Feature Request: Filter and sort by TOTAL price—including fees

Cassandra176
Level 10
Richmond, VA

Feature Request: Filter and sort by TOTAL price—including fees

Feature request: please allow users to filter by TOTAL price —and— sort by TOTAL price. Also, you need to display the total price in the app as well as on the desktop searches. With fees varying so much, the listed price ends up meaning NOTHING anyway.

 

Recent True Life Example: I filter for a rate under $100 a night but many listings have fees that double or triple the total price. By using the price range feature I've unknowingly filtered out a stay with a nightly rate higher than $100 but no fees that would end up costing much less overall than others that are listed within my "price range." 

 

Obviously, this feature would be N/A if a person had not yet selected a number of nights. An alternative solution would be to have the fees added to the nightly rate by default, then those fees would be divided up by the number of nights chosen. Because, either way, it would be a much more honest reflection of the cost. 

 

 

AIRBNB—If you care about user experience at all, as I've heard from colleagues you do, please make this feature work more FOR users instead of AGAINST them. Also, you're rewarding hosts who try to game the system by setting artificially low rates with high fees and punishing those that are being straightforward with their prices.

 

Please upvote if you agree.

 

78 Replies 78

I get that there are extra fees that are associated with taxes and maintenance, but it would be super helpful to know the price you will be paying BEFORE adding it to your list, while you are still browsing. It would make choosing that much easier and faster!

Cassandra176
Level 10
Richmond, VA

My point earlier was that when companies don't include fees upfront it's only justified when those fees are dependant on wild fluctuations. Now, sure, a $200 cleaning fee might be legit, but your cleaning service fee isn't fluctuating, and I don't care if I can't afford to stay with fees anyway. My point still stands—fees should be included in the price. 

 

Also, once you favorite a place and add it to a list the total price disappears. So even after you've combed through hundreds of stays across different pages to find ones in your budget, there's no place to compare them on the same map. I'm going to Brooklyn in the fall and I wanted to compare the total price while also factoring in the distance from the location I'll be visiting. (Another feature request: sort by proximity to address?) I don't want to risk exposure to the virus by taking public transportation, so the ease of getting somewhere on foot is worth more money to me.

 

So I'm in my list, right? I'm looking at my in-budget favorites together on a map. But I also need google maps open in a second window to see my destination marked. Then I can't remember if that higher one was actually a lower price or the lower price was higher because I can't tell what the actual prices are!

 

Imagine how deceptive seeing these two listings marked on a map would be:

 

Screenshot 2020-07-10 19.30.53.pngScreenshot 2020-07-10 19.30.43.png

 

Can you see what I'm saying? It's just a series of factors that compound to make the site needlessly cumbersome. The features I'm talking about are really basic and as @Sally221 said, transparency in pricing benefits hosts and guests. 

 

And yes, it is resulting in profit for hosts whose stays ALWAYS come up in a low price range, and a loss for the higher looking but ultimately cheaper listings that never get seen because of it! I can't choose something I don't know about!

@Cassandra176  I totally agree there should be more transparency.  But the cleaning fee does fluctuate in a way - it's a one-time fee.  If you choose a listing that's $125 a night with a $25 cleaning fee, one night would be $150 (forgetting all the other fees), but 6 nights would be $775 - or $129 a night.  That's a 14% difference.

 

Searching by location is a giant headache and I find the algorithm problematic.  I think it's based more on keywords in reviews and the listing description than it is on the actual address.  Virtually every guest I get wants to go to Bar Harbor, which is an hour away.  I can only conclude that part of the reason is security - as these are people's homes, addresses are not disclosed until the place is booked.  (Hosts do have the option to reveal the address, but not everyone exercises it.)

 

People search for many different reasons and have many different needs.  To be honest I'm as likely to stay at a hotel as an Airbnb when I travel, partly because it just seems easier to comparison shop for hotel rooms.

 

@Ann72, Ture. I've stayed at hotels when I get fed up with the Airbnb search function for the many reasons which @Cassandra176 describes. Especially, when you go to an area extremely dense with listings and you have to weed through thousands to get to what you want. 

ABSOLUTELY they should include everything- because airbnb's fees AND the taxes are the same for everyone when looking in an area. So show the nightly rate, and give the USER the choice to search by TOTAL cost, so that you're comparing apples to apples. I HATE how you have to click on every listing to see the total price, we often just use Booking instead because it's SO SLOW to find a place on airbnb. I get it, the host isn't getting all that money, but I'm paying it and I'm the user looking for a place and I shouldn't have to be surprised when I go to checkout.  And I agree there are hosts who put a low nightly fee and then jack up the cleaning cost to compensate. 

@Amy2129  The taxes may be the same inn an areea, but the Airbnb fees aren't. I don't know how their fee algorithm works, but all listings do not have the same percentage of fees applied.

