Airbnb: Everything You Wanted to Know but Didn’t Know Where to Ask

I wrote this piece back in 2017, when Airbnb was still young, idealistic, and genuinely felt like something built on “trust between people.” Re-reading it almost ten years later, I can see how much both the platform and my view of it have changed. So I’m leaving the original text largely as it was — as a portrait of the sharing-economy era at its peak — but I’ve added a few notes from 2026 where it really matters.

I really love all these new-fangled sharing economy businesses: Airbnb, BlaBlaCar, and the like. It’s a genuine phenomenon of the Age of Aquarius — and it’s absolutely my thing: services built first and foremost on human trust.

While picking photos for this piece — from my own Airbnb trips — I did the maths: in six years, I’ve rented places through this platform 34 times. I’d use only Airbnb if I could, but it doesn’t always have enough of what I need in every destination. For example, in the Florida Keys, almost no one rents out flats — only large villas, which were beyond both my budget and my needs as a solo traveller. Or in Bratislava, flats in the centre were inadequately overpriced, in my view. So instead I came across a hotel on a little boat — and I’d long wanted to stay on a boat… In short, when Airbnb doesn’t have what I’m looking for, the good old booking.com comes to the rescue, or — in Ukraine — dobovo.com. Disclaimer: I’m not saying these are the best services available, just that, in my experience, they’re the most convenient and well-rounded.

🔄 2026 update: Dobovo.com is still going strong and has even expanded — you can book apartments in Kyiv, Lviv, Odesa, and other Ukrainian cities. A wartime detail worth knowing: many flats now have backup power for wifi, and this is often noted in the description. Booking.com remains essentially unchanged and is still the main alternative to Airbnb in Europe.

It’s interesting that my introduction to Airbnb began with a scandal. Meaning, I first heard the name while reading an article about how a hostess on the platform had her flat trashed by guests. After that incident, Airbnb introduced an insurance system for such cases and several other safety measures. And I, despite the apparent bad PR, decided to give the service a go for the first time. My very first Airbnb stay was a not-very-clean but very authentic and overall lovely apartment in Brooklyn, New York.

Since then, there’s been a lot of variety: a house with a pool in Los Angeles — and an Orthodox Jewish home in Beverly Hills. A brand-new little flat in a Paris suburb called Houilles. A charming little nest with cats in Tel Aviv, and plenty more besides, including a good ten apartments across Budapest.

So it just so happens that I can probably claim to be something of an Airbnb expert by now. And I’ll be glad to share my knowledge and recommendations with you.

To start with, briefly, on how it works. As originally conceived, Airbnb is a place where flat owners list their homes for short-term rent. The idea was that people could earn something while they themselves were off travelling somewhere — why not let someone else stay at your place during that time? But the system quickly drifted from the ideal and became more commercial. Today, almost all listings on Airbnb aren’t homes someone actually lives in — they’re properties built specifically for short-term rental. That said, I’ve stayed a couple of times in places that were genuinely someone’s flat, vacated only for the duration of the rental. There’s a particular charm to those, but the “purpose-built” ones are usually much cleaner and more comfortable. After all, people have very different ideas about how a home should be set up. In permanently rented flats, things are a little more impersonal — but at the same time, designed with guests in mind.

🔄 2026 update: This shift away from “real homes” toward commercial listings has only intensified over the years — to the point where many European cities (Barcelona, Berlin, Lisbon, Amsterdam, Paris) now impose serious restrictions on short-term rentals because of their impact on the local housing market. It’s worth bearing in mind: sometimes what you’re renting on Airbnb sits in a grey zone of local law. In London, for instance, there’s a 90-day annual cap on letting an entire flat.

So how does the rental process work? You go to the site, choose your destination and dates, and then the place you’d like. I usually look for whole apartments (though you can also rent a room, or even something more like a bunk). Then I narrow things down by location on the map and budget. I read the details and reviews carefully. Once I’ve chosen, I send a request. If the host accepts it, I’m charged immediately — for the entire stay — and I get my booking confirmation. This, perhaps, is the one thing where Airbnb falls short of, say, Booking: you have to pay in full and upfront. You can’t just place a tentative reservation.

🔄 2026 update: This is now only partly true — Airbnb has introduced split payments: you can pay part at booking and the rest closer to check-in. The option isn’t available for all listings or dates, but it does come up regularly.

