News about the co-hosting split payout feature

Airbnb
Official Account

News about the co-hosting split payout feature

We recently shared that as of August 1, 2018 we’ll no longer offer the co-hosting split payout feature. Many of you use and appreciate this feature, and we understand that this change has implications for the way that you do business as hosts. It’s always our intention to improve your experience in any way we can, and we’re sorry for the inconvenience this change will pose for you. We’d like to give you some background on why we’re making it and offer some alternatives for paying your co-hosts.

 

It’s important to note that we are not removing co-hosting. We’re invested in helping you succeed, and co-hosting overall has been a valuable tool for many of you. So why are we removing the split payout feature? When we added the ability to pay co-hosts through this special feature, the number of co-hosts was rather small and we built a system that handled the volume well. But in order for this feature to meet the needs of a much larger community of hosts and work seamlessly with Airbnb’s evolving platform, we would need to completely rebuild the feature so that it grows with your needs and meets our internal reliability standards. We’re not building a feature to replace this one yet, but we know it’s important to certain hosts and co-hosts and will continue to evaluate ways we can improve and grow the co-hosting program.

 

The good news is we’re exploring the best way to introduce a new and improved feature. We can’t give you a date yet, but will keep you informed. In the meantime, you can still pay co-hosts through the Airbnb platform by changing your Payout Preferences to split your payment with your co-host. To do this, with your co-host’s permission, enter their payout information in your Payout Preferences tab, and set the percentage you would like to share. If your co-host is not comfortable sharing their account details or ever withdraws their authorization, you can pay them outside of Airbnb through secure online payment apps, bank deposits, cash, or checks.

 

We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience, and we’re grateful for each and every one of you who host and co-host—and support local businesses while you’re at it! We look forward to building a feature that will be useful to you and better meet the needs of this growing community.

274 Replies 274
Roma10
Level 2
San Francisco, CA

Thanks. It’s very not comfortable. 

Russell97
Level 1
Auckland, New Zealand

Add the cleaning fee to the split paymeny option and I'll be happy, otherwise your creating problems for hosts rather than solving them. Fewer barriers to hosting please, not more.

The old payout spliting system was working-- perfect.

Both Hosts and co-hosts were satisfied. 

The cancelation of something that everybody was happy with is--- senseless, cruel, counter-productive.

Very sad ,unreasonable decision by AIRBNB.   Sad day for the airbnb community.  

This is all so confusing ..to so many of us hosts and co -hosts. Why make things more complicated ,confusing instead of easier. When you call the airbnb help line, they seem confused also as to the new guidelines. what a mess! 

Adam421
Level 1
Big Water, UT

At 6 a.m. this morning August 1st, I went ahead and added my co-host to the payout routing alternative. My co-host still got paid the split payment and she also got paid through the routing percentage. In other words I double paid my co-host. The fine print says that it will only apply to future bookings, but it applied to the guests who checked in last night on July 31st. 

 

Furthermore, it was my understanding that my co-host would not be paid for any bookings on the split payout feature ( the old method) after August 1st.

 

However... if I look at my future transactions, you have already tabulated the old co-host splits. So now I have deleted all the work I did on my 10 listings at 6am, to avoid double payments.  I will manually keep track of every booking that comes in until we are past the point of the already confirmed bookings that occurred before August 1st. This has actually made things more complicated, not less complicated.

Lizzie
Former Community Manager
Former Community Manager
London, United Kingdom

Thanks @Adam421 for sharing your experience with payments over the transition, I am sorry to hear the confussion around this.

 

I want you to know I am collating all the community feedback which is incredibly helpful and passing it back to team involved in this. Thank you so much for sharing your detailed overview here. 

 

 


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Looking to contact our Support Team, for details...take a look at the Community Help Guides.

Mary1099
Level 1
Mountain View, CA

The "split payment" feature seems like it would work just fine EXCEPT for the cleaning fees!   Please just add a way to direct the cleaning fees 100% to the host or cohost.  Otherwise the cleaning fees will be split between host and cohost, which makes no sense... only one of us will be paying the cleaners.

