This fee schedule is untenable. On the few services we offer through the platform I have already had to add a service fee to counterbalance the fee you were taking from us, but that fee plus your 25% fee to the guest makes our lower priced add-ons roughly double the actual cost to the guest. That’s outrageous.
I’ve had several guests complain about how expensive the add-ons are and I had no idea the fee they were getting charged on-platform was so high. You need to be more transparent about your pricing. It’s difficult to find host fees listed plainly on the platform and I had to play games with a booking update screen and do math to figure out the guest fees.
Also, this just encourages us to take add-ons off-platform. You’d have way more of us using the option if you lowered your exorbitant fees and fixed some of the issues like allowing us to link the booking time to the add-on fees (hourly fees). Imagine the revenue from tens of thousands of catering fees if you dropped the fees to 5% or something similar because people could now actually afford to offer catering directly through the platform. Same with labor. I’ve never used the platform to offer crew services because I would have to charge at least double the going rate to earn a profit margin that was less than our standard profit margin and no one would bother booking crew through us.
Add-ons are not gravy for us, they’re services we work even harder to provide than renting out a space passively, and often involve significant 3rd party costs on our part.
You don’t advertise add-ons as a separate service - they’re 100% gravy for your bottom line as far as revenue goes, and while you’ve spent a little time and effort coding a mildly better add-ons experience over the years, practically speaking, it has barely changed since it was implemented.
Why do you charge more for doing less?