Chesky changes Airbnb- how will this affect OR api

Chesky announced last night on Twitter🤦‍♀️

• Starting next month, you’ll be able to see the total price you're paying up front.
• prioritizing total price (instead of nightly price) in our search ranking algorithm. The highest quality homes with the best total prices will rank higher in search results
• to set more competitive prices, we’ll be launching new pricing and discount tools
• You shouldn’t have to do unreasonable checkout tasks-  But we think it’s reasonable to turn off the lights, throw food in the trash, and lock the doors

See full thread here:  https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1589541705921212416.html

The first 3 items look to be Airbnb programming - OR have nothing to do with it.

#4 is arbitrary and vague at the same time - typical Airbnb fashion. They may be creating (just guessing ) a new section specifically for checkout rules. Maybe something for OR to do. 

Note that "the OR API" is kind of a misnomer - in connecting with Airbnb, we are using their API.  So, we can only control or update what they allow us to do by supporting it in their API - that's why certain amenities don't sync, they haven't added support for them to their API.

If they make changes to their API reflective of this post, that will be documented and announced, and we'll make the necessary changes to handle them.  If they don't make any change to their API, then there's nothing we can do, and most likely any changes at their end would be minor, optional, or can be handled using the current API - for instance, perhaps they'd be limiting / refusing to enforce certain sorts of House Rules.

We'll have to wait and see together - please feel free to post additional comments in this thread!

That brings me to another question. I suspect this may be requested by users who are heavily into Airbnb in the future. "Spreading" cleaning fee across the quoted rates. Something akin to what TA does to their SF - they do not show it as a line item but rather spread across the quoted nights. 

For example, if I have a rate of $110/night and $90 cleaning fee. The traveler looks at 3 nights quote, and he would see a rate of $140/night vs seeing 3 nights X $110 plus a line item for the cleaning fee of $90. The total is the same, just the presentation. 

This may not be an issue for vrbo and direct users, but Airbnb seems to be pushing in that direction. 

First- what is a SF?
Yes... that would be their desire. Though it does appear that they still allow for the listing out of fees. The problem with not absorbing them in the total cost is you sink below the fold in search value. 

From what I've been able to gather from various discussions on r/airbnb and chesky's twitter posts is that they are going to have a toggle switch that is on by default which will show the combined total of room & cleaning in the map search and on the detail page.  From what I can tell, it will not include their fees or taxes, but I could be wrong on the their fees part.  When they tested this (without warning) earlier in the year, their fees were a separate line item.

This will thankfully impact everyone equally, so everyone's prices will rise drastically together.  It may make it a little more difficult to investigate your competition's pricing, but it's just a toggle switch away to see where their fees are.

The cleaning checklist stuff, I'm guessing will be a separate section of either checkboxes or a generic "low, medium, high" with vague definitions for people to fill in.

First- what is a SF?
Yes... that would be their desire. Though it does appear that they still allow for the listing out of fees. The problem with not absorbing them in the total cost is you sink below the fold in search value. 

Service fee