I have never been to a triathlon, I wanted to go last year, but something changed my mind, is it worth it?
agreed in this opinion
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I would only do AirBnB if I had a guaranteed back-up option.
This is my approach.
I’ve used AirBnB a bunch of times, and my experiences have all been positive. Mostly, I like having my own kitchen. But the stories are out there (including here) where people really are screwed. If when I get to the place, I’d be able to walk away if I see it’s a scam, I’ll go ABnB. If I don’t have that option, I go hotel.
After having an Airbnb nightmare a few years back I will never use them for a race again. I was doing Boulder 70.3 and found an awesome house for our group really close to the race for a pretty low price, booked it about 6 months out. 2 weeks before the race the owner discovered Ironman was in town, cancelled my reservation, then relisted for more than double what I paid. Even went as far to list on VRBO for 3x the original amount. I was left with no place to stay, everything else booked, prices through the roof, and 2 weeks to figure it out. Airbnb customer service is atrocious and getting them to refund/rebook me took no less than 8 hours on the phone. I eventually was able to find another house far from the race with an owner that agreed to accept the original amount I had booked for.
All together it was a total nightmare. Lesson learned, book a hotel. It might cost more and the space is smaller but the chances of them cancelling on you are far less. It is too easy for a person to list their property on multiple sites and basically take the highest offer.
Same exact thing happened to me, except in Mont Tremblant.
After having an Airbnb nightmare a few years back I will never use them for a race again. I was doing Boulder 70.3 and found an awesome house for our group really close to the race for a pretty low price, booked it about 6 months out. 2 weeks before the race the owner discovered Ironman was in town, cancelled my reservation, then relisted for more than double what I paid. Even went as far to list on VRBO for 3x the original amount. I was left with no place to stay, everything else booked, prices through the roof, and 2 weeks to figure it out. Airbnb customer service is atrocious and getting them to refund/rebook me took no less than 8 hours on the phone. I eventually was able to find another house far from the race with an owner that agreed to accept the original amount I had booked for.
All together it was a total nightmare. Lesson learned, book a hotel. It might cost more and the space is smaller but the chances of them cancelling on you are far less. It is too easy for a person to list their property on multiple sites and basically take the highest offer.
Airbnb has changed their policy since then so that it makes it more difficult to do that as a host. If you cancel any reservation at all as a host, the dates you cancelled get blacked out on your calendar for that listing. If I remember right a host still has to pay some sort of penalty if they do this now. So basically, hosts will now be more thorough with checking their pricing policy for certain dates.
That has been the case for quite a long time, however, what hosts do is list on SEPERATE platforms to get around this. An example would be to list the same dates on AirBNB, VRBO, and HomeAway for $1000, $1500, and $2000. Then they sit back and see which ones get booked and cancel all but the highest.
In my case they listed it on VRBO for a way higher price and when someone booked it they cancelled ours.
I almost always do AirBnB/VRBO over a hotel (unless I can’t get one close to the venue or the price is ridiculous).
Our AirBnB in Lahti last August turned out to be a scam. We showed up, after 24 hours of travel, and the host was unreachable (the listing said to call them to be let in and given the key… I didn’t make the reservation, this would have been a red flag to me). AirBnB was great. They wanted 30 mins to try and reach the host to validate our claim that it was a scam. We took that time to eat dinner and to scan the remaining listings to see if anything was open. There was one listing open that fit our needs - and the owner was game to rent it to us for 6 days and have us show up within 1 hour to take it. AirBnB refunded us the cost of our original reservation AND gave us a discount on the replacement. I was pretty impressed.
I’ve got a similar story only the owner cancelled just before I arrived. Airbnb got me a new reservation and credited me a couple hundred bucks.
I have a other story just last week. Airbnb randomly canceled my trip to Nice for WC next year (book early when they have free cancelation!).
The owner didn’t cancel when I contacted them and told me to rebook. Airbnb told me it was a mistake and said to rebook and they’d give me a $300 refund for my troubles.
So I got the same place I already booked and 300 bucks back.
Once I stayed in a hotel. When I got to the room, there was a dehydrated dump in the sink.
They offered to get me a new room. I left and had to find a new hotel. No one gave me any credits (but I wasn’t charged). It’s not like bad things don’t happen with hotels too.