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Tell HN: Airbnb’s transparent pricing is a lie
250 points by figassis on July 31, 2023 | hide | past | favorite | 173 comments
I made a booking at Crowne Plaza Times Square on July 22, 2023. Set the option to show all prices and paid $1500 for it. At checking, in presented with a bill for city and state taxes and “resort fees” totaling $552 and a $500 security deposit. Doesn’t seem very transparent since they specially state that you’d see all taxes when you pay on Airbnb.

I called support when I was doing checkin, and they just said it was on the hotels terms/fine print in the listing and I should have read more carefully. Well, I assumed the value of Airbnb was to protect users from this, otherwise they’re just a middle man collecting a tax.

This is the listing btw. You’ll pay 30% more than advertised, so factor that in when comparing to other places. Also, weren’t security deposits unnecessary with Airbnb because they handle charging customers for things like damage, and aren’t listings insured?

Finally I use Airbnb a lot, so trust wise there should not be any red flags what’s justify security deposits.




Fruit of the poisonous tree: Companies that started out by thumbing their nose at laws will never be honest with their employees, customers, and shareholders.

AirBNB is a good example. They didn’t lose their soul when they made it big - they never had one to begin with.


Airbnb is arguably something that didn't have any real net benefit to society yes.

I am conflicted about uber though. Many, many people I know (mostly women) have had their life completely transformed post uber. It ushered in a mobility revolution that would likely only be smaller than the car or bicycle in terms of liberating some populations and increasing their freedom. It was all built on lies and masquerades though.

Perhaps that's not new however? All of history seems to have been built on ideas that robbed Paul to pay Peter anyways.


Uber was also amazing for travelers. No need to worry about the taxi driver looping around the city to run up the meter just because you aren’t from there.


A good example: I arrived at Budapest's train station. I asked a taxi driver if he'd take me to my hotel. The driver asked me about the address, and said 35 euros. It sounded fishy, so I pulled out Bolt. It turned out it would cost me only 8 euros. From then on, I didn't bother to talk to any taxi driver. Just Bolt whenever I need a taxi.


As is Uber is a vastly better product than current taxi services.


"Computer-dispatched" taxi companies existed before Uber. They had numbers you could call to verify that your route didn't go the wrong way and they'd have guarantees to refund you if they found the taxi driver had done something wrong. Uber didn't invent that.


Hmm, never heard of them in my city but instead always had to deal with sketch taxis who credit card reader was “broken”.


Yeah, as with nearly anything taxi-related it was definitely a city-by-city thing to find/evaluate. There was at least one big franchise you could count on to be "computer-dispatched" in several cities, in my experience, if you knew to look for it. Unfortunately, Uber disrupting the traditional taxi companies also has seemed to have disrupted that franchise and the situation actually seems worse today than before Uber existed from that perspective.


I'd argue the real transformation of that was really phones with GPS maps. These days, the tourist is more likely to notice they're being scammed by long detours.


Was that a function of Uber and ride sharing? Or just having a GPS-connected app that you can track? Plenty of cab companies are following suit w/ GPS systems.


It's not only tracking. It's convenience of ordering, and paying, and knowing in advance how much it's going to cost, etc. Sure, I've seen taxi apps doing that too but it always been hit or miss whether particular app works in particular city and has a good sized fleet there.


I imagine there are hundreds fewer drunk driving deaths due to Uber, too.


Cabs and car service existed long before Uber. Bars almost always have a list of car and cab services plus the bartender can call you a cab if you're too drunk to call yourself. Seen it plenty of times.


While true, recent studies show that ride-sharing apps reduced deaths due to intoxicated driving by over 6%, which amounts to hundreds of lives per year.


Cabs and Uber are in theory very similar, but in practice the small details amount to a game changer.

I've always avoided Cabs (largely because of lack of trust), while Uber basically fixes cabs' problems for me.


> I've always avoided Cabs (largely because of lack of trust), while Uber basically fixes cabs' problems for me.

I can say with confidence that I don't trust an Uber driver any more than a car/cab driver. Sure, ive been in sketch cabs and cars with intoxicated drivers or some dick who runs the meter up after you fall asleep - those are rare and I can count them on one hand.

Uber gives you the illusion of being abetter cab service while being markedly worse in some ways. Okay, you voted out a shitty driver with one star - there are a 1000 more waiting to fill that position. I've been in numerous filthy Ubers, drivers who are possibly intoxicated, drivers who got their license in a cereal box, and cars who's mechanical status is questionable (severely worn suspension, squealing brakes, etc.) You vote one out and another scurries in.

Don't get me wrong, I use Uber and Lyft mostly because its tough getting car service as many went out of business. But its no utopia and the safety and quality of the rides is not better in any way.


My worries were mainly in these departments:

* will the cab arrive? When? * will they overcharge me? How can I make sure it doesn't happen.

With Uber there aren't a problem. I haven't been worried about my safety too much (maybe I should).


"Computer-dispatched" taxis would answer those questions when you called for a taxi in the times before Uber. Uber didn't invent those things, it just capitalized on them with better marketing.


I believe taxi in my city still has nothing like that. Or maybe some companies I don't know about? I also get to travel to other cities and researching local taxi companies is not an activity I'm looking forward to.


Some cities never got it or finding it was harder than it should be. Sometimes that was because of incumbent momentum or regulations. Some cities had good "radio-dispatch" laws that made sense at the times they were passed, but those then stymied "computer-dispatch" decades later as those improvements were made available.