A couple of important points now. Take note (Airbnb does explain and warn about this in the process, but…): if you simultaneously send requests to several flat owners and one of them approves yours before you’ve cancelled the others, you’ll be charged for every confirmed booking! So don’t do that. If you just want to ask a question, send a message rather than a booking request.

If you need to book somewhere quickly and urgently, look for listings marked with a lightning bolt — these are flats with Instant Book. If such a flat is free, you don’t need to wait for the host’s approval: you just choose, pay, and it’s yours.

You may ask: what should you do if you’ve booked a place on Airbnb but your plans change? If there’s any chance of that happening, read the conditions carefully when picking a listing. Some hosts refund the money if cancellation happens within a specified window. Some don’t. If cancellation is allowed, in principle you’ll only lose a small Airbnb service fee.

What else? In all my time using the platform, I’ve had only a couple of serious disappointments. Maybe three. But two of them happened only because I was in a rush and didn’t read the descriptions (and especially the reviews! reviews here are everything) carefully enough. In the third case, things turned out so far from what had been promised that I decided to leave early and test for myself how Airbnb’s dispute resolution system actually works. It works well: the experience itself wasn’t pleasant, but everything was resolved as it should have been. So yes — with Airbnb you can rest assured: you’re paying the platform a small fee for guaranteeing the safety of your transaction.

🔄 2026 update: Sadly, complaints about Airbnb’s customer support have grown noticeably since the pandemic — the service has scaled up, and quality has slipped in places. I’d no longer rely unconditionally on Airbnb in difficult situations, the way I felt I could in 2017. Read reviews carefully, look for Superhost status, and photograph the state of the apartment on arrival — that level of caution is now, unfortunately, baseline.

What other nuances are there? On payment — some hosts require a deposit, charged together with the rental fee and refunded after check-out. Many also include a separate cleaning fee. But some have no such requirement — they clean themselves. If every euro counts, those are the ones to pick.

And here’s a small TOP-4 of what else is worth knowing about this service — and why it’s worth using.

First, it’s worth remembering: the foundation of services like this is trust and human relationships. It’s not the same as hotels, where — theoretically — you pay and do as you please. (Personally, I don’t trash hotels either.) But when you’re renting flats from people, the assumption is that you’ll treat someone else’s home the way you treat your own. Look after their things, don’t leave a mess behind — and you’ll get good reviews, and good fortune will follow.

Second — yes, reviews. This follows directly from the first point: for trust to function, you need to read the reviews of the places you’re renting, and definitely leave your own. Unlike on shopping sites, Airbnb reviews can only be left by actual users, so you can genuinely rely on them. Don’t be lazy about jotting down a few words about the services you’ve used.

Third, take advantage of discounts and invitations. If you haven’t used Airbnb yet, sign up through someone’s referral link and get a discount on your first booking. The person who referred you will get one too — but that’s not the main thing. The main thing is that opportunities like this are worth using regardless. Once you’ve become a user yourself, don’t be shy about handing out your own invite link. It’s all part of the sharing economy — its very essence — and that’s wonderful.

🔄 2026 update: Sadly, the Airbnb guest referral programme has been discontinued in most countries — in the UK, Ukraine, the US and many others, it no longer applies. It’s only still active in a handful of places (China, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Germany — the list varies). The host referral programme, however, is still very much alive: if you invite a new host, you receive a cash reward once they’ve completed their first qualifying booking.

Fourth, and most importantly: all of this is yet another wonderful way to discover the world. Airbnb’s main appeal isn’t the price, which is usually lower than for an equivalent hotel. The real point is that no hotel will give you the same understanding of a place as living among locals will. When you stay in a flat, you’re surrounded not by tourists but by residents. If you spend long enough among them, you can pick up their habits, glimpse their world a little, and feel less like a tourist and more like a traveller. That’s what I personally adore.

🔄 2026 update: This is probably the only thing in my 2017 text that has remained absolutely true. Living among locals is still the best way to understand a city. It’s just that today, achieving that sometimes means looking beyond Airbnb: small boutique hotels, local platforms (like Dobovo in Ukraine), or simply guesthouses. The idea of the sharing economy is alive and well — Airbnb is just no longer its only carrier.

So, use the good things in life and enjoy them! And I’ll be glad to answer any further questions about Airbnb.b.