Airbnb Debuts Total Prices Before Taxes With Plan to Make It Default View
Photo Credit: An Airbnb in Utrecht, the Netherlands as seen July 15, 2017. Airbnb revamped how it displays prices, including cleaning fees. Flickr.com / Umair Abassi
Skift Take
Airbnb's pricing changes will likely have a ripple effect, prompting some hosts to reduce cleaning fees and property management websites to switch to showing total prices.
Dennis' Online Travel Briefing
Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, Executive Editor and online travel rockstar Dennis Schaal will bring readers exclusive reporting and insight into the business of online travel and digital booking, and how this sector has an impact across the travel industry.In an effort to placate guests upset with sticker shock over surprise fees at checkout, Airbnb rolled out the ability for guests to view the total price of a stay before taxes in initial search results in many parts of the world.
The exceptions would be locations including the European Economic Area, Canada, and South Korea, where authorities already require Airbnb to display up-front the total price of a stay, including host cleaning fees, Airbnb's service fees and, in some cases, taxes.
In a twist, Airbnb plans to make these new displays of total price before taxes the default view that customers would see starting at an unspecified time in 2023. When Airbnb announced the pending changes last month, the company said users would have to opt in to view total price.
Airbnb app users will see a prompt to activate total price before taxes for 'early access' to the feature. Source: AirbnbIndeed, for now, Airbnb users in its
