There are five key changes you need to be aware of when importing your listings to the Hometime platform.

Airbnb automatically applies a new host-only service fee of 15% when connecting to an official API partner (link to guide on host fees below). It’s mandatory unless you have the majority of your listings in the United States, Canada, the Bahamas, Mexico, Argentina, Taiwan or Uruguay. Airbnb Plus hosts and hosts who use Super Strict cancellation policies may pay more.

If you do have the majority of your listings in one of the above countries, we recommend opting into the HOF before once you have your account connected. You can do that on Airbnb here.

Remember, you will be now paying the platform fees on behalf of the guest therefore you should increase nightly prices and cleaning fees by 15%.

Note: applying these changes results in no change to the guest, the homeowner or the property manager as we are simply reconfiguring Airbnbs fees.

Airbnb support page for Simple Pricing

Do you use a Dynamic Pricing tool like Pricelabs?

If so then you can follow the advice that they provide in relation to accounting for the Host-Only fee in your base and floor price.

When you connect to Airbnb you'll notice 3 main differences in your listing settings:

Each change is explained below.

A. You can't change prices or availability directly on your Airbnb calendar

When you open your Airbnb listing calendar you'll still be able to see your prices, bookings and availability but when you select a date you'll notice you can' change availability and you can't change the price. Instead, you need to change your prices and availability directly in Hometime.

B. Some pricing settings are disabled

You'll notice on the Pricing settings tab some 'edit' buttons are disabled.

Airbnb smart pricing does not work at all when connected to a software partner like Hometime.

Most other settings are configurable directly in the platform, except for other standard fees and sharing settings. The sharing settings are unlikely to change often.

C. All availability settings are disabled

You'll notice all 'edit' buttons are disabled on the availability settings. If the setting is disabled in your Airbnb account then it will be directly editable in the Hometime Platform.

All listings connected are automatically set to instant book, which is an Airbnb requirement. However, Airbnb will allow you to cancel penalty-free in the event you are not comfortable with the guest that has made an instant booking.

You can use the minimum advance notice feature to set a period of up to 7 days in the future where guests can only submit a request to book.

During the connection process, Airbnb will remove any iCal links that you may have connected to your listings from other booking channels. It is important to re-sync any other channels as soon as you have imported the listings so you don't get any duplicate bookings.

Airbnb also removes the ability to link your listings within Airbnb, and you will need to use the iCal feature instead.

We have made it really easy to connect calendars from other channels to the Hometime platform, and will only take a few minutes.

During the connection process, Airbnb also reset the settings you have in place for guest requirements:

The guest requirements simply need to be switched back on in the Airbnb listings after you have finished importing the listings to the Hometime platform.