Airbnb is finally doing something about its hidden fees, but they’re not doing enough

Airbnb has announced that they are finally introducing “total price display”, which displays a listing’s total price included in search results. This is a long-awaited feature after users have complained about Airbnb’s rising prices and hidden fees. However, the “total price display” still doesn’t include taxes.

“Starting in December, we will begin rolling out the option to display total price in countries without existing price display requirements. Total price will include all fees before taxes and be shown in search results, as well as on the map, filter, and listing page,” said Airbnb.

According to the platform, guests can still view a full price breakdown that shows Airbnb’s service fee, discounts, and taxes—which they’ve been able to do before. But the listings have usually had hidden charges, and the fees have risen a lot recently.

With their new implementation coming next month, users won’t need to worry too much about the hidden fees that are only ever visible near the end of the booking process. For example, I tried booking an Airbnb for a night for RM239 a night, but won’t know until I see the booking page that says I have to pay extra fees for cleaning and service—totaling up my cost to RM367. And this doesn’t even include taxes yet.

However, when I tried booking an international hotel from Booking.com, the fee for the night costs just as much (RM244) but I was only charged an extra RM25 for taxes and RM27 for other services. Including taxes, it costs far less than a night at an Airbnb.

Additionally, Airbnb plans to introduce search rankings which prioritise total price, pricing tools for hosts, and “improvements to guest checkout”. This just means that they’ll regulate checkout requests more—as hosts might be unreasonable with what they’re asking guests to do before they check out. For example, guests should not need to “strip the beds, do the laundry, or vacuum”.

“But we think it’s reasonable to ask guests to turn off the lights, throw food in the trash, and lock the doors—just like they would when leaving their own home,” said Airbnb.

In 2021, Airbnb had announced a review of its fee system in response to customer criticism on social media. They said that “cleaning has taken on added importance and costs for Hosts since the pandemic was declared in 2020”.

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