Airbnb is a great service for finding holiday rentals across the globe. It previously required travelers to pay the full amount for the booking upfront with refund conditions varying from host to host. This made it difficult for those managing a budget to ensure that they didn’t lose the rental as they figured out their finances for the trip. Airbnb has now made things easier by reducing the advance payment requirement for rentals.
Airbnb is calling this Pay Less Up Front, it enables travelers to pay for part of the trip at the time of booking, which will be a 50 percent deposit in most cases. They will pay the rest closer to the check-in date.
The service adds that its testing of the feature highlighted a clear demand for more convenient payment options. When travelers were given the option of paying less upfront, 40 percent of them choose to take advantage of it and even opted for more expensive properties on the whole.
Airbnb says that this is great for the hosts as well since they won’t lose out on bookings from cash flow-sensitive guests as they can now pay in installments instead of having to pay the entire amount upfront. Pay Less Up Front also encourages bookings further in advance with nearly double the lead time in some cases. This helps hosts secure and manage bookings more easily.
This new payment option is available starting today across Android, iOS, mobile web, and desktop.
Filed in . Read more about Airbnb. Source: press.atairbnb