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How do Airbnb discounts and promotions stack?

  • Updated

Airbnb can apply several discounts to the same booking, but not every promotion combines with every other one. The discounts that do combine are applied one after another, not added together, so the final guest price can be lower than you expect. It is worth understanding this before you switch on more than one Airbnb promotion.

Some Airbnb discounts always stack

These promotions combine with each other on the same booking:

  • Top-rated Guest Discount
  • Mobile-only Discount
  • Non-refundable Discount
  • One standard Airbnb promotion (see below)

They are applied in sequence, not by adding their percentages. Each discount is worked out on the price that is already discounted, not on your original base price. That is why discounts of 10%, 10% and 15% do not combine into a flat 35% off.

Standard Airbnb promotions do not stack with each other

These promotions all belong to the same group:

  • Early-bird discount
  • Last-minute discount
  • New Listing Promotion
  • Weekly discount
  • Monthly discount
  • Custom promotion

If more than one of them could apply to the same stay, Airbnb uses only one, chosen by its own rules (generally the one that gives the guest the best offer). They never combine with one another. One of them can still combine with the always-stack discounts above.

Seasonal adjustments and Rule Sets come first

Seasonal pricing, weekend premiums and nightly price changes from Rule Sets are applied before any Airbnb promotion. The nightly price that results becomes the starting point for all the discounts.

The order Airbnb applies pricing

Airbnb builds the final price in this order:

  1. Base price
  2. Seasonal adjustments and Rule Sets
  3. One standard Airbnb promotion (early-bird, last-minute, weekly, monthly, New Listing or custom)
  4. Non-refundable Discount, if enabled
  5. Mobile-only Discount, if enabled
  6. Top-rated Guest Discount, if enabled

Each step is calculated on the price left by the step before it.

An example

Start with a base price of €200, with a weekly discount of 10%, a mobile-only discount of 10% and the Top-rated Guest Discount of 15%:

  • €200 base price
  • after the weekly discount: €180
  • after the mobile-only discount: €162
  • after the Top-rated Guest Discount: €137.70

The three discounts add up to 35% on paper, but the guest pays 31.15% less, because Airbnb applies them one after another instead of adding them together.

Common questions

Why is the discount smaller than the numbers add up to?

Because the discounts are applied in sequence. Each one comes off the price left by the one before, so the combined effect is always a little less than the total of the individual percentages.

Which discounts can I safely combine?

The Top-rated Guest Discount, the Mobile-only Discount and the Non-refundable Discount combine with each other and with one standard Airbnb promotion. Two standard promotions, for example early-bird and weekly, never combine, so only one of them will ever apply.

Still stuck?

If this didn't answer your question, the Smoobu team is happy to help. In Smoobu, open the Help menu to open a ticket or book a call slot, or use the chat bubble in the bottom-right corner for a quick question during business hours.

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