Airbnb.com.au

The first place I booked was a disaster. It was for a school reunion and I lived 4 hours away so needed to stay the night. Turned out the host had sold the property but I didn't find out till 2 days before. It all got sorted in the end and I decided to give them another go, which I'm glad I did. Spent a glorious week in Cairns with my son and granddaughter in a gorgeous tree top house with pool and spa. Stayed at another house in Yeppoon on the way home, both 3 bedrooms, and both bookings were quick and easy. The prices are much cheaper than a hotel, resort, or caravan park, for a place with privacy and a lot more space. If you're going to the local attractions and it's busy and noisy, you get to go home to peace and quiet in a fully self contained house or unit. Prices in comparison per night - 2/3 bedroom cabin in a caravan park, starts at about $110 on average with kitchen, but very small space. Hotel, starts at about $150 for 2 tiny rooms with interconnecting door, and just a kettle and bathroom. Resorts, start at about $200, which was what I paid for the place at Cairns, which was totally worth it. And there are also cheaper, really nice places on this site, starting from as low as $70/night, with out the service fee (8%), for a 3 bedroom unit or house and going up from there, most with heaps of extras, like internet, DVD's, cable tv, games/toys for the kids, books, basic cooking ingredients such as sauces etc, a dishwasher, yay, and other individual cool things unique to each place. So far we've stayed in 4 places this year, and they've all been really nice, clean, unique, and fun to stay in. I've done hotel, caravan park, and resort, and this has by far been the better deal all round! We'll only be staying anywhere with air bnb from now on!

Honestly, this was our worst airbnb experience in Australia and sadly we have had many since coming back to Aus. We had wonderful experiences with airbnb in Canada and Europe but it's a completely different ball game here in Australia. It's as if they can do whatever they want and they get away with it. Highway robbery … taking your money when you lost a booking due to their fault, dirty places, rude hosts, a/c doesn't work, cockroaches running around, no privacy like in the pictures, etc. I will quickly share the worst experience now and I will preface this with we will never ever use airbnb ever again. We made an expensive 2,797 booking as a special treat for our family in Suffolk park NSW and then couldn't travel there from Queensland because at that time the host area was in full lockdown so it was because of the HOSTs lockdown area NOT our area. Any reasonable host would offer the booking at another time or a refund. Not this host, she had the cheek to tell us how inconvenient it was for her to pack up her house and get it ready when we could no longer come, that we would need to book 3 additional nights if we wanted alternative dates and then she refused a refund request. She (and airbnb) kept all our money (every penny) and we didn't even get to stay there 1 night. What did airbnb do when we complained, nothing … absolutely nothing like always. All they care about is money. It's stealing money from guests who have paid for a booking that they don't get to use and illegal to keep money when a person has not received what they have paid for.