooms or invite strangers to spend a few $20 bills to sleep on their air mattress, or its equivalent. It was a monetized, socialized version of the venerable couch surfing tradition.
The initial version of the Airbnb site promised the service would “provide the opportunity to connect with other [people]—rather than return to the seclusion of a hotel room.” The first FAQ said the only things hosts needed were “an airbed (or couch), clean sheets, clean towels, a sense of hospitality, and the desire to meet new people.”
No more! Once people began buying homes expressly to rent out to Airbnb users, prices shot up. Airbnb hosts know the market value of a night in their city. You’d be lucky to find a flat on Airbnb in Central London, for example, that doesn’t cost at least as much as a hotel. Only now, you don’t get the human connection the original site claimed it was trying to foster. And a 2023 research showed that hotels were cheaper than Airbnb’s in most major cities around the globe.
Airbnb’s corporate leaders seem to be aware of this serious value degradation, because the company’s current ad campaign centers on using the service for groups and families, which is an area in which hotels can’t compete as efficiently. But if you’re traveling alone or as a couple, an Airbnb rental is rarely, if ever, the stellar deal it was when the app started.
Home rental speculators inflict terrible housing shortages and destroy community fabric.
The speculative opportunities presented by Airbnb and other vacation rental platforms have decimated the culture of more destinations than I could name here. A few examples: Lincoln Memorial University Law Review says Airbnb has “deeply” contributed to the housing crisis in the United States; in Barcelona there have been street protests and home rental bans; in Los Angeles, ongoing friction with home rentals is reaching a boiling point following the January 2025 wildfires that took out even more inventory; it’s thought that in Venice, tourists now outnumber Venetians by 140 to 1; and so on.
“This is destruction,” said an activist in Brittany, France, at a 2023 Airbnb protest. “Entire neighborhoods are being emptied.”
I don’t want to be a part of that anymore. No empathic person should.
“Airbnb décor” has become an insult that means cheap
It’s never a good sign when your business’ name becomes synonymous with iffy design quality. But just as the late Party City became a shorthand insult for halfhearted effort in decorations, “Airbnb” has come to denote furniture that you wouldn’t mind getting damaged.
As in, “What was your rental like inside?”
“Oh, you know. An Airbnb.”
Like Wayfair and IKEA, invoking Airbnb is a sign that someone phoned in their décor to make a buck—and that’s because so many Airbnb rentals are outfitted with such cheap, forgettable stuff.
We would never accept such a long roster of routine pitfalls from a new company vying to win our business, so why should we endure them from an established one trying to keep it?
No points or status.
True, the big hotel chains have jacked up their rates because they know frequent guests will pay a little more to earn free stays. But at Airbnb, such promotions are limited at best. They’re restricted to single airlines, and of course they can’t be used to upgrade properties you’ve already picked out. Hotel points systems are simply much more useful.
Seriously unreliable quality and code standards.
Who keeps an eye on a listing’s safety equipment, like smoke alarms, fire extinguishers, carbon monoxide detectors, and up-to-code wiring? Airbnb will mail hosts a smoke detector and a battery upon request, but it’s not as if the company sends inspectors to verify safe and working equipment before listings go online. All it does is “strongly urge hosts to install smoke and carbon monoxide alarms.”
Only in 2024 did Airbnb officially ban indoor security cameras from spying on occupants of its properties, and even now, the company has to rely on “reported violations” to remove listings.
When it comes to safety, I don’t want strong urgings. I want inspections—but Airbnb passes the buck to the host. Passing the buck is the cornerstone of Airbnb’s business model—it’s what keeps administrative costs down.
Instead, authenticating standards is each individual host’s responsibility, which in turn is overseen by their local government. We all know that countless local governments don’t lift a finger to fill potholes, let alone to verify the compliance of vacation homes, so in those places, your rental may never have any careful official oversight at all.
As for quality, Airbnb doesn’t personally inspect units to verify that the amenities are what they’re advertised to be, either. It’s up to reviewers to flag dishonest properties—after the rental is over and the rip-off is done.
Airbnb duplicates services offered by vacation rental agencies.
The vexing thing about Airbnb’s lackadaisical quality control is that within the wider vacation rental agency industry, many other rental companies do indeed keep an eye on these crucial elements for you. Many vacation rental agencies personally send inspectors to every listing to ensure they conform to a rigorous checklist of requirements, both for safety and for comfort.
For about the same money, you could rent a vacation home from an agency that takes a responsible active role in your safety and in quality standards. So why wouldn’t you just use that other vacation rental agency instead?
If we all stopped using Airbnb, vacation rentals wouldn’t go away. But we’d put a major dent in rampant, unchecked, speculative home rentals.
Personalized rental agencies existed long before Airbnb arrived and they will survive long afterward. You can still rent vacation homes without Airbnb (or VRBO), and you can still do it with the financial protection of a middle-man.
We’re doing what we can to put vacationers in touch with better vacation renters. Frommer’s published guide books include recommendations to the best vacation rental agencies in each destination. Pick one that vouches for their listings, personally inspects the inventory, and holds hosts to rigorous standards. Some even come with daily housekeeping and concierge services. They actually provide that human connection that Airbnb pretended to be about back in 2007.
