> If I were going to disrupt AirBNB, I'd offer hosts a better percentage with the requirement that the experience is standardized and high-quality.
This is an interesting idea, but it puts the quality level way above what I want to pay for. Hotels are anti-septic and cold. I like staying in an apartment that feels like someone actually lives there. I don't mind a few dust-bunnies under the couch, nor a little dirt behind the toilet. It's even better when the kitchen is fully stocked, including a selection of non-perishable food (think cooking oil, salt, pepper, maybe a bag of ground coffee and a box of pasta.) Sure, the sheets and towels should be freshly laundered, but beyond that, I don't want much.
AirBNB allowed me to pay less to get a more human-feeling space. Hotels are like McDonalds, they are designed for the regular customer who wants to get that Hilton-feeling, regardless of if they are in Wichita or Cairo. I want to feel like I'm in Cairo, and if that means that I'm in a mud brick house with a single bathroom, no A/C, and no daily housekeeping that's great! AirBNB opened those worlds to us as travelers, in a way that hotel chains never did.
I think that's more common in other parts of the world. (i.e. getting places that people actually live in).In Europe most/all of the apartments I've stayed in are basically business apartments (more or less).
You don't feel that someone lives there because nobody actually lives there. It's like a long term rental apartment that in best case scenario someone is using as a savings/investment vehicle but on short term. "Worst case" it's part of an apart-hotel.
When I travel as part of a large group(i.e. more than 3 people) a short term apartment is great because we need a big affordable space (i.e. someone may sleep on the couch and we don't want the hotel "greetings & house keeping" experience) but nevertheless I don't want or expect a dirty place in any way, shape or form be it in Cairo or somewhere else. I'm pretty sure there are people living in less than sanitary conditions all over the world including Western Europe and the U.S. That doesn't mean I have interest in experiencing that kind of "living/sleeping".
All that being said I've stopped using Airbnb years ago. It seems a broken system. For short term rentals/apartments Booking.com is the only sane choice(IMHO).
It's not so much for a Hilton-like feeling. In most cases, it's because I'm looking for a predictable place to stay with, often, a 24 hour desk. I just don't care about the room most of the time so long as it's clean and comfortable. I'm generally not traveling for the purpose of staying in a hotel room. I do stay in more traditional B&Bs/inns though very rarely somewhere that's solely an Airbnb.
> In Europe most/all of the apartments I've stayed in are basically business apartments (more or less). It's like a long term rental apartment that in best case scenario someone is using as a savings/investment vehicle but on short term.
If that the only thing AirBNB offered, I would have much less interest.
> I'm pretty sure there are people living in less than sanitary conditions all over the world including Western Europe and the U.S. That doesn't mean I have interest in experiencing that kind of "living/sleeping".
Thankfully, AirBNB doesn't have to be all things to all people. As long as there are enough people like me to keep them afloat, they can provide a product that I am happy with, and you can stay at hotels that are immaculately clean.
I do hate the way that many AirBNB hosts have made hosting a business, and would fully support a limit on the number of listings per host. People renting out a space in their house, or a vacation rental in a vacation destination that they also stay in too is fine. People buying 3 or more apartments to rent them out (taking them off the long-term rental market) is terrible, and should be prohibited.
I just randomly looked at hotels.com for hotels in Cairo and I saw name brand hotels from American brands like Hilton for around $120 a night. Even high end hotels like the Waldorf are $284 a night (I don’t care about fancy hotels personally). Why would I stay in a dirty Airbnb?
Not that I would ever use a third party booking site like hotels.com either…
I want the place I stay at to be run professionally and it to be I give them money and they give me a clean place to stay without having to worry about my ratings, discrimination, etc.
Especially in another country where I don’t know the language and after taking a long flight. I wouldn’t want to take the chance on an AirBnb.
* Desire to have an experience and living environment I can't get at home.
* Desire to have living space beyond 2 beds and a bathroom crammed into the smallest available space.
* Indifference to dirt or wear and tear.
