Total Cost difference between amending existing booking and creating new one

[Alex482]

Posting here as I'm banging my head against a brick wall with Support in the hope that someone can shed some light on this discrepancy.

I'm currently on a stay and I would like to extend the booking to cover 5 Mar - 5 Apr but I have some coupons I'd like to use. I know they can't be applied to existing/amended bookings so I looked at an entirely new booking (for the same place) to cover the same 5 Mar - 5 Apr dates.

The issue I'm having is that there's a difference in the total that is greater than the Cleaning Fee which is the only difference I can see between the two options.

Amend/extend current booking

Price adjustment £2,067.39

Service fee adjustment £265.27

Price difference £2,332.66

New booking
Accommodation £2165.04

Cleaning fee £87.84

Airbnb service fee £367.88

Airbnb service fee savings -£78.85

Total £2,541.91

Logic says the difference should be Cleaning fee (£87.84) + a bit of Airbnb service fee for this Cleaning fee but the delta is £209.25 and it just doesn't make sense.

Airbnb Support have just been sending responses about differences in Nightly Prices which makes no sense as it's the same nights for both options.

What am I missing here?

Screenshots here:

[Shelley159]

Hi @Alex482 

The difference doesn't seem to have to do with the Airbnb Service fee. This is 265.27 / 2067.39 = 12.82% for the extended booking  and (367.88 - 78.85) / (2165.04 + 87.84) = 12.82% for the new booking. 

I agree with you that if the cleaning fee was the only difference, the second booking should be only 87.84 +12.82% = 99.10 more expensive.

There's something in the nightly rate that's causing the difference. I don't know if it's just me, but I can't see your screenshots at all - is there any extra detail there? If so, please re-post.

At the moment all I can think is that the host could have added a trip length discount, and that your existing booking would qualify for the discount, while the new booking is too short on its own. The new booking is, however, a month, so I guess we're talking about a discount that kicks in when you stay for even longer than that.

[Shelley159]

@Alex482 

I know you want to figure out the price difference, but at a practical level I should mention that you can just message your host and show them what the total quote is for the extended booking. Then when you request a new booking, the host can send a special offer that matches what you would have paid for the extended booking. That's how these sorts of issues are normally dealt with (and if the host agrees to charge the extended booking price, you also won't be charged the cleaning fee). 

[Marcin65]

@Shelley159  @Alex482  This topic is probably not about getting a discount on his stay, but about explaining the mechanism for calculating fees. I am equally confused.

[Pat271]

@Alex482,

I just had something similar happen on the host side. Here are some possibilities that come to mind for your booking:

1) Your host might be using Dynamic Pricing, in which case the rates may be different now than when you booked. Check the room fee breakdown in the new proposed booking vs. the fee breakdown of your original booking. Also check for any other fees and/or tax line items that may have been added between the 2 bookings.

2) In my case, in the extension request from the guest there was a bug in the cost preview that was subtracting taxes from the room rate of the extra days (incorrect), along with subtracting the host fee for the extra days (which was fine). Made zero sense. CS gave me several nonsensical reasons for this so I kept pushing. Then they told me they would get back to me, only to escalate the issue to another “team”.

Meanwhile, the 24-hour clock was running out on my acceptance of the guest’s request, so I went ahead and accepted it, despite the error in the preview. I figured there was plenty of evidence that I had attempted to sort out this issue, and took a chance that I could get it resolved after the booking. Otherwise, I would just eat the taxes. Magically, the software sorted it out in the final reporting of the reservation details. The total for the final, extended booking was correct.

Just a couple of ideas…let us know how it turns out!

P.S. Similar to @Shelley159, I couldn’t access your screen shots.

[Alex482]

Yes I tried adding the screenshots in a number of different ways but couldn't get them to stick. They didn't show anything more than what I can detailed in my message as I just copied the figures from there.

Dynamic Pricing would affect both a New booking and an Alteration as it's the same future nights and nothing to do with the nights already booked. I also happen to know that the Host is not using this feature. They reduced the nightly rate for me and I saw the effect it had on both the New and Alteration options so it's not that.

As I'm the Guest I can't see the Room Fee breakdown like you can do as a Host.

You don't get any more detail other than the lines that I put in my opening message which makes it hard to figure out where the discrepancy is coming from. There's no additional tax line items and anyway, they would affect both options.

I have however finally gotten clarity from Airbnb Support. The reason for the difference is that the Service Fee for New bookings are charged a different % from Alterations.

"New reservation usually has the maximum - 15%."
"Service fee on a reservation alteration decreases to 12%"

Also, Airbnb charges a little extra for FX:
"these cross-currency bookings, the guest service fee will include an additional amount, resulting in a guest service fee of up to 16.5% of the booking subtotal"

[Shelley159]

Hi @Alex482 

But the way I work it out, the service fee was already reduced to compensate for this by giving the 78.85 discount on the new booking ("Airbnb service fee savings").

After discount, both service fees are 12.8%.

[Alex482]

You are absolutely right! So their answer is again complete nonsense.

I will go back to them with this.

There seems to be some sort of difference in the nightly rate but no explanation as to why as it's the same nights for both options.

[Shelley159]

👍my best guess is still possibly a long-term discount. The host would also be able to confirm whether there is one, and perhaps pass it on to you in the form of a special offer.

[Alex482]

Is there a longer stay discount than 28 days because both options are over this length? I have looked on my Host portal and I only see Monthly as the max.

I have actually seen this discrepancy before as a Host when I would play with a New booking vs Alerting a current one.

One interesting fact which Airbnb Support has shared is that when an FXC is involved it uses the FX rate from when the original booking was made if doing an Alteration. As this is GBP/USD this still doesn't explain the ~10% difference in Totals but an interesting fact I thought worth sharing.

[Shelley159]

Hi @Alex482 

Yes the two standard options are weekly and monthly, but if you go to Pricing, Discounts, Set up discounts, you can select up to 12 weeks for a long stay discount (you may need to turn on Professional Tools for this).

Some hosts also use add-on software that can link with Airbnb and other sites to set up discounts.

Let us know if you figure out the price difference, it would be interesting to see whether it was a long stay discount or something else!

[Alex482]

Yes I've seen that option when setting up a Promotion but I am 99.9% sure this Host has not done that as they are brand new to Airbnb and inexperienced. I do speak to them about the listing as I try to help them with the platform.

I have asked them if they know what it could be and they are as unsure as we are.

Unless I can get a screenshot of their side showing that there is nothing then I'm pretty sure Airbnb Support is going to keep fobbing me off using the excuse that they "can't access the Host's settings" when my gut tells me there's something more at play here.

I feel like I want to set up a booking on my own place to run a controlled experiment and show them that there's something fundamentally wrong with the platform.