That’s exactly what I do too and it works for me, but for some reason, it’s not working for @lisanddavid. I was willing to blame Airbnb but perhaps it has something to do with the Australian regulations, banking stuff or something?
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Yeah I don’t know why it didn’t work like that for me, but for some reason it wouldn’t let me charge less than $16 per additional night! Maybe it’s something I’m doing wrong; maybe it’s Airbnb; maybe it’s just Australia, I don’t know. Maybe it’s like that specifically to deter people from doing what I’m doing: tacking days onto the end of longer stays to reach the 21-day minimum.
Anyway, what I did was I first sent $80 to the guests through the resolution centre, and then I put in the booking modification request which they had to accept and pay $80. They did so promptly. I lost a little money (20% of the $80), but overall it was worth it to have an extra two weeks that we can rent the apartment. It was a little extra effort for our guests but they weren’t out of pocket and they didn’t complain. And now their 21-day stay is officially recognised on the platform, so all good!
For any curious Sydneysiders here, I got a response from the government agency that explained that Airbnb enters rented nights into some central government registry. I can only assume that other platforms (Stayz, etc) do the same. Local city councils have access to this registry so they can audit and pursue people who aren’t complying with the 180 day limit.
They expect anyone who is renting off-platform to enter those additional days into the registry, and sent me information about how to do that. (If anyone needs to know how to do that, contact me and I’ll send you the link.) So I asked them what would happen if I added days to the registry myself, contiguous with days that Airbnb had entered: would it recognise that as a 21-day stay, or as two stays? They couldn’t really answer that. They replied:
Unfortunately this isn’t a policy question but I do note it is an exempt policy and at your discretion to interpret the rules.
I don’t really know what it means to say “it is an exempt policy” but am guessing that what that means is it wouldn’t have looked like a 21-day stay but I could have argued it was if and when I got investigated by the city. Anyway, I’m happy I was able to do the extension on platform just to avoid the trouble.
Thanks to everyone for their advice!
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