Thankfully, no one is saying that AirBNB should replace name brand hotels, in the same way that no one thinks that every hotel should be a Motel 6. AirBNB/VRBO is just another segment of the industry, and those people who want to stay in an AirBNB can, just as people who want a Hilton can without affecting those people who want to stay in the Ritz-Carlton. This is the beauty of the market!
> Hotels are like McDonalds, they are designed for the regular customer who wants to get that Hilton-feeling, regardless of if they are in Wichita or Cairo.
Stop staying at chain hotels. There are plenty of hotels out there that are what you're looking for, and have an actual business to engage with in case of issues instead of some anonymous lister on AirBNB.
> Stop staying at chain hotels. There are plenty of hotels out there that are what you're looking for, and have an actual business to engage with in case of issues instead of some anonymous lister on AirBNB.
That has not been my experience. It is very hard to find a robust selection of hotels in a major city that has a living room and kitchen. Even when you do, in a part of the city you want to stay in, they are often tiny kitchens, with limited kitchen equipment, and where the cabinets are completely cleared of every food item after every guest. These places also have very antiseptic, uncomfortable furnishings. They are night and day different from staying in most AirBNBs.
A large fraction of families traveling value the kitchens (leftovers, kid breakfasts, not having to eat restaurant food for every meal, when all the kids want is Kraft Mac&Cheese, etc.) and the common living spaces (kids go to bed early). I hate traveling with my family and being stuck in a hotel room (or two!). When I'm traveling alone or with just adults, I can be out all day and only use my hotel room for sleeping, but with a diverse set of ages traveling, we often hang out in the living room while someone naps, or my kids will be done with touristing by 3pm and we need somewhere to be until dinnertime.
You see this in vacation destinations like Hawaii and Ski towns; there is a significant fraction of accommodations that are Condos, because you need a place to hang. AirBNB brought that to urban areas by sub-letting apartments, when hotel operators only provided maximally-dense sleeping-focused options; multi-bedroom hotel rooms with living rooms and kitchens largely did not exist in major city centers.
This is the primary reason I use Airbnb and it's equivalents. My typical traveling party is 4 adults, 3 kids, and 1-2 dogs most of those people have a preference to cook rather than eat out. Accommodating that in a hotel is a disaster unless you get an ultra low price of a double suite or something.
That's really the sweet spot for Airbnb (and Vrbo). Very few conventional hotels accommodate large groups well. If you're just trying to save a few bucks as a couple or solo traveler I'm not sure it usually pencils out given other tradeoffs.
If it truly is a minority preference, then we need a way to square that with all the people saying they book AirBnB's instead of hotels because of the kitchens. :)
The people who don't need kitchens and just book hotels don't say anything because their needs are met.
There are also some hotels with kitchens. Usually they have 'Suites' in their name. I stay at one most holiday seasons, we go and visit my folks and want to have a place where my family can cook without taking over my parents' kitchen.
I've stayed places with vrbo, which is pretty similar to airbnb, but older. It's most convenient IMHO if you want more than two bedrooms for a group with shared space, or you're going somewhere without many hotels.
> There are also some hotels with kitchens. Usually they have 'Suites' in their name. I stay at one most holiday seasons, we go and visit my folks and want to have a place where my family can cook without taking over my parents' kitchen.
These are okay, but they still have the antiseptic, overly-clean feeling of a space optimized for housekeeping. They will usually have a small couch or two, and maybe a table for 4. I have never seen one with a full dining room with table for 6; a fully stocked kitchen that includes non-perishable food staples, or any outdoor space. These things are common in AirBNB rentals, often at the same or similar price to nearby hotels.
AirBNB and VRBO absolutely opened a new market of accommodations compared to what was available before. These options may or may not be for the previous commenters, but it's silly to state universally that you can or should stay in a hotel instead. It's like saying "I love to ride my bike", and the reply being "you know you could ride a scooter to your destination, or drive a car."
I don't see anyone arguing that you shouldn't stay in an Airbnb or Vrbo. But a lot of us with more routine needs just want to plan to be able to checkin at any time, leave our luggage for a late departure, have a fairly predictable experience, etc. for our typical hotel stay.