There was a brief few years where a couple of big US taxi franchises had "computer-dispatch" labels and you could use that to select between alternatives.

Unfortunately, Uber disrupted the industry in so many wild and interesting ways. The most useful franchise I was aware of with "computer-dispatched" taxis in multiple cities I traveled between apparently broke apart competing with Uber and some of the franchise cities just outsourced the work to Uber or Lyft or other competitor or built entirely new names/brands separate from the old national franchises and figuring out which one is which is so much more challenging than it was for a brief few years in my experiences before Uber started up.

(In the mid-oughts, I used to have a "Yellow Cab" phone number memorized that was the same 7 digit number in multiple cities, you just swapped the local area code you were standing in. That number is basically out of service in one of those cities and goes to very different branded taxi companies in the rest, some of which then just have messages telling you to book them on Uber or Lyft or Some Random App.)


in germany we had and have an app for that which was founded before uber: mytaxi (now FreeNow)


Trust is a funny thing. I avoid the likes of Uber due to a complete lack of trust.


Have you tried to get a cab in Dallas pre-uber? You can sleep, get up refresh yourself and be ready to go to work before he cab comes to pick up.


I got stuck once in the middle of the day in a million plus sized US city (not Dallas) where every single cab company I called just flat refused to get me anything within the next hour, and no promises after. Just nothing. No public transport that went where I needed to be, of course. Since I was there for work, I luckily had a phone number of a coworker (whom I never met before) that I had to call and beg to rescue me. Never had such situation once uber/lyft came up.


Cabs and car services were (and still are if we ignore Uber and Lyft) effectively non-existent in many small to medium sized towns. And where they existed, they were exorbitantly priced. Where I lived (while Uber and Lyft were becoming popular) the local taxi service had around a dozen cars for a community of around 250k people. The only other transportation services were catering to the elderly and infirmed and pretty much just drove to hospitals and clinics.

Uber and Lyft introduced an option there (and in many similar towns and cities) that did not, or effectively did not, exist at the time.


> Cabs and car service existed long before Uber.

Were those usable? Certainly not in my part of the world (SV). Where are you from?


Yes - NYC. Native and still living here so I've been in a lot of cabs, cars, ubers, and lyfts.


There you go. I have been visiting NYC for two decades now and could rely on cabs to a large extent. But haven't seen any reliable cab network like that in other parts of the US (SV, Austin, LA, Seattle, Denver-Boulder, ...).


Ok but come on, surely you can’t compare that to the ubiquity of everyone having a button on their phone that brings a car to them in 10 minutes?


> ubiquity of everyone having a button on their phone

I mean you just pressed a few more buttons and told the cab company where you were headed and they'd show up in a reasonable 15 min or so. I'm an NYC native and took a lot of cabs and car services - not saying it was perfect - but it wasn't a dystopia. I can only once recall having trouble getting a cab from park slope to ozone park - there were no cars around.

Waiting was simply due to the nature of the cab/car market back then - cabs were radio dispatched and yellow cabs only cared about Manhattan and JFK/LaGuardia leaving us outlier schmucks with a paltry selection of mom and pop car services with few cars.


Got injured (brain). Airbnb and Uber eats is how I kept my family from being homeless until I recovered enough to program again.

Huge advantage being able to go at my own pace when I didn’t know how functional I would be on any given day

Not saying it’s a good company, but saved my family.


While I'm glad it worked out for you, it's also kinda dystopian to read how you had to work to keep your family under a roof in a time you probably should focus on healing. You shouldn't have had to do that at all, and in that sense I think some of these gig companies also prey on the needy.


Disability straight up laughed at me. I should have gotten a lawyer, but I couldn’t think straight or effectively communicate for a couple of years.


Make sure you’re taking creatine daily, some very promising data around brain injuries and I think it won’t do any harm. Hope you feel better soon.


Some papers supporting this, in humans:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK209321/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6094347/

https://journals.lww.com/jtrauma/Abstract/2006/08000/Prevent...

https://www.futuremedicine.com/doi/full/10.2217/cnc-2016-001...

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17461391.2018.15...


Don't forget to give her Smeckler's powder


See my sibling comment about the promising research and thanks a lot for the snarky, uninformed response.


You're welcome! It is generally wildly unwise and rude to give medical advice based on three words in a comment, so I shan't be apologizing.


Maybe you are right, but there are ways to communicate your feedback to people without being unwise and rude yourself.


Gave me kidney stones, do not recommend


Disagree. I remember the early days of it - I paid what it says I'd pay and the hosts were real people renting out their space and it worked just fine, and was an excellent solution for places where hotel prices were insane or no hotels were around where I needed to be at all. Then it got big, and became investment vehicle, and all kinds of weird fees started and now it's much easier to just book a hotel.


Hotels need to have flight-style pricing.

Remember back in the 2000s when Spirit Airlines would advertise $9 flights, that only at the very last moment of the checkout stage would have a government compliance fee, all taxes, gas costs, flight attendant costs, etc added on to make a $120 flight?

That's what hotel pricing feels like today. The FTC needs to step in and make advertised pricing equal the all-in fee for everything mandatory at a hotel.


The price should be the price. Advertising any dollar amount less than what the customer actually has to pay should be fraud.

Even taxes should be included in prices.

And this has to be a top-down, legal thing, rather than something companies can opt-in to, because I think the business consequences of being the only one in your industry with transparent pricing would generally be lethal, and I've heard stories of restaurants going out of business due to including taxes in their prices. People want to pay less, and they'll go to the place they think will charge less. So this has to be enforced top-down.


