Live Q&A: Airbnb Host-Only Fee (Monday, Oct 27)

Thanks ​@MoniqueD 

Yes, the 2 owner accounts have PMS  next to their email addresses. 

airbnb.com/h/bamboobamboo 

airbnb.com/h/heart-of-fremont-seattle

They’re two of my newest properties < 2 months. The owner/listing owner of the second one remains primary host, for what it’s worth, not that it should matter. That’s not the case with the first listing. 

Should I just re-sync listings? I’d hate to break anything/do anything destructive to the connections. And again, would rather not involve owners in the behind-the-scenes Hospitable magic. Thanks!

​@Sam Esecson That is so weird! I have re-synced and have not had issues but I don’t know today what that would do if anything has changed on the back end or if that would even fix the issue you have with these 2 listings of yours. I’m so sorry you have this problem but I would love to know what fixes it. Maybe ​@Petra Podobnik ​@Marina Coimbra ​@Cameron Riera might be able to give some insight on this.

Hi ​@Sam Esecson I have escalated your situation to Airbnb.

We still have 3400 other users who haven't been fully transitioned.

I'm hoping that they have an answer for us on Monday!

​@Marina Coimbra, that’s helpful to know that so many others haven’t been fully transitioned. If it simply hasn’t happened yet, that would explain it. Unfortunately the discrepancy between the the all-important Oct 27 date and when the change will actually occur (if it does at all) leaves me vulnerable to overcharging or undercharging depending on my current markup. What would help is an update on that number. Is it stuck at 3400 or has it been steadily decreasing since Oct 27?  

​@mrotman did you see this? 3400 Airbnb users still fully transitioning...

~3400 of ~17000 is significant. ​@Marina Coimbra or ​@Emily Tunggala can you please provide an update? It’s really hard to know how to proceed at the moment, unsure if or when my properties will be transitioned. Thanks. 
I’m also told there’s a new Oct 29 update since the town hall concerning how fees are marked up. ​@Gabriel Diaz can you elaborate on this? Do you mean fees are no longer tied to the percentage markup? Is it now recommended to set fees higher to account for the Airbnb update (or leave them at the newly marked-up amount), but fixed, and independent of the markup percentage?  Thanks

I'm waiting for Airbnb to follow up on it! It was escalated Friday. I'll give you updates as soon as I can.
The number has been stable since Thursday.

Regarding markups on fees here's our take:

• We decided to markup everyone as a one-time only for the host only fee
• We encourage everyone to markup their fees because commission is being charged on the fees
• Owner statements has changed to take into account OTA commission on fees - because we honestly believe this is the best way forward.

During the transition it was too difficult for everyone to change their fees so we had an early release of Listings Management for fees which had markups still tied to fees. Since then we have released another version in which everyone can set up their final prices and we don't enforce markup to fees.

This is not our final version yet! While we won't be enforcing markup to fees in the future, we will be encouraging and suggesting them.

Hey ​@Sam Esecson , we received communication that the screen to transition to the host only fee is now available on Airbnb to all the affected users. Can you try and let me know if it worked? :)

​@Marina Coimbra, thanks for the update. The guest service fee is unfortunately still on there for these two properties:

airbnb.com/h/bamboobamboo 

airbnb.com/h/heart-of-fremont-seattle

But can you switch them to the Host only fee directly from Airbnb? :)

No, Airbnb has removed that option. 

Yes it was gone, and they just told me it should be back again!

If it's not back until tomorrow let me know!

You’re right, they added the option back in! Resolved. Thanks for working through this.