Airbnb is a fabulous site to book accommodation of all kinds, especially by directly addressing private individuals who provide rooms, apartments, tree houses, caravans, boats or whatever. Last year I organized a road trip in Andalusia almost always booking from there, finding myself great.
This year, wanting to repeat the experience, I'm looking for a apartment in Slovenia, at Lake Bled. I find a fabulous complex of mini-apartments, which are not for nothing defined in the title of the ad "Paradise in the Julian Alps". Extraordinary price per night for 2 people € 30, price per week € 200, inserting the dates correctly: August 16-20.
Since the offer makes me a bit strange, too shabby for such a thing, I find out more and see that on other sites the same accommodation is proposed in August at 90 € or at other prices. I also see that this is not a private individual, but one sort of agency. And when there are all these rounds, it stinks me more and more.
I therefore write to Airbnb contact, to whom I explicitly ask for clarification, given that the prices written around the network are all different from each other; I was ready to understand if he replied that the € 30 indicated was per person. In reality I receive a proposal that is again different from all the others: “August is a main sesons - so prices is higger. Prices for apartment tubej is 100 eur / night for 2 persons. We have a camp and if you like stay in indian tipi - tend is prices 40 eur / night / 2 person or normal tent is prices 30 eur / night / 2 persons. "
Laugh or cry? Or feel cheated maybe? I ask him for a nice, typical apartment, with some comforts etc., and he shoots me a higher price than all those on the net for his structure, or offers me a very comfortable teepee tent from indians! I could answer him with smoke signals maybe.
Already discarded, of course, however I enjoy going on with the thing, pointing out the speech of the higher price of the other proposals. And what does he answer me about it? "Yes prices is 90 eur, I'm sorry it's my mistake." Poor, he was wrong.
At the end of the story, I came to the conclusion at least to make him change the prices in the calendar, which are the ones that count for the calculation when looking for a structure on certain dates. I also strongly advised him to make different announcements for those curtains that he wanted me to trim, but he didn't get much reception; nor did he change the price per week, which remains at € 200.
Advice: for my modest experience, since Airbnb was born through an exchange between private individuals, the professional operators who use it, in most cases, use it as Bait and switch. So I'm staying away from it.
