Comment by creer

That's confusing things. There are bad, good and great hotels. There are bad, good and great airbnbs. The problem is what will the management of that place do or try to get away with; what can the client do; what can the intermediary / rating. That was already the case before Airbnb.

If an airbnb and a hotel choose to race to the bottom, perhaps they deserve each other and the rest of us deserve a way to avoid them? (Or use them if it came to that...)

I think Airbnb and hotels.com do not push people to the bottom - they offer a minimal bar or set of features to look for quality / price ratio. Are they perfect? No. But they make discovery much easier.