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Airbnb Policy Update: Off-Policy & Fee Transparency Policy

Introduction and Episode Overview

Sarah Karakaian: [00:00:00] [00:01:00] Welcome back to another great episode. My name Sarah Karakaian

Annette Grant: I’m Annette Grant, and together we are Thanks for visiting.

Sarah Karakaian: All right, we got a bonus episode for you today.

Airbnb Policy Update Overview

Sarah Karakaian: The past couple weeks, you should have been emailed by Airbnb alerting you to a policy update, and this is their off platform and fee transparency policy update.

And first I sent it an email tell us, telling us that by May 10th, all of this would go into effect. And then shortly thereafter, the next time you logged into your Airbnb account, a popup was presented to you and you had to agree to these terms of services.

Community Reactions and Initial Thoughts

Sarah Karakaian: And since then, since then, our community has had a lot of questions.

And at first, and even Annette night before we hopped in the mic today, we’re like, you know, nothing has really changed. It’s just a tightening up of [00:02:00] policies that have always been there. But then of course we dig into the policy and we’re like, well, this is gray and this is gray, and what does this mean?

Detailed Policy Breakdown

Sarah Karakaian: So we thought we would initiate a discussion around this update, share with you our thoughts, some point of views that have been presented to us by our industry colleagues to get your brains. Moving and shaken to get back into your listings and make appropriate updates. And if you haven’t heard about this, seen this or thought it’s much of a change to kind of get you aware and just on your toes.

Annette Grant: Yeah, none of this is a big surprise, I don’t think. Um, and again, it’s just a time for everybody to. Recalibrate. I have a saying that I have like been rooted in for not too long, but it’s becoming more and more true. Daily is expect the unexpected. [00:03:00] And it doesn’t even mean the unexpected is negative. It’s just like we’ve got to always be ready for things that are going to come our way.

And so this is a way for everybody to just refocus and get into your listing, focus on your property. Make sure you’re compliant.

Implications for Hosts and Compliance Tips

Sarah Karakaian: So we, in our hosting business Mastery in our private membership, we often have these discussions as a group when policies change and we work with a bookkeeping expert and a trust management expert.

Her name is Corey Lee. She’s awesome. I’ve been working with her for years. We brought her on to talk about this with our group because she has a really interesting perspective because she does books for companies all over the US and obviously when you do someone’s books, you also have to dig in deeper and ask them different questions about their operations.

Plus she’s worked in operations for short-term rentals before. So she has a really [00:04:00] interesting take on how this is affecting multiple companies across the us. So co-hosting companies, property management companies. And she had a really interesting perspective because you may have seen some people post YouTube videos or Instagram reels about this topic, and they’re upset about it, but she was like, listen, it’s easy to get upset.

It’s easy to kind of shake your fist at Airbnb and say, what the heck? But when you go into air, when you go into Google and you search. For the Airbnb. I, I’ll do it right now. When you start that search in your browser, you can do it on Safari, wherever, and it, the dropdown comes with all the different Airbnb, uh, URLs.

The first one that pops up says Airbnb – Vacation Rental Company. Annette and I are, we are, uh, guilty of this where we have said Airbnb is like a marketing platform, right? It’s kind of where you list your. Property and they, and they market it for us, but that’s not what they consider [00:05:00] themselves.

They consider themselves ’cause they decide on what this says here. When you do the search vacation rental company, we have advised, I have done this myself as a vacation rental company manager, have told our owners of properties like, if you want to be in my program, you have to operate the way that I’ve built out my program to operate so that I can deliver the best service possible to guests, right?

So when I have someone who wants to work with me, I’ll be their licensed property manager, they can share with me in the courting process of finding the right property manager to the right owner, you can ask them questions and see how you’re most aligned. But at the end of the day, if we’re aligned, it’s because you like what I have to offer in my program, and you’re agreeing to it. Does that make sense?

Annette Grant: Yep.

Sarah Karakaian: Airbnb is saying the same thing.

Guest Experience and Payment Policies

Sarah Karakaian: If we want as owners of our property, or maybe we are third party, you know, co-host or property managers if, but if you wanna use [00:06:00] the Airbnb’s vacation rental company, they have these lists of policies that you have to agree to so they can serve their guests, which is all of our guests, but their guests, the way they want to serve them.