>> Even taxes should be included in prices.

Many people are dumb as bricks and hold insanely weird beliefs such as "if the displayed prices include tax, you will become desensitized and won't notice it if the government increases the tax rate!" or "I want to know exactly how much is going to the business and how much is going to the government!" Some US states have even codified this and explicitly ban tax-included pricing.

This is also why people will fight tooth-and-nail against very obvious methods to drastically simplify things, such as by having the IRS handle your taxes for you and simply send you an "is this correct or do you need to make changes?" form every year.


> "if the displayed prices include tax, you will become desensitized and won't notice it if the government increases the tax rate!"

Which is also a weird position to have, since nobody suggested getting rid of the price breakdown that gets shown at checkout. I'm sure companies would still love to show tax if half of their price is tax.


I doubt they would... Its not going to make someone more likely to buy their product just because they know how much is going to tax.


Do you personally know how much your employer pays in tax to employ you? I bet most people dont have any idea. I just had to look it up myself. I would never know if the rate changed provided I didnt read about it in the paper.


I can see it on my paystub, it has a nice breakdown of where everything goes.

I’d argue you could do the same with anything, in the case of restaurants just show the actual total on the menu and include a breakdown on the receipt so people who care can see how much is going to taxes and such.


Your paystub or W-2 show how much tax YOU are paying. Social security is two-sided, you pay half and the employer pays half, unless you know that already, the paycheck itself doesn't say so. There are also additional types of taxes, such as unemployment, the employer pays that aren't shown on your pay stub.


I wonder how those people feel about gas stations.


If you search for a hotel room on Hilton/Marriott/Hyatt/IHG/etc website, that is how it is. After you select room type, it always shows you the total cost prominently.

It is only travel agent/third party websites that try to hide total cost.


I think VRBO shows you the full cost for your visit (not in the nightly rate though!) while AirBnB shows you some subtotal presented as as the total cost, then when you start clicking through you get the "real" total cost. By that point you're already engaged though, so mission accomplished? I don't think I'd ever book a hotel through Airbnb - what's the benefit?


> I don't think I'd ever book a hotel through Airbnb - what's the benefit?

Agreed. My usual mode of search is to go to hotels.com or booking.com depending on the destination and find out what's available and to price compare. Then I go to the actual hotel's site to book the reservation. I'll end up paying the same rate either way but having a direct booking reduces the chances of there being a problem down the line since there's no third party to shift blame or act as the middleman in resolving the issue.


That's because people want it sorted by price ascending, and you must be near the top of that list for the customer to even see the offering. So they show an artificially low price. At the hotel's own site, there is no such competition.


Hotels are not choosing to not display the total price in third party websites, it is the third party website that is choosing to obfuscate prices.


But the hotel is the one charging a "resort fee" in the first place. If such a fee didn't exist, the 3rd party website wouldn't have anything to obfuscate.


I don’t think this is a valid argument. Airbnb specifically calls out including cleaning fees in these total, but this is something that affects small owners by default. The choice of cracking down on cleaning fees but not on resort fee? Purely on Airbnb. Moreover, when a host charges a cleaning see, it’s not the fee plus a tax on that fee, it’s just the fee. Hotels will tax you on each separate fee they add, so you really can’t trust that what you pay on Airbnb won’t balloon to 2x.


Ehhh, hotel websites aren't all so clear either. Often there is a public rate and a member rate. Cancellable and non. With breakfast and without. And various confusing packages and offers for booking multiple nights or in advance, etc.

Right now for the same room on the same dates at Hilton Waikiki Beach, Hilton.com shows 9 different rates (all of which don't directly include resort fee or taxes).

And when a resort charges for parking, that fee is almost never included.


Offering choices is not obfuscating the price. Member pricing requires you to login because of their arrangements with third party sellers requiring them to not “publicly” advertise lower prices.

And as soon as you choose a room type, Hilton shows you the total price. Perhaps not the best they could do, but not worth complaining about in my opinion.

Parking is often not included or desired, so it makes no sense to include that in the price, but it is listed prominently on the final page.


> And as soon as you choose a room type, Hilton shows you the total price

No, it shows you 9 possible per-night prices, with a small note underneath about resort fee and tax. You'd have to select one to get to the total price, and you still have to figure out some confusing terms... what is "semi-flex" rate? Which is better, deluxe mountain view or a premium mountain view?

And of course, the prices might all be different if you visit the site next week.


In the app, there is a “quick book” option, above the “more rates” option. Quick book option is the cancelable reservation with typical terms.

It seems pretty easy for those that want a straightforward reservation to choose quick book, and for those that want more nuance, to choose more rates and figure out what they want.


> In the app

We were talking about websites


Yes, sorry, I was not near computer to be able to compare. I assumed the options are similar on the website.

Edit: The website shows the same options as the app, a "quick book" price and "more options" underneath.


I'd like to see that page, because there's no quick book on the hotel I was referencing, but there are 9 distinct rates for the specific room type on specific dates, plus another button which allows for AAA rates, AARP rates, Travel agent rates, Senior rates, Government rates, plus corporate, group or promo codes.

The point is, price discrimination and obfuscation is an integral part of hotel revenue maximization strategy. The premise that they guarantee a "best rate" is a largely empty one.


This is what I see. The screen right after you select the room type and reservation terms has the total clearly listed. I do not feel like I was "hoodwinked" or "led on", on the previous pages it clearly says there will be resort charges, and prices are almost always excluding tax in the US.

https://imgur.com/a/quVPzWX

>The premise that they guarantee a "best rate" is a largely empty one.

