Starting in December, Airbnb will have a filter to display the total price of a listing, including fees and checkout requirements, on search results as well as map pages.
“Total price will include all fees before taxes and be shown in search results, as well as on the map, filter and listing page. Before confirming their booking, guests can still view a full price breakdown that shows Airbnb’s service fee, discounts and taxes,” the company said in a release Monday.
The move was spurred in part by consumer backlash to a hike in cleaning fees and checkout requirements on the platform.
Starting a Twitter thread detailing the move, Airbnb co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky wrote, “I’ve heard you loud and clear — you feel like prices aren’t transparent and checkout tasks are a pain. That’s why we’re making 4 changes.”
Changes will also be made to the platform’s search algorithm.
“We are prioritizing total price (instead of nightly price) in our search ranking algorithm. This means that for similar listings in the same area, those with the highest quality and best total prices will rank higher in search results,” Airbnb explained.
Furthermore, Airbnb will delineate to hosts which checkout requirements are kosher and which ones are not.
Checkout requests, Airbnb is telling hosts, “should be reasonable and displayed to guests before they book. Guests should not have to do unreasonable checkout tasks such as stripping the beds, doing the laundry or vacuuming when leaving their Airbnb,” the company stated.
Some hosts welcome the change, fearing that bad results from other Airbnb hosts make consumers likelier to default back to booking hotel reservations.
“Airbnb hosts don’t consider good hosts their rivals; they consider bad hosts their rivals. I think that’s going to get rid of some of the lower hosts,” John-Michael Thomas, an Airbnb property manager in Phoenix, told the New York Times.
• Brad Matthews can be reached at bmatthews@washingtontimes.com.
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