"We're Going BACK to Hotels" — Airbnb Guest Says $172 Listing Came Out to $972 After Fees

Ever hop onto Airbnb or similar applications and find a listing that seems reasonably priced, only to be drop-kicked by the total amount once you head on over to checkout?

It's an issue that TikToker Jesse Martin (@jsmartinlive) says is ultimately killing the end-user experience, and is the reason why everyone is deciding to stay at hotels again.

"You wanna know why we're going back to hotels? Because of this," the TikToker says, pointing to a screen-captured image of an online listing in his video. "$172 a reasonable, cool, $344 for 2 nights, that makes sense," he continues, indicating that he doesn't have a problem with the per night cost of the rental.

The TikToker continues to break down the additional fees associated with the stay, stating, "Taxes, $95 ehh, not rockin' but $108 service fee? Okay. $425 host fee? What you doing? You telling jokes or something, what, what you mean, host fee?"

He just couldn't understand how the host fee ended up costing more than a 2-night stay at the rental unit, and wanted to know what the "host fee" actually entailed. "Am I getting paying you to get me entertainment? Like that's crazy what you need $400 for? You about to clean the place while I'm there?"

Jesse then begins to delineate why staying at a hotel is superior to booking through one of these home sharing services in this instance: "I go to a hotel, they're gonna make my bed, they're gonna give me free soap, free lotion, what am I getting here, huh?"

The TikToker also decried the particular and pedantic nature of some hosts and how they expect their guests to behave in their rental units: "So that you can call and be like hey you gotta keep it down because you can't get too loud for your neighbors or what?"

"Because that's how it is in these Airbnbs then you're gonna charge me even more money for a cleaning fee after it. It's getting ridiculous. I can go to a hotel and have somebody at the front desk and everything just waiting on me."

He points to the screen captured image again, showing the grand total of the charge, including taxes and other fees which resulted in his $172/night selection amount to a whopping $972 for two nights. "Look at this. now I'm going from $172 to $972 it's crazy."

Viewers chimed in to comment on Jesse's post, detailing that they too believed home sharing apps have gotten too pricey and a worthy venture under only a very specific set of circumstances: "Airbnb started off as a cheaper alternative from hotels too now there’s really no point unless you’re staying more than month," one person wrote.

Another cited personal security/spying issues with Airbnbs, and there have been numerous concerns/incidents pertaining to this creepy phenomenon that have popped up on social media previously: "I’ll stick to a hotel. People be putting cameras in these homes, be careful out here."

Someone else couldn't believe the amount of money that was being charged for the service fee, stating that they expect the royal treatment for that amount of coin: "I better be having full access to the house, plus you cooking and cleaning for me every day at 9 am sharp"

In addition to the pricing and voyeurism concerns, there was one TikTok user who brought up the effect that Airbnb rentals have had on local real estate markets: "Also, hotels aren't ruining the local real estate market. I'm so done with Airbnb. Literally never again"

Architectural Digest states that the number of Airbnb and Vrbo rentals are greater than the amount of homes in the United States that are for sale: "The nation's supply of short-term Airbnb and VRBO rentals exceeds the number of available homes for sale by approximately 380,000."

This, consequently, has driven up the prices of homes, forcing people to rent for longer periods than they would like or take on a high mortgage/financing plan for a home that puts them in a precarious financial situation.

However, this may ultimately blow up in Airbnb and homeowner's faces, as a number of folks have financed homes in order to list them on Airbnb and similar services in a bid to generate (relatively) passive income. Newsweek states that due to falling Airbnb revenues, presumably because these homeowners are jacking up the costs of their rentals in order to make their mortgages, cover the cost of home maintenance, and turn a profit for themselves, a housing market crash may occur.

One may think this is great, because, then those homes that were being Airbnb'ed out could just go on sale from folks who want out of the hospitality due to no one renting at such exorbitant prices.

If that does happen, however, this means that there could be a lot of short sales going on with homes, or foreclosures. In these instances, cash buyers are preferred.

And it's not like the average American has hundreds of thousands of dollars on hand to buy properties. Financial institutions, however, do. So unless there's some type of effective regulation that ensures homes are being put in the hands of families and folks who will buy a home, live in it for a long time, and contribute to their surrounding community, more and more corporations will continue to buy up homes, as they. have been doing so for years.

EDIT: It's worth mentioning, however, that even though Martin's caption for the video suggests that the listing he was referring to was on Airbnb, it was actually booked through another application. A representative from Airbnb reached out to Distractify in order to clarify that the screenshot Martin showed in his video was not an Airbnb listing.