I have never found a hotel room as cheap as the rewards member pricing from a third party, and that is what a guarantee is. Does not seem empty to me, they deliver what they promise, and being a rewards member is free, and zero cost since they already have all your information anyway.


LOL, want to "quick book"? It's only an extra $30/night above other rates, but hey, its "quick."


It is $30 more than the more restrictive cancelation policies, not for being able to “quick book”.


It's worse than this. Everything you note happens, but then you are so distracted by the price change that you forget to read all the other things, like there are now at least two classes of tickets, one of which is non-refundable and non-changeable under any circumstances.

And, this isn't the "scam pioneering" airlines like Spirit, this happened to me with American. When I was so busy trying to figure out the total costs once I get out of Google Flights, then I neglected to read the fine print. I have a ticket I called to change two weeks ago, and was told if I don't take that flight, I lose the value completely with zero recourse.

The airlines are actively waging war on their customers. It's awful.


I think it might be because most airlines don't make almost any profit on tickets themselves, but now rely on selling frequent flyer miles to companies to turn profit [0].

In other words, ticket purchasers are not their costumers anymore.

[0] https://abroaden.substack.com/p/the-strange-way-airlines-are...


If the FTC is getting involved, the first thing they should do is make hotels knock off the minibar nonsense. I shouldn't have to play stupid "Mnaaaah, you touched it!" "No, I didn't," games.


Stay at cheaper hotels, they don't have the stupid sensors in the minibar and use real human eyes to check.


Or nicer hotels where they ask “did you use anything from the minibar?”


Yes, the "resort fee" is the most bullshit of them all.

Any additional "fees" should be optional. I should be able to say "I'm not using the resort, I'm not paying this".

If it's mandatory it should be priced in.


Part of that "resort fee" is typically Wifi, bottled water and a daily newspaper, or something with next to zero cost, something you don't really need and something you don't want.


Most super budget airlines do this but it's because they let you pare down by paying for random things.

But even the non-budget ones like Delta save the taxes and 9/11 Fees for the end.

Southwest is the only one that shows you the actual price.


Delta always shows the actual price on the search page. When you check out, they break down the costs by fare, taxes, fees etc. But if you look at the numbers, the flight that was listed on the search page as $250 gets broken down into a $160 fare, $80 in taxes and $10 in fees. It's still the same $250.


I flew Delta a few months ago and don't remember it being this simple, but I probably got confused because I did look at multiple airlines that day. Maybe it's different depending on the market?


Flights are pretty bad today with like 4 different tiers of economy.


Australia has a law that says you have to show the actual real price inclusive of all taxes and fees. So I use https://www.airbnb.com.au/

AirBnB's hidden fee situation has completely and utterly jumped the shark / taken the piss. It's unfathomably bad.


I’ve used this trick for a few years. The fact it exists show that the pricing for other countries is an intentional dark pattern.


Yep, we're planning a trip right now and have completely foresworn AirBnB because of this. I suspect they're less than five years or so from the trash heap of history. Which is really a bummer because they made travel so much more fun for me a decade ago. But I guess I was just being subsidized by VCs.


That law isn't doing much good. I looked up one New York City hotel (like the OP) on the linked Australian site, and it was exactly like the US site. The resort fee was not part of the AirBNB price, only under "Show more" at the bottom of the hotel description did it state:

There is a 𝐅𝐚𝐜𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐅𝐞𝐞 𝐨𝐟 $𝟒𝟎.𝟏𝟔 𝐩𝐞𝐫 𝐧𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 that will be charged upon arrival. This includes WIFI, local and long distance calls, fitness center access, 1 Citi bike daily pass, and a $10 Food and Beverage credit daily.


Interesting. Is it really the universal rule or does it only apply to some countries? I compared the same listing at the same dates on both .com.au and on airbnb domain for my country (in EU) and there is only a negligible difference that comes from currency conversion I believe. I did the comparison in the same browser, so I'm wondering if there might have been some fingerprinting involved and prices were artificially bumped on the AU site?


Excellent, thank you.

I did a quick search for something, and the AirBNB fee was slightly higher ($20) than the US website for the same listing (dates, people, etc.)


Search on the Aussie version, buy on the US version. Too bad the US doesn't have an FTC with teeth (and one in favor of consumers).


Same in (most of at least) Europe.

Which is nice. Avoid the weird incentives hosts have to set a low night price and then jack up all sort of fees instead.


I've had very similar experiences with Airbnb.

Other deceitful line items:

* Paying for a cleaning fee and then in the terms and conditions they charge additional fees if you don't clean the listing * Terms and conditions that add additional liability, binding arbitration, and all kinds of additional items that were never disclosed in the listing * The above items were never disclosed and vaguely referenced in some random fine print that was not provided before you booked and then airbnb will not issue a refund if you cancel.

Honestly, the problem with airbnb is that they are a middleman that sits between the host and you. They really won't do much to help you when you call customer service, and they won't help you in ways most hotels would help you if you called and had a problem. It's really not a great experience as soon as you need customer service from them. The hosts add all kinds of nonsense rules when you show up or after you book that are never disclosed and they do nothing about it. There is even a news article where the CEO spent a bunch of time living in airbnbs and said he experienced all this nonsense, but still nothing is done about it.

I really enjoy the authentic experiences at airbnb, but I've been burned too many times and think it's outrageous to spend thousands of dollars on high end airbnbs and pay fees for things like cleaning and then be expected to clean on my vacation or be subject to some nonsensical rule and worry my whole vacation. I'm really torn about whether it's a good service or whether it sucks but you should know what you're getting into.


