What happens to your hosting fees

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What happens to your hosting fees

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At a recent Host Q&A event in Sydney, Ben, a Superhost from Brisbane, Australia, asked a great question: What happens to the money Airbnb collects from hosts and guests as service fees? We thought it was such a fantastic question, we wanted to share a few behind-the-scenes details with you here.

 

You probably know that as a host you’re charged a service fee whenever a booking or Experience is confirmed. For home hosts, the fee amount is usually 3%*, and for Experience hosts, it’s 20%. In most cases, guests are also charged a service fee when they book on Airbnb. A full breakdown of the fee model, can be found in our Help Center

 

So what exactly happens to the money that’s collected? We redeploy it into three big categories that help support you as a host and an entrepreneur: community support, marketing, and product development. Here’s a closer look at how your fees are deployed to help power Airbnb:

 

 

Community Support

One of our top priorities is making sure we can support you if you have questions or need support.  As we mentioned at our last Host Q&A event, we're investing a substantial amount of resources into our Community Support team to ensure we’re there when you need us, and that we can help you with your question or concern smoothly and efficiently. In the past year, for instance:

  • In the last few years, we’ve tripled the size of the Community Support team to help you get answers more quickly, in your preferred language. (And it’s helped: over our peak holiday season this past year, for instance, 80% of calls were answered in less than one minute; and this year, we’re committed to improve this even more.)
  • We built a new process online to make it easier to connect with us—via phone or our online chat system—and help you get to the right person, right away. Now you can find the phone number you need and access the chat system almost immediately.
  • And finally, we launched new tools so our agents can easily understand a hosts’ issue and can respond efficiently and consistently.

 

We will continue to make improvements and invest in our Community Support team. In fact, one improvement that’s happening right now is that we’re splitting the team into areas of expertise. This will help us connect you more quickly with the right person to address your particular concern. We’ll be using an intelligent routing system to direct your question to a Community Support agent who is specially trained to address your question. We’ll be introducing this program globally in the next few months.

 

What other ideas do you have for improving the Community Support experience? We’d love to hear your suggestions in the comments section, below.

 

 

Marketing

Another topic we know hosts care a lot about is getting enough bookings to meet their individual goals. We help to drive that through significant investments in marketing to guests. Through our marketing teams, we ensure that guests around the world think about Airbnb first when they’re making their vacation plans. We focus mainly on three types of marketing:

  • Marketing to guests in the ‘real world’, through traditional advertising channels (think TV ads, billboards). These are typically tailored to specific local markets. Already this year, for instance, we’ve had major ad campaigns in Mexico and Brazil, and there are more that will roll out around the world later this year.
  • Marketing to guests in the ‘digital world.’ We also have close partnerships with Facebook, Google, the iTunes app store, and other digital platforms to ensure that Airbnb has a strong presence in the places where our guests and other travelers are spending time online. It’s crucial that Airbnb—and your listings—show up high in search results when travelers are looking to book trips and that’s why we spend meaningful money here on your behalf.
  • Marketing to guests through Airbnb-specific channels. The Airbnb website and app and email are the other channels we use to help drive guest demand and additional bookings to you. On the website and in the app, we create travel-inspiration articles and collections of listings travelers search for frequently, such as beachfront properties. We also send booking reminder emails when guests have been searching for a place to stay but haven’t booked yet.

 

 

Product development

Finally, our last significant bucket of spend is around product development. Airbnb employs thousands of engineers, designers, and product leaders who build the tools and infrastructure that power your business. They focus on keeping Airbnb up and running (ensuring our technology platform is strong, fixing issues that arise), and they develop products specifically designed to make it easier for you to host and succeed.

 

Recent examples include tools to make reviews more fair for hosts and the newly redesigned Guidebooks feature. The latter helps hosts give guests local recommendations and create a more welcoming, memorable experience overall. (It’s also a lot of fun to use!)

 

 

Let us know if you have any other questions about fees and how Airbnb spends them in the comments section, below. We love to get your feedback.

 

 

*The Airbnb host service fee may be different in certain cases, and is typically higher for hosts in Italy and for hosts who have a Super Strict Cancellation Policy.

