I guess in a traditional hotel you don't care about the hotel owner and you are one of numerous faceless people passing through on a daily basis so leaving bad reviews is easy. In the Airbnb system not only have you met the host face to face and in some cases spent some time with them, and what's more it really isn't even possible to leave an anonymous review because the host can pretty easily tell who left the review based on the timing of its appearance.

The thing is Airbnb originates from the couch surfing and hostel ecosystem which has considerably less controls and reviews but also a guest base who in general are willing to put up with less than savory conditions. Airbnb kind of tames that wild west of couch surfing by providing a review system and a more legitimate system of paying and getting paid. But it doesn't reach the full legitimacy of a corporate hotel.

Some of my friends ask me whether or not they should try Airbnb, and based on their personalities I will sometimes tell them no, because I know some of my friends just can't deal with it and need a real hotel. Others are more adventurous and I'll tell them to go for it.

For that subset of people who would be willing to try couch surfing on staying in a hostel Airbnb is like a luxury service and has all the key benefits of meeting interesting people and living like a local when traveling. But for people who wouldn't dare try couch surfing and find hostels unsavory then Airbnb is kind of on the edge. They might like it because it is a step above couch surfing and hostels, but most of the time they won't like Airbnb either.

I disagree. Don't take me as a "hurrr corporations" person, I am not - hotels, even chain hotels, are at the end of the day run by real people. Your local Best Western is likely run by a family, not suited, faceless corporate officers.

The difference between reviewing them and reviewing an AirBnb isn't how faceless they are, it's how much they can afford it, and how much they can actually use the review as an impetus to improve. That review does no good if it simply means the business folds.

> "The thing is Airbnb originates from the couch surfing and hostel ecosystem"

Ehhhh... I'm not sure if I buy that line of argument. Couchsurfing.org originates from the couch surfing and hostel ecosystems, where the focus is on experience with the host/guests instead of a plainly quid pro quo exchange. AirBnb has no real focus on this experiential exchange and instead has always been very firmly in the "make money on your place" camp.

AirBnb likes to portray themselves as being related to the populist communities of couch surfing and hostels, but I don't see any evidence that they were ever in that space. They certainly aren't now. I was initially an ardent supporter of AirBnb, but their persistently dishonest PR positioning has really turned me off lately; that includes their persistent and annoying efforts at positioning themselves as some sort of populist revolution.

When's the last time AirBnb ever marketed themselves as "find a place, meet cool hosts, go adventuring with your hosts/fellow guests"? Because that's a fundamentally core part of the hosteling and couch surfing ethos. AFAIK this has never been an AirBnb angle.

In fact, if you look at the featured properties (curated by AirBnb themselves) you will see a dramatic dominance in luxury properties, not cute little bungalows where you're likely to hang out with a cool host. The descriptions are also always strictly about the property, not the host, and the photographs are also strictly of the property, not the host.

The host is a small-print detail in the AirBnb model, which makes it almost entirely antithetical to hosteling or couch surfing.

Airbnb definitely isn't as host focused as something like couchsurfing.org but it also definitely isn't as purely property focused as your traditional hotel chain.

To me the property focused listings are a way for Airbnb to attract people who are too nervous to try the real couch surfing community by making Airbnb appear more like a property first hotel system. You can't blame them for this, because the subset of people who are willing to try this kind of thing if it was purely host based would be quite a bit smaller.

But the problem is that Airbnb obviously isn't a normal hotel system, and so some people who go into the experience expecting a hotel experience can be turned off by it when it doesn't meet their expectations.

On the other hand people like me who enjoy the chance to meet new people enjoy the social aspect but also like the slightly added safety of the reviews, pictures, and the payment system. Of course it depends on the host, but I've had some amazing experiences with hosts during some Airbnb stays: going to rock concerts, restaurants and bars, eating meals that they've cooked, and of course just talking to them and learning about their lives. My favorite experience was getting to stay with a couple who were aerialists for Cirque du Soleil, and months later returning to NYC to see an amazing opening performance by their own troupe of performers.

So to me Airbnb seems on the surface to be property based like you said, but underneath has a strong host ecosystem like couchsurfing.org The problem is that Airbnb is using properties to attract guests instead of the host experience. Of course this attracts people who are more demanding about the property and when the property falls short people are naturally unsatisfied.

There certainly is a small community on AirBnb that has shades of Couchsurfing, but I disagree that it's at all a substantial attribute of the system.

AirBnb has always been angling to be a hotel (or at least Bed & Breakfast) replacement.

Unfortunately AirBnb doesn't have an API, so I did the best thing I could: searched for rooms vs. whole-apartments in a way that would actually give me counts.

In and around Greenwich Village, NYC: 634 whole-apartment listings, 132 private rooms in apartments, 6 shared rooms.

On the Upper East Side: 126, 13, 2

In Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn: 146, 50, 2

In Park Slope, Brooklyn: 559, 196, 5

In Astoria, Queens: 107, 111, 7

Moving away from NYC to SF...

In the Castro: 238, 129, 3

In North Beach: 176, 67, 9

In SOMA: 421, 197, 63

Or another state entirely...

In Capitol Hill, Seattle: 130, 55, 9

In Belltown, Seattle: 96, 16, 6

All of the searches were performed with the default filters, with the additional filters being only geographic bounds and type of listing. Now, I've got experience with all of the neighborhoods listed here, and they're all places where locals actually live. We're not exclusively at, say, Times Square.

I realize you've had good experiences with AirBnb, but I've argued, and still maintain in light of this data, that AirBnb is on the surface property-based, and is also beneath property-based. There seems to be a subcommunity dedicated to the more Couchsurfing type of experiences, but the data is stacked against them. AirBnb likes to borrow and quote heavily from this subcommunity in an effort to appear more populist and grassroots, but in reality the vast majority of listings on AirBnb are dedicated rental properties, not situations where the host is even present.

Thanks for providing some real data behind the assumptions everyone has been making. I remember when AirBnB first started, it was definitely much more about people renting out spare bedrooms, in-laws, etc. but as it became more popular it was very clear to property owners that they could make more taking rental units off the market especially in markets with high nightly hotel rates like New York and San Francisco.