Other Standard Fee and changes

[Zacharias0]

Gasp! Has anyone else noticed that AIRBnB is allowing you to automatically put in a standard line item fee for : linens, resort fee, community fee or management fee. I suppose this is because they are putting resorts and small hotels on their sites that they want all the pricing to be up front. Most of those fees 90% of hosts wont use. Its nice to have the fees upfront, but if youre a guest booking via AirBnB there are A LOT of fees that you wont see at standard hotels. I tried to book my place and even though Id receive $672 for a monthly private room rental the guest would pay $869. I worked out the cost breakdown on my end and theres about $100 missing in the equation. Point is the fees can dissuade someone from booking even though the guest may not realize youre getting $200 less than what they are paying and you'd still have to pay at least an additional 10 % in taxes to the government.

Also, has anyone else noticed that if you looked at your previous reviews you dont know which listing they are tied to and that if you clicked on someones profile you have no idea what listings they manage. Is this a way to allow the host privacy? In my part of town having my listings tied to my profile for the world to see made it extremely easy for code enforcement to say people managed x number of listings and to find those listings on a map.

Will you be enacting a linen fee for your listing?

[Branka-and-Silvia0]

@Zacharias0  yes, I've seen all those different fees... but pet fee is still missing 🙂

[Susan151]

@Zacharias0 . And I don't have any of these options yet.

[Rachel177]

@Zacharias0 I noticed those additional fees a couple of months ago. I've actually removed my cleaning fee, increased my base rate and added an increasing discount for days stayed as an experiment. To date I've had the same number of bookings as in previous years. And I can see those fees being removed, or Airbnb being forced to include them in the pricing when guests search for accommodation. It's called 'drip pricing' & the competition & consumer regulator in Australia has had major issues with it. They've targeted airlines for misleading & deceptive conduct and been successful and I woudn't be surprised if Airbnb is on their radar.

And as a guest I hate that one host who has multiple properties can have superhost status, yet if you wade through the reviews of all their properties they may have some serious bad reviews for specific properties. Ratings (and superhost status) should be based on the property(s).

[Cynthia475]

@Zacharias0   I do have those available fees but will not be using them.  I would never consider charging a guest a linen fee because it would never work in my market.  Our units sleep 8-9 people each and I provide all of the bed linens, kitchen towels, bath towels and beach/pool towels for all of the guests and in my mind it is the cost of doing business.  Anyone staying at our place will be arriving by plane... they would need multiple suitcases if they were going to bring their own 🙂

Our resort does charge a one time $75 check in fee but the guest pays it directly to the front desk.  I have it listed in my description and remind them again when I send out all of the documents once the reservation is confirmed.  That way there are no suprises at check in time.

What I would like to see is an option to break out the tax on a per night basis instead of having to add it manually into the nightly price when we put our rates in.  Our accommodation tax (just like a hotel) is 14.42% and it would be nice if that was broken out of the nightly price so that a guest could see that.  It is something I have to pass along and do not benefit from but it makes our nightly rate look much higher.  It would also make it easier when changing the nightly price.

[Paul154]

@Cynthia475 

I thought you were mistaken about a line item for taxation - until I tried to book your place.

You are correct, The Hawaiian occupancy tax is not shown. This is very different from Seattle, where the guest is shown the taxes (17.6% applied to the Airbnb fees also, making it more like 21% on my revenue)

Perhaps it's a Hawaiian thing. The state of Hawaii doesn't want their tax gouging to be transparent.

Anyway, if it's applied to all your competitors, you're good. After all, it is difficult to leave an island looking for less taxes.

[Cynthia475]

@Paul154   Thanks for looking.  In this case I would have welcomed being wrong since sometimes I miss a change to the system that I might want to take advantage of.

[John2123]

I own in resort that have a NIGHTLY resort fee, but AirBnB does not give that as one of the options.  It is either a standard fee no matter how long the guest is staying or a percentage of the total booking, neither of which give an accurate quote.  Why will this not add this as an option.