Originally Posted by
rickg523
I'm going to add a caution, based on the phrase I bolded.
A few years back, I booked an apartment in Rome through Airbnb. While poking around online, I came across the same apartment offered on another site -
for twice the nightly rate. When I checked the availability calendar, my booked dates were shown as open. That worried me, so I commenced an in depth search and found this apartment listed on 4 different sites, all of them about twice the price at which I had booked through Airbnb. And all the calendars (except Airbnb) showed my week as available for rent.
To be clear, the price on Airbnb was exceptionally low for the property, which is why I grabbed it almost a year in advance.
I contacted the property manager who danced around a bit. When I asked him directly if someone booked my dates through another site at twice the rate would he reject the booking or would he cancel mine, he suggested we scotch the reservation. I had him do it, so I got a full refund and moved on. If he'd refused, I would have contacted Airbnb, who would likely have refunded my money and booted him off the site (he had a couple of other properties listed).
My point is to check other rental sites for the property you're going to book and if you see higher rates, make sure that when you book the availability calendar on all sites is the same and your dates are shown as blocked. Otherwise, you can expect to get a cancellation notice if someone wants to take the place at the higher rate.
Thank you! You posted a really useful tip on how discover the hosts who are hunting better price on different websites and even willing to cancel your booking as part of this strategy. Maybe that is why airbnb has now introduced the penalty for hosts who cancel the bookings. Regarding the difference in price of 'honest' hosts, I think that the difference can be between the same property due to different % of commissions used by different booking websites. More or less they are all between 15 and 18%. That 3% difference may be a good amount on a high season. I always try to contact properties directly finding them on Google and offer them 10% less from airbnb with a direct payment, which is usually accepted with a deposit and rest at arrival.