Allowing guests to make partial payments.

[Darrin2]

Hello all - 

My rental is very seasonal and in the summer we require Saturday to Saturday stays. This can be a good chunk of money for the whole reservation so recently someone asked if I could split the payments up. According to the guest she spoke to Airbnb and said that it was up to me to allow this. Does Airbnb have some means to allow us to do this for our guests? If so - how do I opt in?

We do rent outside of Airbnb and when we do we automatically break payments into 3 equal chunks. The first reserves the place and the remaining two are due 60 and 30 days out. This works quite well - especially for peak months - which need to be reserved in advance and are priced higher.  It's simply a bit unfair to ask our guests to pay so much months in advance of their stay.

Thanks!

-Darrin

[Karen-and-Brian0]

Hi @Darrin2 I'm not aware of Airbnb ever allowing hosts to determine the amount & timing of payments - it's always been my understanding that Airbnb handles the money, all aspects of the money and as far as I know, this hasn't changed. There are different payment structures depending on the length of the rental, but these are still handled by Airbnb alone.

See this Community Guide for full information:

How Payments Work

There is mention of one way to get around it near the end of the post; perhaps this is what your guest was referring to: "One way around this is asking the host if they would allow you to book half of your dates now and pay and block off the other half so payment can be made later.  When ready to pay for the second half, the host would unblock the dates and then you can book and pay for the second half.  This would however require a trusting host."

 Hope that helps! - Karen