I manage around 30 properties under this structure, and not one of my hosts has had an issue with the change. Neither do I.
For the past seven months, guests have largely been seeing the total price rather than focusing on a breakdown of who pays what anyway. And ultimately, without guests booking our properties, we wouldn’t have this first-world problem of debating who pays the fee in the first place.
I also have a number of properties listed across other platforms and have been tracking the fees closely for the past few months, across both split-fee and single-fee structures. From what I’m seeing, Airbnb still comes in lower than platforms like Booking.com in many cases.
Then there’s the insurance and protection element attached to each stay. If we’re asking who should technically carry the platform fee, I actually think it makes sense that the owner does. It is their asset being booked, their income being generated, and their property receiving the benefit of the platform’s protections.
And that brings me full circle.
We can debate whether the fee sits with the guest or the host, whether it’s visible or absorbed into the nightly rate, but ultimately it is a cost of acquiring a booking.
No platform. No guest.
No guest. No booking.
No booking. No revenue.
No revenue. No fee.
For me, I’d rather focus on pricing the property correctly to account for the cost of doing business than get too caught up in which side of the transaction the fee appears on.
