Airbnb has today announced a new feature that will help users manage their payments on the platform. The feature, aptly albeit unimaginatively named Pay Less Up Front, lets users pay for a part of their trip upon booking and the rest near the time of check-in.
Before now, Airbnb users had to pay 100 percent of their booking up front. For weekend trips, that wasn’t such a big deal. But long stays can end up being relatively expensive and thus inconvenient to pay for up-front.
This comes on the heels of another payments feature that lets group travelers split payments at the time of booking.
Airbnb said that, during testing of the Pay Less Up Front feature, 40 percent of guests chose to go with that option and chose higher-value bookings. The company also said that users who chose to use the feature booked with 2x the lead time compared to ordinary bookings.
Airbnb determines the amount that can be paid up front and the amount that is due a few days before check-in, which the company says is usually 50 percent. One stipulation of the feature is that bookings must be made 14 days ahead of check-in and must be at least $250 total.
The new feature is available now across all platforms.
