From Bieberchella to Disaster

Local New Roads seniors forced to leave Coachella Weekend 1 due to unforeseen circumstances…

The Coachella Music and Arts Festival (or this year known as Bieberchella), hosted annually in Indio, California, is one of the world's best-known music festivals. Attendees either camp out on-site (if they’re up for the challenge) or book an Airbnb for the weekend. 

If you’re an avid TikTok user, like me, you may have heard about the issue of Airbnb hosts cancelling prebooked reservations with little to no warning during this Coachella season. Not only has this happened to many popular TikTok content creators, but it has also affected students in our local school community. New Roads student Ruru Chonzi interviewed seniors Mimi Nikolic and Esme Held about their Airbnb disaster amidst all the Coachella hype. 

Typically, events such as Coachella require booking months in advance for things such as transportation, Airbnb or hotel reservations, as well as the festival tickets. Nikolic and Held were aware of this and had been planning their Coachella trip for almost a year in advance in order to save as much money as possible when making all these purchases. Luckily this worked out, and Nikolic stated that they were able to find an Airbnb priced around $2,000 for the entire weekend, which would then be split amongst 5-6 people. Held added that some mutual acquaintances of theirs ended up spending $11,000 when buying an Airbnb due to last-minute pricing. 

Due to this significant price difference, some Airbnb hosts take advantage of last-minute booking prices as we get closer to the festival dates. Nikolic says that “Airbnb hosts inflate the price as the festival gets closer because they know people urgently need a place to stay."

Despite booking months in advance, this ended up being the same case scenario for Held and Nikolic. Held describes the scene best as they arrived, excited for the event they’d been planning that year. “Bags in hands and everything, and then all of a sudden when we’re texting the Airbnb host saying we’re here and we asked for the code, he was like, 'No…'" states Held. 

With nowhere to stay, they had no choice but to turn back around and try again for Weekend 2. Held and Nikolic, also taking advantage of last-minute pricing, managed to sell their Weekend 1 tickets and purchase a new set of tickets for Weekend 2. Even though they managed to secure new tickets, they still struggled with the challenge of finding a place to stay, since most Airbnb hosts were inflating their prices. Luckily, they were able to share an Airbnb with a mutual friend who happened to be attending this festival at the same time!

The real question is, what is Airbnb doing to solve this issue? Long story short, nothing. After Held reported this incident to the Airbnb app, they failed to respond within a timely manner and reached back out weeks later after Held threatened to involve the police. Nikolic couldn’t have said it best “Airbnb needs to handle this situation ASAP."