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Airbnb: The Pros and Cons and Cons and Cons…

I started to call this article “The Cons and Cons of Airbnb” but to be honest that would not be fair. There are some very good things and a lot of negatives. Let’s start with the good:

Some Airbnb hosts are wonderful people. You may make a friend you will want to stay with time and again.

Airbnb will give you the chance to stay in an area you prefer at a price that is more reasonable than a hotel.

You may be able to cook in your room or apartment to save money or for dietary reasons.

You will have a chance to see what real people live like and not just rub shoulders with other tourists at the Hilton and the local heritage castle.

It sounds great. So what could be the problem? The first one is with Airbnb itself:

Airbnb tends to stay neutral when there is a problem. It is in their best interest to avoid taking any action. Your lovely villa in Spain turns out to be a flop house that hasn’t had a good cleaning since Franco was in power. It is owned by someone who lives in Berlin and has never been to his own rental? Call Airbnb to find out how quickly they will be able to offer no help at all.

Also, Airbnb reviews are not ranked by date or number of stars. So five years ago the host and room were great but now the host is old and ill. The room has had the doors ripped from the cabinets. Sorry, that’s your problem.

A rule of thumb: If your host says, “Public transportation is a short 10 minute walk away and it takes 20 minutes to ride the bus downtown,” figure it takes an hour to ride the bus downtown with three transfers. Also the short 10 minute walk will be across 8 lanes of the Autobahn with no pedestrian crosswalks.

Your host may expect you to whisper and he will close your door after 10pm even though it is 90 degrees in your room, there is no fan and no air-conditioning. This one happened to us so don’t think I am exaggerating here.

The teflon pans on your stove were new before you were born and have been used to mix tar to seal the bathroom floor? Call the owner in Berlin and Airbnb to find out how quickly no one can help you.

You wanted to see how the real people live but now you are tired of vacationing on the wrong side of the tracks? Did I mention to call the owner and Airbnb?

So with all the caveats, you think you still want give Airbnb a try. There are a few things you can do:

Know the cancellation policy. Try to chose the Flexible Refund policy and a Superhost if you can. Avoid the Strict Cancellation policies. You will lose up to 50%.

Scan through reviews and avoid Hosts that cancel before guests arrive or have reviews with a lot of the same complaints.

Also, communicate with your host during the first hours of your booking. You can often get a feel for what kind of person they are. Ask them if a fan is available or if they live nearby, etc. If you need to cancel, do it immediately, before it costs you money.

Make sure you know what Airbnb’s fees will be.

Many Hosts use Airbnb to get into the hotel business without the expenses involved in a real hotel. Realize their services are likely minimal as a result.

Use Google Earth to take a virtual walk through the neighborhood.

Google maps can tell you how long the tram ride will actually take and how often the trams run.

Download the Here We Go app and see if it offers other choices for public transportation that are not on Google. Here We Go will also work offline and when phone service is weak. It is also better for walking trips after you arrive at your destination.

To sum up, do your research. Know what you are buying before you commit. It’s a simple rule but one that failure to follow leads to costly and unpleasant mistakes.

So there you have the ups and downs of Airbnb. Maybe a cruise would be easier and more fun.

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5 Travel Apps You Need Today!

A good App is a beautiful thing. It does its job day in and day out simply, intuitively, and efficiently. The best Apps have an art to them, a certain design elegance. That’s the cream of the crop. Most of the ones I find are rated capital “G” for Garbage and uninstalled within minutes. I am the uninstall King. There are a few though that I wouldn’t leave home without. The best Google Apps were covered in a previous blog. Here are the best of the rest:

Dark Sky-Hyperlocal Weather–

The Dark Sky Company

You can’t make travel plans without some idea of the weather. I must have tried a ton of Weather Apps over the years. They were not worth bothering with. That is until I ran across Dark Sky. I don’t know where these guys got their crystal ball but their weather predictions are the best available. Also their maps feature covers the entire planet and is stunning.

Moovit: Bus Time and Train Time Live Info

Google Maps can do most of the same things, so why use Moovit? Moovit is for public transportation only. The interface is clean and easy to use. Moovit will show Trams and Train routes when Google sometimes doesn’t. Download Moovit as a backup insurance policy if nothing else.

Open Signal—

better signal and faster data

Open Signal will show you where the nearest cell towers and Wifi hotspots are. This will tell you which way to move for a better signal or where to go to get Wifi. If you are cutting the cords from your cell carrier, like me, you can see the beauty in not wandering down the street, hoping for a signal. I recently used Open Signal in Bryggen, Norway to find a hotel Wifi while I was sitting in a public park. Cool.

