I think AirBnB’s tagline should be “Pay for eight, stay for seven!” because their service fee is about the same as an extra night when you book a week.
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Absolutely. And Airbnb is trying - and mostly succeeding - to ensure that millions of guests every day of the year are having great stays with wonderful hosts all around the world. No mean feat.
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I’m with you. If a guest asks me over the platform to go off-platform to book, my response is “My agreement with ABB/Vrbo prohibits me from directing you on how to book our home through a different platform, with a potential penalty of being delisted.”
However, if a guest contacts me on an OTA, then, without my prompting them in any way or “dropping breadcrumbs” to help them find us, they find us elsewhere and book on that site, I don’t force them to go back to the OTA.
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Sometimes it’s a relief when a guests asks to go off platform and I say “sorry but if I try and send you a phone number or email it will be redacted and if I try and go off platform I may be banned so you will have to book through them”. It’s no skin off my nose and means I get paid in a timely fashion. If I like them then I give them my email and ask them to book directly the next time. I even say this to VRBO guests even though it is apparently not true.
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That Airbnb policy seems twofold to me.
The first thing is just Airbnb’s general intimidation and control MO, like warning hosts that they will get suspended if they decline any more bookings, (regardless of whether the declines were because the guest was asking to break rules or sent up a ton of red flags and wouldn’t withdraw the request), like dire warnings about turning off Instant Book, like messages about how a host needs to pull up their socks if their rating has fallen below the “target” (regardless that the cause of that was some awful guest who devided to give you 3*s for whatever).
The second is that if a host took an Airbnb booking and then foolishly offered a guest to go off platform to extend, when they really had no sense of the guest , and the guest started behaving badly as soon as it went off platform and the host booted them out, the guest could then seek revenge by reporting the host for extending with a cash booking.
But I don’t get the sense that most of the hosts on this forum would need to fear any of that.
Yep, I’ve done that many times. Their platform, their rules. Plus, it’s only fair that they get their commission when the guest has found us via the site.
But I don’t believe that they can claim rights over repeat guests. I leave my card in the rentals so that the guests have my contact details if they need me during their stay. If they take that home and book again, Airbnb has had nothing to do with that.
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What does your card say? You have a resort type complex though, right? Im just one boring little house.
I’m sorry if I have that wrong. I’ve seen so much on here I mix everyone’s stuff up at times. I think you’re the one with the amazing brochure, too…I think 
I think it’s amazing too, so thank you. 
Yes, it’s a small complex of a dozen apartments. One of them is my home, most are also owner-occupied, some rented out by their owners and finally our two.
The cards are standard size with a photograph of the property on one side and my name phone, email and website on the other.
Yes, I know that strictly speaking a guest doesn’t need the website address when they are here and yes, the photograph encourages guests to take one when they leave…
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I leave the card for my dog boarding business. It has my name, phone, address. On the back it says “We board humans too,” and has my airbnb url. I’m not sure if any have ever been taken. I’ve had a little bit of crossover between the two businesses, that is, either an Airbnb guest results in some dog boarding business, or someone who boards dogs with me uses or refers my Airbnb. It’s been less often than I hoped it would be.
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Speaking of intimidation tactics:
something similar happened to me last summer. Guest claimed bed bugs when there were none. Now I realize, it was a scam designed to get compensation from me. I left 1* review for the guest. Later on I could not find her profile. She either blocked me or Air booted her off the platform.
I have had a number of these as well. I’m trying to figure out if there is another platform that doesn’t force me to become a travel insurance provider.
I don’t have any experience with VRBO. Does VRBO force you to be a travel insurance provider like Airbnb using their EC?
I did a direct booking with a previous guest. The communication and payment took a lot of my time. I realize things might become simpler as I gain more experience there. For now, I appreciate the simplicity of Airbnb software. I will be declining the requests to book direct.
Another person sent me their phone number to book direct. She wanted a much lower rate. Four hours later, I got a booking on Airbnb for a higher rate.
Right now, I feel that although Airbnb charges a hefty commission, I make money at lower hassle going through them.
I want to figure out another solution that has the simplicity and high rates of airbnb without having to provide the travel insurance (EC).
LOL, don’t know, I have < 1/4 the bookings on VRBO that I have on Air and never had a cancellation after the first covid wave. I can’t remember if they canceled the guests penalty-free themselves, but I would have anyway under those initial circumstances.
