I have someone inquiring on my listing that said, “I had a question about the fee. When trying to book it says 100hr which that was fine but when I put in the number of people it changes to 250hr instead. On your page it doesn’t say that the rate changes by how many people you have since you already placed the max at 70. Can you explain that part to me please because i read your entire page and it doesn’t read that” I replied to her with explanation of my tiered pricing, but my question here is… As host, are we supposed to say tiered rates in our listing? if we have tiered rates, guest should’ve seen the drop-down list on “Attendees” field and see the tiered rates.
This has been an issue for hosts for a long time. Peerspace has chosen to not address it.
I don’t mention it in my description. I just do as you did and explain it to guests in messages. I even have a pre-written message in a Google Doc that I cut and paste.
Frustrating.
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Thanks Geoffrey! I’ve been hosting for a few years now and this was the first time a guest had asked that. Generally, I thought in the Attendees field, there’s a drop-down list which shows the tiered rates… not sure why guest didn’t see that. And I don’t know how she was able to enter specifically 26 guests… She should’ve saw the tiered rates instead.
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I have also asked Peerspace to change this many times and they have refused to make what I think would be a simple and very helpful adjustment. Right now, every listing says “starting at $XX/hr”, and I send at least two messages a week to guests who are confused about the price being $XXX/hr for their larger party or high-demand time. If Peerspace would simply change the listing to say “priced between $XX-$XXX/hr” it would save hosts and guests so much confusion and back-and-forth.
So yes- you can lay out the pricing in your listing, you can have a copy/paste reply; whatever works to keep people informed.
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They don’t intend on changing this practice because it would be bad for business. Just like on Airbnb, they want the customer’s gripes to stay with the host, not the platform. If the transparency increased, front-end prices would increase, and it’s highly unlikely that "Starting at $25/HR
" would be even marginally accurate across the board.
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I think the guest not knowing is a tactic to negotiate a lower fee by the booker. In Marcel’s case a $100/hour booking for 70 people should be a red flag to the booker. And if it is a genuine mistake or they are new to navigating the platform by the booker , no harm in me, as host to explain the tiered pricing and/or direct them to toggle on the guest count tab.
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Thanks Meredith, that thought crossed my mind. Then there was a lot of back and forth of her trying to negotiate and I offered to throw in a bunch of free add-ons and she still wanted better price. Maybe that’s a flag that I don’t want to deal with her… Sounds like she won’t be happy regardless and I risk getting not stellar review.
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We stopped doing tier prices for events, made sense since they would be using the whole space, no matter if it was 10 people or 80 (also so I don’t have to the head count police). We still do tiered prices for productions, with our production prices lower and not charging a cleaning fee, people were trying to do parties under production, now it will cost more than an event, as a 40+ people production. We do have different pricing for weekends then weekdays, but I think I am going to change that to the same price each day of the week, it’s rare for us to get an inquiry from PeerSpace for a weekday for an event, this way our events will show as from the highest price and won’t have the confusion of it said $150 an hour but it showing as $200 an hour for a Saturday.
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It’s one of the most frustrating aspects that is continually ignored. When a guest searches for locations it will state “from $____” but when they click to go to your actual listing that “from” is no longer there and it simply states the lowest rate offered. This is why the guests who are confused have every right to be upset. They are kind of being lied to and it feels like its borderline false advertising.
It would be a simple fix to just add “FROM $____” actually on our listings and it would help alleviate confusion and anger from guests. And guests don’t only get mad at the hosts – they also look down on Peerspace because it comes across as a bait & switch structure of the service as a whole. It also loses Peerspace money because it often results in Hosts having to negotiate a lower rate and/or not charge for Add-Ons that they normally would have. A guest who would normally have no issue with your higher rate may suddenly not want to pay it if they feel they have been actively tricked.
It’s such an easy thing to adjust to still keep things enticing to guests while also being more clear that the price will change depending on circumstances.
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I guess I’m confused on why the guests are confused by this. When you create a quote, it shows you the price fluctuations. I’ve had 3 people this week act shocked an awed when their weekend quotes ended up higher, even though they had to select the number of people coming which increases the price. Don’t they get a copy of the quote when they send it to us as hosts? Am I missing something?
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This whole thing is a long-standing user experience challenge that Peerspace has chosen not to address. It’s not perceived as a business issue for them… just for us.