This forum is dedicated to connecting hosts with other hosts. Sign up to get the latest updates and news just for AirBnb hosts! Note that we are not affiliated with Airbnb - we are just passionate hosts!
When I opened up the Airbnb dashboard this morning, there was an additional entry under Opportunities, titled “Compare how you’re priced on different websites”.
Looking further it appears that they are scraping the pricing data from BDC and comparing it to your Airbnb listings. I suspect that Vrbo will be next.
Ok, it’s data that is in the public domain, however a bit of me feels like this is intrusive.
Our results showed that we are, on average, fifteen per cent higher on Airbnb than on BDC, and there is a prompt for us to reduce our Airbnb prices. Good luck with that young Master Chesky, WE decide our pricing structure, not you.
A potential downside here, now that they know how you weight prices, is that folks with lower BDC prices may be penalised in the search results. In the EU, I’m fairly sure this would be illegal.
On mine it shows similar listings in my area. It’s indicating that my prices are to low BUT I know that those listings are $300 more because they host 10 to 12 whereas my max is 6. They also have inground pools. Therefore, I don’t think it’s a reliable tool.
I think you said a while back that BDC requires that a listing on BDC be the lowest-priced if it’s listed on multiple platforms, and also that there are ways around it since it can be a different listing on other platforms simply by adding/removing one amenity. Hopefully, that strategy will work on Airbnb if they ever decide to enforce something similar.
It would be interesting if Airbnb sees a trend where listings are higher-priced on Airbnb than on other platforms. I wonder if they would actually understand that the higher prices are a form of compensation for (or insurance against) dealing Airbnb’s policies rather than just trying to increase profits from the largest platform.
Fortunately the lowest price requirement is illegal in my country. There were a few lawsuits where BDC wanted the same or lower price when booking direct, and they lost.
My guest have to pay 15% more on BDC and Air to compensate for the booking fees.
At one time, a neighbour was using Airbnb to advertise his apartment. It was opposite ours so had the same location, the same layout, the same view, the same almost everything…
But it was half the cost because it was fairly tatty, there were just a couple of threadbare towels, it was mildly damp-smelling and (the most important thing of all) it didn’t have me as host.
His guests got what they paid for and so did mine. Airbnb saw them as ‘similar listings’ but they were almost completely unalike in reality.
They’re still asking me to add “heat” as an amenity. You’d think with all their love of algorithms, they’d come up with one that doesn’t prompt hosts who live in the tropics to add heat.
I suppose we could just check it off in the amenities list so it disappeared off the dashboard. It’s not like any guests are going to complain that there weren’t any heaters
And if anyone did use it to scam a refund, we just say, yeah there’s heat, and point to the sun. It doesn’t specify what kind of heat it has to be.
Unfortunately, ticking the box does not always make it go away or stay away. I get asked over and over if I have a patio, backyard or deck. Yep, all three and have told them so repeatedly.
I am often annoyed by the prompts to add amenities or features that are clearly urban features. Why they can’t understand the differences between country properties and city properties is beyond me.
I can imagine the discussion at Airbnb head office. Oh we are loosing market share, it cannot be our fault we have risen so fast and we are so well loved. It must be the fault of those silly hosts again, we will build a routine to tell them again how to run their businesses and everything will be great when we bring them into line.
Not sure if you know it, but if you have BDC payments activated (BDC is paying you for the reservations, you are not charging directly to the guest), they are selling under your selling price.
That way, they are creating a big dependency on his channel (which is not good at all)
So, with this new feature, Airbnb is helping you identify this practice. But you are also making the mapping job for them, so from now on they will be able to control your rates (is not that easy to do by themselves as many of the vacation rental listings have not unique names)
