Airbnb addresses pricing, fees; announces improvements based on feedback

CEO Brian Chesky

Community feedback continues to guide product innovations at Airbnb and on the heels of its 2023 Summer Release, which introduced Airbnb Rooms and over 50 new features, CEO Brian Chesky asked the community what other improvements they would like to see, and these were their top suggestions:

1. Lower prices & lower cleaning fees. We know affordability is important, especially during economically uncertain times. Over the past year, we introduced several initiatives aimed at fostering affordability on Airbnb, from new pricing tools for Hosts, to making pricing even more transparent for guests.

Today, four out of every five Hosts use one of our pricing tools. Almost 680,000 Hosts have used our new tool to compare their prices with similar listings nearby, while almost two thirds of Hosts offer weekly or monthly discounts.

Against the backdrop of increasing prices industry-wide, and with an average nightly rate of $127 in July 2023, the average nightly price of a one-bedroom listing on Airbnb is 1 percent lower than it was in July 2022 - while hotel prices have gone up 10 percent to $163 over the same period .

Since we launched it, over 8 million guests have booked travel on Airbnb using total price display, which made fees even more transparent.

This year over 260,000 listings lowered or removed their cleaning fees – on top of nearly 3 million listings that currently don’t charge one.

2. Better search and filters. We know how important it is to find the perfect stay in just one search. One of the top suggestions from our community was to expand our search capabilities.

Starting today, if search results are limited, we’ll automatically display a carousel at the bottom of search results so guests can review more great homes available over similar dates.

We’ve also added two new search filters by popular demand: pet-friendly homes and king-size beds. This should come as no surprise as there have been almost 6 million pet arrivals on Airbnb in the past year. The top ten most popular countries for pets in the past year include the USA, France, UK, Canada, Brazil, Spain, Italy, Australia, Mexico and Germany. With over a quarter of listings across the platform welcoming pets, it’s now even easier for guests to narrow their search by those that welcome furry friends.

And with king-size beds featured in over a million listings, the new king-size bed filter will help guests easily find the homes that offer them.

3. Verified listings in our top five countries. We firmly believe guests shouldn’t have to worry about whether a listing is fake or isn’t located where it says it is.

Later this year, we'll begin verifying every listing in the US, Canada, Australia, UK and France with verified icons appearing on listings from February. Starting next fall, we'll begin verifying listings in 30 more countries.

This complements our ongoing work to implement tools to help prevent fraud, remove bad actors, and increase trust in our community. This year, we blocked 157,000 fake listings from ever joining the platform, and removed an additional 59,000.

4. Better customer service. We want all of our guests to have a great experience on Airbnb, which includes providing timely and seamless support when they need it.

This summer, we answered 94% of calls in English within 2 minutes. We also extended this 2-minute response time to 9 more languages.

From November, we’ll start making additional improvements to customer service so that when guests call, they’re going to be matched with the best agents to resolve their specific issue, faster.
*Anna Laskaris anna.laskaris@thrivepr.co.nz