Mobile nightly price higher than on Chrome Desktop.

[Lynette131]

Hello, We are having a problem with how Airbnb displays the nightly price on their mobile app vs on a desktop. If I pick the exact dates on both devices, on the mobile device the price is higher per night as is the cleaning fee. On the desktop it is the correct price. Anyone else have this issue? No luck with Airbnb support.

[Lawrene0]

It looks like a difference in currencies, @Lynette131 . Is your mobile device in Canadian dollars, for instance and your desktop in USD? Go to "Payments and payouts" on your mobile app to check.

[Christine615]

Good catch @Lawrene0  I bet that's it.

[Ann72]

@Lawrene0  You're so darn smart, isn't she, @Christine615?

[Lawrene0]

Nah, @Ann72 , just a Canadian who gets excited to see something is affordable until she realizes it is showing in big green US dollars...

[Lynette131]

Thank you for your help and I apologize for the delay as I was travelling. Your answer solved the problem. It was the setting in my phone. Funny, I get better and faster support than through Airbnb. I am still waiting on a response from them.

Thank you again,

Lynette

[Lynette131]

Thank you for your help @Lawrene0 and I apologize for the delay as I was travelling. Your answer solved the problem. It was the setting in my phone. Funny, I get better and faster support than through Airbnb. I am still waiting on a response from them.

Thank you again,

Lynette

[Jo-and-Ivan0]

This reminds me...it's unrelated but interesting in terms of the price quoted.  A few months ago we were making some minor edits to one of our listings and so we flipped back and forth between Host and Travelling mode on the laptop to review the changes.  We also cleared the browser cache on our laptop after each iteration just to make sure we're seeing the "latest" changes.

Somehow the Airbnb pricing algorithm spotted and interpreted that as our particular property getting a lot of views and interests and dynamically raised the price.  Not what we would earn (as that stayed the same) but the fees they would make off our booking!  It wasn't much, maybe a few dollars difference.

[Ann72]

@Jo-and-Ivan0  They dynamically raised only the service fee, not the nightly booking price?  Wow.  They do state the guest service fee ranges, but it's not clear what impacts the range.  I think you just found one of the factors.

"Guest Service Fees:

"This fee is typically under 14.2% of the booking subtotal (the nightly rate plus cleaning fee and additional guest fee, if applicable, but excluding Airbnb fees and taxes). The fee varies based on a variety of booking factors and is displayed to guests during checkout before they book a reservation."

Note they say "typically under 14.2%" - but in six years of hosting every guest I've had has paid 16%.

I've also heard that guests with a lower rating pay a higher service fee, but I don't know if that's apocryphal or not.  If true, I would imagine some of that fee goes into the Host Guarantee fund.

[Jo-and-Ivan0]

@Ann72 Yes, the net income to us was the same in each case (again we kept clearing the cache)...the total quoted prices charged to the guests got slightly higher all because of upward adjustments to the Guest Service Fees, i.e. what Airbnb pockets.

In this case it wasn't dependent on the guest rating since it was ourselves iteratively reviewing/editing the change each time.

The Airbnb pricing algorithm must have thought our listing was very popular, getting a lot of views, and likely resulting in a booking, so it took advantage of the situation and automatically raised the fees by maybe 1%.  It wouldn't have benefitted us (we're not getting paid more) but a very price sensitive guest may be deterred by paying an extra $5!

[Ann72]

@Jo-and-Ivan0  But that's fascinating!  Someone recently posted asking us for our Airbnb wishlists.  One thing on mine is more easily seeing exactly what the guest sees, the booking breakdowns especially.  

A few dollars in service fees on how many bookings per night around the world is a lot of money.  As a consumer, I would definitely prefer a fixed rate and to know exactly what it is going in.  I wonder how many guests have noticed this variation? 

But perhaps we're used to it.  When I search for airline flights, I always do it first in an incognito window, then book it in a regular window when I know exactly what I want.

[Debra300]

@Ann72,

You are full of tidbits and tips.  Tell me if I am understanding you correctly.  You first search for flight in an incognito browser window so the search engines cannot identify your location or plant a cookie to give you a price based upon your region.  Then you use a regular browser window to make the booking once you've made your selection.  If I am right, please share what differences you've noticed between doing the initial search in a regular browser window vs the incognito window.

[Ann72]

@Debra300  Most people I know do this because, after searching for flights in a regular browser, we've found that when you go to book the flight you've chosen, the price has gone up!  I prefer to fly Delta whenever possible, but I first search on Kayak to get all available airlines' times and prices.  Then I go to Delta to book.  When I've done this on a regular browser I've found that the price was higher than originally stated.  So I start with Kayak in an incognito window, narrow it down, log in to Delta and book.

It's interesting that airlines have figured out how to raise the price on you in this fashion, while Airbnb will tell hosts that, on the one hand, people are looking at your place and, on the other, you should lower your price to attract more bookings.  I don't necessarily want Airbnb to do this form of bait-and-switch, but sometimes I wonder about their grasp of supply and demand economics.