15 years ago it was much cheaper than a hotel. Depending on the type of reservation, you may also get a kitchen and basically a house.

But things have changed and now they're not the cheapest route anymore. Some people get horror stories as you can imagine because... People do shitty things sometimes as is human law of statistics.

Rent a house instead of a hotel room. We've used that and other services like VRBO to rent cabins in the mountains. There's nothing really "special" about it and it's not really different from those other services like VRBO that came before. I think originally the difference was letting people rent a spare room, but I've personally never met anyone who has used that functionality (leasing or renting side).

I have a fondness for AirBnB. It's gotten way bad in the past decade, since it's being gamed.

Back then, there wasn't much of a review system for shitty places. Today, Google Maps, Yelp, forums, social media - they can warn you about shitty places. And from my experience back then, a lot of hotels were scams.

Need a place to crash? You can either get a scary motel for like $40 that might have bed bugs, or a hotel for $300. I remember my first time in 2000 booking a hotel over the phone, having them save me a room, only to get there and these fuckers tried to upcharge me. I walked and they said, "Good luck finding a room in the middle of the night!" My mom eats specific foods because of her health issues, and Airbnbs often have shared kitchens. Hotels only recently started adding kitchenettes. And some hotels had locked devices. TV was extra. Fridge was extra. Touch snacks, fucking extra. You expected to pay $250 and here's a bill for $600. Don't want to pay? Well we'll call the cops.

Airbnb and Uber gave people options, and you can give bad reviews to these bad actors. Having all this competition, hotels and taxis improved dramatically.

Of course, now Airbnb hosts (not Airbnb the company) took a lot of the shitty behavior that hotels used to do. Not to mention a lot of the Airbnbs are now owned by real estate companies who are trying to squeeze every penny.

So yeah, hotels have come back around to being a better service. And now if you get fucked over by the Marriot or something, take photos, leave a bad review, and they bend over backwards to apologize.

Location and large parties. You can usually find a short term rental in places where there aren't any hotels (like near national parks, remote beaches, specific parts of certain cities).

It's often cheaper to split a short term house rental between a large party than it is to get everyone rooms in a hotel. I've spent $700 a night at an AirBnB before because it was for a house with enough bedrooms, living rooms and kitchens for 14 people (with beach access). It was like renting an entire small hotel for a weekend.

I’ve recently rented an AirnBnB with 6 other People and at 21:26 the owner knocked and complained about noise. At that time we were playing cards and just enjoying each other’s company. The next day they wanted to kick us out because “partys” were not permitted. In no way other than drinking like 2 beers each we were having anything close to a party. I don’t know what they expected when they decided to offer a room for 8 Adults, but apparently they only welcome monks with a vow of silence.

8 people? Sounds like the perfect excuse to rent the penthouse. (Disclaimer: I've only seen penthouse hotel suites in movies)

A lot of taxis also work for the apps, it's kinda like hotels that are listed on airBNB for some reason.

I've had too many bad experiences with taxi drivers demanding too much money or trying to drop me off too early, I almost exclusively book through apps now. I know the app takes 20-30%, why tf are you trying to charge me 2-5x what the app would for this route?

Before you take any taxi, look up what the route would cost on an app, then use that as the max you would pay.