Booking Website: Booking Engine Fee

What is the Booking Engine Fee?

• The Booking Engine Fee, also known as the Guest Service Fee, is a nominal charge of 1.8% applied to the base rate and fees (excluding taxes) for all reservations made through the Hostaway Booking Engine
• This fee also applies to Google Vacation Rental bookings that are finalized through the Booking Engine
• Eligibility. Only listings in the US and where the account uses Stripe will see/have the Guest Service Fee

How does it work?

• The Guest Service Fee will be deducted from your Stripe payout under the "Hostaway Application fee"
• The Booking Engine Fee can be paid by guest or paid by host
• By default, paid by the guest is turned enabled
• However, if you want this fee to be paid by the host, you simply follow the next steps:
  1. Go to your Hostaway Dashboard > Listings > Edit > Price & Fees > Guest service fee
     
     
      
  2. Untick the checkbox Include in reservation total (paid by guest)
  3. Click on Save to apply the changes
• You can copy the settings of each listing to other listings
  
  

Paid by guest vs. Paid by host

Paid by guest

• If you decide to charge it to the guest, it will be applied at the reservation checkout and passed directly to the guest. This way it will not affect your net revenue, so you, as a property manager, will not be charged for this fee
  
  
   
• The price breakdown of the reservation will be something similar to:
  • Guest books for $1,000 (excluding taxes)
  • An additional 1.8% ($18) is added to the booking
  • The total (excluding taxes) for the guest becomes $1,018
• If you include the fee in the price breakdown in the Booking Engine, the total price increases. However, your payout stays the same since you pass on the fee to the guest
• Stripe Dashboard. The guest service fee will be part of the line item “Hostaway’s application fee”, meaning that it includes the guest service fee AND the 1% application fee
• Taxes. Under Listings > Edit > Financial settings > Taxes, you can decide on existing or new taxes if they apply to the guest service fee
• Financial reporting. The fee is called guestChannelFee. It’s not part of the paymentProcessingFee. This will be displayed as a separate entry (since it’s part of the Price Breakdown and being paid by Guest) as "Guest channel fee" while the rest of the Stripe processing fees are grouped as "Payment service processing fee".

Paid by host

• You assume the Guest Service Fee
  
  
   
• If you exclude the fee from the price breakdown in the Booking Engine, the total price stays the same. This means that your payout decreases since you don't pass the cost onto the guest.
• Stripe Dashboard. The guest service fee will be part of the line item “Hostaway’s application fee”, meaning that it includes the guest service fee AND the 1% application fee
• Taxes. Nothing can be set up in the Hostaway Dashboard if it’s “paid by host”
• Financial reporting. The fee is called hostChannelFee. It’s not part of the paymentProcessingFee

How the Guest Service Fee Appears in Stripe and Hostaway

When reviewing your reservation payouts, it’s important to understand how the guest service fee (also known as the Booking Engine Fee) is reflected in both Hostaway and Stripe. There are two main scenarios:

• Non-Booking Engine Reservations:
  • For reservations that are not made through the Hostaway Booking Engine (for example, bookings from channels like Airbnb, Vrbo, or manually created direct bookings), the payout values you see in Hostaway will match the amounts shown in your Stripe dashboard
  • In these cases, no additional guest service fee is applied by Hostaway, so the financial figures remain consistent across both platforms
• Booking Engine Reservations with a Guest Service Fee:
  • If a reservation is made through the Hostaway Booking Engine and you have enabled a guest service fee in your listing settings, this fee (typically 1.8% of the base rate and fees, excluding taxes) will be deducted from the payout in Stripe
  • As a result, the payout value shown in Stripe will be lower than the total displayed in Hostaway, since Stripe includes the deduction for the guest service fee (along with the standard Hostaway application fee) under the “Hostaway Application Fee” line item
  • This is why, for Booking Engine reservations with a guest service fee, the values between Hostaway and Stripe will not match exactly
    
    
     

Why Booking Engine Fee being applied?

This fee is part of our ongoing commitment to driving more direct bookings for our property managers.

• The fee is applied when a reservation is made through the Hostaway Booking Engine or is coming from Google Vacation Rental, ensuring alignment with your success
• We've conducted guest research to ensure this fee remains acceptable and does not burden property managers directly
• This year alone, we've made substantial investments in our Booking Engine, resulting in a 144% increase in conversion rates
• The Booking Engine Fee is designed to cover the costs associated with the use of the Booking Engine

Finally, you must understand that this is not the only option. You can use any booking engine with Hostaway or even build your own through our integrations.

If you need any clarification about the Booking Engine Fee, please do not hesitate to contact our support team.