The argument was never about what anyone individual should or should not do, it was about the idea that the limitations of the hotel format are more driven by urban planning and local politics - striving to keep buildings as small as possible, concentrating all non-house buildings in small slips of land, etc. - than anything inherent to the hotel format. Hotels and Airbnb’s are great, but both be better if both were legal on 100% of the land in the city, along with apartment buildings and every other form of housing, and without the arbitrary restrictions on size.
I've seen NICE DCV be used for this too. Amazon bought them, so it's free if the server end is on AWS, but they will also sell you licenses for your own hardware too. It's essentially 4k60 video streaming where the video is your desktop and they use all the tricks they've developed for media streaming here as well.
Yes, but it says "mostly from Americans", so I cut it in half, then halved again just to be conservative. The argument holds at 2% and 4% as well as it does at 1%.
the fundamental reality is that money itself is a construct, and all of the values attached to goods a services are arbitrary, so there is no basis to diferentiate beween scams, and entertainment
it's all pay per view, and any dissastisfaction
could fall under buyers remorse
gambling is perfectly legal....as long as it gets taxed
I have never had any account with apple, yet a charge to my credit card from apple appeared , I disputed it, but my bank refused to stop payment, and instead issued me a "credit", rather than go after apple, where as, anyone like me doing the same, would be a "scammer" and be prosecuted
this impossible breach of law therefor is absolute proof of the complete falsity of our financial system.
some are designated "scammers" others are empowered to take
and I am personaly happy to live with that, and do what I can to protect my own tiny patch, from the marauding grabbers and muckers
Externally funded research also come with many compliance, reporting, and other requirements [1]. Administrative staff are the ones who handle these responsibilities. If funding agencies want fewer administrators, require less oversight.
> Look at how much grant money a given university brings in annually and ask yourself if 30-60% of that number is being spent on overhead related to research. It’s not.
Look at a consulting company or law firm. Most will charge you 2-3x the salary cost of the consultant or lawyer you're getting. This limits universities to 1.15x.
Right - but as a consulting partner I take home that margin to spend on my boats, homes, and watches. What are universities getting? More university...
To be clear, this is not margin, it's non-direct expenses. So the consulting partners probably take home half of that multiplier as profits, and the other half goes to pay for the paralegals, AR/AP, HR, IT, office lease, janitorial .... all the things that Universities use their overhead to cover. What a surprise!
> A $8M grant doesn’t cost a university any more than a $1M grant for university admin in terms of “indirect costs”. The fact that they think they’re entitled to several million of it to waste on things that shouldn’t be coming from taxpayer funded NIH grant money is obscene.
Sure it does. An 8M grant is going to have roughly 8X more researchers working under it than a 1M grant. Each of those researchers needs space, parking, IT support, HR supports, etc. There are some economies of scale, but the idea that you could increase the staffing of a business by 8x and not have to hire more HR and accounting people is silly.
Yes, I agree the overhead scales close to linear unless a grant is very heavily dependent on one type of cost such as bulk sequencing of 10,000 subjects. In that case the overhead is usually much lower or disallowed. And there is no overhead allowed on equipment.
This is such a wasteful way to think...do economies of scale not apply to universities at all? They're allowed to just bill as if there is 0 savings to be found in bulk construction and administration?
Generally, no, they don't bill at 0 savings. The rate is set on a per-institution basis. The rate setting process incorporates the documented economics of scale that that institution is achieving already. This is why schools have different rates; the more resources (instruments, facility use, computational, etc.) the university provides at no/low-cost to the researchers, the higher the rate.
If the rate wasn't set in this way, the overhead would be well above 100%, as it is in most labor-heavy businesses like consulting and law.
Sadly, many of those arbitrary policies are set by ... The Federal Government! As an example, NIH just added a huge new cybersecurity requirement for a bunch of their datasets.
Space, utilities and IT can be significant costs. There are also the standard costs of personnel for the people working under these grants (HR, Accounting, Purchasing, etc.) Add onto that the significant compliance requirements.
When the government hires a consultant, they usually pay 2-3x the salary of the consultant in per-hour costs. This rule limits them to 1.15x the salary of the employee.
