Amid backlash about its cleaning fees and pricing model, Airbnb is redesigning its pricing structure.
In response to a tweet publicly criticizing how prices are displayed on the short-term rental site, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky said, “You are correct — the cleaning fees were never intentionally designed, which is why we’re now playing catch up. This is one of my top priorities — we are redesigning how pricing on Airbnb works.”
Airbnb says that it has long been aware of the pricing issue and, over a year ago, formed a team to review the company’s fee policies. Since then they have begun testing features to make total costs and fees more transparent.
It seems it should be easy enough for the platform to show the total costs of a stay since they are already required to do so on their European listings. Instead, the real challenge Airbnb is facing is how to remain competitive with the nightly display rates of competitors like traditional hotels.
Airbnb has also shown trepidation about changing its cleaning fee policy, which currently allows hosts to set their own prices. It helps hosts turn a profit, so they would certainly be up in arms if that were taken away, but I think we can all agree that paying $143 to do laundry that’s not yours while on vacation is a bit far.
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