You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login
See, I don't think I can take the stress of that. I hate that about Airbnb. Don't the customers get seriously punished for cancellations? Then the owners should too.
That was our big concern the time we did airbnb for sdcc, luckily it worked out for us. But I don't think I would do an airbnb unless the owner's history was free of cancellations and it looked like people had stayed there during sdcc in past years. One neighborhood i would recommend, though there doesn't seem to be much listed there at reasonable prices right now, is Little Italy. We have stayed there several times, once at a hotel and once with airbnb and, while it's not a nice and walkable distance from the convention center, it doesn't take long to get there on the trolley and you can use the hotel shuttles in the morning when the trolley is too crowded.There is also the new Homewood Suites, which is where we had our backup hotel reservation. They do raise prices during sdcc but they have a 2 queen bed suite with a sofa bed and a kitchen. They also have a 2 bedroom suite which isn't currently available during sdcc but it might be worth checking back later as people cancel their backup reservations.
Just passing along my tale: normally I'd stay with friends as an ex-SD resident, but this year with a couple extra people in tow, I decided to book an Airbnb for this year. In late February, I snagged a place in my old neighborhood, Clairemont, about 15 minutes from downtown, since I'm very familiar with that area and will be driving in that week. The hosts are not a Superhost which would have been nice, but I am fairly optimistic since I was upfront with them about it being SDCC. They only have a handful of host reviews, but based on all the dates blocked out on their calendar, it looks like a summer-only rental. Fingers crossed. I also believe Airbnb hosts are not allowed to relist for the dates in question if they cancel for no good reason (which admittedly is subject to interpretation).We ended up negotiating what I thought was a fair price, since they did initially ask for more than their originally listed price. I'm keeping in regular-ish contact with questions and random notes just so we stay on their radar.
I didn't realize you could negotiate, I thought what was listed was the price, didn't realize there was wiggle room for negotiating.
I guess I have the horror story. Rented a place through HomeAway in what looked to be a great location (a short walk to SDCC) at a good rate. The owner just informed me that he's cancelling the reservation because he got "evicted" from his place. Yet, when I go to HomeAway, I see that he's listing the place at a 4x increase on the rate. I did get my deposit back (yeah!), but HomeAway has been no help at all regarding this guy's relisting of the place or in helping me get some restitution from this guy's shenanigans. Additionally, he cancelled AFTER the SDCC lottery process had completed, so I didn't get an opportunity to throw my hat into that ring. I did manage to find a place by the airport near a trolley station, but I'm paying significantly more (snagging something downtown is way out of the budget). Given what I've seen about AirBNB, I think I'd stay away from HomeAway, they have been less than useless in this process and in helping me out.