Airbnb feels like a soulless rip-off – and its hosts are revolting

Excuse me if I feel no sympathy for the property owners who have threatened strike action because guests no longer have to do their chores. Whatever happened to the company’s initial guff about building community?

To Airbnb or not to Airbnb, that is the question. Would you like to help pay someone’s mortgage and clean their house and fork out an extortionate cleaning fee and abide by a 90-page list of house rules? Or would you like to check into a nice hotel where you get fresh towels and a tiny chocolate on your pillow?

Airbnb’s business is booming, so plenty of people are still choosing the first option. Nevertheless, the hospitality giant seems to have realised travellers are sick of being handed ridiculous chore lists, and is reining in some of its more tyrannical hosts. Last week Airbnb posted updated guidelines stating guests can no longer be asked to complete tasks that “require significant effort or time or would typically be performed by a cleaner”.

This entirely reasonable stipulation has gone down exactly how you’d expect from landlords who want to charge hotel-like fees without providing hotel-like services. Some hosts are desperately trying to find loopholes, while others are calling for a strike. “Even if we all unlist our properties for just a day or two, we can send a powerful message,” one budding revolutionary wrote in a Facebook group for Airbnb hosts. “Airbnb built its empire on OUR properties. It’s time we reminded them who actually holds the power.”

I’ve tried to avoid Airbnb ever since a stay where the coffee table was proclaimed off-limits for coffee cups and there was a snake in the basement. So I can’t say I have much sympathy for hosts who are melting down about not being able to force their guests to scrub the floors.

That said, I fully support a general Airbnb strike. Despite all the guff about building community, the platform is as soulless as every other tech company. It has enabled Israeli settlers to make money from illegal settlements built on stolen land, for example. And it has supercharged property speculation. In the name of maximising profits, it has also gone through the same enshittification as other once-shiny startups. What was once a fun and inexpensive way to travel often now feels like a bland rip-off.

So, please, disgruntled hosts, go ahead and remind Airbnb who actually holds the power. And don’t stop with Airbnb. If every one of those small-time property moguls channelled that same energy into protecting democracy rather than their bank balance, the world would be a far better place to live.