RyanAirbnb

In this week's biggest news, we stayed at a hotel for the first time since the pandemic began. Times have certainly changed -- when we made our booking we were amazed to learn that our 3/4 star hotel in a major tourist area did not provide maid service during your stay. Re-use your towels, make your own bed!

I think you can trace this sort of thing back to the impact of low-cost airlines such as Ryanair, Southwest or Allegiant. Low prices, but also rock-bottom customer service, and in the case of Ryanair (I don't know about the others) a sizeable dollop of outright contempt for the paying customer. The ultra-low cost base of these carriers, coupled with people's natural lust for a bargain, has meant that "legacy" or full-service airlines have had to price match as much as they can, which means that service standards have inevitably converged toward the Ryanair level. My own worst-ever flying experience was not on Ryanair (which I have used several times) but on a Toronto-Miami trip with Air Canada's low-cost (not!) "Rouge" division.

If my recent hotel experience is in anyway typical, it seems as if the same sort of thing is happening in the hospitality sector. The rise of Airbnb has persuaded a lot of people to abandon traditional hotels, which in turn has forced those hotels to cut prices and service standards in order to remain competitive. My sister is an avid Airbnb fan; when she and her family came to stay with us a few years ago, we were startled to find that at the end of their stay, they stripped all the bed linen from the beds to be ready for laundry.  Apparently this is standard practice at Airbnb: who knew?

It seems as if the bloom is off the rose at Airbnb. Rapacious "hosts" have pushed prices and fees too high while still offering abysmal service.  Municipalities (with New York in the forefront) have realized that Airbnb is trashing their rental accommodation market and begun a belated crackdown. Airbnb may well have passed its peak, which is a good thing -- it's a global blight.  So far, however, there is no sign of the same happening at Ryanair and its ilk, which seem to go from strength to strength despite concerns over their impact on the climate. .