Airbnb multiplies by five the fee charged to hosts. Guests are exempt
Airbnb registered hosts will pay a 15% commission to the platform instead of the current 3%. Guests, in turn, will no longer pay the service fee but only the accommodation.
About to enter the stock market, Airbnb decided to be as similar as possible to the competition. As of December 7, the platform will no longer charge a guest service fee, but will remit these costs to the owners, who will pay a 15% fee. This decision is not being well received by the hosts, who even admit to increasing the prices of accommodations to cope with this increase in costs.
“On December 7th we announced the launch of the new commission structure for all our professional hosts in Europe”. This is how the email that is being sent from yesterday by Airbnb to the owners registered in the platform, and to which ECO had access, begins. Thus, from that day on, “all professional host accounts will be updated to the new 15% commission structure.”
In the same email, the platform explains that this increase will allow the owners to have “100% control over the final price for the guest (no more service fees added by Airbnb) and be more competitive in the market. This is because, while the costs for the hosts increase, the costs for the guests are reduced, so that they pay only the value of the accommodation.
Currently, an owner pays a fee ranging from 3% to 5% (depending on whether VAT is charged) for each reservation made in his accommodation, while the guest pays the stay and also a service fee ranging from 15% to 20%. With this change, the costs that the guest has (excluding the value of the stay) pass to the owners.
In the same email that is being sent to the hosts, the company offers the possibility to be charged only a 14% commission until the end of the year, in case they update already for this new modality of simplified price. ECO questioned Airbnb to understand the reasons for this change, to which the company responded that it made this change “following feedback from the hosts.”
“Pilot experiments in countries across Europe where we implemented this change showed a significant increase in bookings. By removing the guest service fee, hosts can manage the final price potential guests pay. Hosts always set their prices per night. Some hosts choose to increase their price to reflect the change in rate to maintain the same earnings. These hosts are less likely to see their reservations increase. Other hosts find it easier to keep their prices competitive and experience increases in reservations,” added the official Airbnb source.