Vrbo lets you enforce your own cancellation policy. Even during COVID, they did not override cancellation policies and give guests money back. However, they did “punish” hosts for not at least giving credit for a cancelled trip during the early part of COVID. The punishment was to push their listing lower in the list when guests search.
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Airbnb is rolling out it’s Travel insurance product soon. The original announcement was it will be released Spring 2022. I need to read the TOS effective 4/22/22 changes to see if alignment with Travel insurance is included.
Currently for US & Canadian rentals, you can refer them to the Airbnb Travel insurance information which has a link to Insuremytrip.com. Apparently in the past, insure my trip would not cover Airbnb rentals.
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For some rentals managed by a property manager, VRBO has a “purchase travel insurance when you book” option. OPTION so not required and not available for all.
They do have a finance your trip option. I don’t know if insurance is part of it.
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This is great! I was able to get a quote for a trip (just a test). There apparently is even coverage (must buy the right plan) for Covid-19 related cancellations.
" * Cancel For Any Reason: Currently, if you are looking for trip cancellation coverage because you are concerned about the coronavirus, you will now need to purchase a plan that includes Cancel For Any Reason since the travel warnings are now foreseen. This benefit is time-sensitive and has other eligibility requirements, so not all travelers will qualify.
InsureMyTrip has introduced a new recommendation tool that to make it easier for travelers interested in policies that may offer coverage for COVID-19 related issues. This new tool guides travelers towards plans best suited to guard against COVID-19-related travel concerns as part of the quote process."
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Unless people ask or I really, really like them, I let them book again through Air, because it is so much more convenient for me.
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I recently had a guest stay that I ended up chatting with for a bit (we live below our Airbnb). She started asking about some art in the shared entryway and I mentioned that I had made it. She asked if she could see more of my art and design work so I gave her a business card with my website. She thanked me and then asked if she could contact me directly to book next time she was in town. It’s not something I have done before with guests, and that wasn’t my intention when I gave her my card, but she was a fantastic guest (and left me a very generous tip), so I feel comfortable working with her directly in the future.
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While you are correct on the 3% being the same as credit card processing. I want to change your perspective on the 14% guest fee.
Say your base price is $1000 x 2 nights = $2000.
Booking fee to guest is $280
Taxes $200
Ignore 3% as it is the same either way, direct or OTA.
In this case the guest is willing to pay $2480 for the trip.
If this transaction was to take place direct, the guest would still be willing to pay $2480.
Now if you truly want to treat this as a money making business, you would prefer to capture that 14% extra revenue. Or any part of it. So you would gladly give guest 5% discount to gain 9% more revenue. The only wildcard is insurance. Do you value that through Airbnb or can you provide that yourself cheaper.
If you are really nice, you could save the guest all 14%, but your motivation should be to make all the money from your hard work of hosting and keep it yourself.
If VRBO had not sold out to Expedia, we would still have an owner centric platform with the old “phone book” ad model. (Pay $500 for the year and get as many bookings as possible). But capital is monopolizing all the marketplace platforms to extract as much as possible.
Also, do you like the fact that 90% of stocks are held by the wealthiest 1%? Guess what, Airbnb is working for them! Which means you are working for them.
In economics, a circular economy is one where the money circulates many times at the bottom and doesn’t get extracted to the top. Which economic system do you support?
Bonus points if you take checks still and cut out the credit card companies. I host groups up to 50 guests and often take checks of $5to9k months in advance. Saves guests about $250 a trip in “processing fees”.
I have several guests who come year after year who always book through Airbnb. I’ve never asked them why but for some reason, that’s the way they prefer to do things.
I think that your comment about it being more convenient is telling. I imagine that there are many hosts who feel the same way. For new hosts in particular it must be very daunting to start without using the industry leader; getting their own website and promoting it, arranging their advertising and promotion, collecting taxes (if Airbnb doesn’t collect it for their area), filling periods when a cancellation happens … and a lot more
All those things make Airbnb seem very good value for money. So it’s understandable when Airbnb has created - at great expense - a huge interactive website and app, a system that works and created a brand that has become shorthand for STR - that they don’t want hosts to deal directly with the guest prior to a firm booking. No one would want to go to all that trouble and expense and then allow hosts to circumvent them willy nilly.
After that, as I said above, repeats are my clients and not theirs.
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