The Case for (and against) Airbnb

“SICKKK LOCATION,” Andy texted.

“I KNOW RIGHT…WE SHOULD DO IT,” I responded. “It’s $500/person though, for 3 nights.”

“Wait, $500 is a lot dude…that’s a round trip flight to Maryland.” (Andy’s from Maryland.)

“Yeah but yolo lol.”

For those of you wondering — no, we don’t actually use punctuation in texts, but I couldn’t bring myself to not include it in the context of a blog post. Also, we were deciding on where to stay in LA for an upcoming beach volleyball trip. Personally I thought it was worth it, but decided to do the analysis where it really matters — in a spreadsheet.

I had just booked the place we stayed in last year, Hotel Hermosa, which was nice enough, but it was 1.5 miles away from the venue. It wasn’t ideal but you could walk there in just over 30 minutes. The cost per person could be as low as $266 if we got 4 to a hotel room, which is quite a bit cheaper than the Airbnb.

I honestly didn’t expect there to be any good options on Airbnb based on what I saw a month ago, but happened to see a new listing that was available with an amazing location (7 minutes by foot according to Google maps) as well as a free cancellation policy. Since it was a new listing there was actually a decent discount on the place, but it still netted out to almost twice as much as the hotel.

The way I saw it, you couldn’t just look at the price by itself. There’s a pretty significant difference in how much time it would take to get to the event everyday — a single trip to the pier is 7 minutes vs 33 minutes, and round trip would be double that every day. That’s a time savings of almost an hour each day, which would imply an hourly rate of ~$90 to breakeven at the Airbnb.

Then there are the intangibles of having a larger space with a common area where you can play games at night. Granted it’s not like we’ll be hanging around the place a lot, but it’s nice to have the option. It is also more convenient to have more of a home base to come back to, versus being out for most of the day.

On the other hand, there are downsides associated with an Airbnb. For starters, it’s just not as nice as hotels…at least the ones I’ve stayed in. Somehow photos are just more deceiving on Airbnb. Then there are the chores, which is confusing because I’m also paying a cleaning fee. Like, why? At least they’ve started to be more upfront about the fees being charged, but it’s ridiculous it took so long to get there.

Despite all that, I would rather spend the extra money to be closer because I personally think the convenience is worth it. If my friends would prefer the hotel I’m also fine with that.

Where would you choose to stay?