Annette Grant: And I truly believe, um, that these changes. Airbnb is thinking about the guest. As they should, because let’s say for instance, no off platform payments, it could be sketchy to a guest of Why are you asking me to send payments in different ways than I had initiated the original payment? Um, you know. Asking for commu, like if there’s communication happening off of the platform, if they’re asking guests to download ancillary apps that are other company apps to access the property.

I do see how it can be consumer confusion, not a good experience for the guest and. I, I, I see, I, I absolutely see where they’re coming from on this. [00:07:00]

Sarah Karakaian: I’ve talked with a lot of people who have a lot to say about this new update, and they have, yes, it is watching out for the guest and making sure the guest doesn’t feel like they’re being jerked all over the place because.

There are some regulations that Airbnb has to make sure that they are falling within. There are some discussion about this being in response to any anti steering regulations in the EU and the US or uh, or drip pricing, right? Where there’s hosts out there that are apparently booking the guests on the Airbnb platform, but then when they, once they’re booked, the guest or the host is like, oh, but now you have to pay for this and have to pay for this in order to have this reservation.

Come to life, you know what I mean? And like we would never do that. But there are bad hosts out there and there are guests that are trying to use this Airbnb platform and they are feeling a certain way about not trusting it. And so we’ve, so anyway, let’s get into the policy a little bit.

Mandatory Fees and Upsells

Sarah Karakaian: The key policy changes that have happened are the [00:08:00] strict off platform, you cannot ask for a guest to pay for anything off of Airbnb if the guest came to you from Airbnb.

Annette Grant: And some of you might be like, cool, I’ve never done that anyway, so it doesn’t matter. Uh, the people that might be impacted is people, let’s say you were asking maybe for pet fees or pool heat or, um, upsells, you know, that’s where this could be impactful.

Where they were either sending, maybe they were sending Venmo, PayPal, maybe just extra links to do upsells where they were upselling directly. Um. To the guest. So there are instances, you know, this might not impact you at all. Easy breezy, no big deal. But if you are someone where you were doing that, still good news for you.

You can still collect the payments. You just need to do it within. Airbnb. Right. Which there is probably gonna be, and we’re gonna get into this a little bit more of upfront explaining to them what the [00:09:00] additional fees are. But again, this is, this is something a, if you haven’t been doing any upsells, if you haven’t been sending anything through the Resolution Center or getting anything above and beyond the reservation from your guest, I encourage you to start getting creative on what are some things that maybe you could offer that you’re not offering.

That your guests would be willing to upgrade to, to enjoy their stay more.

Sarah Karakaian: Let’s break this down. If a fee is mandatory for their stay, right, mandatory, they cannot stay there unless they pay this thing. It has to be collected at reservation time, so you have to use the additional fees section of Airbnb and outline those additional fees to the guest at the time of booking.

Let’s give an example. So. For example, and we’ve taught this before because I didn’t like the way Airbnb’s pet fee structure was. I didn’t like that. I had to choose, I forget what it was. It was either just flat, a flat fee, flat fee per stay flat. I [00:10:00] charge a per pet per night fee just like a boarding house would.

So what I would do is actually not charge a pet fee ver via Airbnb’s PET fee. And I would, and I had in my house rules in our description that here’s how much we, we are for pets. We will charge you the day of arrival via the Airbnb resolution Center for pets. That way we could have a more appropriate pet fee.

Well, since then, Airbnb has changed their pet fee collection, uh, uh, software, I dunno how to say it. Um, whatever. And now you can charge per night per pet. So moving forward, if you, if it is mandatory for a guest to pay for pets to stay with you, you have to collect that at the time of booking. So I can no longer, and if you’ve heard my episodes before about how I did this, you can’t do that anymore. Okay? You have to collect it. At the time of the reservation, or let’s say like Annette, you mentioned pool heat. Let’s say it’s mandatory. Um, [00:11:00] and it depends on how many days you’re staying, how much the pool heat is. You have to use the additional fee section of Airbnb. And so now there is no pool heat section, but you could use one of their provided sections to collect that fee, whether that’s the management fee or the community fee and what you have to do.