I am surprised IHG allows their franchisees to sell on Airbnb.com. But also, if you were to have gone to IHG.com, the total price shows everything included, super easy. Always cut out unnecessary middlemen.


Always cut out unnecessary middlemen.

Agreed. Especially since the hotels I've inquired with freely admit they put middlemen/broker bookings into the bad rooms (noisy, bad floors, bad views, bad location, not renovated, next to the exhaust of the restaurant next door, old electronics and furniture, etc.) first, until those fill up.


Why not? In this case they successfully diverted a customer from booking an Airbnb at the cost of whatever fee they paid to Airbnb. Hotels being directly bookable or bookable through other travel systems is a core feature of the hotel business model.


Hotels being directly bookable or bookable through other travel systems is a core feature of the hotel business model.

Many industries go through this, especially retail. It's cyclical.

- The business establishes its brand and develops a loyal following.

- Some consultant or middle manager or other rocket surgeon decides "We should be everywhere! Then we'll sell more!"

- Increases sales for a little bit, then it doesn't because the product becomes a commodity that people can get anywhere, and so people start buying the competitors because the they're all viewed as being the same, since they're everywhere and right next to one another on a web site or store shelf. The company then has to compete on price rather than quality while still paying the middlemen, causing profit margins shrink.

- Management realizes it's bought into a bunch of lies, and starts to let the co-marketing agreements expire so that it can get better control of its product.

- New generation of managers come in and repeat the same mistake.


> Why not?

There are likely several reasons for why and not. One for why not might be that it could be seen as legitimising a competitor, one which various interests from within & without the industry are actively lobbying against.

Another at a more local level could be that AirBnB is garnering negative press in many areas due to further marginalising local residents¹ and some companies might not want to associate with that if it goes against an image they try to portray.

--

[1] or potential local residents who are more priced out of an area by AirBnB² on top of more traditional holiday lets and second homes.

[2] I'm thinking twice about using the service after seeing a recent increase in AirBnB & similar activity locally (often standing idle a significant amount of the time) while friends are struggling to find affordable places to rent or buy.


I had assumed Airbnb is not integrated with hotel central reservation systems, but I did not know they bought HotelTonight in 2019. In which case, you are correct, why not sell in more places.


Airbnb users: Is there ever a scenario where it makes sense to book a hotel room using Airbnb?

(Not blaming the customer, and I completely agree that a "total price display" that leaves out fees that Airbnb knows about is predatory.)


Not from my experience. I’ve found the inverse to be true with the likes of booking.com now having some apartments.

Booking isn’t perfect but it is definitely my go to for travel accommodations. Their customer service is always helpful and easy to get in contact with from anywhere I have traveled to.


> Booking isn’t perfect but it is definitely my go to for travel accommodations.

Definitely keep an eye on your transactions, I had an additional fraud $1500 transaction from Booking.com Netherlands shortly after I booked a stay in Norway.

I reported it to my credit card and all was fine but there are probably some bad apples working at Booking.com.


That’s crazy, glad you got your money back. Was it a booking which asked you to pay directly by any chance?

I recently had an apartment (in the Netherlands also) request that I pay them directly with a bank transfer before I arrived but it seemed dodge to me so I booked with another


No, I paid for the (intended) Norway booking via Booking.com in full.

I then got a fraud charge a couple days later. I never gave my credit card info directly to the Norway property (not sure if Booking shares it with them?) but I'm more inclined to suspect someone at Booking who had access to their saved credit card database OR superuser access to book some other resort using my saved payment info.


Booking.com and other OTAs often will book the reservation with a virtual card that they fax the details over with the reservation (or otherwise communicate the virtual card payment information in the OTA extranet).

What could have happened is someone compromised the hotel's side of the extranet and grabbed your (and other) bookings' virtual cards and attempted to start racking charges against them which would then go back on your card you gave for the reservation to Booking.

While there's supposed to be fraud controls on the cards, who knows what could have let the extra charges fly.


Agoda usually has better coupons and sometimes mobile specific ones, better than Booking if they have the same listing. But the prices will also vary. Same parent company.


Is there ever a scenario where it makes sense to book a hotel room using Airbnb?

IME, not really. Hotel web site first, then Airbnb if I'm staying in a place where there are no hotels.

Third choice is booking.com, which has the ability to book motels in some small towns I frequent that don't show up anywhere else, and the motels use booking.com as their sole room management system.


Yes. Sometimes Hotels have cheaper rates on Airbnb. Not sure why. Possibly because they don't want to advertise those lower rates on their own websites or they have exclusive deals with Airbnb.

Edit: Another reason is that Airbnb simply provides more eyeballs for hotels. Sites like Booking.com is very crowded already.


If you can, I would always call the hotel and ask for price matching. 9/10 they say yes and sometimes I even received a free room upgrade because I paid with them directly and not a 3rd party.


Yes, any hotel manager would be a fool to give 15% to 20% commission to Expedia/Booking/Airbnb rather than split that with the hotel guest and have both parties come out ahead.


I've had instances where I've extended my stay, and they've found me a cheaper room. However, calling the hotel itself prior to booking has always resulted in higher or identical prices.

It's anecdotal, but I've not personally found it to be worth the extra hassle.


If it is a major brand hotel, they should not be advertising lower rates than on the hotel brand’s direct website:

https://www.ihg.com/content/us/en/customer-care/best-price-g...

https://www.hilton.com/p/price-match-guarantee/

https://www.hyatt.com/info/best-rate-guarantee/

https://help.marriott.com/s/article/Article-22050

https://www.choicehotels.com/deals/best-rate

https://www.wyndhamhotels.com/hotel-deals/best-rate-guarante...


