Pet fee transparency

[John89]

Airbnb claims to want hosts to have pricing transparency yet I have been asking for years now for airbnb to total the pet fee at the outset of a guest booking. I can’t, for the life of me, comprehend the business logic of airbnb creating a potential conflict with virtually every single one of our guests, as almost all guests travel with their pets. Can Brian Chesky himself answer this for us. Thanks

@brianchesky

[Bhumika]

Hi @John89, Hope you are doing well! Thank you for sharing your concerns and feedback here at the Community Center.

As I was reading your feedback, I was wondering if you have had a chance to look at this Resource Center article that elaborates on adding Pet Fees to your listing. Although I am not 100% sure, if this answers your question, but thought of redirecting to this resource as it has been quite helpful for other Hosts.

One of our super helpful Host @Joelle43 guided one of the Hosts with a pet fee-related query here, in case her guidance helps us past this query: click here to view the post.

We have also had some recent discussions about Pet Fees and would like to invite our Host members who allow pets in their listings if they have any ideas regarding your feedback or effectively handling pet fees: @Christina56 @Lorna170 @Lucy975 .

[Christina56]

@John89 I just charge a $50 flat fee for each pet’s entire stay.  I’m not sure what other transparency you need.

[John89 · Accepted solution]

So if a guest has three pets and stays 10 nights, airbnb charges the guest 50$. That’s 5$ /day (Because it seems impossible for airbnb to do the math and tally up the correct cost. In your fee structure it would be 150$! But magically they do the correct math if the guest has a party of 4 poeple.

So back to the guest that owes you an additional 100$

So You need to hunt down that money hat in hand asking for more money from the guest.  an additional 100$.
All guests want clarity on their bill. No surprises. That makes for a happy guest and a repeat guest. They see a 50$ pet fee  charge on a 2000$ bill and think that they have paid for fido!

So because of airbnb’s in ability to tally a pet fee per pet per night, as they do for humans, the host and guest have a potential conflict/miss understanding!  The annoyed/ angry guest is angry with Airbnb and goes to another platform or a hotel. That should not be the desired effect of billing!

That is what I mean by transparency.