Airbnb is rolling out a new toggle to show you the price, inclusive of all fees (before taxes), for your stay instead of showing you a price per night. This means you won’t have to go to the booking page to see other charges like resort fees and cleaning fees.
The company first announced this update in November, and now it’s making the feature available to users via a toggle. If you enable the toggle, the search algorithm will prioritize the total price of the stay (before taxes) in ranking search results. So properties with a lower nightly rate but high cleaning fees won’t appear on top.
The question is why not switch to displaying all-inclusive prices by default? Last month, Airbnb told TechCrunch that the opt-in search method “allows us to notify guests of this change, without causing further confusion.” The company doesn’t want to suddenly switch to the new search parameter, as some users might be used to seeing the price at night. Although it offers an early access toggle, Airbnb said it plans to make all-inclusive pricing a default setting next year.
Airbnb, which deployed a bunch of host tools last month, said that next year it plans to introduce more pricing and discount tools for hosts to help them see the price guests are paying. The company said this will help ad owners set more competitive prices.
Additionally, the company is poised to improve the checkout experience for guests by providing guidelines for hosts to be “reasonable” about tasks.
“Customers shouldn’t have to do unreasonable payment tasks like stripping beds, doing laundry or vacuuming when they leave their homes. Airbnb. But we think it’s reasonable to ask customers to turn off the lights, toss the food in the trash, and lock the doors, as they would when leaving their own home,” he said.
However, Airbnb has not specified how it plans to apply these rules to hosts and guests. Airbnb users have been complaining for a long time ridiculous cleaning fees and a long list of payment tasks listed by some hosts. The company is finally paying attention to some of these issues.
Apart from that, CEO Brian Chesky is also focused on increasing the number of hosts on the platform as he doesn’t want to “get into an era of supply shortages”. To onboard more hosts on the service, the company launched a new program last month to help renters find Airbnb-friendly apartments in select markets.
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