Skift Take
Remaining in professionally managed short-term leasings is no guarantee of a maximum visitor experience. When your host’s profile picture ends up being a free stock picture, you can guess how this ended up.
Dennis Schaal
Online Travel Today
A vacation journey over the last two weeks to California highlighted to me what a crapshoot staying in short-term rentals continues to be in spite of the expected heightened professionalization of the industry.
While I booked a mix of short-term rentals and hotels throughout the journey, a stay reserved through Booking.com and a 2nd appointment I made on Airbnb, both in Los Angeles, made me longing sometimes for the relative reliability of a hotel where I ‘d have some sense of what I ‘d really be getting.
The apartment or condo hotel I protected on Booking.com in downtown Los Angeles was a guest experience nightmare throughout the procedure leading up to signing in although the stay itself turned out well enough.
A Meetup Place, Not a Property Address
The host didn’t offer me the name or address of the property, which turned out to be Level Downtown South Olive, even on the day of the stay until in fact satisfying me there after a lengthy process and handing me a crucial card. Leading up to that the host had sent me a 15-paragraph email notifying me I ought to provide an arrival time, which the address was a “meet-up location.” I undoubtedly didn’t check out the email because I was driving 6 hours to the residential or commercial property and not examining e-mails. So it was partly my fault, but should not you be able to schedule a home, get the address, and check in? Duh.
Prior to check-in, the host offered me no property name or precis