Money

It's a drag. According to Pink Floyd back in the day, and it still is. Most people don't have enough of it to feel comfortable, and then there are the sad and weird few percent who collect money seemingly to be in competition against other sad and weird wealth grabbers. 

Case in point . . . Airbnb. We've been on their platform for many years, and very much appreciated the earlier days when it seemed like a cool idea to let people stay in a room in your own house for a bit of extra cash. We've had many guests and had many lovely reviews, and even become good friends with some of our lodgers. But in the last few years the emphasis seems to have changed from being a socially orientated platform to one where money has become the main or possibly the only object. The key box, the buying up of buildings to cram them full of soulless holiday apartments, with the consequence of affordable housing becoming out of reach for the local population.

I'd been considering for some time leaving Airbnb, but the final 'right . . . that's it' moment arrived when they started charging for cleaning and the amount being absorbed into fees for them. I've never charged for cleaning as I feel it encourages people to be respectful of their lodgings and leave them in a reasonably tidy state. For us it's always worked: people pay less and (apart from one or two instances) everything has always been left clean.

Chambre d'hôte in French means a room in someone's house; you meet the house owners; they are friendly and welcoming (hopefully) and are happy to suggest walks, restaurants, places to visit etc. 

Airbnb seems to have become more: key box code, or a brief 'Hi' and you have the place to yourself.  One place I stayed in had a notice saying don't touch anything in the kitchen. 

Maybe most people don't mind about the lack of contact with their hosts or absence of items that make a place unique; maybe it's just me and a few others like me that actively hunt down places with character rather than grey, white and beige IKEA. 

Anyway, we've deserted the site and are now on GreenGo, a French site with an ecological emphasis and seemingly less about just grabbing a bigger cut of the rent. So far it's been great for us. We've had more cyclists and walkers, people arriving by train and keen to explore the area on foot. 

I reckon this is the future seeing what's happening with the price of fuel, and everything else . . . more local, exploring what is around within a couple of hours radius rather than plane-hopping to Iceland for a weekend, or finding oneself on a beach in Thailand. Mind you - typing this with gloves on - that sounds quite appealing on this foggy November day.

Below, our GreenGo page. Interestingly, the name 'La Péniche sur La Colline' - The Barge on the hill - came up as The penis on the Hill on an AI auto-translation of a voice message . . .