The BedBooking Price list allows you to automate Airbnb price management thanks to the "Commission and Availability" functionality. Its operation is described in the article How does "Commission and Availability" work?, but it is worth taking a look at how to use this functionality to make working with Airbnb offers easier.
The commission that Airbnb charges is split between you and the bookers, as described in Airbnb knowledge base article. Your part of the commission is usually 3% of the so-called the booking subtotal, i.e. the amount for the accommodation plus any optional fees (e.g. cleaning fees). Bookers usually pay about 14% of the total booking amount, as the so-called payment for service.
Example of using “Commissions and Availability” in Airbnb
Let's assume that you offer accommodation for EUR 200 and you want to sell it for this amount directly in the BedBooking Reservation System, which does not charge a commission. If you sell Airbnb accommodations for €200 per night, the booker would actually have to pay €228 due to the 14% service fee, and you would be left with €194 after taking the 3% commission from the booking total. If you want to receive EUR 200 per night sold on Airbnb, you must compensate for the 3% commission charged by Airbnb. You would think that it would be enough to increase prices using the global “Commission and Availability” by 3%. However, in this case, you will be offering accommodation on Airbnb for 206 euros, excluding the booker's service fee. Airbnb will then charge a commission of 3% on €206, or €6.18. You would have €199.82 left. To be more precise, you need to calculate the compensation percentage, which can be written as:
compensation percentage = 100 / (100% - Airbnb percentage commission) - 100
In our case, the Airbnb percentage commission is 3%, inserting it into the formula we get: compensation percentage = 100 / (100% - 3%) - 100 = 100 / 97% - 100 ≈ 103.09 - 100 ≈ 3.09%
If the global "Commission and Availability" amount is 3.09%, then in the above-mentioned In this case, Airbnb would have a price of 207 euros.
The 3% commission that Airbnb charges would be €6.21, so you would have €200.79 left.
If Airbnb charges you a different commission percentage and you want to calculate the compensation percentage, use the calculation sheet. Just make a copy of the spreadsheet and then change the amount of the portal's commission charged to you.
Compensation Airbnb commissions and additional fees
It's worth remembering that the booking subtotal that's used to calculate the fee Airbnb charges you includes additional fees, such as a cleaning fee or pet fee. If you use these fees on Airbnb, the amount of commission this website will collect from you will be higher than the amount of commission for the accommodation price itself.
For example, if the price per night in Airbnb is 207 euros (BedBooking price of 200 euros increased by 3.09%) and you charge a cleaning fee of 20 euros, then the 3% commission will be calculated on the amount of 227 euros, which will be 6.81 euros .
When using Airbnb additional fees, e.g. cleaning fees, it is impossible to calculate the exact percentage of compensation - the price per night depends on the length of stay, and prices for additional fees are usually based on a fixed amount regardless of the length of stay. Additionally, by increasing prices using “Commissions and Availability” we increase the prices per night, but we do not increase the prices for additional fees. For this reason, we recommend setting compensation using “Commissions and Availability” by increasing the nightly prices by 3.09%. Since “Commission and Availability” does not increase rates for Airbnb additional services, you will need to manually increase rates to include compensation.
For example, if the cleaning fee is €50, Airbnb will take 3% of that, leaving you with €48.50. If you would like to have 50 euros left, you must increase the cleaning fee by the compensation percentage, which for a 3% commission is 3.09%. 50 euros increased by 3.09% is rounded to 52 euros. Airbnb charging 3% of €52 will leave you with €50.44.
Please note that you will need to manually raise all fee amounts on all Airbnb listings.