Uh, is, is set, is set that fee. And then, and then if you need to send your guest a special offer before they book, maybe converse with them. If you’ve gotta change that fee, you can do that. But if it’s mandatory, it has to be collected via Airbnb. Airbnb at the time of booking. Now, if it’s not mandatory, if it is like a net was saying an upsell, you can still upsell yes, but you have to list your upsells in your listing description.

And you must collect those upsell fees via the Airbnb resolution Center, unless you are a software connected [00:12:00] host with an improved approved software connected Airbnb, API approved software connected company.

Ooh.

Annette Grant: And that, that’s where it does get all kinds of fun. Yeah. So we’ll make sure we link. Okay. A couple things in the show notes we’ll up.

We’ll link to the policy updates and then we will also link to the software partners, the preferred partners, because if you are anywhere online, you’ve heard there’s a lot of buzz about who is. Truly a preferred partner of Airbnb versus a concierge, uh, service provider. And we can admit that has been, um, some gray areas that we have seen, um, on the interwebs.

So if you are someone that has some sort of software connected to your listing, I would be. On high alert to a, see if they’re a preferred partner, and then if you don’t see them on the list, reaching out to that [00:13:00] partner and figuring out how they are going to be woven into these new regulations. So again, if you have any sort of software connected to your listing, let’s make sure we understand who they are, what they’re doing, and if they are a preferred partner.

Sarah Karakaian: So let’s just give you an example of how this works. Both ways. Now, Annette and I said the beginning of this, of this episode, that this isn’t a huge change for all of us, but what might be a big change is listing any and all upsells in your listing description. I, I don’t have them all listed there. You know, prior to this change with Airbnb, um, where I have it listed is we use Hostfully guidebooks.

In our hostly guidebooks, when a guest goes to, uh, after they book, we send them the one link, and this is where they get, you know, their wifi information, their their code to, to enter the property and all the upsell options. They can get it from the Hostly guidebooks. That’s why I don’t have it listed in the listing descriptions, even though Hostly, is it an approved API connected [00:14:00] software, I am gonna continue using our hostly guidebooks and that hostly link after they, the guest books, because it’s an approved.

Software. Now, as far as I know, this should be fine, but I’m still gonna list all of my upsells in our listing description just to be fully compliant. If you are not a software connected host, if you do not have a channel manager or a PMS, again, same thing applies all of your upsells in your listing description.

After your guest books, you can say, Hey, Susie. We’re so glad that you confirmed your stay with us. As outlined in our listing description, we have the following upsells available to you. Would you like to add any of these to your stay? If you would, let me know and I can send you the request for these funds via the Airbnb Resolution Center.

So I actually think. This could be a [00:15:00] great way for all of us to recalibrate. Mm-hmm. And think about what upsells do I offer? What have people paid for in the past? Let me get more organized about this.

Annette Grant: And more consistent in offering it. Yeah. That’s when we talk to so many folks, they’re like, I used to do it, and then I stopped, and then it’s like, well, let’s, I think this is them helping us be better salespeople. Yes, there are also, in these mandatory fees, there are some things that are like privy just to hotels tax collection. We’re not gonna get into that nitty gritty because it’s probably not gonna be helpful to our listeners, but there are a slew of exceptions on some of the mandatory fees. So check those out, read through the. The actual policy online.

Sarah Karakaian: Right. Okay. So again, you can no longer collect cash. You can no longer send Venmo links. You can no longer Zelle your guest anything. Everything has to happen on Airbnb. Again, unless you’re software connected host, like for example, I’m [00:16:00] connected to Hostfully. And with Hostfully, our guests can book an upsell from our Hostfully guidebook.

Checkout there. Obviously that link isn’t via the Airbnb resolution center. My understanding is that’s okay. I’ve asked Airbnb support. They’ve also said that’s okay, but as we all know, you might check Connect with a different Airbnb support and then you might say something completely different. So move with caution.

This episode is meant to just make you aware. I would still reach out to Airbnb, ask your specific questions. I like to talk to Airbnb via chat, so I have record in writing of what they’ve said to me. So I’ll leave that there. Okay.

Security Deposits and Damage Waivers

Sarah Karakaian: Another uh, situation is the security deposits. It used to be that you could collect a security deposit from an Airbnb guest.

It now says that [00:17:00] most hosts, and this is coming from the policy, most hosts are not allowed to charge a security deposit. For the small number of instances in which a security deposit is permitted, they must be disclosed in the appropriate fee field because Airbnb wants us to use air cover. This one is the one that is a little frustrating to me.

