Long time host here, 4 years and a Superhost. Decided to do some travelling and became quickly frustrated at the airbnb platform to inacccurately offer filters that completely fail at their intended purpose. Let's say I want to book a place for $150 or less. Well I'm shown a variety of places that almost all now seem to follow the VRBO model of baiting with a low price and switching to the true price once the user has clicked a property. Thus the entire point of the filter is moot as a $50 a night property might very well be $200 when fees are added in, yet that property will still who up and IN FACT bypass the filter because the misleading "nightly price" is quite a bit higher. I actually saw a whole home listed for $12 a night, but by the time the cleaning fee and other fees were added in, it's $200 a night. This is disingenious and dissapointing and not what I expect from a company such as Airbnb.
I fail to see how any hosts or guests benefit from this bait and switch tehcnique and clearly the $12 a night work-around is excactly that, a host gaming the system to be seen. But does that lead to more bookings? No, it frustrates the guest and suggests to the very guest that it is the host and not the platform that is gaming the system. When in fact, in some cases it is both. I do neither, and I want my listing to show up at the price people will pay (once dates have been included), that actually fits within the parameters of their search filter, and so at the end of the day we all look honest and not shady, which this practice certainly suggests.
