Airbnb: bad experience and responsible response from Airbnb

The temp was 13 degrees. It may rain.

Well, it’s not impossible to stay in a park for one night.

…….no no no, I have to work tomorrow. If I stay in a a park for one night, I definitely will not be able to work well tomorrow. That’s wasting more time and money travelling from Finland to Paris.

I keyed in “hotel” on Google map to search for hotels close by.

I walked 30 minutes with my luggage.

First hotel: full.

Second hotel: full.

Finally, there is a room available in the third hotel.

140 euros for one night.

It’s expensive.

What should I do?

Go out and check Booking.com for some cheaper hotels? Then move to the hotel in such a night time?

No…I’m already so tired and hungry….I can’t do that.

“Yes, I want the room”, I said.

Next day I got contact with Airbnb and explained the whole thing.

What I asked is simple: it should not only be the guest to take the risk of meeting a host who refuses to communicate. How about the responsibility of Airbnb? What about the 140 euros I paid for the hotel?

The first answer I received was disappointing. It’s something like we’re very sorry to hear that and it’s good to hear that you found a hotel. We can offer you a drink up to 15 euros so that you can sit down and find a new accommodation through Airbnb for tonight.

What?? Are you kidding me? You’re trying to use 15 euros to cover everything I had last night? And you just said, “we can do nothing for it and good luck!” ?????

No…..if Airbnb do business like this to let guest take the risk of meeting an irresponsible host, I will stop using Airbnb in the rest of my life and share my experience to all my friends and my new friends in the future.

So I decided to write my third and the last message to Airbnb to ask them to make a decision.

To cover the damage caused by the irresponsible host, Airbnb should cover at least 50% of the 140 euros I paid in order to find a place for sleep (Guests have the option to have very cheap accommodation, which makes guests to take 50% of the risk, in my opinion). If Airbnb doesn’t have any response, I will stop using Airbnb forever and share this experience to my 900 friends on Facebook. I will also remind all my future friends of this risk of meeting an irresponsible host by using Airbnb.

Finally, a meaningful answer came.

Airbnb decided to cover my 140 euros extra expense and provide me a 70 euros coupon for my future trips in Airbnb.

It’s the first time I felt that Airbnb is trying to be responsible for their business.

Usually Airbnb guarantees to cover the damage caused by a bad guest to a host, but Airbnb doesn’t guarantee the reversed situation.

It’s actually not fair for guests and underestimates the risks from bad hosts.

But in my case, Airbnb has tried to be responsible and tried to do something to cover the bad experience I had from a bad host. I would say, “good job! Airing!!”

Originally, as a business like Airbnb, it is a sharing economics to share private property, and it’s based on the responsible minds of lender and borrower. So if either of them is not responsible, there would be huge risk inside the business.

Then, if the operator can’t handle with the risk well, the business will die soon.

This time, I believe Airbnb has done a great job. However, I still hope Airbnb can also construct an insurance system to cover the potential risks guests are facing with bad hosts.

This story is just my experience as your reference.