Remove the guest fee

[Richard531]

When you go to "Insights," you are presented with a list of items Airbnb suggests to make your listing more appealing.  For many reasons, it's wise to listen to them and do a heck of a lot of what they say.  

But that brings me to one of the items I'm really struggling with.  Removing the guest fee.  

We have recently seen a couple listings significantly tapping the breaks on throughput.  In order to remove that one last barrier to any reason why Airbnb wouldn't push our listings, we're looking at Removing the guest fee.  But we REALLY don't want to.  

Reasons to not:

1. It confuses guests into thinking the host is making more money than they are
2. When a refund is warranted, it's not clear how much the hosts' actually got paid to determine the correct refund amount
3. Staff members see an inflated figure and make incorrect assumptions on what their owners are making
4. Guests may even go so far as to 4-star your 'Value' if they think we're making that much money - or worse - an overall 4-star review
5. Guests have higher expectations/are more critical when they think the owners are making the entire amount
6. Guests might not as easily understand Airbnb's PAID role to mediate/handle payments/provide Aircover, etc.
7. At a glance, some seasoned guests may actually think the price is too high because they assume taxes/fees are still coming after the search step and may opt to click away

The reason to Remove the guest fee?  Only because Airbnb suggests that we do.  And when you go to the details of how this whole thing works, Airbnb never explains how/why to do it or who it benefits.  It reduces transparency. . .  I just see zero upside.  Not for us and not even for Airbnb, really.  

Why not have Airbnb just roll out a consistent way to depict pricing for all hosts/guests and put us all on a level playing field?  I don't like stressing about an aspect of booking/pricing display like this.  It's one thing for a host to be given an advantage for allowing IB, Superhosts status, hosts that have more calendar availability, Rare Find, etc.  But this whole topic adds a level of anxiety that I just don't need.

Anyone else as deep into the weeds as I am on this sort of thing?

[Genaro18]

Thank goodness for a host like yourself WILLING to do this deep dive in the first place.

It's up to us, here, in the best of the forums, the seemingly independent "Host Circle" to address the real meat of what hosting is like because frankly  im  done with the everyday whining about hosts with 4.9 reviews terrified over a guests imagined wrong doing and future potential 3 star review . . . gasp . . . .I digress. 

You are touching on the IT factor of the last several weeks of hell many are going through with headlines, titles, categories, WTF, OMG, silliness that is not professional - so ABB can still manage to look "cool" like they used to be - and as someone smarter than me said on this forum "ABB are desperately trying to stay relevant and different while everyone catches up to them". 

So what's my answer? I didn't know the question was hiding where you found it, and now I am going guns blazing to do what my strength is, analytics, logic based marketing and predictions, and blunt, direct implementation of policy. 

I will be sticking around since I believe this is a brand new post

Any one out there confused by the poster or think its' complicated? Yea, it's DESIGNED that way, and you'd be well advised to read it a few times, go to insights, and get to the real stuff. 

THANK YOU @Richard531 

[Vanessa1676]

Off to do a deep dive and understand the ins and outs. I too, wish AirBnb made the fees clearer for guests - our overall price is much higher after the AirBnb fees are added, meanwhile they want us to lower our nightly price so we make less. That’s not a workable solution.

[Rhonda301]

I saw this earlier and deep dived into and said where is the real explanation and when I saw nothing it’s up there with them suggesting me get a crib when I don’t allow children as it’s pretty standard where I am. Nashville itself is experiencing super wild parties so all hosts are guarded.  I simply set it aside as I did smart pricing. 

[Loretta126]

Agreed.  Vrbo shows a nightly rate, then the total for your stay when you search.  Admittedly, the total is in small print under the nightly rate, but at least it's there.

The upside for AirBnB is they don't have to deal with showing service fees to guests so they look better and refunding fees is now hidden from the guests because it's between the host and AirBnB.  ABB will also be more competitive with Booking dot com, since BDC doesn't show a guest service fee, either.

[Richard531]

Could perhaps a member of the Administration Staff shed some light on this?  I want to do exactly what Airbnb wants me to do 99% of the time.  But for the reasons outlined above, I really feel uncomfortable making the pricing less transparent for the guest.  

Can you tell me why I should do this?  Or how much it matters/doesn't matter?  I realize this is super deep in the weeds and many aren't even thinking about this granular nonsense, but it would behoove the whole community to have a voice of authority tell us what we should do.  

