Why does Airbnb show a higher price for my listing?

[Carina91]

I set the price on my listing but guests have informed me in the past that they are put off by my rate which is usually much higher than what I’ve set my listing for. 

Its my property, I should decide the price to publish my property. Airbnb charges me a fee for listing ( ie service fee/charge) plus the fee charged the guest— Airbnb receives fees from both  parties. Why the need to increase the rate on the list still? You can’t earn 3x — this is unacceptable. 

[Emiel1]

@Carina91 

Airbnb is not changing the price you have set. You can easily check that yourself on your listings. Searching guests see the price including all fees, so maybe there is a confusion. One of your listings offer  the "no refund" cancellation option, then guest even  pay 10% less then the price you have set.

Best regards,

Emiel

[Carina91]

Thank you @Emiel1 — that really helps. However, I have been a guest  and during my stay, there was an issue at the property and I requested a refund. The host refused to pay me what I paid to Airbnb for the nightly stay as his nightly rate was different from mine. For example, I paid £65 and his advertised rate was €60.

In this instance, I paid the service charge and associated costs however, the nightly rate differed. If anything, the nightly rate should be less as I saw it in £ and his offer was in €.

To the best of my knowledge, £ is still higher than € ( albeit ever so slightly by the day).

Kind regards, 

Carina 

[Emiel1]

@Carina91 

Ok, that is a different story then you originally posted. It is true we still (!) get some little more Euro for the same amount in GBP. As a guest by default prices are shown (and payed) in the currency of the country the guest is living in (allthough it can be manually changed to any currency, temporary or permanent)

Currency fluctuation can ofcourse reflect on a refund if exchange rates changed between time  of booking and time of refund. That happens in every international transaction. But it does not mean the listing price has changed by Airbnb. Also the host can be on "Smart Pricing", which means rates dynamically change. But i never experienced Airbnb changed manually my listing price on any of my 5 listings.

You will see a lot of postings in this community people complaining about getting less money than expected. Those listings I  myself looked at in almost any case there was an simple explanation for it (host not aware of discounts set, using Smart Pricing in a wrong way, have "no refund" cancellation option active, offering multiple rooms (or even a whole hostel) in one listing, no fee set for additional guests, no aware of Airbnb Host Service Fee, not aware of Service fee being subject to VAT, etc..

Regurarly have a look at your own listing as a guest and simulate some bookings to see if the booking form  acts as expected, especially after a major change in pricing / discounts etc..

Hope this helps,

Emiel.

[Susan151]

@Carina91  In addition to @Emiel1 's statement, it is also possible that each night has a different price. What you see is the average, plus any fees, however, it is possible that Wednesday night was $50, Thursday night was $43, and Friday and Saturday were both $60. So your refund would be based on which of those nights were being refunded. The cleaning fee is generally never refunded for a shortened stay. I actually don't know how the AirBNB fees are calculated, but I bet the fee is higher on the higher priced nights.

It used be far more transparent, but the EU insisted on some different presentations, so AirBNB took the opportunity to "hide" the cost per night. [Not actually complaining since the screen is pretty cluttered already.]

[Carina91]

@Susan151 @Thank you for your response. At the end, I didn’t actually stay at the property mentioned. It was not clean and tidy so I asked for a refund for the entire stay. It couldn’t have been nightly fluctuations as I should have received a refund on the total sum paid. 

[Carina91]

@Emiel1 @Thank you for you detailed response. It is very helpful. I’ll review my listings as a guest more frequently. 

Much appreciated. 

Kind regards, 

Carina