Airbnb Says It Will Show Total Prices and Curb Checkout Chores

On 7 November 2022, Airbnb said it would start showing guests the full price of a stay and told hosts that guests should not have to strip beds, do laundry or vacuum at checkout. The company's newsroom post that Monday listed four changes: an option to display total price, a search ranking built on total price, new pricing tools for hosts, and guidance on checkout requests.

Chief executive Brian Chesky announced the changes on Twitter the same day. Fox Business reported that he acted after the company received complaints, and quoted his message to guests: “you feel like prices aren’t transparent and checkout tasks are a pain”.

Airbnb set no cap on cleaning fees or checkout lists. It changed what guests would see and what its search would reward.

What Airbnb changed

The first change was the price display. Airbnb said the option to display total price would start rolling out in December 2022, in countries that had no price display requirements of their own. The total would include all fees before taxes. It would appear in search results, on the map, in the price filter and on the listing page. Before confirming a booking, a guest could still open a full breakdown showing Airbnb's service fee, discounts and taxes.

The display was a choice for the guest, and it was off until the guest turned it on. Fortune reported that users had to toggle a switch in the search tool to see total costs, and TechCrunch reported that the feature would arrive through a toggle in December.

The second change was to search. Airbnb said it was prioritizing total price, instead of nightly price, in its search ranking algorithm. Among similar listings in the same area, it said, those with the highest quality and the best total prices would rank higher.

The third was a promise to hosts. Starting in early 2023, Airbnb said, hosts would get new pricing and discounting tools to show them the final price a guest pays and help them set competitive prices. Short Term Rentalz reported that the tools followed feedback from hosts who wanted help understanding the final prices guests paid and what rates to charge to stay competitive.

The fourth was checkout. Airbnb said it was giving hosts guidance that checkout requests should be reasonable and displayed to guests before they book. It named three tasks guests should not have to do: stripping the beds, doing the laundry and vacuuming. It named three it considered reasonable: turning off the lights, throwing food in the trash and locking the doors.

The complaints behind it

The pressure had built for more than a year. TechCrunch reported that Airbnb published a blog post in May 2021 asserting that it displayed all fees transparently, and that Catherine Powell, its Global Head of Hosting, was assigning a team to review fees across the service. Fortune reported that in 2021 Airbnb declined to make changes, saying hosts set their own prices while recommending that they keep cleaning fees affordable. The review's recommendations had a deadline of December 2021, Fortune reported, and were delayed by nearly a year.

By November 2022 the complaint had two parts. FOX 13 reported that Airbnb was fighting a perception among many guests that high cleaning fees and misleading listings had taken the bargain out of its bookings, and that the chore lists hosts demanded at checkout were another sore spot. Scripps reported that some guests said hosts charged additional fees when an assigned list of tasks was not finished by the end of a stay. FOX 13 also noted a complaint running the other way: hosts were increasingly unhappy about problem tenants.

Chesky tied the changes to the economy. In a message carried by TechCrunch he wrote: “We started as an affordable alternative to hotels, and affordability is especially important today.” He added that in a difficult economic time Airbnb needed to help its hosts provide great value.

The fees, as reported then

Skift laid out the problem with an example. In many parts of the world, it reported, Airbnb listings at first showed only the nightly rate, without taxes and fees. A five-night stay might be quoted at $1,195 per night, or $5,974 for five nights. A $199 cleaning fee and an $871 service fee would show up only on the next screen, taking the total to $7,044.

TechCrunch cited a NerdWallet report published in June 2022 that surveyed 1,000 U.S. rental properties on Airbnb. By that report's count, 34% of the listings carried a cleaning fee worth 20-30% of the base fee.

The company making the change was growing. TechCrunch reported that Airbnb registered $2.9 billion in revenue for the third quarter of 2022, up 29% year-on-year. Airbnb's own post still listed the effect of the product updates on its business, including conversion rates, among its risks.

Airbnb limited the rollout to countries without existing price display requirements, and The New Daily, an Australian outlet, reported on 13 November 2022 that the total price feature was already available in Australia.

What the coverage questioned

The reporting of the time accepted the direction and questioned the reach. TechCrunch asked why the fee-inclusive price was an opt-in toggle and not the default search setting. It noted that showing fees up front did not stop a host from charging a high one: Airbnb offered hosts tips on setting affordable cleaning fees, with no rule to enforce them.

On checkout, TechCrunch reported that Airbnb did not say whether it would penalize hosts more directly. Airbnb's post said only that it would share more as it rolled out the updates. The New Daily reported that users welcomed the changes online, and that one Twitter user asked when there would be rules saying what was reasonable and what was not.

Chesky's own view went further than the announcement. On 20 November 2022, Skift reported that he had called cleaning fees a huge problem and was weighing whether to let hosts charge variable cleaning fees. Skift quoted what he told journalist Kara Swisher in a podcast session aired in October 2022: “Actually I’d like a customer to never see a cleaning fee”. Skift's executive editor added a warning of his own, that hosts might be sabotaging their bookings with excessively high cleaning fees.

What it meant for hosts

A host reading the announcement in November 2022 had three jobs.

• Price the whole stay. Once the option rolled out, a guest could choose to see all fees in one figure, before taxes, and Airbnb said its ranking would favor the best total price among similar listings in the same area. On Airbnb's account of its ranking, a low nightly rate paired with a heavy cleaning fee would no longer lift a listing in search.
• Rewrite the checkout list. Stripping beds, laundry and vacuuming were named as unreasonable. Turning off lights, putting food in the trash and locking doors were named as reasonable. Under the guidance, any request should be shown to guests before they booked.
• Budget for the work. Tasks taken off the guest's list went back to the host or the cleaner, and the cost of that work had to sit somewhere in the total price.

What a host did not get was a firm rule. Airbnb set no limit on cleaning fees and stated no penalty for a long chore list. It said it would share more as the updates rolled out.

Sources

1. Airbnb Newsroom, Airbnb is introducing total price display and updating guest checkout (7 November 2022).
2. Fox Business, Airbnb says it's making prices more transparent (7 November 2022).
3. TechCrunch, Airbnb will soon show prices inclusive of all fees in search results (7 November 2022).
4. Fortune, Airbnb knows you’re mad about surprise cleaning fees and it has a plan to fix the problem (7 November 2022).
5. Skift, Airbnb to Display Total Prices Up Front and End Checkout Task Drudgery (7 November 2022).
6. WKBW (Scripps Media), Airbnb addresses hidden fee complaints, makes pricing changes (7 November 2022).
7. FOX 13 Tampa Bay, Airbnb to display total prices up front, end 'unreasonable' checkout tasks (8 November 2022).
8. The New Daily, Airbnb users heard ‘loud and clear’ as this dreaded feature gets the boot (13 November 2022).
9. Short Term Rentalz, Airbnb to include cleaning fees in total display prices (14 November 2022).
10. Skift, Airbnb Mulls Removing Cleaning Fees as a Separate Charge (20 November 2022).