Since our year of travel in 2010, a lot has changed in the world of lodging. As we went from country to country, city to city or island to island, we relied heavily on the Lonely Planet and when not that, either Booking.com or the now defunct HotelClub.com (which I loved in its day). The choices seemed straightforward and were almost invariably hotels or budget guesthouses – always organized establishments which we paid for by the night – or maybe the week when we had longer stays. Our only real exception was in Bali where we rented a house in the same compound I used to live in from a family I knew well.
Now Airbnb is a major player in vacation rentals, Booking.com has expanded the kinds of establishments it allows to rent (presumably to compete better with Airbnb) and TripAdvisor which was really more of a Yelp-style rating/review site for travelers has gone into the hotel/lodging booking business. The Lonely Planet remains a resource we enjoy, but we may cling to it out of sentiment because with a family in tow, it no longer addresses our travel needs very well – and moreover it simply can't address all the many lodging options as well as it once did. It's best use is in describing a place and cluing us into the culture and key points of interest. We've noticed that in Greece, it doesn't even do a great job covering the restaurant scene where so many of our favorites and well-known local eateries are overlooked.
In Israel, Emily's parents worked with a travel agent and amazingly arranged and paid for all of our lodging during for the family trip. We had to worry about nothing. When we went to visit Ziv and Hila in Zicharon Ya'akov – a very nice, family oriented town – hotel options were limited and to stay near them, Airbnb made the most sense. We got an adequate, but not amazing apartment in the center of town, only 10 minutes from their house. The lodging wouldn't have worked well had we needed to stay longer, but for a few days it did the job nicely. As a transaction, it all worked perfectly – the host/owner couldn't have been easier or nicer. We had no issues checking in, leaving or with anything about the place – it was well provisioned with soaps, shampoos, toilet paper, linens, dishes, etc. Everything went smoothly.
That has been our general experience with Airbnb – which we used for the past two years in Thailand without issue or incident. This summer, we've discovered that both Airbnb and even the changing nature of hotels has been more complicated.
We used Airbnb to rent our house/condo from Victor – who is originally from Poland. He speaks like Bella Lugosi and is a kind, although a little eccentric individual. Victor claims not have rented via Airbnb before – although I suspect we aren't his very first guests. But at the time we booked, he didn't have any reviews and it showed he joined Airbnb recently. So, he is new even if strictly speaking we aren't the first. Victor reminds us of Emily's late grandfather who was also from Poland. Henry owned and rented several properties – commercial and residential. Emily has said – and I join her in this sentiment, with love and respect for Henry – we wouldn't have wanted to be one of his tenants. He was perhaps a little restrictive, invasive and cheap…. in the nicest of ways, of course.
Victor is exactly the same – a very nice, warm hearted, busy-bodied, talkative, penny-pinching, mildly misogynistic (Emily is the "woman of the house" or the "mother" with an expected role and abilities, and I am "the man of the house" who can "talk as men" with him and has certain duties and roles), rule generating host/landlord. And much like Henry lived in the apartment building he owned, Victor lives downstairs from us – so he can pounce unexpectedly from his doorway when we are leaving or returning. Mostly, he has brought character to our stay and he is kind to our children.
Only Victor doesn't really seem to understand the full idea or workings of Airbnb. Twice now he has tried to get us to pay extra for our utilities – and we have explained how Airbnb – with a few specific exceptions which are listed on their site – required the final price a guest pays to be all-inclusive, much as a hotel. We also explained how any money passed between guest and host is supposed to run through Airbnb and that we will not violate that rule. Victor – somewhat understandably – feels "we're people – can't we just be people and work things out among ourselves?" And we have pointed out that the reason we use Airbnb is so that we don't have to deal with misunderstandings – that's Airbnb's job. If he feels anything additional is owed, he can simply submit it to Airbnb and if they agree with him, they'll ask us to pay and we'll abide by whatever they decide. He struggles with this not because he's greedy or difficult, but because the entire idea is very foreign to him. It could be that he's in his sixties trying a new platform and way of doing business, or a cultural gap – or both.
It became clear on our conversations with Victor that he didn't really consider the costs of utilities when he developed his rental price. Given how much he's making, the utilities shouldn't be that big a deal. But still, we felt badly for him – and the fact that he genuinely didn't understand – and through Airbnb passed him and extra 100 euros as a one-time gesture of good will. Unfortunately, that didn't last and he came looking for more utility money – freaking out that we had lights on in the house when he came on a very gray morning. He apologized for it when we saw him today.
Victor has also struggled when the house has needed some maintenance such as the sink backing up and the bathroom drain slowing. The plumbing in Patmos – and most of the Greek islands – isn't first-rate and many establishments have signs asking people not to flush toilet paper, but to throw it into a garbage bin provided for the purpose. The sink in question drains into a narrow, PVC pipe and even with using the drain traps, it only takes a little food to cause a problem. Victor told us this morning that the plumber found some cooked rice down the drain and that about a spoonful of food sentiment was all it took to clog the drain. So, we were instructed to be careful to really scrape all the dishes into the garbage and not let anything get into the sink. It's a touch restrictive, but fair and probably necessary given the circumstances. The slowed shower drain was from Emily's hair – which happens. The local version of Liquid Plumber we tried on it didn't really solve the issue – so the plumber cleared the drain manually. And we were admonished about the kids' use of toilet paper – Victor thinks they may use too much and that could cause further damage.
