20% NEW LISTING DISCOUNT

[Ray1437]

I posted my 1st listing on Sat and received my 1st reservation today.

I applied the 20% daily discount and a 30% discount for a monthly stay or more as recommended.

The buyer reserved the space for 30 days.

Looking at my payout the buyers received both discount for a total of 50% in discounts.

I thought the discounts were mutually exclusive.

Is this the way is is supposed to be?

How can I avoid this as I have 2 pending reservations of 30 days or more.

[Ray1437]

Correction.

The 20% discount was shown as a "new listing discount".

[Sarah977]

Discounts are cumulative, not mutually exclusive. And you can't change a price on a guest after they've booked, so you're just going to have to bite the bullet and consider it a expensive learning curve.

You could try contacting Airbnb and pleading new host ignorance and see if they would cancel the bookings without any penalties to you, but that's probably a long shot.

I would suggest that as a new host, you turn off Instant Book until you get more familiar with how everything works. If these guests had had to send a booking request for you to either accept or decline, you would have seen the payout and caught the problem before the booking was confirmed.

@Ray1437

[Sarah977]

P.s. The pricing suggestions by Airbnb are basically ignored by experienced hosts. Airbnb's interest is in having guests book so they can charge their service fees. They aren't interested in whether you make a worthwhile profit or not. @Ray1437

[Anonymous]

 It's crazy that Airbnb even allows Instant Book to be activated for first-time hosts. So many cancellations and customer-service calls could be spared if this feature were blocked until, say, 5 consecutive successful bookings.

@Ray1437  Before considering stays of over 30 days, you had better make sure you're very familiar both with how Airbnb works and how Florida law applies. Airbnb only collects the first month's payment at the time of booking. If they aren't able to collect payment for the next period, the only thing they can do is cancel the remainder of the reservation. But what if the guest refuses to leave? They may be protected by tenancy rights, and require a lengthy and expensive legal process to evict - none of which Airbnb can help you with.

Scammers and squatters are very well aware of this, and as a new host who hasn't quite learned the ropes, you're going to be the prime target.

[Inna22]

@Anonymous interesting thought. I made mistakes with new listings even when I was an experienced host. Forgot to raise price for New Year, have not had a chance to tweak something and a reservation came in etc. It does not help that the guests who usually book a place with no reviews are inexperienced themselves. This is a great idea- no IB for until first three reservations are made and first stay takes place