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Our Channel Management feature is extremely powerful and can greatly simplify your channel advertising. Learn how it works by reading our Channel Management overview article. The most powerful part of our Channel Management is the API Integrations we have with certain channel partners like Airbnb.
This article provides a guide for how to set Surcharges for the Airbnb API integration. You should make sure to set up Surcharges before you do the API connection.
Surcharges
Airbnb supports special fees that can be configured in OwnerRez and will be calculated per stay. To trigger these fees, you must use one of the following keywords in your OwnerRez surcharge description:
- Cleaning
- Resort
- Community
- Management
- Linen
- Pet (additionally must select Pet as the multiplier, even though no actual multiplication is performed - see below for additional information)
These fees are handled specially by Airbnb, and operate with the following restrictions:
- The above surcharges can only be per stay (not per night).
- Everything but Cleaning and Linen can be either percent or amount. Linen can only be amount.
- There can only be one matching fee per category -- any category with multiple surcharges will only get a single one, and any surcharge fee without a keyword matching the above list will be ignored.
- Criteria will not be honored. For instance, you can't create a surcharge to be applied only to bookings longer than a certain number of days, or with more than a certain number of guests.
On the guest display when a guest is looking for the quote, Airbnb will roll together all of the following fees into the nightly rate -- they do not show in an itemized breakdown. So the rate as displayed to the guest will show the total of the following from OwnerRez:
- Nightly rate
- Channel rate adjuster
- Per night surcharges
- Matching per stay surcharges (except Linen), divided by number of nights and added to the nightly rate
- Linen fee, added to the cleaning fee
Since Airbnb only supports a specific set of names for charges, in order to have one of your OwnerRez surcharges be included by Airbnb on your quotes and booking charge sheets, you must include specific keywords in the surcharge description to make them be properly identified, get included, and match.
Examples:
- Damage protection - if you want to charge a guest for Damage Protection, you could use the word "Resort", "Management", or "Community" - the surcharge will get rolled into the Nightly Rate shown on Airbnb
- Credit card processing - if you would like to recoup Credit Card fees from a guest - you can use "Management", "Resort" or "Community" in the Surcharge Description - any of these will be included in the Nightly Rate shown to Airbnb guests (Note: You also have the ability to increase nightly rates sent to Airbnb from OwnerRez as a way of covering credit card processing fees.)
- Parking Pass - include the word "Community", "Resort" or "Management" in the description of the surcharge
Airbnb displays the fees as follows:
| Fee name | Guest display (where each fee is included) |
|---|---|
| Cleaning fee | Cleaning fee |
| Resort fee | Nightly price |
| Community fee | Nightly price |
| Management fee | Nightly price |
| Linen fee | Cleaning fee |
| Pet fee | Nightly price |
How do I get my pet fees into Airbnb?
You can configure a pet fees that apply to Airbnb just like any other channel, with one important caveat: Airbnb only supports per-stay pet fees! Per-night pet fees will be ignored and excluded from your Airbnb listing. Also, Airbnb only charges one fee regardless of how many pets are coming -- so you may want to note any limitations or additional fees for additional pets in your house rules. Last, Airbnb requires your pet fee to be no higher than your lowest nightly rate - so at most, you can charge the cost of one additional night as a pet fee.
The OwnerRez setting of "no pets" or "pets allowed" is also transmitted to Airbnb via the API. Note that the setting is in two places -- the Suitability Pets option on the Amenities tab of the property, and the Pets Max of 0 (or otherwise) on the Rules of the property. Both of these are needed in order to make pets allowed, and when they are, that status will automatically update to Airbnb.
Please note that the pet fee is not enumerated separately like cleaning or service fees. The pet fee is added to the nightly rate like management, resort, and other types of fees. If you're looking to double-check that your pet fee is working, first select some nights without any pets and record what the nightly rate is. Then select a pet and compare the new nightly rate. You should see the price per night increase exactly by the amount of your pet fee.
OwnerRez surcharges can be set to apply to specific seasons - but, Airbnb doesn't honor that. You also cannot have multiple surcharges with the same name, you only get one per property per fee name.
Per-additional-guest surcharges are also supported by Airbnb, and don't have to have a special name. Note that they only work for "guests", because Airbnb doesn't distinguish between Adults and Children. Also, they are valid only per-night, not per-stay. These are added directly to the nightly rate pushed.