<story><title>Airbnb raises $1B at $31B valuation, became profitable in 2016</title><url>http://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/09/airbnb-closes-1-billion-round-31-billion-valuation-profitable.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dragonwriter</author><text>&amp;gt; Unless, they fix this and get more people to review honestly. I think they&amp;#x27;re going to run into a lot of problems.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t airBnB, but a friend who does was recently berated by a host after leaving a 4-star review; that host claimed (don&amp;#x27;t know how true this is) that many hosts will refuse to rent to you again if you leave anything but a 5-star review.&lt;p&gt;That and other things I&amp;#x27;ve seen and heard about airBnB reviews suggest to me that there a structural problems that are likely to make it problematic for them to become honest and useful in general, even on top of the usual problems in numeric&amp;#x2F;star rated reviews that come from cultural differences in how people rate when given such a scale even when the actual substantive opinion is the same.</text></item><item><author>kilroy123</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m not surprised to see Airbnb became profitable. They&amp;#x27;ve expanded everywhere. I nomad around and always use Airbnb, I&amp;#x27;ve booked places on several continents.&lt;p&gt;However, I&amp;#x27;m definitely feeling the effects of their growing pains. For example, many people have bought places to only rent on Airbnb full-time. Most of these people suck at being an hotelier. It&amp;#x27;s clear people get lazy and are just trying to make money.&lt;p&gt;Think about how many hotels you&amp;#x27;ve stayed at that were less than stellar? It&amp;#x27;s hard to have a good hotel with full-time staff. It&amp;#x27;s much harder when it&amp;#x27;s just you on the side, renting some place. I&amp;#x27;ve been to many horrible Airbnb&amp;#x27;s that I had to checkout of early, and go find a new place last minute.&lt;p&gt;Unless, they fix this and get more people to review honestly. I think they&amp;#x27;re going to run into a lot of problems.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>zeroer</author><text>AirBnB reviews are massively inflated.  A 4.5 average means you should carefully read between the lines of what the previous guests wrote.  A 4 average means you should probably reconsider staying.  Hades itself would probably rank around 3.5.</text></comment>
<story><title>Airbnb raises $1B at $31B valuation, became profitable in 2016</title><url>http://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/09/airbnb-closes-1-billion-round-31-billion-valuation-profitable.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dragonwriter</author><text>&amp;gt; Unless, they fix this and get more people to review honestly. I think they&amp;#x27;re going to run into a lot of problems.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t airBnB, but a friend who does was recently berated by a host after leaving a 4-star review; that host claimed (don&amp;#x27;t know how true this is) that many hosts will refuse to rent to you again if you leave anything but a 5-star review.&lt;p&gt;That and other things I&amp;#x27;ve seen and heard about airBnB reviews suggest to me that there a structural problems that are likely to make it problematic for them to become honest and useful in general, even on top of the usual problems in numeric&amp;#x2F;star rated reviews that come from cultural differences in how people rate when given such a scale even when the actual substantive opinion is the same.</text></item><item><author>kilroy123</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m not surprised to see Airbnb became profitable. They&amp;#x27;ve expanded everywhere. I nomad around and always use Airbnb, I&amp;#x27;ve booked places on several continents.&lt;p&gt;However, I&amp;#x27;m definitely feeling the effects of their growing pains. For example, many people have bought places to only rent on Airbnb full-time. Most of these people suck at being an hotelier. It&amp;#x27;s clear people get lazy and are just trying to make money.&lt;p&gt;Think about how many hotels you&amp;#x27;ve stayed at that were less than stellar? It&amp;#x27;s hard to have a good hotel with full-time staff. It&amp;#x27;s much harder when it&amp;#x27;s just you on the side, renting some place. I&amp;#x27;ve been to many horrible Airbnb&amp;#x27;s that I had to checkout of early, and go find a new place last minute.&lt;p&gt;Unless, they fix this and get more people to review honestly. I think they&amp;#x27;re going to run into a lot of problems.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ghaff</author><text>I haven&amp;#x27;t done eBay in ages but rating inflation used to be a big deal there when the relationship between buyers and sellers was more symmetrical (among other differences from today). People took anything other than a positive with an &amp;quot;A+++++++++++++++++++++ seller&amp;quot; as meaning that the seller had shipped you a brick and then burned down your house. People got really pissed off if someone left a neutral because, say, the item was damaged in shipment even if the problem was ultimately resolved.</text></comment>