Because they can use reviews to filter out the 2-3% of customers who cause most room damage and are otherwise expensive.


they own the app "hotels tonight," which is the only way i use airbnb.


I just checked the closest hotel to me and hotelstonight was $25 more than the hotel's website rate and hotels.com. May be a great way to find vacancies, but I'm not sure why you would book through them unless you find a one-night room at an extended stay place.


I need a kitchen because I eat lowcarb otherwise I'd be eating $100/day/person at restauraunts.


Sure, that's the huge advantage of AirBnB in general, but GP's question was about using AirBnB to book a hotel room (which rarely has a kitchen).


I didn’t know AirBnB could be used to book hotels, but yes resort fees are a scam. The recent AG settlement with Marriott is a complete joke and accomplished nothing of value.

Ideally banks would identify it as fraud and charge them all back automatically but they rely on co-branded credit cards (especially Chase and AMEX).

Perhaps Discover and Citibank would like to start a hilarious proxy war using Marriott, Hilton and IHG as pawns?


I think the resort fee is a way to get around either lodging taxes or franchise royalties, as they might specifically apply to lodging portion of a hotel room’s price.

Hotel room night tax rates are almost always much higher than general sales tax rates. The hotel might pocket more if they sell a room for $200 + hotel tax + $50 resort fee + sales tax rather than $250 + hotel tax.


You could be right, but I think you're missing the point.

The complaint is not that the fee is problematic in and of itself, it's that the fee isn't revealed until after your booking is made, usually not until check-in.


The post I responded was complaining about resort fees in general.


No, that comment called resort fees a scam.

Maybe I'm wrong, I don't want to put words in that user's mouth, but my interpretation was that they'd called resort fees are a scam because they only show up after you've booked your stay. That's the scammy/fraudy/dishonest part of the transaction; without it I'm not sure there's anything to complain about.


I'm sure some hotels only show you the resort fee after you've booked but I'm not only talking about that: I consider them a scam in concept because it is a fee that hotels allege covers specific things (parking, wifi, pool access & other amenities) but the fee is not optional, it cannot be avoided even if you won't be parking or using the pool.

But I also consider them a scam in practice because hotels & OTAs go to such lengths to hide them during the search process. By advertising a rate that doesn't include these fees they are advertising a rate that simply doesn't exist.

It is (sadly) the default practice in the states to advertise the price of basically everything pre-tax, so at a minimum consumers here expect for tax to be added (though folks new to booking a hotel probably don't know about occupancy taxes). But for a hotel or OTA to advertise 2 different hotels, one with a $30 / night resort fee, as both being $199 / night is also a scam.

Hotels do this for banquet & convention services as well. Everything is "plus plus", meaning plus tax plus a service fee %, usually 20% in my experience. Your $10k banquet hall rental is really $13k if the tax on it is 10%.


In my experience, resort fees in Las Vegas are still subject to the same lodging tax as the rest of the room rate.

My understanding is that when you book through an online travel agent, the regular room rate is subject to a commission of up to 30%, while the resort/destination fee is not. That's why many hotel chains provide incentives for customers to book directly with them.

I've heard in some jurisdictions outside of the US, hotels are required to show the total price including all taxes and fees when advertising rates. So if AirBnb isn't doing this, it could be a problem.


Yes, reducing the commissionable price could be yet another reason. Airbnb is not the hotel though, so whatever legislation would have to specify that travel agents also advertise total costs.


I think the resort fee is a way to get around either lodging taxes or franchise royalties, as they might specifically apply to lodging portion of a hotel room’s price.

According to the newspapers in Las Vegas, which report on this frequently since it's the resort fee capitol of the world, the resort fees are used to lower the base price of the hotel rooms so they look more attractive on third-party web sites.

Resort fees are still taxable.


So they’re not just scamming consumers, they’re scamming the franchisor and the tax collecting agencies they are subject to as well.


The consumer would be paying less tax. For example, if lodging taxes are 18% and sales tax is 7%, then you would avoid paying an extra 11% on the room rate.

Of course, the calculation is not that clean, since maybe the resort fee is also used to obfuscate prices which results in people paying more.

As for the tax collector, resort fees and whatnot have been commonplace for the 20+ years of my adult life, so either the tax collector is a corrupt idiot, or the hotels have a legitimate claim that the entire cost of staying at a hotel is not subject to lodging taxes.


The "Display total price" toggle should just be deemed misleading all together. It's explicit that it includes fees and not taxes, but is withholding tax info really the total price? No.


Something I haven’t considered until today is that the resort fee is probably a tax avoidance scam as well.


Maybe it was, or in some jurisdictions, but I think for the most part it's required to be taxed at the same rate.

I had assumed that it was a way to avoid paying the parent/franchising company, or paying commission on it to booking sites, which I think might be the case, especially the latter since they generally collect it on premises not through the booking engine.


Presumably they’ll add a second toggle for “show total cost including all fees and taxes”, which will give every cent you’re going to pay, except special surcharges.


"Display total price" "Display total price for real"


"Display Total Price (tm)"

...much further down the page in small font...

Total Price (tm) is our proprietary number we just make up because we actually hate you, our customer, and want to bamboozle you into spending far more than expected.


