Megan Singleton: BloggerAtLarge writer weighs up Airbnb vs hotels

New data shows that travellers may have swung back to preferring hotels over Airbnbs.

Originally marketed as the cheaper alternative for thrifty tourists, more people have turned away from Airbnbs - citing safety risks, uncertainty and exorbitant cleaning fees.

BloggerAtLarge's Megan Singleton explains why the mood among travellers has taken a turn.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News Talks EDB Travel with Wendy wu Tours unique
fully inclusive tours around the World.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
And Megan Singleton joins me now to talk travel blogger
at large dot com.

Speaker 3 (00:23):
Good morning, Good morning, Francesca.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
We seem to fluctuate. There'll always be something going on
with Airbnb, or there was something going on with hotels,
and I'm never quite sure what is the best deal
and what's the safest deal. But there's been a few
issues recently with Airbnb.

Speaker 1 (00:38):
Is that right?

Speaker 3 (00:40):
Well, there's been a study that's come out recently to
show that actually people are swinging back from the peer
to peer accommodation like your airbnbs, in favor of the
large hotels. And I ran a little in unscientific poll
on my Facebook group asking people about any Airbnb issues
that they might have had with cancelations. And that is
part of it, because you can get canceled on and

(01:03):
although there are consequences for the hosts, they're not major
enough to there's no kind of recourse for you, like
as the person's staying right, So what if you were
in Paris and you're there now and your Airbnb cancels
on you. Well, there's not going to be anywhere else
in the city that you can just suddenly find at
the last minute. So I think that's part of it.
There's other reasons that people are swinging back. This is

(01:26):
the statistics out of travel insurance company Europe Assistance. So hotelias, rejoice.
People are heading back to you for the better bang
for the buck, for reliability, for safety, and for the
facilities and amenities that hotels offer. So some of the things,
and I want to talk about this for a minute,
that Airbnb have been sneakily doing is adding on exorbitant

(01:51):
cleaning fees up to four hundred dollars. You could be
charged on top of your nightly accommodation for the cleaning fee.
So I know that they're trying to take that to
task and they're addressing hosts about that and you're only
meant to charge that get cost for cleaning and not
just make a profit and all that. But also Airbnb
and short term rental options are being policed by the city.

(02:15):
You might say, there's fees being added, there's levees being added.
They're trying to dissuade, you know, short term accommodation options,
and well Victoria in Australia is about to introduce it
a short term stay levy because you know, this all
does does increase the lack of apartments for citizens. You know,

(02:38):
so the whole accommodation airbnb thing New York City is
super super tight. You can't read anything out for less
than thirty days, so you're actually really you know, letting
it for a person who's working in the city, really Barcelona,
they're having to come up with a whole new idea
and how they're gonna deal with it. So it's really interesting.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
Definitely worth shopping around. That's really the key thing, isn't it.
And I think it kind of depends on what location
you end up at to what's the best best solution
for you as well. Thank you very much, Megan said,
good time.

Speaker 1 (03:11):
For more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin. Listen
live to News Talks it Be from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.