World’s worst Airbnb
Briton is shocked to find his £100-a-night Amsterdam room is shipping container
When Ben Speller found a three-bed listing on Airbnb for a ‘clean home in Amsterdam with private bathroom’ for £100, he snapped it up. But the tourist was left speechless when he arrived at the address to find it was actually a shipping container set up on the roadside with a portable loo. Tottenham hotspur fan Mr Speller had travelled from London for his football team’s Champions League clash with Ajax last week.
he was delighted when he found the reasonably priced accommodation online. But upon arrival, he was confronted with a large grey shipping container with three mattresses on a street called Pauwenpad in the Frankendael district of the Dutch capital.
‘We had already driven past the container three times in the taxi trying to find the place,’ Mr Speller said.
‘We thought, “This can’t be it.” But when we got out it turned out that it was true. We opened the door and looked inside, [then] locked the door and left.’
Mr Speller said they quickly decided to find a hotel instead.
Photographs of the container revealed a bleak scene – three single mattresses lined up with three pillows and one large sheet stretched across all three makeshift beds.
Two doors were visible from the outside – one leading to the ‘bedroom’ and the other to a small grey portable toilet.
Mr Speller contacted the owner, named only as ‘Jacob’, and asked for a refund but this was refused.
But when he informed Airbnb, his £100 was returned, as well as £230 for the emergency hotel stay.
The container was later reported and removed by city contractors.
An Airbnb spokesman said: ‘We have removed the host and listings from our platform. Misrepresented or fraudulent listings have no place on our platform.’