Airbnb Nightly Cover Prices Are Misleading, Fees And Taxes Can Be More Than Nightly Rate. Photo: Screenshot from Twitter
Airbnb is trending for all the wrong reasons. Instead of social media users singing the vacation rental company’s praises, they are dragging it for exorbitant fees that make the final total much higher than the initial nightly cover advertised.
“We gotta stop Airbnb,” user @mariokartdwi, who identifies herself as Alexa on Twitter, wrote along with a screenshot of her itemized charges for two nights. While the two nights totaled $198, the cleaning fee was $114, the service fee was $44.05 and the occupancy taxes and fees were $57.90. Her grand total for a two-night stay in an Airbnb was $413.95.
The tweet immediately went viral with many users chiming in to complain about their own experiences. “Exactly!!! Why Im Paying All These Fees Just To Pull Up To My Airbnb And The Host In The House Half Naked Drunk? @Airnbnb Please Make It Make Sense,” replied user @ooweegarcon.
“Accurate! AirBnB’s were supposed to be cheaper options to hotels, but now you have to read 3 pages of rules & clean the entire house. Hotels charge $35 for resort fees, AirBnB hosts charge you in the hundreds. It is beyond ridiculous,” user @racergoil89 wrote.
User @BillRatchet added, “i stayed 2 weeks in between moving into a new apartment at an Airbnb for a low fee of $2500 last summer.” User @awkward_duck chimed in, writing “I’ve been back to hotels now for several reasons. This is one.”
Still another user pointed out how companies like Airbnb and Uber were becoming like the very companies they were created to offer alternatives to. “AirBnb and Uber trippin. We back to yellow cabs and hotels this summer. They not gonna fee us to death,” user @5iveRokk tweeted.
At the time of publication, Alexa’s tweet had gotten over 200,000 likes, over 17,000 retweets and over 4,000 quote tweets. User’s discontentment with rates, as well as competition from companies like VRBO, have led to a drop in Airbnb’s revenue.
The company’s “gross bookings declined by roughly a third in 2020,” according to CNBC. “In its latest results, the short-term lodging service reported a 39% quarterly increase and 13% year-over-year boost in nights and experiences booked,” the report continued.
Listen to GHOGH with Jamarlin Martin | Episode 74: Jamarlin Martin
Jamarlin returns for a new season of the GHOGH podcast to discuss Bitcoin, bubbles, and Biden. He talks about the risk factors for Bitcoin as an investment asset including origin risk, speculative market structure, regulatory, and environment. Are broader financial markets in a massive speculative bubble?
As a result, Airbnb has also experienced losses in the stock market with shares falling 36 percent from their February highs. Shares fell an additional 3% on Thursday, May 13.
Boris Schlossberg is the managing director of FX strategy at BK Asset Management. He said, “Competition is really becoming a problem for Airbnb,” adding investors were losing faith in the company.
“I think what’s happening with Airbnb, the swan dive in the price, is that it’s lost the imagination of Wall Street,” he said. “Wall Street has kind of lost faith in its model at this point and I think it’s going to be very tough going for the company going forward.”
