What I LOVE about AirBnBs

I wrote awhile back about a truly terrible AirBnB experience in Osaka Japan. While I was in the midst of the chaos of this experience, I kept thinking, “I know I’ll use AirBnB again…” AirBnB has it’s fair share of flaws, and I do plan to write about the things that I hate about AirBnB. But I’m of the opinion that there’s a whole lot more to love about AirBnBs than to hate. Here are some of the things that I love about AirBnBs:

1. Money saving. I don’t exclusively stay at AirBnBs. I always search for both hotels and AirBnBs in any area that I’m traveling to, and more often than not, it’s cheaper to stay at an AirBnB than at a hotel.
2. Unique spaces. Through AirBnB I’ve stayed in a traditional cave home in Oia, stayed in a beautiful off-grid space in Mallorca, and stayed in a traditional Japanese home (okay, that one smelled musty, but it WAS an interesting experience rolling out our futon mats and moving the bamboo screens around).
3. Multi-room spaces. Guess what? I don’t need to sleep as much as my kid does! I’ve had so many unpleasant experiences in hotels reading books on the toilet so that I could keep the room completely dark so my kid could sleep. With AirBnBs, it’s more likely that my kid can have a separate room and therefore my husband and I can move around freely after she goes to sleep.
4. Laundry. I see you sillies with your huge suitcases for a one week trip. I prefer to travel with a carry-on sized suitcase if possible. With a kid, this gets a bit difficult because she spills and trips and gets her clothes dirty. But many AirBnBs have laundry! It’s awesome being able to just carry a backpack worth of clothes for a multi-week trip because we’ll have laundry available along the way.
5. Getting into the goooood neighborhoods. Whenever I’m heading to a new city, I research where to stay in that city. Often time the recommended neighborhoods are super expensive for hotels, but reasonable for AirBnBs.
6. Kitchen. One of the best ways to save money while traveling is to make sure that not all of your meals come from restaurants. With an AirBnB, we can make our own food and save a lot of money!
7. Local help. Many AirBnB hosts will provide special information about where to go, where to eat, and what to see. They can often help set up drivers or tours if needed. In 2021, we visited a climbing area in Kalymnos, Greece in the off season. We quickly realized that because it was the off season, the restaurants in the area were all closed. No major worries, because we could cook in our AirBnB since we had a kitchen, but we did ask the host if she knew of any restaurants that would be open. She did not. Guess what she did? She asked the owners of a local restaurant if they’d open for us. They agreed! We had a private dinner in a local Greek restaurant, which simply would not have been possible without the help of our local AirBnB host.
8. Little Extras. AirBnBs are more like to have special surprises that hotels don’t have. In Kauai over Christmas, our AirBnB host provided surfboards, boogie boards, sand toys, and snorkels. We’ve stayed at AirBnBs that provided transportation. I’ve been given little gifts like cookies, flowers, and other local gifts.

If you’ve never tried an AirBnB before, I do think it’s worth a try; I personally would typically prefer an AirBnB over a hotel most of the time. Don’t worry though, there’s a lot of stuff that drives me CRAZY with AirBnBs…but we’ll leave that for another post!