Gift Cards

[Lauren2491]

Hi there,

Wondering if any of you sell gift cards to your rental properties/businesses?

We are just about to open our first (of many) treehouse rentals and since we are growing our business and plan to have a little online shop for selling merch, backcountry goods, food items etc. we want to be able to sell giftcards that can be used towards any of our products, including rentals. My question is, how do we embed these giftcards into airbnb? Is it possible to create our own codes that we discount the $ amount from the rental ? I imagine they'll be sold in $50, $100, $150, $200 etc. amounts. I guess I just want to know if theres a simple solution for selling gift cards and then making them easy to use for our guests who will book via airbnb? Does this make sense?

[Alexandra316]

@Lauren2491there's definitely no easy way to do it through the Airbnb platform. They used to have a generic Airbnb gift card, but they're no longer doing that and it was not property specific. There's no way to issue a discount code. 

The only way I could think is either getting the guest to contact you before making the booking and you can send them a special offer for the reduced amount, or you could send them a refund for the gift card balance through the Airbnb app after their stay. You would need to record gift card numbers outside of the system so you knew when they had been used. 

Personally, I don't think it's a good fit with the Airbnb platform. 

[Lauren2491]

Thanks so much for your reply - i figured as much. Kind of too bad, it makes it so complicated for the guest. We have no problem keeping track of the cards on our end but asking them to pay full price and then wait for a refund seems a little strange. I guess we can test out a few methods with family and friends and ask for their opinion.

[Alexandra316]

@Lauren2491Yes, I agree, but the only reason I suggested doing it that way to ensure there's no damage before you start sending money back. Any way that you do it is going to be a bit cludgy, as the system isn't set up for it.