Removal of Price Breakdown Feature!

[Leila470]

Hi,

Airbnb’s latest update removed the price breakdown feature, so we can no longer see earnings for specific date ranges on the calendar. I relied on this tool to adjust pricing, promotions, and booking rules, and its absence makes managing listings much harder.

After about a month of waiting for support, I learned that the option has been permanently removed, and the suggested workaround—setting the calendar to "request to book"—doesn't make sense since we need earnings visibility before receiving a reservation request. The delay in getting support has only added to my frustration.

What are your thoughts on this? I’d appreciate any insights or experiences you have.

Thank you.

[Patrice13]

@Laetitia31 Except that doesn't work either, because if you try to click it to see the breakdown, it says, "I see you're trying to book as yourself, this is not an option."...

[Inna31]

So, it is permanent…

I predict that realizing how important it is for guests they are now plotting to start charging for something like  “Professional Price Tool Calculator”. Hope I don’t give them an idea. Not to mention to use those comparison pricing maps with booked and unbooked listings which are also gone.

I guess the best we can do for now is to have a dual account to be a “Host As a Ghost Guest”  (HAGG) just to have idea what the end price is for our tenants so we could set up the adequate price on this competitive market. Hug and best wishes to all the HAGGs. 

[Shelley159]

😀 @Inna31 

About the booked & unbooked listings comparison, apparently that was replaced by a magic wand that you can click for price comparisons. I can't see it (so I've lost that function), but it should be visible to US-based hosts on their calendar.

I'm not sure whether it's also available in some other parts of the world, but one or two UK hosts have said they don't have it either.

[Ashley2240]

I agree with you! The way they removed the price breakdown is really frustrating!  I hope they will make an effort to find some way to allow us to see the price breakdown very soon! I hate to have to find other options to move my listings to.

[Mattew2]

Totally agree removing the price breakdown was a huge step backward. It was such a helpful tool for planning and adjusting rates. The suggested workaround doesn’t really solve the core issue either. Really hope Airbnb reconsiders this decision.

[Debra180]

I would like to know the reasoning behind the decision.  A guest is able to see the breakdown before booking but not the host??? Makes no sense to me. And it's frustrating.

[Elizabeth708]

I feel Airbnb will charge what they feel the market will pay. I'm still in disbelief. I'm looking into other platforms for MTR's. We pay too much to Airbnb for them to drop these functions. 

[Sophie810]

I am having the same issue, it's a nightmare.  As a former Pricing manager my role was always to try  and give the sales teams better tools, more accurate information, more data,  so they coud make the best pricing decisions.. In the case of Airbnb they have done the opposite, they seem to be going backward.

No more visibility on detailed pricing means I am having to guess what the guests will pay. The information we are now getting seems to be inaccurate as well. If I drill on the "price per night" to find the "guest price per night"for a selected date range, the guest price per night does not even include discounts and promotions applicable for that period. 

The only work around I found is to open another window with Airbnb without logging in and pretend to be a traveller. That way I can see the effect of price changes on the travellers by switching back and forth between traveller and host window. 

Customer service does not seem to even know either, it looks like the pricing team worked in complete silo without involving anyone else before making this decision. 

C'mon Airbnb, you can do better than that!! 

[Sophie810]

What worries me is that this makes no business sense whatsoever unless they hired  someone in Pricing  who is trying to sabotage in the Airbnb business!  Two years ago I used to be able to set custom  pricing for  a specific week. They took that function away which was already  a step backward.

I read somewhere that  it is part of plan to simplify guests pricing at the expense of host pricing. Airbnb

Intends to hide their 15-20-% service fee and include it into the hosts pricing so the guests will no longer see that their booking includes Airbnb service charge. It will also probably driving prices down overall. Airbnb might also be trying to push people towards smart pricing which for me is more like stupid pricing because my property is very different from other properties in the area so smart  pricing doesn’t work. 

I have been spending days trying to change my prices and have lost all visibility. Interestingly enough in the meantime I managed to get two bookings from another smaller platform so right now I would suggest trying to diversify and research alternative platforms to advertise  your properties. It will not replace Airbnb but can definitely help until hopefully Airbnb brings back the hosts ability to manage their listings. 

[Shelley159]

Hi @Sophie810 

The fact that the price breakdown still shows as it should when you select a single night that doesn't have a custom promotion, caused me to believe that the removal of the price breakdown from multiple night selections wasn't intentional and was something that went wrong during the May update. When I first explained it to the technical team, I got the impression they were really interested in fixing it.

The problem is that the update was in May, it's now mid-July, and it doesn't make sense that a company this size takes so long to fix something so crucial that was accidentally broken. I would've thought that - seeing as the feature was available and working before the update - it would be a quick fix.

[Sophie810]

I read an article saying that the move is intentional and was  done to simplify guest pricing at the expense of host pricing visibility and that they want to hide what the "guest pays" information in order to minimise numbers of hosts /guests trying to go direct. If guests can't see anymore the 15%  service charge taken by Airbnb then they do not ask to deal outside the platform. I am not sure I follow this logic and why that means that the hosts can't see what they are charging anymore either, but you are correct that a company as large as Airbnb cannot have made such a technical blunder without being able to fix it in a matter of days. 

This new calendar/pricing set up is absolutely terrible, I can't even find my rules and discounts any more , the whole thing is so bad that there has got to be a reason that we cannot understand. Perhaps Airbnb is trying to get rid of non professional hosts and only want to work with big travel agents who have a specific software.. ? 

[Shelley159]

@Sophie810 when one searches as a guest now, you only see the all-inclusive price in the search results. The article that you refer to, makes sense in relation to that.

I agree with you that it doesn't explain why hosts, in the back-office calendar, aren't able to see the total of what a guest would pay for a particular date range. We need the feature to price appropriately - it's a pain to keep going back and forth between different tabs or different devices just to see what a guest would see.

But I guess we all already agree on that, we just don't know when or whether it will be fixed ...