Airbnb- Relationship status: It's Complicated
One day, as a procrastinating teenager I stumbled upon Airbnb (quite literally with the website StumbleUpon). With most websites, I'd browse through and just as quickly stumble out of it. Not with Airbnb. My wanderlusting heart spent hours looking up random cities to visit, creeping through all the crevices shown in strangers' houses, imagining my real-life experiences there.
Years later, I met Sani and we were planning our first big trip together. I excitedly said, "We should use this website called Airbnb for our stays, it looks awesome!" to which Sani replied, "Yeah I know, I use it all the time!" Soulmate level: unlocked. From that moment, we have accumulated 17 Airbnb stays and kind reviews from dozens of hosts. But we've also seen things change. Or maybe we've changed. I'm not sure.
One of our first stays was with a wonderful hostess who gave us French cooking lessons, had dinner with us and shared her life with us. She'd prepare a magical breakfast. She told us that she was new to the city and was using the platform to meet new people and have something different to do. I see her as the epitome of a true Airbnb host: welcoming, informative, sharing.
We've stayed in homes of beautiful people who put their souls into their homes and then shared them with the world. Even in those instances when we were renting a whole apartment without the host there, we could still feel the essence of the person. We'd still meet the host and their presence would linger behind them. One memorable stay was with a woman named Celine in Montreal. We met her only briefly when she told us about her favourite places in the neighbourhood and the quirks of her majestic home. The apartment was her gem. She designed it herself with the intention of it being her last ever home. She put everything that she was into it. It was a human museum, if that makes sense. From meeting this person for 15 minutes and staying in her home for 3 days, I felt that I knew enough about her to buy her the book The Architecture of Happiness. She left us the most glowing, authentic, beautifully-crafted review. We were one of her first Airbnb stays and to no surprise she quickly became a Superhost (a special Airbnb designation for hosts who get consistently stellar ratings)-- she clearly was one.
Here's a review that is beautiful and authentic-- more importantly it shows the connection between a host and a guest.
This was in 2014, when I trusted Airbnb reviews. When people's kind words about someone made an impact on me. This is no longer the case. I've stayed with more "Superhosts" since then and hosts with perfect 5 star ratings, but many of them were nothing close to Celine. Yes they had nice apartments, yes they were clean, yes they had helpful tips and yes they were kind people. So what's the problem? Do they not deserve to be Superhosts as well?
I come into a clean, functional apartment with no host. The apartment gives no clues into who the host is and the host is busy at work and couldn't come to greet me at the front door. It's as if that person was never there and I don't really know who they are. Then they send me some good tips and I know that I can contact them whenever there's a problem but they don't really exist in my mind. And then I encounter some minor problems: humidity, noise, minimal hot water, power outages. Some things the host can control and some that they can't, but things that would have been nice to know beforehand. In the reviews I see no mention of any of these issues. Am I really the first person to be experiencing all of this? Am I being nit picky? As I write my review, I think twice about my real thoughts because if noone else has said it maybe it's not that big of a deal? And so the cycle continues. The next person staying at the apartment may experience all of the above issues and again see that noone wrote about them so they will feel stupid and guilty mentioning them as well. And so the Superhost status stays, as does a mediocre Airbnb experience.
I admit, as I complain about this problem I know that I am a contributor. If I felt so strongly about these issues I should have written about them for the sake of future travellers, but I didn't because human nature is strong and we don't want to be mean and hurt someone's feelings.
The reviews you get as a traveller are no longer to be trusted either. You don't know the host, they don't know you. What are they going to write about you as a person? I've had some extremely touching reviews and then as I looked through the host's previous reviews I saw that they just copy and paste the same review every time. Oh. The personal touch is gone. As much as you may stay through Airbnb to avoid the fake feel of hotels and as guilty as you may feel about writing something mean about a person, you might as well admit that you are just being churned out for the money just like in a hotel, so you might as well treat it as such.
Aw, so touching and so personal... except that it's not at all.
But not all hosts! Still this year I've stayed in places that go beyond my wildest dreams, with magical humans and special animals--but they've now become the exception and not the rule. It's much harder to differentiate between the magical places and the almost-hotel places because both can be "Super hosts," both can have amazing reviews and both can have nice people as hosts-- but only one will have a traveller's honest thoughts.
Not all hope is lost! Magic in the Spanish mountains via Airbnb
The sharing economy is built on trust. If I can't trust people's reviews anymore what's the point? For me Airbnb was never about luxury apartment rentals with rooms that noone has ever lived it. It was never about hosts who treat every guest as a number. It was about building meaningful connections, sharing our lives, learning something new. But now it has become the former. And I have become disgruntled and sceptical.
Off to Couchsurfing I go!