And based on the name of this topic, it'll be easily referenceable going forward. 

[Gillian166]

 effectively you are putting your prices up 13%, so you'll look more expensive in search. 

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Gillian166 You do not seem 13% (I thought it was 15) more expensive when searching in Europe as all fees have to be shown. However incorporating the Airbnb service fee into your rates in some countries might tip you over the VAT threshold.

[Gillian166]

@Mike-And-Jane0  i think it's between 13-15%? it's a bit loosely worded.  actually just doing the calculation it looks to be a smidge over 15%.  it's like 15.5%

for us hosts to incorporate the fee means we are assuming all the risk, because we might lose bookings. has anyone ever tried it? next year when we have our other rooms online that are all identical i might be able to do a/b testing. 

[Helen744]

@Richard531 this brings up a lot of mini issues . we all have to do basically a bit of a valuation between our prices with our other fees and our need to have gusts at the moment . the guests can choose certain price ranges and these include cleaning fees . so in other ways it is a good idea to just hover in a slightly lower price bracket when you are busy building full calendars . This is why new listings take market share because initially they are 20 per cent below the general market .Isee no problem with your cleaning fee because of the size and quality of your property . Its a balance . I am taking a cut at the moment to get bookings but it goes against the grain. I usually charge an extra guest fee but have dropped it temporarily but reduced my guest number to four. This is dangerous I think but I will put the extra guest fee but at a reduced rate . In my type of house the cleaning fee being non existant or less would make the whole thing non viable.its a safety , but saying that I do remember someone cancelling because of additional fees not being clear .they are still not clear but people are used to them but when cancelling they expect to get back all they have paid ,which is why i use ' a flexible cancellation policy' . This is not useful to most people but negotiable with IB .H

[Richard531]

@Helen744 @Gillian166 @Mike-And-Jane0 @Loretta126 @Rhonda301       

I really appreciate the thoughts.  It sounds like it's hard for anyone to really justify going the route of Removing the guest fee.  I don't even think we have collectively been able to deduce why Airbnb is encouraging us to do so. . .  Unless I missed it?  Still begging the Admins to maybe weigh in? 😊 The whole subject just adds a silly option to the already always-contentious discussion around prices/transparency that nobody really seems to want or need.  

One of the things I didn't bring up in my OP was that an absolute non-starter we have is arranging reservations under any cancelation policy accept STRICT/NON-REFUNDABLE.  The way we structure our listing turns/maintenance/0% vacancy, there's just no way that we can handle people canceling simply because their "plans change."  We'd upset (or even lose) our crews, and be working double the hours to triage guests/fill the canceled nights.  Even at STRICT/NON-REFUNDABLE, you'd be surprised how many guests think they're initially in the driver's seat when they attempt to cancel because they no longer "feel like going."  Once they realize they are on the hook, they all end up going and have a great time anyway.  LOL!   It's hard work to get off your butt and go on vacation!  I get it!

Back onto the subject of Remove the guest fee. . .  

I guess we'll just keep going at the status quo and not Remove the guest fee.  In order to close the gap that I discussed earlier with some lagging listings, we ended up absolutely firesale-ing the few open days we had left.  They started to finally move.  Wow!  News flash!  All guests care about is money!  LOL!

[Mark116]

@Richard531   I would guess Airbnb would rather get the fee from the host so that they don't have to deal with guests who are upset they don't get the service fee back.  If the host pays everything then Airbnb's fees are invisible to the guest.

As far as the rest of the OP, I have not found that most of Airbnb's suggestions are in my interest.  Airbnb wants me to have a 'flexible' cancellation policy so guests can cancel up to 24 hours before their stay, and wants me to take long term guests while not offering any legal protection against people claiming tenant rights, wants me to accept pets while making it difficult to get damages from same, wants me to accept up to 5 infants at no charge to my 2 bedroom apartment....

All of these are designed to increase Airbnb's gross volume=profits, nothing to do with helping me as a host.

[Branka-and-Silvia0]

we are paying 25% VAT on the Gross earnings (before Airbnb fee deduction ) + we have a threshold and if we earn more then we can't pay lump-sum tax but have to run books which is pretty complicated here. 

No chance I would willingly agree to pay a guest fee.

[Loretta126]

Same as in St Lucia - there is a revenue threshold for VAT and your books get more complicated and the government reporting takes a lot more time if you go over it.