Service fee charges

[Hellen8]

This service fee business is doing my head in.  I read the information supplied and it doesn't really help me understand what's going on. 

So I went into my listing pressed preview listing and put some fake dates in.  The service fee read  $36.89 for 2 nights.  This got me curious so I went into search as a guest and clicked on my own listing, did the same dates and it read $63.86 for the service fee.  Well that really disturbed me.   I then looked at other listings in my area that were similar to my listing, put the same dates in and the service fee was nearly half that

I contacted airbnb and asked them to explain and they said it was a sliding fee, what ever that means.  But the upshot was, he couldn't explain.  

Can anyone shed light on this for me please.  It's very confusing indeed

[Anna1607]

So that everyone is clear, the cleaning rate IS absolutely included in the total amount that Airbnb charges a percentage of, as Service Fee to guests. I was shocked to see how high the guest 'service fee' is compared to previous years, which is over 15% for our UK listing. From the Airbnb terms:

''This fee is typically under 13% of the booking subtotal (the nightly rate plus cleaning fee and additional guest fee, if applicable, but excluding Airbnb fees and taxes). The fee varies based on a variety of booking factors and is displayed to guests during checkout before they book a reservation.''

Airbnb, are you listening? Hosts are not happy about this sly fee increase or the complete vagueness of 'typically' or 'based on a variety of booking factors'. It's an insidious way to charge guests more, often making Airbnb stays too expensive and sending them (including myself as a guest) to other booking platforms. Hosts are in fact the (only) commodity Airbnb has, so these policies need to be acceptable to us for a sustainable system.

It makes no sense that the cleaning fee is included in the service fee calculation, as this is arranged and offered entirely by the host at no profit to themselves. Airbnb has no involvement in the provision of cleaning, an essential part of being able to offer accommodation. So why does Airbnb deserve to make commission profit on cleaning and laundry services that in many cases, such as our listing, is provided by external staff? And why should a guest pay a service fee for cleaning?

This may seem like a small detail but if you think about this applied to millions of bookings per day, the extra profit to Airbnb is significant, at the sacrifice of guests who have to pay inflated prices and hosts who are then encouraged by Airbnb to reduce their rates to compete. A mess. Unfortunately, this reflects the increasing nibble-nibble greediness in Airbnb policy that favours professional hospitality hosts/hotels and penalises individual hosts who rent out their own homes when they are away (the bread and butter that Airbnb was originally built on and abandoning) Most hosts don't even notice or consider this.  Phew!