Pricing on airbnb home listing page is wrong and way too high???

[Heather1086]

This is something completely new (and not great) happening to my listing during the past week.  My average nightly price in spring is $300-$450.  During holiday periods the rates goes considerably higher, but in line with the resort the house is located in.  When my listing is pulled up in a search engine (without specific dates) it shows nightly rate $782???  In my open calendar I think the highest price is $575 for spring break. Th3 $782 is higher than my average summer rate!  Any idea how to get that adjusted so that is actually reflects the pricing of the house?  I noticed that once the price shot up the number of people clicking on the house went  way down... just seems like a weird glitch!  Anyone else experience anything like this?

[Robin4]

@Heather1086 

Hi Heather, you may need some help from Airbnb on this one! It is possible that your listing price in a general search is showing as a total price when no specific information is included.

When I look at your listing (and don't do a backflip, the prices are in AU which at the moment is about 75cUS) this is the price that is quoted for one night for one person.......

There it is $1,026.54 for one Guest for one night!

But when I put in free dates for 2 nights for 12 guests look what happens.......

The price comes back to $426.55 AU per night......which is probably what you are expecting to see mid winter in Oregon. 

So if we add those additional fees on top of your nightly charge the nightly amount you see looks like this.....

$426.55 + $295.31 + $178.34 + $109.09 = $1009.29. Although it is not correct it starts to make sense!

Maybe you should get onto Airbnb and get some clarification on this.

When I do a search of my property it shows my net listing amount, not the total with fees and charges.

Cheers.........Rob

[Heather1086]

@Robin4   Thanks for pulling screen shots.  I'll give CS a call and see what they say.  I didn't notice it until I had my sister pull up my listing two days ago to see if it was still live, she was shocked that the nightly rate was showing so high... I was too!  I was thinking that maybe it was averaging my summer pricing (even though the calendar isn't open) so I lowered those prices to see if it would drop the price, but today it was even higher!  Up until last week it was showing my daily rate (without specific dates at around $400 which is accurate.

[Robin4]

@Heather1086 

There are a couple of things which may be disadvantaging you Heather.

1/....You have set as minimum, 1 guest, and as a maximum 14 guests but, there is no difference in nightly room tariff between 1 guest and 14! You should set your nightly listing amount for, lets say 6 guests and have an additional guest fee for each guest above that basic 6. That way you will be able to better structure your cleaning fee for the amount of work that is involved.

2/....A cleaning fee of almost $300 is exorbitant. Most cleaners charge around $40 per hour and a typical 5 bedroom clean should be around 3.5-4 hours. Remember you can't charge general property maintenance in your cleaning fee.....ie: mowing lawns cleaning gutters, pruning hedges. These fall under property maintenance which is a property expense not a rental expense and should not be charged as a cleaning fee.

If I, as a guest was confronted with a $295 cleaning fee I would instantly look for other listings.....that Heather is simply a 'bridge too far' and would put a lot of bookers off! 

Some of the way you are charging your listing may work if your property was on the race line at Whistler, Jackson Hole  or Sundance....and I am not trying to demean your area Heather but I don't think your area has the group pull of a world class ski resort in ski season!

As nice as it is, you might like to reconsider how you charge your listing.

Cheers.......Rob