Over the last 6 months my wife and I have been working and travelling around Europe using Brighton U.K. as a base. Before we left we looked at a few different ways of getting a roof over our head while travelling, our ideal solution would be low hassle, low responsibility, low liability, and easy to set up.
The original idea was to rent an apartment in Brighton but this can be very expensive, difficult to find and organise from overseas, and requires signing contracts, putting up bonds and other legal arrangements. In addition to these problems, the local law also puts a stupid paradox in the way of any traveller renting an apartment; To rent a British apartment you need British bank account and to get a British bank account you need a British address. From the HSBC site
You may also be required to show bank statements if you want to rent a property. This is not always as straightforward as you might think, as many banks require you to provide proof of UK address to open an account.
While looking at options I remembered AirBnB which came across my radar on the Giant Robots podcast, which made it really sound like a good solution to our housing problem. The benefits of using AirBnB over just about any other product are:
- There are thousands of places in Brighton to select from
- Paying through AirBnB means that there are no awkward conversations or disagreements about money with your hosts (so no worries about tips, taxes or scams)
- Paying in NZD means no conversion fees or converting between currencies
- Different daily, weekly and monthly rates makes it cheaper the longer you stay
So, after using AirBnB for our 6 month long trip, I decided to do a quick write up over some of the things I have learnt using the service.
Some places are hotels, most places are homes
Some places we stayed at were clearly just businesses using AirBnB as a way to book guests. These rooms are easily spotted because the owners usually have multiple listed properties or many listed rooms in the same property. The relationship to the owner is just like if you stayed at a hotel, very professional and direct.
Mostly though, the places we stayed at were just homes of people looking to make a little extra income from a spare or unused room. So when you show up to their house you are walking into where they live, and the relationship is completely different where you are more of a guest or a flatmate rather than a customer.
Book early, the host decides the speed of the process
One weekend we rented a car and drove to Cornwall where I decided not book a place to stay because I didn’t know which city we would end up in that night. What I didn’t know was that it was a school holiday, on a long weekend, and Cornwall is where people go on school holidays and/or long weekends.
At about lunch time I had a better idea where we would end up, so I found the only (cheap) AirBnB place nearby and requested to stay there the night. As we neared the location and the sun was setting, the request had yet to be accepted so I sent a few messages. After some time, we decided to get some dinner and I was checking my phone every few minutes hoping for a reply. At about 9pm, when stress levels were high because no other places had accommodation, I finally got a response. It was an apology for the delay explaining that their phone ran out of battery while they were on a long walk.
The lesson I learnt was that when you request to book a place with plenty of time to spare, as it takes 24 hours for a request to expire. Also, once the guest has requested a booking there is no way to cancel it without calling AirBnB customer support.
Most AirBnB places don’t serve breakfast but are more DIY
Despite its name, very few of the places we stayed at actually provided breakfast, but most provide coffee, tea, cooking facilities, a fridge, a cupboard for food, places for cloths, washing. Some provided soap, shampoo, and other amenities like mini kitchens and kettles.
All the places we stayed provided some cooking facilities, though one had a microwave and no oven, and another had no oven but a microwave.
No reviews may be worse than bad reviews
When you stay with someone at their house and they are warm, friendly and offer you tea in the morning, it can be difficult to leave a review which says something like “the room was noisy because it is next to a busy street” or “the room is a bit small” because neither is really the fault of the host, and they were very nice people. It is hard to leave a bad review, especially for a nice host.
This makes the review system a little difficult to navigate, if a place has loads of good reviews it is probably really good. If it has average reviews, the host is probably really nice and the place is bad, or it actually is just average. If there are bad reviews don’t stay there. But, if it has no reviews it could either be new or it was difficult for guests to leave bad reviews for a nice host.
Sometimes you get what you pay for
We once booked a cheap place to stay for one night, it was in the perfect location but it had 0 reviews. After organising how to check-into the place, we got this interesting message from the host:
“Don’t tell my flatmates, they don’t like the whole AirBnB thing, if they ask tell them we are friends”.
This was a massive warning signal, but it was too close to the date we needed to stay there and there were no other places to stay.
The host turned out to be a student, and what we had rented ended up being a room in a University hostel. The student had gone away for the week and instead of wasting a week of rent on an empty room, put it on AirBnB. The room was cheap, it was unclean (it was a students room) and it had a single pillow for two people. Fortunately the flatmates didn’t speak english so we didn’t have to lie to them.
The place was cheap in the centre of a very expensive town, and we probably got what we paid for.
As a guest you have no insurance, AirBnB only provides the host with insurance
Guests need travel insurance according to the AirBnB FAQ. If the host cancels unreasonably on you, or doesn’t show, or steals your stuff and locks you out, AirBnB is not liable. The worst you can do is leave a bad review.
This is in comparison to the hosts guarantee of $600,000 insurance with AirBnB, which occurs if the guest does damage.
I can see why AirBnB does this, there are much less hosts than guests, and if they offered guests some kind of insurance their call centres would always be flooded with unhappy guests trying to claim for all sorts of minor things. It is important to know that as a guest, AirBnB is not liable for anything when you use their service.
Controversies with AirBnB
AirBnB is truly disruptive in that it takes what used to be difficult, finding and paying for a roof over your head in a strange city, and makes it so easy for both hosts and guests that it is hurting the traditional models of accommodation. These traditional models include protections for renters, like not being able to be evicted at a minutes notice, which AirBnB does not have.
The problems with AirBnB have come to a head in San Fransisco where some people think that the skyrocketing cost of living is in part fuelled by people listing their houses on AirBnB, and that locals are being illegally forced out of their homes by landlords whose intention is to rent their houses on AirBnB. Here are some interesting articles about this situation:
- Why are people so pissed off about Airbnb?
- I Have Read Prop F, and It is Worse Than You Think
- A Response to Above
I think AirBnB needs to offer some guest assurances, and also “short term rentals” may need some kind of regulation to make sure that no-one is getting screwed or screwing other people. But the idea that the majority of AirBnB hosts are big-bad-landlords just doesn’t fit with my experiences where most hosts were just nice people using an empty room for additional income to help with their rent, to pay for renovations to their homes, or to help them save to go on their own trips around the world.
If the only answer to “disruptive technologies” like Netflix, Uber or AirBnB, is to regulate them out of business, or make it so hard for them to operate they don’t even bother e.g. internet tax or asset seizure, then this hurts everyone and doesn’t fix the reason why everyone abandoned the old models and used the new services instead.
If AirBnB didn’t exist, or it was made so difficult or unprofitable that way fewer hosts were around, when we showed up in Brighton we would have been homeless. You go and see if there is another service where you can rent a fully furnished apartment for 6 months, in Brighton, with no downpayment, paying in your local currency, and you get a cup of tea when you arrive.
To Sum Up
AirBnB is an awesome service, and our trip was made easier, less stressful, cheaper and more pleasant because of AirBnB. If you are travelling for any amount of time I highly recommend the service.