airbnb

Tag Archives for airbnb.

A Way To Book Las Vegas Strip Hotels Without Resort Fees (And Lower Rates, Too)

by Gary Leff

Dec 15 2020

One of the most annoying features of hotels is the resort fee, a mandatory charge that’s not included in the room rate in order to deceive customers – to make a hotel look less expensive than it is. The practice spread beyond resorts to city hotels, and became known as a ‘destination charge.’ Even with many of the supposed-inclusions the resort fees pay for suspended during the Covid-19 pandemic, the charges persist.

Las Vegas is a city where resort fees play a hugely distortionary role. Hotels cut prices to rock bottom levels to fill rooms. And there’s a way to get an even further discount – and skip the resort fees. Hotels that want to compete in the future need to pay attention.

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Marriott Devalues Points For Home & Villa Stays, Reflecting Broader Bonvoy Points Value Reductions

by Gary Leff

outside marriott hotel
Dec 12 2020

Marriott has devalued Bonvoy points for booking Homes and Villas redemptions. Marriott has a curated competitor to Airbnb, Bonvoy is one of the key selling points against this behemoth competitor with a huge head start in the space. But Marriott has chosen to erode its advantage.

Put another way, given broader devaluations in the program over the past couple of years, Marriott is just playing catchup adjusting down the value of points for homesharing stays.

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Hawaii Uses Coronavirus As Excuse To Attack Airbnb and Protect Hotels

by Gary Leff

hawaii
Jun 01 2020

Since the beginning of the coronavirus crisis Hawaii has mixed a legitimate desire to keep cases out of the islands and prevent spread with a fear and even hatred of outsiders.

Now there’s a move to keep tourists segregated in resort areas and keep them out of Hawaiian neighborhoods that want to keep those neighborhoods only for locals. This is also protectionism for hotel owners.

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Soon Your Social Media Posts Could Keep You From Booking An Airbnb

by Gary Leff

airbnb mobile
Jan 12 2020

The U.S. government scans the social media accounts of foreign visitors who want to enter the country. Employers scour social media posts before offering candidates a job. And what you post in social media gets scooped up and analyzed in order to advertise to you.

Soon our digital footprint may be used to determine whether or not we can travel. In particular Airbnb may use this information to determine how likely you are to trash the home you want to rent.

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The Awkward Truth About Airbnb’s Effect on Rents

by Gary Leff

airbnb mobile
Nov 28 2019

Airbnb is politically unpopular in many cities. Opponents of the homesharing service are a mixture of hotel industry lobbyists and local residents who believe they pay higher rents because units that would otherwise be available to them are put on the market for tourists instead.

New research though shows that it isn’t the poor – least able to bear the burden of increased rents – suffering from Airbnb. According to a paper by Sophie Calder-Wang of Harvard (.pdf) the “increased rent burden falls most heavily on high-income, educated, and white renters, because they prefer housing and location amenities most desirable to tourists.”

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Hotels Are So Scared of Airbnb They are Lobbying to Kill the Entire Internet

by Gary Leff

Sep 17 2019

Hotel industry lobby group the American Hotel and Lodging Association sponsored a push poll to support eliminating or undermining protections of section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

As the lobby shop – which represents “9 of the 10 top U.S. hotel brands” including Marriott, Hyatt, IHG, and Hilton – explains, “Online web sites and social media platforms have claimed that CDA Section 230 gives them protection from any third-party user publishing information or content to their website.”

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Airbnb Acquires HotelTonight, What’s the Difference Between Homesharing and Hotels Anymore?

by Gary Leff

airbnb mobile
Mar 07 2019

Major hotels chains have been in and out of experimenting with homesharing products, even as they engage in dirty tricks to get the practice banned in some jurisdictions. Online travel agency sites have expanded their product suite by offering access to homesharing, and not just traditional hotel rooms. And now Airbnb itself has acquired online hotel booking company HotelTonight. Airbnb said it plans to acquire HotelTonight, a service that offers last-minute hotel bookings, in a deal that will expand the online room rental company’s offerings with traditional and boutique hotel listings. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The acquisition values HotelTonight in the range of its last private valuation, $465 million, said two people who were briefed on the deal and were not authorized to publicly disclose the price. That would make it Airbnb’s…

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