Guest blog by Live & Invest Overseas
Airbnbs can be a great choice of accommodation when you’re on vacation. They’re comfortable and convenient, offering more “home-style” amenities (like fully equipped kitchens) than traditional hotels do. They can also offer more cultural insight into the place that you’re visiting. The rental is likely someone’s personal home, so it can offer a glimpse at the day-to-day lifestyle of a local from that place.
That said, Airbnbs also have downsides, and chief among them is their price. On top of the nightly rates, you also pay for cleaning fees, service fees, and taxes when you book an Airbnb. Those extra fees add up. The average cleaning fee adds an additional CA$67 to CA$108 to your booking, and in some cases, you’re expected to take out the trash, strip the sheets, and do the dishes before you leave, despite the cleaning fee. Service fees vary according to the location, property type, and cancellation policy, but they typically range from 3% to 16% of the total booking fee. Taxes, determined by local tax considerations and VAT rates, also add significantly to your total spend amount.
The impact of those administrative fees is that, in some cases, Airbnbs are more expensive than hotels. The average Airbnb booking for two people was 29% more expensive than the average hotel, according to a 2022 study by NerdWallet. But, if you’re someone who prefers the comfort and convenience of an Airbnb, you don’t need to choose between their higher cost and an accommodation type that’s less expensive but doesn’t suit your needs.
Thanks to a little-known travel hack, you can book an Airbnb without paying the additional fees. Here’s how it works: Many Airbnb hosts have their own direct booking websites that cut out the admin fees, and/or they list their properties on local third-party websites that are equivalent to Airbnb but charge much less. Here are two methods that you can use to book the Airbnb you want without paying the admin costs:
- Find the property you’d like to rent on Airbnb and do a reverse image search using the listing’s photos. To do this, you can either right click on any photo and select “Search with Google Lens” (if using Google Chrome), or you can go to Google Images, click on the “Search by image” button, and upload a photo from the Airbnb listing there. Either way, you should be directed to a list of URLs that also feature that image. Among them, you may find the host’s direct booking website or the local equivalent to Airbnb.
- Use Airbnb to find the property you like, and then copy and paste the listing’s name into any search engine. If the host has given the property a unique name (which many do), the host’s direct booking website or the third-party platform that also lists the property should show up among the results.
Happy traveling!
Live and Invest Overseas is the world’s savviest source for top opportunities to live better, retire in style, invest for profit, do business, and own real estate overseas.
David Popowich and Faisal Karmali are Investment Advisors with CIBC Wood Gundy in Calgary. The views of David Popowich, Faisal Karmali, and the guest writer do not necessarily reflect those of CIBC World Markets Inc.
This information, including any opinion, is based on various sources believed to be reliable, but its accuracy cannot be guaranteed and is subject to change.
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