Holiday letting agencies have been taking advantage, as well as travel agents. We have a cottage with agents (fairly new to us) who have recently listed our property on Airbnb without our knowledge, let alone permission. We only found out by chance when we had to contact the guests after their stay. It turned out the price they had paid for their stay was considerably higher than the booking price we were given by the agents. We were not told it had been let through Airbnb, we had assumed it was booked through the agent's web site, as was indicated on our monthly statement from them.
The holiday letting agents have been listing their properties on Airbnb for some time, although we were not aware of this when we recently joined them.
When I asked our agents to account for the difference in price they said it was due to the high fees that Airbnb charged them, but they could not say how much they received from Airbnb for the booking as the fees vary and they receive all their booking revenue from all the holiday properties they list on Airbnb in a block amount, not itemised per rental.
The result is that guests pay significantly higher prices through Airbnb than they would through the holiday letting agents' own web sites. Owners receive none of this extra revenue - it is unclear exactly how this is divided between Airbnb and the agents.
The agents present themselves as the "hosts", when they are simply marketing the property. We undertake full management of our property, and also liaise with our guests. We are on hand to deal with any queries from the guests relating to their stay - rendering the "service fee" that guests have to pay to Airbnb null and void.
To add insult to injury, we effectively paid two lots of marketing fees so that a significant profit was removed from our income. Needless to say we have asked that our property is not listed by the agent on Airbnb.