"Display Total Price FINAL REVISED FOR SUBMISSION(1)(1)(1)"


OP, why did you have to book Crowne Plaza via Airbnb? Didn't you have to end up doing their chores you'd have gotten for free otherwise?


> Doesn’t seem very transparent since they specially state that you’d see all taxes when you pay on Airbnb.

They do not. When you toggle the setting for "total price" when searching it specifically says "Includes all fees, before taxes" right next to it.

I also just tried to book the hotel you mentioned (https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/801588170672441756) and there is no security deposit or resort fee.


I think OP was talking about fees that got charged once he arrived at the hotel, not the fees that showed up at airbnb checkout.


Ah, that sucks, but ultimately it is exactly as predatory as booking through the hotel directly. It is crazy that hiding "resort fees" in their booking terms and conditions is legal.


In the description, they say they charge extra fees:

*******

▶ Mandatory fees

You’ll be asked to pay the following charges at check-in or check-out:

• A damage deposit of $350 will be collected by credit card. You should be reimbursed within 7 days of check-out. Your deposit will be refunded in full by credit card, subject to an inspection of the property.

• A resort fee of $40.16 per night

• There will be taxes and fees that need to be paid at the front desk

▶ Optional Extra

• This property allows pets however there is a $350 pet deposit per stay. 50 USD is kept for a deep cleaning fee, and the remainder is refunded if there is no pet damage.

• Parking $78 for 24 hrs and $93 for oversized. no in and out


I think the issue is that Airbnb claimed and advertised they would begin offering true pricing that included all fees displayed upfront so you could compare all the bookings against each other in the search engine and not buried in the terms and conditions:

https://mashable.com/article/airbnb-actual-price-listing-fee...

It's insanity to have to search through each listing and add random fees to compare the prices of different listings against each other. I don't think the OP disputes that this appears in the terms and conditions.


Requiring users to toggle a setting in order to achieve normal expected behavior is defacto a dark patten.


What other hotel booking site shows you the price with all fees included? As far as I can tell, Airbnb is the only one that even gives you the option.


Other hotels having dark patterns does not make them not a dark pattern.


Put it this way: What store have you gone to (in the US) that shows you the price of the item with taxes included? Including taxes isn't the norm nor expected. Nor is including fees for the travel industry, with the notable exception of airlines.

Airbnb giving you a toggle to show "With all fees" (but without taxes) is better than every other booking site out there.


If everything is a dark pattern then nothing is a dark pattern. Not advertising the various state and local taxes up front and instead calculating them at checkout is nearly 100% of transactions work in this country.


Are you seriously asserting this?


...you were downvoted?!? I can't think of a more cut and dry example.


I also noticed that in certain locales there are tricky things on Airbnb postings. I'm headed to Berlin in September and a few postings within the overview of the listing would talk about how you needed to pay a 5% cash fee (the "city tax" for the first 21 nights) but this is not included in the Airbnb listing. I don't know if this is because it's a local rule and Airbnb hasn't updated the product to allow for city level taxes, but it seems like a pretty major oversight that could trip someone up if they didn't see this in the fine print.


Airbnb only cares about hosts. Expect nothing from them but a tax and you'll be happier.

Keeping hosts happy is the game.


Startups that build their business on mere financialization of market arbitrage have a tendency become like the industry they sought to disrupt.

I think it’s because ultimately it produces no value and simply brokers, and brokers tend to end up representing the financial interest of the more powerful or financially enriching party to the brokering equation.

So, they have come to serve the landholder’s interests and no longer provide reliability to the consumer, and that is ultimately because the consumer is not the actual customer, merely the input to the product — nights booked per host.

I think it's part of a larger trend.

They say the U.S economy is going through a crazy tech makeover that is totally messing up how people work, hustle, munch, splurge, swipe, binge, and sleep, right? It's disruption and innvation of everything! Right?

Sometimes I wonder if this tall tech tale we have been telling ourselves is more of a big scam — that maybe the last 30 years have been more of a waste of time than we realize and not many things that are huge have really changed in daily life in ways that deeply matter.

People dreamed of jetpacks and got cat videos instead.

We disrupted the hotel industry to have the hotel industry recreated. We disrupted taxis and got Uber taxis. Restaurants got disrupted to create virtual restaurants with delivery. We disrupted television to create Google TV, which is basically television + the Internet but not really that different. We disrupted retail so we could have Internet retail where the primary innovation is again just delivery, and everything is a race to the bottom -- side effects be damned.

We’ve made efficiencies, massively, but sometimes I wonder why the real impact of all this "innovation and disruption" seems actually quite mild, and substantive disruption is so few and far between.

In the end I wonder if we have made technological advancements, but we haven’t made much actual progress. We have such a bias for the new, it tends not to be a popular opinion. But so much of this technology innovation just leads us to create new versions of the same old, because the incentives are to financialize and exploit financial advantage and to reconcentrate wealth and fortune, not actually innovate.

It's perhaps not the most thought out thesis, but I wonder about it, and whenever Airbnb comes up it brings this question up for me. I mean landing rockets changes the economics of space… we have innovation. It’s just that most of it just seems to be merely a greater efficiency of delivery masquerading as “disruption.”


This is a loose thread, but your post reminded me of this article: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/silicon-val...

It's an interesting read and really made about think about how big of a game they are all playing.


Always book with the hotel directly. If you don't, and you have any changes, arriving late etc., you will lose your reservation and your money. It is not worth the $10 you might save.


A lot of times I’ve also found it to be cheaper. So that has left me wondering if these web agencies are just selling the same rooms for a small premium on top of the actual price.

