Pricing Visibility in AirBnB Winter 2023 release

[Craig Jones]

Did anyone else catch this in the Winter 2023 release announcement?

https://news.airbnb.com/airbnb-2023-winter-release/

Pricing visibility – The prices Hosts set will include service fees, helping them better understand what guests pay.

Looks like they're going to make hosts bake the 15% guest fee into the nightly rate. Rolling out sometime in early 2024. If they make this change without a very obvious prompt for hosts to update their prices, it'll act like an across-the-board 15% price cut for hosts who aren't paying attention. Which the rest of us will then have to compete with.

[JD Martin]

Quote from @Andrew Steffens:

People will catch on quickly and prices will raise and then they can call hosts greedy for price increases.  Really sick of Airbnb as a company but unfortunately still command a large market share :/

 I'm sick of all of them as a company. Rarely have I seen a business model that was so skewed towards the customer and the middle man, while the producer of product is constantly getting screwed. Just off the top of my head:

- One sided reviews wherein the fairness or accuracy of the review is unmonitored; 

- Hefty skimming fees charged by the middle man;

- Penalties to the host for denying scam stays or individuals attempting to break house rules (parties, animals, etc);

- Search and listing penalties for enacting policies designed to protect/provide more security for your property (non-instant bookings, higher minimum stays, etc);

- No vetting whatsoever of people who sign up to use the service, leaving the host to sort out the bums from the honest people (and take the penalty for tossing the bums aside).

In my opinion AirBnb & VRBO (and Booking, to a lesser extent) have been vehicles for an arms race to the bottom. The platform's only interest is skimming fees from the buyer & seller, so their only vested interest is having stays booked, regardless of the suitability for either buyer or seller. If they have to pick a side they virtually always side with the buyer, who puts the sale on their credit card. The constant increases in fees means the seller either has to continue charging ever-higher prices or eat the costs in their fee structure. The sheer number of listings in any kind of popular market leaves you drowning in cut-rate listings, whom are favored in their search algorithms. Hell, they even make money on the float.  

I predict their day of reckoning is coming. Good people with good properties who just want to rent them out at a fair price are getting tired of competing with dumps and dealing with losers who want to treat their multi-hundred thousand dollar property like a fleabag motel. Literally the only value to any of the booking sites is visibility, if you fit their algorithm. Everything else - the calendars, the photo descriptions, even the payment platforms - are worth squat. Once some of the direct booking sites like Houfy really start taking off, these sites days are numbered. They captured early market share, but I predict more serious travelers are going to get sick of paying the hefty add-ons for no extra value and will abandon those sites. If not Houfy, there will be some other market disrupter where sellers & buyers will connect for either no extra charges, or sellers will pay a flat, reasonable fee for fair exposure without all the bullcrap you deal with from AirBnb/VRBO.