Airbnb Debuts Total Prices Before Taxes With Plan to Make It Default View

25.08.2023 - 14:36 / skift.com / Dennis Schaal

In an effort to placate guests upset with sticker shock over surprise fees at checkout, Airbnb rolled out the ability for guests to view the total price of a stay before taxes in initial search results in many parts of the world.

The exceptions would be locations including the European Economic Area, Canada, and South Korea, where authorities already require Airbnb to display up-front the total price of a stay, including host cleaning fees, Airbnb’s service fees and, in some cases, taxes.

In a twist, Airbnb plans to make these new displays of total price before taxes the default view that customers would see starting at an unspecified time in 2023. When Airbnb announced the pending changes last month, the company said users would have to opt in to view total price.

Indeed, for now, Airbnb users in its updated mobile app starting to day would see a prompt to “try it now,” for “early access,” and then the total price view would be activated. But total price before taxes become the default view for everyone starting at some point next year.

Until now, in the United States, for example, Airbnb merely showed the nightly rate at first glance, and then when a customer entered dates, it showed the nightly rate and the total price, including cleaning and service fees but without taxes, when initially viewing a listing. Then users had to click through to see the nightly rate, cleaning fee, and service fee to view the fee breakdown.

The Old Way of Showing Airbnb Pricing

But starting Wednesdays in regions and countries that didn’t already require displays of the total price, Airbnb will show the total rate, albeit before taxes, at the initial glimpse of a listing.

The New Way of Showing Airbnb Pricing

Users can now see the total price minus taxes on listings pages, on maps, and when using filters to narrow their searches.

The cleaning fees, which are set by hosts, have been a particular pain point because they can greatly inflate the total price. Some hosts charge no or modest cleaning fees, while others view it as a way to generate greater profits, and levy relatively large cleaning charges.

“This new change drives an incentive for hosts to have lower cleaning fees, now that those fees will be included in the initial search results,” said David Jacoby, an Airbnb superhost who is co-founder and President of property manager software firm Hostfully.  “Airbnb has been hammered on social media lately for absurd cleaning fees — not to mention a list of cleaning to-dos before check-out — and any way to decrease cleaning fees in general can only be a plus for Airbnb.”

Hosts using Airbnb to find guests set their own prices, including for the cleaning fees. So Airbnb’s changes in the way it shows the price of a