I still, and I think this

one is a little gray too, because it says the ones that are permitted,

right? So, and it’s like, who? And it’s like who’s permitted? It does say under exceptions, it says Select software connected hosts may collect payment for disclosed mandatory fees and security deposits off of the Airbnb platform.

So there you go. Maybe. But it’s just tough because air cover, while sometimes it comes through for you, especially when things are. Clearly a violation of house rules or they’ve [00:18:00] damaged items in your property. There are times when you feel it’s clear and you get denied air cover, and this is why we will continue to collect damage waivers.

We prefer it in-house. If you don’t wanna do damage waivers in-house. There are third party companies that offer damage waivers and as long as they’re approved by Airbnb. You should be okay. But just something to consider.

Annette Grant: Yeah, and some when we, when we did a little deeper dive, like the security deposits, pet fees, like there’s gonna be exceptions again, like hotels, resorts, professional property managers.

So again, that’s where you would probably wanna reach out and confirm.

Sarah Karakaian: There’s also talk about Airbnb getting very dialed in on any host, like we said, trying to get a guest to book off platform. So I’ve been guilty of it. Trying to, a guest wants, has a potential guest, has a [00:19:00] lot of questions and it’s like they’re not understanding and you can’t send pictures via the messaging system until they book.

So we’ve been like, we like try to get them to reach out to us direct most of the time so we can just be really clear about the question that they’re asking us. But now, especially with AI and Airbnb. Being able to leverage AI to really dig into our conversations with guests, to dig into our listings and our photos.

I would be really careful about any sneaky ways that you are trying to get guests to contact you off of the platform and find you direct. Yeah. I’m just gonna leave that there because it’s so gray in this policy update. It used to say like, you can’t have any logos or watermarks on your photos. And now it no longer says that, it just says you can’t try to get an Airbnb guest to book off platform.[00:20:00]

So I don’t know.

Annette Grant: And the reason, and we wanna share this too, we do know that this, like not taking a. Any communication, any money off of the guest because we do know that, again, some hosts have tried to pull a guest that even has a current booking with Airbnb, cancel that booking and then book direct. So they are protecting themselves in that respect of, um, and we’ve never encouraged you to, like, it’s always been too.

Gather information from the guests after they’ve booked, and you’ve honored that reservation that came via Airbnb. But again, we do know there are a lot of, um, potential bad actors out there that have had guests canceled and just book direct and take the, take the lead essentially that Airbnb gave them, and then pull it over to their own booking sites.

Unapproved Software and API Partners

Sarah Karakaian: Before we sign off, we want to [00:21:00] share with you that there are implications to host using unapproved software. So again, we’re gonna put the link in the show notes that Airbnb shares of who is an approved Airbnb API partner. Now if you are using an account, uh, any sort of software that isn’t an Airbnb, API approved partner, there could be implications.

Airbnb can flag or ban your host account for violating its terms of service, especially around data scraping, unauthorized messaging, off platform communication or payments, and they can detect it. Uh, if you have. Unauthorized API calls repeated login attempts from third party ips, activity from software that’s not on the preferred partner list.

Why? Well, okay, go. I’m gonna go back to Corey, our expert bookkeeper, and she’s, and she had a great point of, listen, if you are not an approved partner with an an approved API connection, Airbnb can’t control [00:22:00] the, the information of the guest that. They have to honor to the guest. And so if all this information is being scraped, we, they don’t know what the guest is doing with that.

So a lot of softwares can pay to play and be connected to Airbnb. And so Airbnb, it, it looks like they’re gonna get more strict about these partnerships and making sure that everyone who is getting the data from Airbnb is. Doing it on the up and up.

Annette Grant: And we already know, we know what’s going through your mind right now.

Um, we have a lot of partners. Let’s just, let’s get ’em out there. We have partnerships with Hostly, who’s a preferred partner. Price Labs Stay, Phi Breezeway, the, the list goes on and on that you have heard us speak about. We are going to, um, obviously these rule, this, these new changes are fairly new and we are going to be talking with all of those partners and.

