Yes, it is true that in Europe, price transparency laws have "forced" Airbnb to comply and it is a great thing. The last thing a guest wants is to see a lower price for an accommodation that fits their budget only to go to a later stage and find all the extras added on.
The most obvious steps that Airbnb has done is to show the nightly rate (Effective Nightly Rate) on the first page in the search along with total price as well as the same effective nightly rate (as a result of total price divided by number of nights) on the map search. It is also great that Airbnb has changed their algorithm to put more emphasis on total price vs nightly rates.
However, Airbnb could still do better and I will use your screenshot as an example.
In the upper section of your screenshot (once you select an accommodation), it shows the nightly rate of 17 Euros per night (and put in BOLD in large letters) so you cannot miss it. I will refer to this as the Derived Nightly Rate. This, of course, corresponds to the below nightly rate without the additional cleaning fees and taxes and Airbnb service fees in the breakdown section. The amount on top in BOLD should show the Effective Nightly Rate of 22 Euros.
As more and more people are making bookings on their telephones, this difference adds both confusion and goes against true pricing transparency. I say this as on a mobile phone, a guest sees the "correct" nightly rate of 22 Euros when presented with the range of accommodations shown on the first page when searching a destination as well as the map. However, once a guest then clicks on the accommodation itself, at the bottom of the page is displays the lower derived nightly rate of 17 Euros for the dates chosen and a reserve button in red at the bottom of the screen. For someone who does not know how Airbnb works, they may "think" that this is a sudden discount on the pricing they had just seen, making them more likely to click the Reserve button. Only then do they see that this lower derived nightly rate does not include the extras.
One may say, this is just a slight difference and you see on the next page the total price. However, for a large accommodation that charges say 270 Euros per night plus cleaning fees of 100 Euros plus another 20 Euros for taxes, it is a big difference. If this accommodation was searched for 3 nights, the nightly rate shown on the first page would be 310 Euro per night (270 * 3 nights +100 + 20) / 3, the effective nightly rate. However, once you click on the accommodation, it will say CHF 270 as the derived nightly rate for the dates chosen beside the red Reserve button on the bottom of the screen.
Airbnb is putting this lower nightly rate up for a reason, and that reason is to trick or manipulate a prospective guest to click through the reserve button. If every host was on the same commission basis, this would be just a simple manipulative trick like all OTA's use to try to get potential guests to continue down the booking process. However, not every host is on the same commission model. Every host that uses a channel manger (property managers and hosts with several listings) are forced to use the simplified pricing method where the airbnb service fee, cleaning fees and taxes are included in the rates..
Airbnb is putting these accommodations at a marked disadvantage by using the lower derived nightly rates for all other accommodations using the split fee method.
To be FAIR and TRANSPARENT, Airbnb needs to consistently show the effective nightly rate based upon the total price divided by number of nights and not show in BOLD typeface in a prominent setting a "lower" or derived "nightly rate" not taking into account the extras.
