For long I have been hearing about airbnb.com, but was postponing reviewing the website – what issues will it have? It has been in the market for some time now and has over 100,000 listings worldwide across 192 cities – well, has to be a very well organised website.
The look and feel of the airbnb.com website is good and very userfriendly. It doesn’t have too many things or links on the homepage to confuse the user. So why not give it a try?
I want to book an accommodation in Dharamshala in Himachal Pradesh so I enter the details and hit enter that takes me to the property listing page. But then what’s this!! Five listings of the same accommodation by the same owner!!!
Now, it gets me thinking. Are the property listings not verified by the airbnb.com team? Does it mean that anyone can come and post a property which may not exist at all? But, then this is airbnb.com, one of the best websites for bed and breakfasts and other non-hotel accommodation! This can’t happen… must me some one-off case.
But when I searched for some accommodation in Chennai, I’m now even more confused. A same lodge has two listings, with two different addresses – one says Anna Salai, Chennai, and the other in Babu St, Chennai. Maybe they are the same location, but for a first time visitor it is no doubt confusing.
Then in the list of accommodation in the search result page of Dharamshala, there were many irrelevant listings, some of the accommodations in places like Manali, Dalhousie which are 240 and 145 km away from Dharamshala respectively.
Another issue I think is worth mentioning is the fact that despite these glitches and confusion, if I book an accommodation, I will be charged 10 to 12 percent of the booking amount as ‘service fee’ which is not refundable.
In fact I was about to book an accommodation, but I thought why not do a little bit of research on the experiences of other travelers who had booked through airbnb.com. I stumbled upon a discussion where many users had a bad experience with the accommodations. Click here to read the reviews by some travelers.
One dissatisfied traveller has even alleged that airbnb.com cares only for the owners. Yes, airbnb.com charges a 3 percent commission on each booking from the owner and an additional 10-12% from the traveler as bookings fees – a total of about 12-15%. I also noticed that all the properties have got very good reviews, some of the properties have reviews of other properties shown on their page and on the whole the website is good looking but misleading in many small ways.
With so many issues in the listings and travelers like me shying away from booking, the question is ‘will the owners ultimately profit?’
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