Airbnbroken

 

 

Airbnb is supposed to disrupt the Hotel industry. Who will disrupt Airbnb? Because there is a lot to disrupt in this service that has a very poor conception from the user/renter point of view

Yes, i know. Airbnb is super successful so there is nothing wrong about it…wrong!

Behind the growth there are so many huge design and conceptionmistakes the service makes that i am not sure it can keep on being so bad. I mark my words

It all starts with the browsing experience which i find so tedious. For example you have to relog every time you come back to the website (usually once a day when you search) and Airbnb does not remember your last search query which you have to type every time. Smart!

The page result is terrible!

As you scroll the results the side column for filtering is staying still. you have to position the mouse on the left column to access all the filters

 

Picture previews could be easily zoomed in, without the back and forth to the page detail view

There is no sorting by Price, New listing. you have to find your own way..

But now here is the worst part of Airbnbroken

Most of the flats listed for a given date are NOT AVAILABLE

How do you know that? by contacting the hosts. Airbnb apparently give very little incentive, maybe on purpose (so you get the illusion of choice) to owners to update the calendar availability (assuming there is one)

The results? Hours and hours of browsing, searching, exchanging…and not finding

Inefficiency and "fraud"

Adding to that, there is also some "fraud" going on Airbnb: where the owner will take your order. But then will decide later to rent it to someone else, maybe not on airbnb because he gets more money. And even though the owner is getting penalized (says the site), he won t care because he gets more money somewhere else.

Lots of those apartments are not owned by the "host" but just represented by some agent or third party. Making the listing results more confusing.

Airbnb should clearly displays if the appartment is listed by a- the owner b-the renter (who sub rents) c- a third party

Finally Airbnb should reward owners who list Airbnb in Exclusive mode and should display that on their site

Comments

[Apps_Delight]

I've haven't used the service but I've heard tons of complaints about it. Yet most people are still using it. Most likely because the competition is scarce. Hopefully they are working on making these fixes because it won't be long before a competitor comes out with a better service.

[Yannmaurer]

Hi Ouriel,
not sure that someone will achieve disrupting Airbnb for the following reasons:

A) Scrolling problem:
must have been overseen by lack on testing on smaller laptop screens.
This is what happens when you give large high definition screens to your webdesigners / progammers:
http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/4eb96afc6bb3f78646000069-590/the-office-itself-is-pretty-swanky-as-fits-a-member-of-the-billion-dollar-club-those-chairs-look-comfy.jpg
Should be easily fixed by the Airbnb team.

B) Not available / Contact the host
How to manage availabilities on a marketplace renting private rooms?
The only way to push renter / owners to update their calendar availabilities is to keep on sending them cutomer requests / notifications (with $$$ indication). Otherwise you might never have a chance to have as much listing as airbnb, therefore making the marketplace experience useless for end-users.

Happy to hear your thoughts if you have a better approach to incentivize owners to update their calendars.

[Ouriel Ohayon]

A /that s what a billion dollar company should be able to do...
B/ the simple answer > give an incentive to host who will do this on a regular basis (once a month every month which should be more than enough...). What incentive? lower Airbnb commission or something else