Hey hosts! Does anyone know when this “split payment” thing started? I never got any email or anything from air introducing the new feature. I had my first booking a few days ago with split payment, and it said “awaiting payment- guest has 72 hours to pay”. So that time counted down, and after the time was up, it said “guest has one day to pay” (!!!). So basically people can hold dates on your calendar for several days and then just not pay if they decide on a different property? I called air, and they said I cannot decline these guests or turn this feature off. I’m not excited about this whole thing. It’s a July booking, and all my July reservations are coming in right now (I book about 5 to 6 weeks out), so having a whole week saved and not paid for is a bit lame. I have not seen many posts about this, so I’m just wondering what you guys think and if anyone has experience with this?
I think I first saw this about 6 months ago. No. There was no announcement. And, I think it truly sucks… my two “split” payments booked without issue, but I believe other hosts have had worse outcomes.
Hm ok. These ladies have about 12 hours left to pay…unless the app updates again to inform me they magically received another day to pay like yesterday 
! I guess we’ll see what happens.
It sucks. Both of my experiences with it have been bad. One group let their hold run down and it was for a holiday weekend. We got rebooked, but it is annoying. Jeez, I think I’m cranky today… 
Another race to the bottom feature!
We’ll, that was irritating. Not surprisingly, they let it cancel. This split payment thing is a shite way to let ppl block off your property while they look for something better suited specifically to their trip. It’s rather BS that we cannot opt out of this free reservation program. I have strict booking for a reason… I guess strict booking no longer exsists.
I have only used it as a guest and it was really useful. I had to pay half upon booking and the other half the week before. But I still had to pay. The host would have received the full amount as usual the day after booking. I’m in Australia. I put May work differently elsewhere.
I had one for the Easter w/e and was appalled. When they hadn’t paid after 24 hours, I contacted the primary guest, pretending ignorance of the feature, and asked if they were having problems paying, that this was blocking my calendar for an important holiday and asked if the could sort it out or cancel. She paid up in full immediately!
It should only have a 24 hour window in my opinion.
Yeah it would be cool for hosts too, if it went by the normal rules of cancellation. Then there would be no issue really. But because someone can reserve the property for however many days then not follow through, there is really no advantage for the host at all. It’s a disadvantage. I’m in Denver, Colorado & we just had a three day bank holiday here in the US. Thus, this woman just made a week of my July calendar appear to be unavailable during a weekend in which a lot of ppl were online sorting their summer vacation plans. Literally all my other available dates in July got booked over this last weekend. I would be perfectly happy with split booking if they could not get back the initial payment they made. Then I still get something, but they don’t loose the entire booking price. I feel like it’s just a backdoor for people to cancel properties labeled as strict cancellation.
I
Just opening up again, and was looking at my own page, as if I were booking and I could see guests were able to ‘split’ the payment! I do not remember approving this with Air. And I m not sure that I want it!
It’s not an option for hosts to select or deselect. Mostly you aren’t going to know if the guest used it or not.
Even at $50 a night I had guests who selected it but I only knew because if I put in a request for them to pay the pet fee it wouldn’t go through because they only paid half. So I just started waiting and collecting the pet fee within a week of their stay. It’s also only an option for bookings some time in advance.
I could be mistaken but I believe that in order to not have this option available to guests you must have a strict cancellation policy
I have a problem where a guest booked 3 months (Northen Michigan) and somehow was able to pay by month. Is there anyway to turn that off?
I have used it too but I had to put in my credit card information to confirm the reservation. I wonder how people are getting around that to reserve dates without payment. That sounds like an unintentional loophole that Airbnb needs to fix asap.
This is a 3 year old topic and most people who posted on this thread are no longer on the forum.