Price changes in service fee after logging in

Christopher1498 · ‎06-09-2022

Hey there,

I already contacted airbnb support with this issue but no concrete answer other than "we checked, it is all normal". In another thread here some users pointed to differences in taxes based on the country of origin or currency applied. This can be partially ruled out in this case since two accounts have been used with the same applied parameters.

https://shareimg.io/ib/wQS2dT4Xrv

The bottom picture depicts the total price before logging in, the middle one after logging in and the last, bottom one, the price after logging in with a new recently opened account. Both used accounts are accounts with both identical credit cards (regarding name and issuing country) and home country.

How can that difference in service fee can be explained? I noticed that phenomena a couple of times now already and as a frequent airbnb user I am not amused thinking I might have overpaid several times already without noticing as a consequence of apparent dynamic pricing.

Thanks for sharing any thoughts!

Huma0 · ‎06-09-2022

@Christopher1498

Sorry I can't see the prices on your screenshots as they are very small, so I don't know if this is going to be relevant, but I do remember quite a few hosts discussing the variations in service fees here a while ago.

The Airbnb guest service fee has always been variable as long as I remember, rather than a fixed percentage. What these hosts observed (when trying to book as guests) was that when they looked from an account of a seasoned guest, i.e. one that had already booked a few stays, the service fee was higher, but with a new profile, it was lower.

Their theory was that Airbnb keeps it lower to lure in new guests but bumps it up for users that they feel they have already reeled in, i.e. regular users.

Christopher1498 · ‎07-09-2022

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this, Huma.

This would make sense for me and this dynamic price feature could be a logic thing to do for Airbnb which could already be observed before with Amazon (they do it way more carefully though, cookies, IP etc are used to identify the user even before logging in).

However, it makes the booking process more complicated. Now, after checking for price differences, one has to always open a new account which also comes at the risk of being rejected by the host since there are no reviews yet linked to the new account. Also, this begs the question whether frequent airbnb customers should be in fact treated worse then new customers with respect to price.