Agnieshka0
Level 2
Fremantle, Australia

I too regret that the co-hosting split payments service is not any more available. At least at the moment. Yet I am confused by your statement:

 

'In the meantime, you can still pay co-hosts through the Airbnb platform by changing your Payout Preferences to split your payment with your co-host. To do this, with your co-host’s permission, enter their payout information in your Payout Preferences tab ...' 

 

This reads to me as if the split payment was still available through the Airbnb platform, doesn't it? My co-host was happy to provide her bank details, but it was just too complicated for me to set it up. So I called the Airbnb's consultant to assist me (Jonathan), but he denied it's possible. He insisted that the only way I can split up the payments with my co-host is through private arrangement. So am I reading your offer incorrectly? Or could you clarify, please.

Anyway,  as an Airbnb loyal superhost and devotee, I too am looking forward to returning of the more efficient co-hosting payment system.

agnieshka

My personal thought is the recent introduced changes on the split payment should exclude the existing co-hosts so that the payout arrangement is not disrupted. I believe most if not all primary hosts like myself,  have set the payout preference on the right footing since day 1. 

 

Whatever changes should affect the new added co-hosts but not penalising the current co-hosts.

Rodney51
Level 1
New Hampshire, United States

I must say this is rather unacceptable.  You cannot delete a service that people have come to utilize within their business without a viable alternative.  I notice a lot of folks are being nice, but this is a business.  And for many of your hosts, its a serious income and they run it like a REAL business.  I have experience in the payment sector and I can tell you that there should not be a single issue from your end about being able to split payments as the owners of the properties want.  Whenever someone starts playing with the method that partners get paid, I get skeptical and worried.  Your explanation is rather convoluted and frankly makes little sense.  You should find a legitimate and viable alternative to this issue as soon as possible.  To restore the reputation of AirBnB you really need to fix this yesterday.

Paul325
Level 3
Los Angeles, CA

Please, everyone -- we have to make our voices heard on this issue.

 

Make sure you do ALL of the following - if we don't flood them with feedback over this they're going to ignore it as they do with everything related to the host experience. 

 

Be concise and diplomatic, but make it clear how having to manage cleaning fees and co-hosting payments manually will impact your time and your business and cause accounting confusion. 

 

General Feedback:  https://www.airbnb.com/help/feedback

 

Contact Airbnb: https://www.airbnb.com/help/contact_us/message

(select Listing and hosting tools/Co-hosting/Message us)

 

Call Airbnb: 415-800-5959

 

Tweet @Airbnb2, @airbnbhelp, and @bchesky at twitter.com.

Lizzie
Former Community Manager
Former Community Manager
London, United Kingdom

Thanks @Paul325 for encouraging others to share their feedback around this. I also wanted to let you know, I am also collecting the feedback shared here in the Community Center and am sharing this backing with our team and will continue to do this. 🙂

 

Thank you for sharing your thoughts. 

 

Lizzie


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Thank you for the last 7 years, find out more in my Personal Update.


Looking to contact our Support Team, for details...take a look at the Community Help Guides.

Paul325
Level 3
Los Angeles, CA

And FYI, here's what my third CSR of the day said to explain the decision:

 

"Many hosts raised concern about the routing of the earnings so in order to make things simpler, this feature was removed so that they can settle the earnings in person and there is transparency in the community."

Michael2123
Level 2
St Augustine, FL

This change adds nothing to Airbnb and puts the Co in the My Space Zone

Alexander472
Level 2
Ainslie, Australia

The routing option works, but it is a pain in that the cleaning fee cannot also be split out. Because of this, I do not use the routing option and have to resort to paying out monthly via transferwise (with exchange rate fees and transfer fees). This isn't a good solution. I am very much looking forward to a 'new and improved' co-host payout method.