‘We must stop Airbnb’: Internet shares horror stories of rising fees, dirty homes, scary hosts

One of the world’s most successful “sharing economy” businesses is facing the heat after its guests start sharing a little more than expected.

Airbnb posted a trend on Twitter this week when a user posted an assortment of their fees, taxes and charges accumulating, saying “we need to stop airbnb.”

The quoted cost of two nights for $ 198 would have been more than doubled with the addition of a cleaning fee of $ 114, a service charge of $ 44.05 and a $ 57.90 occupancy tax and fee for a total bill of $ 413.95.

With over 208,000 likes and 23,000 retweets, it kicked off a massive stacking as customers began to question whether staying with regular people was still better value than booking hotels. hotels.

“The whole point of airbnb was that it was the cheapest option instead of paying charges for hotels etc away,” @Georgemapston wrote.

User @RyanDudar added: “The places charge a cleaning fee of $ 100 and ask you to vacuum, start a laundry with towels / sheets, wash all the dishes, etc. ‘other.”

Equity Research firm Cho Research said it would be difficult for investors to ignore the high number of rants circulating on social media, with complaints about fees leading to complaints about hosts, property conditions, prices and more. Security.

Comedian Tim Dillon has said sleeping in a van is better than staying in dirty homes and following their rules.

“The problem with #airbnb is that people are terrorists. Their houses are filthy and disgusting. There are 150 rules including ‘Don’t wake up the neighbor. She works nights! ”Or“ Try Claudias Pancake Hut local fav! ”Just buy a van and sleep in it,” he said.

Cho Research wrote that negative consumer and investor sentiment combined is a bad sign for a tech company as large as Airbnb.

“Of course, we haven’t looked at the company’s financial results yet, or whether or not the company is trading at a fair valuation. But, at this point, it looks like the stock is about to trade. go below $ 120 given the increased volume, and negatively trending tweets about the consumer experience, ”they said.

“Many other Silicon Valley IPOs start strong, then fail after hyper-expansive trading volume and limited insider trading due to lock-in provisions. “

After the company went public in 2020, its listing price tripled to a high of $ 220 in February before dropping to around $ 131. It was $ 135.02 on Tuesday.

In a statement, Airbnb said a team has been assigned under the leadership of its global hosting manager, Catherine Powell, to review its fees and marketing to make pricing more transparent.

“We pride ourselves on making the pricing of a stay transparent to guests – including charges that are under Airbnb’s control as well as charges that are not under our control,” the statement said.

“We also understand that there is always room for improvement and to take into account the feedback we receive from our customers.”

The review will return recommendations by December 15.

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