That’s the whole purpose of transparency!

A company should explain simply and clearly how it calculates and applies fees. Can you imagine if the grocery store worked like Airbnb!?! Either there would be total anarchy, or most of us would starve to death!

No seller of any goods or services in any industry should be allowed to operate in this manner—FULL-STOP. 

Helen427
Level 10
Auckland, New Zealand

@Cassandra176 @Emilia42 @Jason1408 @Ann72  

If my memory is correct, ABB were reminded of there legal obligations relating to showing the full price through European Courts of laws, they were here in New Zealand by the Commission Commission who are one of our watch dogs - Maybe try source those articles online.  Or see if they have challenged it...

Sarah977
Level 10
Sayulita, Mexico

@Helen427  The laws Airbnb has to abide by in the EU or other places aren't necessarily what they have to abide by in the US.

Helen427
Level 10
Auckland, New Zealand

Precisely@Sarah377 

 

There's now "Cross Border" legislation and rights that we all encounter bc of the "Wild West of the World Wide Web" that were once simple to undertake before the internet became world wide.

 

 There's always "Grey areas" in laws.

 

I personally wouldn't want to be in @Airbnb situation trying to ensure they adhere to each countries legislation when people can be anywhere in the world 🗺 alas most laws are written in a Template manner across the world with variations.

 

How do we go fwd in a positive manner to address these challenges with @Airbnb for the betterment of all across the world?

 

@Cassandra176 @Ann72 @Jason1408

@Emilia42 

 

and others 

Debra300
Level 10
Gros Islet, Saint Lucia

@Cassandra176,

When I do a search that includes the dates for the stay on the Airbnb home page, the search results display the total price underneath the nightly rate.  

 

Debra300_1-1594570177585.png

 

If I do a search of a location without dates, only the nightly rate is displayed with the search results.  I then have to open the listing, and enter the travel dates to see the total reservation cost.

 

Debra300_4-1594571290365.png  

Debra300_5-1594571383795.png

 

@Yiwei3@Helen427@Sarah977@Emilia42 

 

      

 

 

 

Emilia42
Level 10
Orono, ME

@Debra300 Yes, that is true. But what I think is @Cassandra176 's concern is that when doing a search in an area which is very dense with listings (ex. New York City) the guest is using the price filter to weed out listings that are out of budget. Only the nightly rate, and not the total price, will affect the search results when using the price filter. So you can have a listing with a higher nightly rate but a lower overall total price, because of small additional fees, and that listing would be excluded from the search results if you indicate to search within a specific price bracket. Does that make sense?

Debra300
Level 10
Gros Islet, Saint Lucia

@Emilia42,

Thanks, I have a better understanding of @Cassandra176's request. I can understand @Cassandra176's frustration, but there really isn't a simple way for hosts to recover cleaning costs, especially those who pay cleaners.  It takes the same amount of work effort and supply costs to clean a space for a two night stay as for a 14 night stay.

 

I suppose a host could raise their nightly rate, remove the cleaning fee, and set up special length-of-stay discounts.  For example, an apartment is $75/night, and the cost to clean it is $60. To achieve the $75/night rate for one week, the one night rate would be $135, a two night stay would receive a 22% discount ($270 - $59.40 = $210.60), and the discount percentage would increase by 7.5% each night through the seventh night.  This may be helpful for guests, but it entails a level of math and effort with setting up the discount that I am not sure many hosts are comfortable with doing.

 

On my personal site, the final price is displayed in the search results.  However, the method of displaying final costs is varied among the other OTAs that I have used.  Ironically, a guest must click through three pages before seeing the final cost on one of the most popular global reservation platforms, Booking.com (a company based in the Netherlands).  This seems to fall in line with the EU price notification guidelines, because it's been that way for the three years that I've used them.

 

Expedia does display the total price on the search result page.

 
 

 

The Booking.com search results display a cost for the nightly rate.

 

Debra300_0-1594578415230.png

 

When you click on the listing, there is information about fees and taxes on the details page.

 

Debra300_2-1594578667241.png

 

The price summary and total cost are displayed after clicking the Reserve button to preview the reservation details.

 

Debra300_3-1594578825643.png

 

TripAdvisor also displays total costs on the search result page.

Emilia42
Level 10
Orono, ME

@Debra300 

The trouble is that this is not a problem with the host's rates and fees, it is with the Airbnb search function. This is a direct request to Airbnb to improve the search capabilities and make it a more user-friend searching experience. 

Debra300
Level 10
Gros Islet, Saint Lucia

@Emilia42,

No argument from me on what you've said.  I should have added the caveat, "Working within the confines of the current Airbnb price settings, it is difficult for a host to incorporate the cost of cleaning, and still display a competitive rate for short stays."