I disagree, in some ways it's even less like a hotel than renting a room. In a hotel you expect some level of service (a bellman, a receptionist etc). Should I rent an apartment or home on airbnb I expect the keys and nothing more.
Should it be substandard, or not what I anticipated from the listing, I expect to be able to report the condition via a review on AirBnB. I don't expect a refund should I decide to stay there, unless it's specified in the host's policy on the website.
I don't expect it to always be spic and span, but if a particular place is, I'd be happy to leave a positive review. I don't expect there to be a new bar of (crappy) soap in the shower. But that's only the negative.
I don't expect the host to spend hours talking about the local area, or even giving me a tour. Sometimes that happens on AirBnB, quite often in fact, even when I rent the whole place. It's never happened at a hotel, though I expect there's a concierge service which can arrange such an experience, except a professional one at a price.
It's just a different experience, and frankly, I will never stay at a hotel again (unless AirBnB is banned or has no availability from a particular area). Yes, I'm taking a risk of a messy place, or bad host, but a risk that's mitigated not by some governmental regulation (which rarely ensures quality), but rather by the AirBnB community which I've come to trust a lot more anyway.
Interesting points. I think we fundamentally agree but I've ended up with lower expectations for hotels than you. What I've gotten from cheap traveller's motels sounds like precisely what you're describing, which is a lot like a lot of the AirBnB-for-profit places I've stayed in terms of service.
I do agree that AirBnB has been generally superior to hotel-hunting and that the review system is powerful. And I completely agree that as a guest AirBnB is superior to regulated short-term rentals, especially in the places where the host goes above-and-beyond to be available and/or provide local tips and flavor.
I certainly wouldn't advocate that AirBnB get rid of whole-apartment rentals because they're not a good guest experience - much to the contrary it's always been great for me. But I think AirBnB are going to be up against the wall soon legally, at least in major metropolis areas, and eliminating the hotel-style whole-apartment rentals could be one solution.
Should it be substandard, or not what I anticipated from the listing, I expect to be able to report the condition via a review on AirBnB. I don't expect a refund should I decide to stay there, unless it's specified in the host's policy on the website.
I don't expect it to always be spic and span, but if a particular place is, I'd be happy to leave a positive review. I don't expect there to be a new bar of (crappy) soap in the shower. But that's only the negative.
I don't expect the host to spend hours talking about the local area, or even giving me a tour. Sometimes that happens on AirBnB, quite often in fact, even when I rent the whole place. It's never happened at a hotel, though I expect there's a concierge service which can arrange such an experience, except a professional one at a price.
It's just a different experience, and frankly, I will never stay at a hotel again (unless AirBnB is banned or has no availability from a particular area). Yes, I'm taking a risk of a messy place, or bad host, but a risk that's mitigated not by some governmental regulation (which rarely ensures quality), but rather by the AirBnB community which I've come to trust a lot more anyway.