These things were understandable, although it's hard not to feel like the house Victor built himself is a little bit of a delicate flower. But this is the kind of thing that we open ourselves to by having an Airbnb host instead of a hotel. Sure, it hasn't happened prior – but we haven't rented for two months anywhere, and there are five of us running a full-household including cooking and laundry.
Luckily, good will seems to have returned and Victor invited us to join him for dinner (I'm sure going Dutch) this Saturday at a restaurant in Hora that has traditional Greek music and dancing with dinner.
Kusadasi taught us that the changing nature of vacation lodging isn't restricted to vacation rental sites like Airbnb and VRBO. Apartment hotels (called apart-hotels or studios in local terms) are one of the most common forms of lodging in this region of the world. Greek, Turkish and European families in general often prefer to have everyone stay together in an apartment or studio with kitchenette and laundry facilities – but operated as a hotel. Kusadasi was FULL of such hotels and we found ours, among many, on Booking.com which has traditionally focused on hotels.
Yet our stay at Kusadasi Rezidans was one of our worst ever. The property had just changed hands and admittedly, the owner is working on a major renovation for it. However, he isn't waiting until the work is complete to begin renting them. The review scores were deceiving and came mostly from Russian and Saudi guests who perhaps have different expectations? Or maybe they were put up to it in exchange for a good deal? Whatever the cause, it became clear that the owner – a very nice man – understood it should work like a hotel, but also kind of wanted to treat it like a hands-off Airbnb-style rental. I think he was hoping that once we were checked in, that would be the end of anything he needed to do. He was rarely on site and has a young family which occupies him.
The problem was that even in the second, better room we were given, we were missing linens, a toilet broke, one shower drain was clogged, previous guests' clothes and food were left behind, a dirty q-tip was on the nightstand, the cleaning lady couldn't seem to manage to get us the right linens, there were no front desk hours or anyone too regularly operate the desk, the cleaning girl spoke no English and the only way to reach anybody by phone was to text or call the owner via WhatsApp. The situation was bad enough that we just bought our own soaps, toilet paper and water. We couldn't rely on the hotel for even the basics – which would have been fine for us in an Airbnb stay where some owners take the extra step provide niceties, but aren't actually expected to supply anything consumable. At some Airbnb rentals – including here in Patmos – we have even bought a few knives and kitchen tools and left them behind for the next guests. That doesn't really bother us as it doesn't seem to be reasonable for a host to anticipate how everyone might cook (although one decent cutting knife and a spatula to go with the frying pan does seem logical…).
Amazingly, one of the many times the owner of Kusadasi Rezidans was apologizing profusely, he said that he hoped this wouldn't affect our review and lower his Booking.com score. Victor too has asked us repeatedly to review him on Airbnb, not understanding that Airbnb won't ask us to do so until our stay is complete. These owners care most about their scores which are critical to attracting business, but far less about running a business that speaks for itself and draws massive word-of-mouth.
When Emily and I were younger – and even in 2010-2011 – hotels and restaurants worked hard to get themselves into the guidebooks, especially The Lonely Planet and when they did, the touted it like they had just received a Michelin star. I don't think the authors of The Lonely Planet carry much weight anymore. Everything is about the constantly fluctuating scores on booking websites/apps and having the best sounding snippets of user reviews. Our hotel in Samos had a sticker proudly displayed on their front door showing that they have an 8.2 Booking.com score (which I don't think is actually that great).
Of course, some of our issues could be endemic to Greece and Turkey. Airbnb and even booking sites like Booking.com are foreign concepts to which people all over the world are adapting. Perhaps as for Victor, it's not easy to understand and subscribe to an inherently impersonal system that emphasizes rules and procedures over personal relationships. Perhaps in the warm-blooded Mediterranean region, a strictly transitional relationship feels cold and perhaps can't be trusted. When we booked our hotels and guest houses in Turkey nine years ago, we always had emails back and forth with the hotel owner or staff. There was some degree of interpersonal communication. One of our worst stays of our year of travel was in Crete where we used HotelClub.com for the booking instead of selecting from The Lonely Planet and emailing or calling to make our reservation.
Or the whole thing could be coincidence. We just finally ran into a couple of hosts/hotel owners that weren't as easy to deal with as others. We broke our lucky streak. Who knows?
Still, I suspect that as the world becomes more digital and user-driven content and reviews become the marketing capital of the hospitality industry, expectations will change. There may well be a greater divide between establishments like the beautiful and comfortable David Citadel where we stayed in Jerusalem with its focus on providing top-end luxury for a curated experience and the bring-your-own-toilet-paper (BYOTP) world of average travel. Eventually the confused Victors will age-out of the system and generations of app-native, apartment-renting micro-entrepreneurs will comprise much, if not most of the hospitality industry.
