Hello!
Need your opinion, dear colleagues.
I host in Israel and our MOF to stimulate tourism credits all foreign tourists with 0% VAT for renting rooms or cars , since all locals must pay 17% VAT.
Adding VAT to the listing price reflects to all guests, not only locals. So I referenced to AIRBNB to ask them to put relevant information on any local listing to inform guests regarding paying this tax upon the check-in.
Just as Booking.com does. Finally, we have to be honest with our guests.
It was about 2 years ago and for a few months I did see this information. Then it was removed. So I’ve wrote CS again and even sent them relevant page from the VAT law. But this time my demand was rejected and I was said to put this information on my listing.
So I’ve replied that this would cause to kind of inequality and put me in a worse situation against those hosts that hid their income and didn’t advertise this info on their listings.
No reply was received but again to note this point in my listings.
So I’ve done this, added it in the policy section as was asked to.
As you may know due to COVID outbreak no foreign tourists could come to visit our country and I haven’t received any booking from AIRBNB for about half a year.
This week I’ve got one finally. But the guest refused to pay because didn’t see this very important information without reading “small letters” of the listing. So I’ve called AIRBNB CS and explained this to Nicole, who answered my call. I was promised to call the guests “at ones”, but she didn’t call neither in 5, nor in 15 minutes. After 2 extra my calls (!), she called me back in 45 minutes, after the guest full of anger agreed to pay the tax, just because it was mentioned on the website and finally that was his fault not reading all the terms.
So I’d like to know what do you think, 1. must AIRBNB to supply this information itself bolded in any listing or not and 2. your opinion regarding CS behavior.
Meantime I prefer to stop the listings and to work with Booking.
Regards ,Michael