News about the co-hosting split payout feature

[Airbnb]

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.

[Lee100]

I like to use original co-hosting. C0-host would like to receive money per percent per booking despite Host and Co-host commute outside airbnb.

[Steve625]

Why shut it down?? Just don't allow new subscribers until it's rebuilt. Very bad to reverse a feature that many of us rely on. Bad bad bad!!!

[Simon478]

This is just a nuisance.  The reason given for the change doesn't make much sense.  It is causing us a problem and exposed to additional expense.  I am sent instruction which doesn't appear to work.   It tells me to go to 'payout preference' and then click 'add payout routing rule' under payout routing rules', but this doesn't exist.  

[Alexa64]

Airbnb has been nosediving drastically over the past year. With features like this falling off, your competitors are looking better and better

[Carole325]

Thank you for at least giving us an option to continue having Airbnb seperate and pay the co-host. That is helpful. I will be sad to see the co-host platform not as prevelant is it has been. 

[Niku-and-Erma0]

My co-host uses Payoneer. How do I put his payoneer at the payout routes? AIrbnb accepts only my payoneer account when I go through that process. Also, what too many other people mentioned already, how do we split the cleaning fees? 

[Susan--HostyMosty-0]

When I first received the email noone at Airbnb even knew about the upcoming changes...this is causing me to redo my entire business model...it is such a nightmare I have to change my service agreement with all my clients...explain to them that I have to invoice them seperatly for cleaning. What a mess. I agree with everyone on here...you arent taking care of the people that support your business. Without the hosts and the cohosts Airbnb will just be another website to park your prperty!

[Al82]

Not so bad for me because I already pay my co hosts a percentage of the earnings but I can see how it would be really difficult for people who aren’t paying on a percentage basis. 

[Jay305]

So the logical solution would be to keep a fixed payout/cleaning fee routing option on the account level to at least make this less painful for us hosts, but it doesn't seem like you guys could give us that. Not having a way to separately route cleaning fees, means our hosts and our cleaners will be paid slower, and you added at least 10 extra hours of work to the end of my months. Add a cleaning fee/fixed payout method to the account payout preferences,  not hard! Just have it be the same as the co-hosting was, but allow us to do both percentages and fixed amounts (not one or the other), and let us dictate which order (fixed amounts first then percentage or Visa versa).

[Avi-and-Vered0]

Very an.noying and interrupting the daily work and income volume. Well maybe not for you.. people won't close their listings due to that. For us it will be more taxes to pay and less accuracy for our income (no option for Cleaning fee separately). As people here said before me, leave it like this for existing hosts until you find another solution for us. It's only fair

[Philip249]

So basically you did not say why you were ending the co-hosting payments.  Which to be clear, is the only reason to have the silly "co-host" feature anyway.  Please state the real reason, like "the National Real Estate Association of America gave us a load of money so they can manage more properties", or "we were sued and it wasn't worth keeping".  It's easy, and not expensive to add the bit of code to your programming and keep it in place.  I both host and co-host.  I love the split feature.  It gave a sense of "ownership" to co-hosts, and makes paying taxes much easier.  Too bad your going backwards with your business model.  You seemed like a forward looking company.

[Esteban85]

I don't undestand why do you do it.

You may have good reasons, for me this is just a really a bad news.

[Ryan368]

I literally just received a notification about this in the app for the first time today and it is getting shut down tomorrow. That's pretty awful. You guys make a boatload of money of hosts and you're now going to take away a principal feature of your platform just "because". 

[Alexis187]

Its only frustrating. I try to add the new payout methode (payoneer) but the system dont work with the existing payoneer accounts. This was an old error on the webpage but wiht the new cohost reglements it beomces more critical for the users like me. Today is the last day and the support team cant find a solution about one week. For this kind of changes, all the systems need some testing and crossing time. This rush and untested changes make only the users angry and cause only loss. I call the airbnb to extend the crossing periode and solve the technical problems before change the system.

[Holly191]

This is poorly thought out. We preferred AirBNB over the other listing services primarily because of the ability to split the payment with a co-host, and more importantly, to have the cleaning fee go direct. It complicates our lives and taxes.  Try again?