272 Replies 272

Sarah I agree fully with your last Paragraph. I find it really annoying receiving constant reminders to lower my prices, scare tactics which when researched shoows that there are other reasons for guests bookibg elsewhere e.g. our space doesn't fit their criteria; they may be smokers; they may not want to be where we are located; they may just change their minds; they drift off to other properties because there are always other properties shown below ours - that rediects people elsewhere; they may just be searching for a particular look and feel;

I attended a tourism NZ seminar recently where I met many other local hospitality proprietors including motel, Airbnb and Experience operators. I was surprised to find out the tourism rate has been down in our region in the past few months and other hosts all mentioned the reasons they thought they weren't getting the bookings they expected and it's not the $$..   Visitors to our place tell us our nightly rate is low in comparison with others they have stayed at.  Just becouse our Suite is attached to our home does not mean we need to devalue all the work we put into cleaning fastidiously, preparation, breakfast in the room, our skill and local knowledge, being available to people 24hrs a day, cost of power, water, food, maintenace.   Airbnb's algorythms are too broad but it's about numbers not quality really  - the more commissions the better  no matter how small.    Receiving the annoying emails does cause me to check out ahead more, research other local airbnb's and still come to the conclusion that what we are doing is fine and our rices are right.   Yes we might get more bookings if we lowered our rates to what they suggest to get more people however we are not a hotel or motel needing every night 7/12 filled and we do not need troupes of backpackers looking for cheap accommodation.

It's about quality! 

Having said that we have had so far a very good experience with 99.5 % of guests, the money transfer process and the calendar system with Airbnb. I have just learned to see their price reduction emails as being for their benefit not ours really.

Beverley, The Red Door Guest Suite Thames NZ

@Beverley-and-Tony0  I get emails telling me that xx number of places got booked in Puerto Vallarta because they lump PV in with Sayulita. PV is an hour's drive from here, and guests book in PV if they want to be in PV and in Sayulita if they want to be in Sayulita. And the "similar listings" to mine are almost all priced at leat $20 higher or are things like a "Monster Truck on the Beach" with a dirt yard and a funky outdoor shower.

I'm tempted to just delete all of them, but I also like to check those lines that say "Not Relevant" or "Not interested in this information". We should all do that. I also leave the feedback that they give you a box for- sometimes I point out what I said here, sometimes I point out that I have never cancelled or declined a booking, nor required Airbnb's involvement in a guest "issue" , so they might appreciate that and see it as a valid reason why I'm not fussed about being fully booked. I.e. quality guests who don't cause problems, as opposed to a full calendar with multiple issues with guests requiring intervention. 

Like most of you, I find that the constant reminders that someone elses place is getting booked more quickly, for less money and more frequently is annoying.....but it is also a reminder that we are merely part of an algorithim that probably needs more fine tuning. Our place is often booked at 90% occupancy so I have learned to just ignore this Airbnb spam. I do believe that Airbnb should look at the relevence of what they send when often your property is being compared to something of a lesser quality. On the rare occasion needed, regarding the CS reps: they do try to be helpful and mostly are, but one does have to explain alot to become understood. 

Like all businesses, Airbnb and us hosts have to stay relevent otherwise we will be overtaken by a new model with less fees and a faster service!

 

Hi Richard,

 

A informative post and well reasoned.

I think the rather annoying spam-like messages are part of the pump process to enlist your/my belief that there is action back at the office.

To be constantly advised that higher prices do not secure bookings borders on 'browbeating'.

One OP has pointed out that most folk do not wish to have their efforts to provide good/great accommodation devalued.

Hello @Sarah977 ,

 

It is always helpful to hear you feedback, so thank you for joining this conversation.

 

CS is obviously a hugely important area for us at Airbnb, especially as the company and community has grown over recent years. And for many of our community our support team are the first point of contact that they have directly with us, so we know how important it is that we are there for you.

 

Over the past few years we have put a significant amount of focus into bringing our CS team inline with the growing size of our community. As you can imagine, it's not an easy task! One of the first things you will have heard about here in the CC was the improvement of easy access to CS and generally making it easier to talk in wide range of ways with our team and I know this definitely helped to reduce the number of questions we saw in here in the CC.

 

Another big focus was carried out last year and mentioned in our Host Q&A was reorienting the support team around topic areas so that the people you reach will have more specific information about the topics.

 

The work we talked about in the Q&A is continuing as we speak, we now have support teams all over the world, which enables you to contact us in multiple different languages 24/7, but as you can imagine this is a huge team and there is still lot more we are working on.

