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Me too, although maybe a bit smaller than 500, no pool but waterfront. I just checked hotels.com and the cheapest hotel in our area that I found was $58. Then I checked three others nearby that I know well. The nearest is $129, the best one on the beach is $142 and the best one in the area (in my opinion anyway) is $221.
Our normal price is $125 but may more for special event times. I don’t really pay attention to hotel prices or the competition.
You can’t compare your nice apartment in the best location ever, waterfront to motel6, you know that!!!
What do you think about the quality when comparing prices? Cheaper and better? I saw that many cases, price may determine the quality. So I recommend you should go with affordable prices, don’t go with cheap prices. but not pricey.
Yes they are, because they offer the one additional amenity that no one has mentioned here, and that is privacy. And because renting out a room in your house, or like me a bed in my living room, lacks total privacy our prices can’t be the same or even approaching what a hotel would charge.
Exactly, very good point!
When we rent out a room we can not offer hotel’s privacy. And privacy has a cost.
I personally prefer to stay at hotels because of that.
I only use Air when I can’t afford hotels. For example now I want to get away for a week to Mexico to do some diving.
I am looking at prices and it will be a cheap trip. Very nice hotels under 50$. Them I look at Air private apartments 25-35$. The difference is very small for me to risk it with Air
Rent a room in someone’s house is always uncertainty big time. There are really no standards, some listings lack reviews and some reviews are not truthfull
I be been doing Air for 20 months now and the conclusion that I made quality does not really matter because people don’t know if quality will be better in someone’s house, they are after low price. And if quality comes along that’s even better. I had few guests who ran away from horrible hotels but still my cleanest room ever with 75 excellent review still was their choice because it was cheaper. In this case the sacrificed privacy in exchange for more decent conditions but still were looking for cheap prices. Otherwise they would just go to hotel
Agree. Almost 5 years in Airbnb and I reach to the conclusion that guests prefer to save 10 dollars per night to sacrifice quality. I have spent a lot of money on making a highly comfortable place, proving high-quality amenities, furniture, decoration, appliances but I know guests will go away if there is someone else that charges 10 dollars less for a crappy place. I might have updated my place more than 10 times (rebrand kitchen, bathroom, floor, furniture) and I was expecting guests will value all this more but I was so wrong. There are plenty of hosts that started at the same time as me and they haven’t upgraded anything on their place (looks the same on the pictures) but they get constant bookings because they charge 5/10usd less than me. At the end, at some point you will need to deal with the fact that Airbnb is for the budget traveller, and hotels are for the ones that expect some level of comfort.
Same here. I have never stayed in an Air place, but if I did it would have to have a private entrance and bath, which means it would probably cost almost as much as a cheap motel.
Where are you going in Mexico??? You got me to thinking about making a short trip south. Maybe Puerto Vallarta.
I stayed in many many Airbnbs, forget private bathroom, I was lucky enough to get AC or heating. In Europe everything cost them a lot, hosts are saving on everything.
I always left a little tip if host was supernice and paid for rides.
I am going to Cancun, Tulum and Isla de Mujeres. I heard about cenotes a lot, and diving there is amazing. The best part is it’s only 90 min.flight from FLL.
Just for a week, I wish I could do more days. I booked a very nice hotel for 46$.
We have no hotels near me… NONE. There is one very small and quaint historic family hotel but it’s right on the highway and the cheaper rooms have shared bathrooms. The other place is a hostel with rooms that go for about what I charge. Other than that you have the major hotel resorts along the Gold Coast. Sheraton, Marriott, Hilton, mauna Lani, orchid, Mauna Kea and Prince. All with $200 plus price points and daily resort fees. In high season they are always sold out. Many people visiting book vacation rental condos… Of which there are a zillion. but I really don’t have much competition where I am.
On the subject of hotels, I always book hotels and wouldn’t take a chance on an Air. I like to travel in the winter and there are always a ton of hotels willing to give away great rooms at low rates. If you go with Air, you’ll be paying nightly rate, booking fees, cleaning fees, security and tax.
We went to Cancun and Tulum last year and did a Cenote tour. Awesome! Just bring bug spray for Tulum!
Glad you liked it! Bugs dont bite me:)
I didn’t think so either until the giant mosquitos started swarming us and I ended up with dozens of bites. You have to walk through a swampy jungle to get to Tulum.
From another point of view, I noted that in my city the rate between a premium and a cheap apartment isn´t big. There might be no more than 30usd between both whereas in hotels you might find 200/300usd in between. People that stays at hotels can measure the difference between a premium and a standard hotel more fairly than Airbnb users. I have an apartment that can host a maximum of 2 people and I know that no matter how nice I make it, the rate per night can´t go further 65usd per night. It just can´t, no matter if I later decide to installed a big jacuzzi.
The cheapest listings (for 2 people) here costs about 35usd per night while the average is 50usd. Between the cheapest one and the luxury one, you can easily tell that the one that is making better revenue is the first one as he hasn’t spend a dime on upgrading his place. Airbnb guests just don´t value quality in a fair manner. A big deal for them is getting a great location for the cheapest price possible.
This is another area in which I think Smart Pricing fails. They know how popular is your area but the bot can´t assign a proper value to the quality of your palce so they ended up standarizing the price based on simple factors like amenities, number of guests, number of bedrooms, superhost (yes/no), etc. Two apartments of the same size, same amenities, same area can differ a lot in quality.
Very true. My price is at the lowest percentage.
I really don’t know how hosts price their private room 20, 30% more than me in a same location. And succeed to rent it. My house is very nice, I can say on a higher end easily.
I have marble all over, granite in bathrooms and on top of that all rooms come with private bathrooms.
I can see my guests are surprised that they ended up in such a nice house. One guest told me that I should charge more for a house like mine. Well, may be in theory.
But in fact, I can not even have full occupancy with the price I have.