Basically what it says on the tin. In the not-too-distant future I will traveling abroad for the first time and am considering making use of airbnb for portions of the trip. Has anyone done this? Can I pretty much assume that if the apartment descriptions are in decent English then the owners will speak decent English? Any and all tips would be appreciated, including “don’t be an idiot, get a hotel room.”
I’ve also never used AirBNB, so there’s that. Johnny Bravo is doing all sorts of new stuff this summer!
I have a couple of Airbnb’s arranged in Japan in the next couple of weeks, so I’ll soon know. I don’t anticipate any problems given the communication with hosts that has already taken place. But as I chose the listings, I tended to avoid any that were entirely in Japanese or looked like a mere machine translation.
My first two requests in Tokyo, of the same host, both got canceled. Airbnb customer service was great, but I did have to find another place to stay—on my own. I don’t think it was really a bait-and-switch situation, but rather that rooms in this particular university guesthouse were listed on other sites as well as Airbnb, and were being picked up for a higher price.
We used AirBnB in Rome, no problems. A few issues with rough English skills, but that’s part of the fun of travel.
We used AirBNB all through Japan and it was amazing! We chose hosts with a lot of reviews and all of them had an extremely streamlined process. We rarely ever saw our hosts but all of them had a comprehensive “user manual” sitting on the table on arrival that went through how to use various appliances, how public transit works around their neighbourhood and local restaurants/places of interest.
AirBNB makes travelling so much better than a hotel, I wouldn’t travel any other way nowadays.
Yes, we have used them in a few countries. Most recently France and Denmark. I think most hosts tend to either speak English relatively well, or have someone nearby that does. We rented entire apartments, so we didn’t really interact with the owners much. If you re sharing a space, I would imagine you could get a decent gauge of their English skills during the initial correspondence. Either way, I wouldn’t worry too much about it.
I used AirBnB for an apt in Rome. Instead of struggling through my okay Italian, I looked for listings written in English. Host was semi-fluent, but his son who was completely fluent helped us out a lot. There weren’t any problems. Stayed there 10 days without a hitch.
Go for it. Save money, stay at a cooler place, screw hotels.
Oh man, I thought somebody was going to ask me how my trip was. 
Reported.