 

Aside from this, I am working on many policies which are regularly talked about here in the CC and have been highlighted as important by hosts. As I mention in the recent Q&A, I've been listening to host feedback and the way you want to be supported more, so I think the work that my team and I are doing this year, will also really help feed into the work our CS team are doing.

 

I will keep you updated.

 

Thank you

 

~Laura

 

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Lead, Airbnb Core Hosts & Community

Here's my Community Spotlight!

What are your favorite notes from your guests?

 

Thanks for your response, @Laura_C. In the meantime, I sent a message to CS 24 hours ago regarding mine and everyone's review ratings going seriously wonky, (Mine shows 14% when I actually have a 100% review rate) received an auto-generated message back saying it was being sent to the correct support team, and have yet to hear a word back. How is this considered to be adequate CS for a Superhost?

Hey @Sarah977 . Are you still having issues with your review rate? I know the team rolled a fix late last night (our engineer was up until about 2am working on it) ... I just pinged them to look into your account and see if there’s another issue. Stay tuned. Sorry that your CS experience wasn’t good - they did indeed enter a bug into the system to alert the engineering team, but I’m sure a call back or more information would have been appreciated. 

 

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Lead, Airbnb Core Hosts & Community

Here's my Community Spotlight!

What are your favorite notes from your guests?

 

@Laura_C  My review rate was back to normal today. But I send a message to support yesterday afternoon and received no response. I guess they figure if it got fixed the message doesn't need to be responded to? I honestly don't expect them to waste time, but they could have just come up with a quick response that they sent out to all hosts about this. And I'd really suggest that somehow the warning messages that we need to pull up our socks should just stop appearing altogether- it's absurd that all hosts received a message that they had something to work on, when in fact it was a system bug, not ours to work on at all. I think about all the hosts all over the world who don't participate in these forums, and how distressed they must have been when they saw that warning and skewed stats with zero message from Airbnb about the bug.

I learned you can’t go by their pricing, first you have bills to cover and you also want a profit. I started out with their prices, got the garbage guest that would leave my house dirty and smelling of marijuana and just distrusting when they jerk off on the walls. I didn’t make enough to cover all my bills either. If you price it right you can pay your bills and make a profit while still keeping it cheaper than staying in a hotel. I will offer the discount they offer on slow months, not many people want to visit the Falls in the winter. I look at it this way, after all the cheap places are rented out mine will be next but at my price and I do very well. I wish you luck. 

Norma Rosa

Elfego1
Level 2
Oaxaca, Mexico

sarah977 con todo respeto debemos  ser justos con los servicios que nos brinda la aplicacion, particularmente a mi me ghan resueltos todas mis dudas ademas que tenemos la oportunidad de evaluar el servicio que ellos nos brindan , la gestion legal  para poder ofertar nuestros espacios es de ellos , aso nosotros podemos obtener algunos ingresos que, dependiendo de la ubicacion de nuestros espacios pueden ser constantes o eventuales , ademas los precios son referencia, podemos cobrar mas si creemos que realmente lo vale y los hosters puedan o quieran  pagarlo, la aplicacion no limita en este aspecto. ( unicamente envia sugerencias de acuerdo a sus parametros de demanda en la zona) gracias bonita tarde

Sergi
Community Manager
Community Manager
London, United Kingdom

Hola @Elfego1 , soy Sergi y me encargo de dinamizar el foro hispanohablante de Airbnb. Te escribo porque veo que participas en el foro inglés pero escirbiendo en español por lo que, quizás, te interesaría más participar en este: El Centro de la Comunidad ya que en él tus publicaciones tendrán más visibilidad, y todo el mundo las entenderá. 

Un saludo. 

Sergi

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Por favor consulta las Normas de la comunidad

Bien dicho! 

Gracias, 

Norma Rosa

Elfego1
Level 2
Oaxaca, Mexico

perdon no se que paso con mi comentario se deformo el contenido

Jane627
Level 5
Sarnia, Canada

Personally to charge 3% fee to the host is quite acceptable to me as a host, after all we get their platform, [advertising ], as well they look after our payment so we never need to worry about that. I vehemently disagree for Airbnb to charge 3% on my cleaning fee, perhaps that should become an issue.

If you request payment of fees for additional services through the "Send or request money" link / Resolution Centre, then both you and the guests don't pay the Airbnb fee. Note, this only works after the guest has made full payment for their reservation.