Guest Fee waived but HOSTS now automatically charged 15% commission by Airbnb

[Melanie818]

Email received from Airbnb September 2nd 2020

Starting 11/1/2020, we’ll be switching your listings to simplified pricing—a new service fee structure that gives you more control of your final price.

What’s changing Today, there are 2 service fee structures: split-fee pricing with the service fee shared between hosts and guests, and simplified pricing with the entire service fee covered by the host.

After 11/1/2020, split-fee pricing will no longer be available.

That means a 15% service fee will be deducted from your payouts, and no fee will be charged to your guests—what you set is what guests will pay. Why we’re making this change We introduced simplified pricing last year, and hosts who tried it out and priced competitively across websites got an average of 17%* more bookings. We heard that removing the guest fee made it easier for hosts to price competitively, and we saw that guests preferred to book places that didn’t have a guest fee.

This is especially important for your listings, since guests usually don’t pay fees on other booking platforms in your region. What will happen next?

This change will happen automatically on 11/01/2020 and will be applied to any bookings that you get after that date.

We’ll send you a reminder 7 days before this change, along with a guide to walk you through changes you may want to make to your prices. Here’s a summary of what will change:

• Your service fee settings will automatically change on 11/1/2020 for all your listings
• We’ll deduct a flat 15% host service fee from each payout and won’t charge a guest service fee
• This won’t affect any existing bookings you have and will only apply to any bookings you get after 11/1/2020
• Using Airbnb after 11/01/2020 means that you’ve accepted this new service fee structure

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Julia3703 its in payments and payouts where one of the tabs is then service fee. As you say  it may appear later

[Julia3703]

OK, I’ve double checked and it’s not there. It must appear later. Thanks for your help. Julia 

[Eagle-Comforts0]

Hi @Mike-And-Jane0 

I have been looking for the setting you have spoken about to try and slip the fee as we are currently paying 17% + VAT and would like to split this with guest, could you please help, I can’t seem to find this under payout in account settings.

I have called air BnB 5 times today and I don’t think any of them had any clue, they just kept referring me to arrivals on the website which were not even about my question.

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Eagle-Comforts0 It should be in your account (not listing).  If you use software to connect to Airbnb it may well be that you have to use the simplified pricing model (ie 15%+VAT). Also the option for simplified pricing may only be available for those hosts who have switched on professional tools.