Making sure that we bring that to you, if anything changes with them, if, um, it would be any [00:23:00] sort of detriment to your listing. Again, asterisk, asterisk, asterisk. We are not attorneys, we are not employees of Airbnb. We do not work, you know, um, with the partners. We’re not on their team, so we are gonna, um, make sure that we’re staying up on that with you.

Sarah and I are already having conversations with them about how to address, um, their connections too. Airbnb and these tools that we have, we have been using to help our business and obviously, um, want them to be helping you guys with your business also.

Sarah Karakaian: Because here’s a big question is, okay, HOSTLY is an approved partner and then Hostly connects with a lot of these more concierge type services.

Mm-hmm. So, so just again, just because you don’t see a piece of tech that you use on this list, don’t panic. What I would do is email them. Ask them for any official statement on these, on these changes. And see, for example, uh, I know we [00:24:00] actually gonna, we’re gonna give you some information hopefully here next week on Stay fi because Stay fi doesn’t scrape data from Airbnb.

They actually, the guest can opt in. To use PHI after their stay is already booked on the Airbnb’s platform. And I mean, they’re in there. Yeah, they’re in your property during their, their reservation. They’re correct. Yeah. And they have to, and, and, and stay. PHI is compliant. They have, the guest has to opt in to marketing efforts.

If they don’t opt in, no big deal, then you don’t, no harm, you don’t market to them. So there’s a lot of conversations around, around that. Um, so again, and there is no, uh. It’s, it’s a little gray right now. So we’re, we’re, we’re keeping our eye on, on all conversations, but the, the true thing here is don’t panic.

Final Thoughts and Recommendations

Sarah Karakaian: Um, now I don’t panic at, right now, focus on, the biggest thing I would focus on is making sure all of your upsells are in your listing description. That’s what I would focus on. Truly, if you’re a software connected host, if you’re a [00:25:00] professional property manager or a professional co-host, most of your systems are probably okay.

I was, we were talking to one of our private clients and she’s like, wants to get like different pieces of technology now. And I’m like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Like, don’t do that yet, because we don’t know what’s going on with some of these concierge pieces of technology that aren’t listed on Airbnb’s approved.

So I would everyone just stay calm, continue on, ask Airbnb support, ask your tech companies, put the pieces together and do the best you can. And as soon as we know more, we’ll share more. Anything else you wanna add? Nothing. Thanks.

Annette Grant: That’s it. Again, I, I do focus on compliance for sure, and just go in and this is a excellent time for everybody to just update their listing, update their workflows, and figure out, you know, where, where they stand.

And I’m sure if most of us look, uh, at our bottom line, there is a line item on the p and l with Airbnb, that’s a large portion of it, so. Mm-hmm. Um. I [00:26:00] would just take note of that.

Sarah Karakaian: Well, I’ll just say what you’re, what you’re, what you’re alluding to. It’s time to get serious about direct bookings. Mm-hmm. And we’re gonna have to build a direct booking business in a legit way.

And not by trying to get an Airbnb guest hacks, like, hacks of like,

Annette Grant: try, hey, well, they wanna like, let’s have them cancel their reservation and then book direct with us. So it’s, that’s, that’s it as of like. Slow and steady wins the race. If there, if there was some stuff that was either trying to rely on hacks or getting a few people to cancel and then book, book direct, it’s like we really need to recalibrate all of that.

Sarah Karakaian: Yeah. If you have questions, feel free to email us, I’m sure. And or you can actually call into, yeah, call into um, hosting hotline.com. If you go to hosting hotline.com. Ask your question. We actually have one coming up soon. Someone asked about phi, so we’re gonna try to get that live next week if you have questions and we have, and we can get to the answer that we feel is [00:27:00] worthy sharing with all of you.

’cause we certainly don’t wanna spread misinformation, we will. So go to hosting hotline.com, ask your question. It can be about this or truly anything hosting related. And we’ll answer it on our Tuesday episodes. Anything else you wanna talk about? Okay, get

Annette Grant: busy. Let’s get out it. Get busy. Go in your listings, update them.

Make sure that you know what’s going on there. Think about upsells that you could offer. It’s, it’s actually an exciting time. We can all go in there a little spring cleaning on our listings. There we go. I like it.

Sarah Karakaian: All right. With that, I am Sarah Karakaian.

Annette Grant: I’m Annette Grant, and together we are Thanks for Visiting [00:28:00]