Infants not charged?

[Luigi27]

I just realized that infants are not charged with extra guest fees!

Since when Airbnb changed this? And why? Airbnb did not ask me anything about this change! 

I wont accept infants if they don't pay the extra guest fee. This is for sure!

Infants, no matter what, also go to the toilet and use more water and more electricity for the air conditioning. 

How can I charge infants an extra guest fee?

[Jon16]

Unfortunately that is not the case.

I have a two bedroom apartment, I have a fee for the apartment (2 guests) then a fee per extra person.

With Infant - people wish to bring two infants and use the second bedroom free - the bedroom is not really the issue - they wnat to use the beds - washing extra sheets, pillows towels and the extra clean up - it is impactful - especially here where staff are paid $20USD per hour - thus Airbnb  have behaved very badly in allowing this change without proper consultation - instead I ma forcing guest to reveal the truth as they use this method to really book 2 people when they have 4 adults or 2 and two children 

Many people are very untrustworthy.

Jon

[Susan285]

Just got a booking with an "infant" (in Italy)!

Totally new to me, never saw that now kids below 2 years are not triggering the 3rd person extra charge!

This is soooo typically airbnb!! Nowadays just ignoring hosts totally, not even informing .... but I know they will say we get more guests because they make airbnb more guest friendly. The wind has changed.

I wrote the nice family - who ask for baby bed and high chair - that this will be ok for me, if they accept the extra charge which is 15 euro for extra person per night. Actually, now I will go back to their booking request and edit it myself, entering 3 persons. 

I am luckily not depending on airbnb as I have other platforms and my own website and will rent it out anyway.

Airbnb did a research some time ago and probbly found out that most hosts depend on airbnb (the question was: are you making more than 50% (or was it 80%?) with airbnb?) and hence, that they can dictate the hosts their rules.

Not happy with the airbnb new style.

[Luigi27]

Totally agree. My bookings with Airbnb dramaticcally dropped after this ''experiences mess'' they have started. The website looks horrible and it is totally confusing. Added to the infant free of charge thing, makes me invest time on other platforms

[Jiw0]

Yeah.. I like Experiences as a concept, and wish I could actually offer one (not available in my location) but god forbid any potential guest visiitng the site who's not intimately familiar with AirBnB already because it's it a complete confusing mess.

[Susan285]

what means "EXPERIENCES" is that the name of a campaign of airbnb?

Also new is: when you pre-approve, the system allowes you to block the dates for 24 h.

I can forsee airbnb's next step: the dates will be blocked for 24h...

[Landhaus-Osborne0]

This is unbeleivable!!! Airbnb made changes to host controls....or should I say lack of control. We noticed that a guest booked with a 4 year old and 1 year old, but the 1 year old was not calculated in the fees!! Read up and:

** Infants (under 2 years of age) will not count toward your guest maximum. You can specify whether your home is safe or suitable for infants, and note the maximum number of infants you can accommodate, in your House Rules.

** Travelers won’t be charged additional guest fees for infants or pets. If you want to charge an additional fee, put those details in your House Rules and collect the fee using the Resolutions Center.

How dare Airbnb change this without warning us. What are they playing at lately? We used to love working with Airbnb, but now they are a nightmare to work with - just take our money and don't care.

We can't even contact them.

We have now just dissallowed infants as we do not accept that we should provide them a free holiday. They usually entail extra cleaning as parents let them get their sticky fingers everywhere and bins get overfilled with hundreds of nappies. Oh and the crying.

And the best thing is that now 'Rate Parity' has been banned here, we can just up our prices on Booking.com and get guests with infamts to book there instead of Airbnb.

Rant over....until the next time Airbnb messes us about again - probably soon....

[Kylie12]

It appears that opionions are varied on this topic.

I am very displeased by this change - that I was not made aware of.

I discovered this change when I looked into a booking after guests left. I noticed that the three families that booked together, had more infants (for free) than they did adults.

Infants do not necessarily cost less to house than an adult.

I have a spa bath - which the guests filled multiple times in a day to bathe thier children - I know this because they complained that the hot water system wasnt heating up fast enough. They did a lot of washing (proven because they used an entire box of washing powder). I'm sure this meant the clothes dryer was used more too. The pebbles from my gardens were thrown around the lawn with little pebble mountains about the yard. They filled two rubbish bins and left more bags on the ground, filled with disposable nappies (my neighbours complained about the smell). My walls were marked, tiled floors chipped, timber flooring scratched. Beds were moved into different rooms, as well as other furniture, and every bed had been used (I can sleep 16) yet the payment was for 5 adults because they booked all thier children as infants. These people also left me a low star rating, with many complaints including that there were no cribs, that there was no dining table inside for all the kids to sit at (my discription says no dining table inside). I got a low star rating and they cost me more in clean up, gardening and rubbish removal.

If anyone knows if there is a way to change this NO charge for infants, I would be very grateful in hearing helpful ideas.

I cannot simply put my prices up because then my nightly price will appear too high to interest guests looking at booking that are all adults and no infants. I did try stating in my discrption you must pay for infants. It did not work.

[Landhaus-Osborne0]

This is exactly our experience; that infants create work and therefore it is OUR POLICY to charge.

I would recommend you do what we have done. We have marked all our listings as not suitable for infants. We get enough bookings, so don't mind if we miss the Airbnb bookings. Also guests can book on other channels with infants.

If you still want to take bookings with infants you can do so with charging, as although guests cannot "Instant Book" if they enter Infants and your listing is listed as not being suitable - they can get a 'Rservation Request'. You can then send a 'Special Offer' which includes your surcharge for infants.

[Kylie12]

I think I will need to look at advertising on other sites, as you mentioned. Currently I am only with Airbnb. Thank you for your advice 🙂

[Landhaus-Osborne0]

@Kylie0You should never "keep all your eggs in one basket". There are plenty of other sites out there, each with their positive and negative points. List on as many as you can handle.

[Luigi27]

My experience is that I get more troubles with infants: damages, bed with pee and vomit and so on therefore I will alwayrs charge them. You just need to deactive the option on Airbnb. Then you have to enforce stricter rules and stricter deposit and compensation standards.

There is no point to argue with some of those kind of irrespectuful guests. Just start charging them for any minor scartch and damage. Very easy with Airbnb. You need to be fair, honest and smart of course. cheers 

[Kylie12]

Thank you Luigi for the advice

🙂

[Lisa-and-Ben0]

Hi Luigi can you tell me how I can make infants pay on today's  airbnb dashboard?

[Robin4]

@Lisa-and-Ben0 

Lisa, or Ben, you can't. Airbnb do not have an option to charge for children under two , they don't now, and never did allow that option. Airbnb's TOS state......"Infants (children under 2 years old) aren't counted as guests when you're booking a reservation and don't incur any extra costs". That has been the case during the 4+ years since I have been with Airbnb.

Luigi was here for a brief time on the CC a couple of years ago and crossed swords with a few contributors with his 'black is white' statements on how he could manipulate the operation of the platform. 

If Luigi was in fact charging for children under two he was doing it outside the platform and asking his guests direct for a child fee! 

Don't get your hopes up guys!

Cheers......Rob

[Lisa-and-Ben0]

ok but before airbnb would simply count a child as a child no matter what the age was and they would pay that extra guest fee which was fairer for those of us who stand out by offering special baby items like cribs, high chairs, toys, beach toys, kid dinnerware and cutlery etc etc... it’s unfair to us a host not to mention infants under 2 make a real mess and a lot of time damage or break things. The fee used to cover wear and tear and damages.. now what al I supposed to do? ( in my region they put this new policy in effect just last year)