We have a huge problem with our city and them using our Airbnb listings against us. The city has now enacted a 7 day minimum STR rental period which it is now vigorously enforcing. The city is currently fining $1000 for advertising that shows less than their 7 day minimum on the Airbnb listing website. In a few weeks the newly enacted city fines will be $2500 then $5000 with no warning and forfeit of the city STR permit upon the $5000 fine.
The STR owners in the city are happy to only book 7 day rental agreement reservations for all guests as we don't want more than one guest group a week anyway. However, the vast majority of our inquiries are between 2-5 nights. We need to capture these 2-6 days inquiries from travelers in order to try to capture the maximum revenue for the 7 day period.
For example, my standard nightly rental rate is about $1800 night. I am fine capturing two, three, four, etc nights total rate and give the guest the whole week for that rate of $3600 (2 nights) to $10800 (6 nights). But the only way to find out what the guest is willing to offer in terms of total nights they want to pay for up front is to allow inquires of less than 7 nights to come through to us. By allowing this, then we owners can maximize our total rate for the week long booking, VRBO gets the highest commission for each booking, and the city gets the highest TOT tax from the booking. Everyone wins and everyone is compliant with the city's STR rules. The travelers win too by getting some number of free nights when they are told they actually get the whole week with their booking.
I also list on TripAdvisor with the exact same listing, the city has no problems with it because the TripAdvisor vacation rental listings do not display any minimum stay on the surface that the traveler can see. The traveler just puts in their inquiry to the property owner and the owner can negotiate the best possible deal to capture the booking. All the minimum stay filters inputted by the property owner are behind the scenes and not displayed to the traveler...it works perfect.
Airbnb listings are displayed to travelers two formats as best I can tell. Which format is displayed is totally random apparently. One listing display format does not show the "Minimum Stay" at all and is 100% compliant with our city rules. But the other listing display format does show the "Minimum Stay".
When Airbnb displays the "Minimum Stay" when a traveler is looking at the property listing, the city uses this against us to fine us and cancel our STR permits. They do this even with me clearly stating in my policies section on the listing that all bookings are for a minimum of 7 days. Please allow us to choose to remove the minimum stay from being displayed to travelers on our listing page. It is fine if it is an option we can select since you already have the listing display format that does not show the "Minimum Stay". I don't see any downside to removing it altogether and only nightmares for all of us property owners by forcing it to be displayed. Does it really serve any purpose...why not let property owners choose if they want to get all inquiries or only inquiries over a certain minimum stay. The hosts internal minimum stay settings still filter all inquiries perfectly fine.
We are business partners and also partners in the support and promotion of short term rentals. This minor fix that your site already has a listing display format that has no "Minimum Stay" shown is a massive help for us property owners and is something we desperately need in order to have a viable method to rent our properties and capture maximum revenue. Without this fix, all Airbnb property owners in our city will immediately lose at least 2/3 or more of our bookings and Airbnb will also lose all the associated commission revenue as well. This fix doesn't just help the Airbnb community in our city of Indian Wells, it will transcend all your locations around the world and help all your hosts remain in compliance with the ever changing, challenging, and in many cases downright draconian city policies.
Let's work together to make our partnership stronger and the promotion of STR's more positive than ever before. This can be an easy win win for Airbnb and its homeowner partners as well as strengthening our business relationship which will help drive your growth upward. This is my hope anyway with this issue and hope it is your goal as well.
Please let me know if you need any further clarification from me if I am not explaining this clearly. Thank you for your time and I very much look forward to your reply to me on this so very important issue affecting all of us.
Matt - Dorado Vida Estate - Indian Wells, California