NumberBarn

Be Number Smart

Did you know you can port your existing phone number? Do you even know what porting your number means? Here’s the deal. Let’s say your phone is out of contract. You have had the number a long time and don’t want to pay the ridiculous call fees while you are on an extended European vacation but you don’t want to lose the number permanently. You can port (translation: move) your number over to NumberBarn so you don’t lose it. You can then go to Europe or Wichita for that matter and use a free Wifi calling system like Google Hangouts for your calls and texts. Voila! Your $100 a month phone bill now drops to as little as $2 a month and later on if you want to go back to a regular carrier, you simply port the number back out to your new carrier. Numberbarn will even notify you when the old number receives a text.

Turbo VPN

If you travel outside the US sooner or later you will find yourself blocked from some of the services you are used to. You need a Virtual Private Network. A VPN makes your computer look like it is in the US when in fact you are in Europe, Asia or wherever. Maybe you can watch some programs on Youtube that are blocked in the region where you are now. Maybe you can see Netflix. Maybe not. The problem is that restrictions on VPNs are tightening due to their use by scammers. There are a lot of VPNs out there. Turbo has some ads and works about the same as most. It’s free. If it works for what you need, fine. If not try one of the paid VPNs.

So that’s all for Apps for now. You can travel comfortably for a long time on the ones I have listed. But if you do run across a new one that knocks your socks off, let me know. I do love a good App.

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Google Apps for Savvy Travelers

There are hundreds of apps out there supposedly designed to make traveling easier and more fun. New ones come out every day. A few are good. Many more are thinly veiled advertising gimmicks. Some cost. Some of the free ones don’t work or are terrible. If you don’t have the time or the inclination to waste time surfing the net, here are some tried and true Google apps, I use Android, but most of these have iOS counterparts. I wouldn`t want to leave home without them.

The MacDaddy of app makers. Google has a stable of horses you need to ride on your next trip. Unfortunately some of those horses are old and worn out. Some don`t know the gate from the finish line. Google has a philosophy that says “if you put enough horses in the race, one of them will come out a winner.” The problem with that is you can get stuck with an old nag. Here are the winners you need:

  • There are lots of good emails out there. Gmail is one of these. You need Gmail because it will tie your other Google accounts together so everything runs smoothly.


Google Photos
Google Photos saves all your pictures to the cloud for free. (There is a paid version but unless you are a professional photographer, the free one is the one you want.) When we say saves all for free, we mean all. I currently have over twenty thousand photos without a glitch. Google photos transfers the photos to the cloud. This can be a positive and a negative. Your photos are available on all your devices. Yay! If you drop your phone in the lake or lose it your photo`s are right there when you get a replacement. Yay! If you are over at Aunt Myrtle`s who lives in the middle of nowhere and has no cell signal or wifi, you have no pics. Boo! So save at least a few pics to your phone for Aunt Myrtle.

Google Maps

  1. Maps
    You probably know Google Maps, but don`t forget it can give you public transportation, bike and walk routes. These are a wonder. Nothing gives you a better feeling than watching your stop come up on free wifi when you are traveling on route 39 in Dublin, Ireland in the dark and you have never been there before. “No, honey, not here. It`s two more stops after the right on Clonsilla Road.”

Google Trips
You can spend forty hours researching points of interest in Berlin, or you can get the same information on Google Trips with a click. Here’s a tip: use the download feature of Trips for times when you don’t have Wifi. Don’t forget to delete the download after the trip. Those things take up a lot of data.

Google Voice, Hangouts, and Hangouts Dialer
Google phone services that will let you call and text for free over Wifi. Saves a lot of money on International calls back to the US. Google keeps threatening to trash these services. At their worst they are a pain to set up and finicky after setup. Do your setup before you leave the US. Make sure you are familiar with how they work before you leave. At their best they provide free clear calls. Many people have International phone bills that run from $300 to 500 a month. My calls and texts cost nothing. Nothing is good. Be careful with Google Voice. In some situations it may use your carrier`s signal and that can cost.

Google Keep
Handy for notes and pictures of things you need to know on short notice. The positive with Keep is that the notes are available if you are offline. Lots of note apps disappear when you don`t have Wifi.

Google Docs
A good word processor in the cloud. Saves as you type so you don`t lose data because you forgot to close or your battery went dead. This article is being written on Google Docs.

Google Duo

Google Duo

A contender for Best Free Video Calls. Your friend will also have to have Duo for it to work.

Google Translate

Saving the best for last, Google Translate. Translate is one of the most amazing apps to come along in a long time. Translates almost every language you can think of into any other language, even Mandarin to English. But the real kicker is the camera function. Click on the camera icon in Translate and focus on the chosen text. It will translate the text into your chosen language. Truly amazing.

So that’s all the Google apps you gotta have. The best thing is their all free on the Google Play Store. Now are there other travel apps you need? Apps that are still great, still free, but not Google? Stay tuned for Apps Part Two coming up.