Once a consumer-friendly underdog, AirBnB has become little more than a necessary evil for many travellers. Here’s how to beat their latest wave of fees.
There are a lot of travel hacks floating around in the ether these days — from the secret reason you should never chuck out your boarding pass to the controversial TikTok seatbelt trend — it’s safe to say that while some are doubtlessly more useful than others, the best are worth their weight in gold. We think this newly discovered Airbnb hack falls squarely into that latter category…
Since its inception over a decade ago, Airbnb has metamorphosis from a tech unicorn determined to make travelling better and, importantly, more affordable for consumers into a corporate behemoth that many consider a necessary evil, often doing damage to communities through its near-total takeover of tourist hotspots and by price gouging it’s paying customers wherever possible. Their latest fee increases are no exception but, lucky for you, we’ve found a neat way around them…
Explaining Airbnb’s New Fees
AirBnB’s fees have always felt like a bit of a p*ss-take, but their latest set of hikes — which first came into being in April 2024 — might just be the worst yet. Sneakily added into their Terms Of Service, these fees can see a total of 2% added to your booking. This might not sound like much, but on a several-hundred or -several-thousand dollar bill, the number quickly adds up.
The fee is colloquially known as a ‘Conversion Fee’ because AirBnB only adds it to your rate if a booking is made in a country where the local currency differs from the currency set on your AirBnB account. For example, if you were booking from the USA with your account currency set to USD, trying to score a nice pad in Japan, a sneaky 2% will be added on to your bill to account for the currency conversion costs apparently incurred by AirBnB…
And the worst part? You won’t even see this fee as a separate line item; they’ve just absorbed it into your total payment, effectively making the fees invisible. So, how can you get around it?
How To Avoid Airbnb’s New Fees
The workaround is shockingly simple: all you have to do is change your default currency to match the destination that you’re booking. How do you do that? Like this: Log onto AirBnB, click the globe icon, then currency, and then simply change the currency. That’s it. For example, if you were booking in France, you’d change it to Euros. If you were booking in Australia, you’d change it to AUD. Simple as.
Even better: there’s an added benefit here. Not only does Airbnb charge a flat 2% fee simply for the act of having to convert the currency, but they also set the rates for that conversion, meaning that while your fee increase will be at least 2%, it often goes up to 3 or even 4% thanks to AirBnB’s rubbish conversion rates. So, this easy trick could be saving you even more.
Are you still an avid Airbnb user? Or have you had enough of price hikes and digitally facilitated gentrification? Let us know.