The other arbitrage opportunities include breakfast and other facilities. Either way check direct before ever choosing another option like Airbnb.


I’d just like to point out, because this isn’t obvious to some folks but all “fees” are bullshit charges. Fees are charges made up by the organizations writing the bill. I personally believe all fees should be illegal or included in the price. I don’t get to write -$5 on my bill because I feel like it; so, why can an organization do that in reverse?


The entire business model of "resort fees" is to be able to advertise a low price on aggregation sites by hiding/obfuscating a significant portion of the total price. Of course it is deceptive and annoying, but companies have realized the additional revenue far outweighs the complaints and possible lost reservations.

It's a shitty situation that nobody likes, but honestly in 2023 if you are booking any type of reservation online -- including the hotel's own site -- you need to read some of the small print.

Complaining online on forums like this is meaningless. The only way to "fight back" is not to book, which may mean skipping the vacation, as much as that sucks. Hotels and travel sites have had record revenues and resort fees and have only increased and become more widespread in the past decade. The trend isn't going to reverse on its own while people continue to book at record rates.


Write a letter detailing what happened to the NYC attorney general, the California attorney general and your state attorney general if you live in a different state. They may recommend you file a complaint with a Federal office as well. Include screenshots of your AirBnB booking/receipts + what you were charged by the hotel.


Booking a hotel room isn't what I thought AirBnB was for. In fact I'm astonished that any hotel chain uses AirBnB as a sales outlet.


I stopped booking hotels years ago after this happened:

I booked on a website advertising a room weeks in advance for $130 a night (only one night).

Arrived at the hotel, and sure enough, I had a reservation - that was not paid for. The company I booked through was charging $130 for them to call the hotel and put my name down on the books.

At that point, I checked out and moved to the mountains.


I simply switched to Booking.com, for this and other reasons. Booking usually lists deposit in small print.

If booking doesn't have deposit disclosure I usually just tell the staff I can deposit this little cash, take it or leave it, should've declared deposit amount and I will find another hotel + complain to booking customer support. (Not in USA)


I'm fed up with Airbnb tbh. From pricing, to booking places in shitty neighborhoods, to finding out a place doesn't have a/c, it's always something... I still love the concept and idea, but it's just too expensive to get rugged in some way, shape, or form every time you book an Airbnb.


Is this the right venue for Karen-style customer complaints that have nothing to do with technology? Maybe try Yelp or Google Reviews.

OP is not going to get my sympathy for booking a chain hotel via Airbnb of all places. Next time book direct with IHG if you want to stay at a Crown Plaza.


Not sure sympathy is what I’m looking for. More like holding startups (especially YC startups that benefit a lot from this forum) responsible for making promises for advertising sake. I’m sure I’m not the only one affected by this and if there isn’t a cost to this type of dishonesty, it will become standard business practice, which I think were already there.


it's calling attention to douchey pricing patterns. Given that a lot of people here doing their startups/projects and thinking about pricing, seems like worth mentioning.


For me the question is: How do we out-legalize dark patterns and fraud?

And legislate a competitive market?

If that’s the FTC - what are next steps with the FTC?

HN popularity is enough to cause traffic spikes that bring servers down.

Can we have a “HN hug of life” instead - a collective nudge toward constructive legislation?


But... Crowne Plaza is a hotel, and AirBnB is an aggregator of inexpensive apartments where hosts want make small buck now and then when the property is vacant, like a direct opposite of hotels?


Side note:

I released https://stay100.app recently.

It lets you view all stays in a grid with the final price you'll pay.


I don't use AirBnB much, but one place I booked didn't exist when I got there. It was in a different country. I was lucky to find a place to stay that evening.


Booking a Hotel using AirBnB ? We have come full circle. Is AirBnB even worth considering these days other than the fact that you may want a kitchen/more space ?


I typically see AirBnB's as the more expensive option. I travel frequently and have shifted back towards hotels. They are easier to book, peace of mind, points or rewards, concierge services, the list goes on. The main reason for an AirBnB is larger spaces, unique designs, and areas with low hotel density.


Use airbnb.com.au and you'll see the real total price


Airbnb is supposed to have a $1m host guarantee, so a security deposit cannot be justified by the host.


> I use Airbnb a lot

And yet somehow you failed to notice this ...

> otherwise they’re just a middle man collecting a tax.

Booking fee, cleaning fee, fee, fee, fee, fee.


Cleaning fee, and you have to take out the trash and recycling, strip the sheets, start a load of laundry, and load and run the dishwasher.


I think OP is saying that the fee wasn't presented in the check out. It's reasonable for customers to assume that there are no other costs except for whatever was at the Airbnb checkout screen process.


I've only used Airbnb twice but even I read the "fine print" (aka the entire description written by the host) as I quickly learned that they mention additional fees, city/country taxes and such in the text, which isn't in the Airbnb pricing/checkout.

I'm surprised OP has used Airbnb a lot and not noticed this. It's in almost every posting lol.


> It's in almost every posting lol.

I've certainly seen that sort of thing¹, but not nearly on “almost every posting”. It is likely to vary between locations, so perhaps OP has been lucky and only used the service for places where it is rare.

--

[1] I've never booked somewhere with extras like that though, I too read the details before booking and that² is a red flag for me.

[2] disingenuously deflating the headline price


I've used Airbnb probably 50 times. I've never been charged extra fees that aren't in the checkout process.


The long list of fees that are charge on top of the listed price are a pretty clear indicator that they’re just a middle man collecting a tax.

Its also in their pitch deck so its not like they are trying to fool anyone.




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