The court heard how Airbnb received over 2000 complaints from tourists whose final bill was far larger than expected. Initially the company told customers they were seeing higher prices because they had chosen to use US dollars as the default currency. Customers disputed this assessment.
The mislabelling was thought to have affected 70,000 bookings by 63,000 consumers.
On Wednesday the website admitted to making false or misleading representations at The Australian Federal Court.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, which brought the case to court, called it “a strong signal to large digital platforms like Airbnb that they must comply with the Australian Consumer Law and not mislead consumers”.
Commission chairwoman Gina Cass-Gottlieb said this currency confusion resulted in even higher cost to Australian customers booking on the website.
“Affected consumers ultimately paid significantly more than they expected to pay because of the prevailing USD/AUD exchange rate at the time.
“Some users also paid additional charges to their banks as a result of paying in a foreign currency.”
Affected customers have 45 days from Wednesday, December 20, to contact the company if they believe they were affected by the misleading pricing.
Airbnb’s Australia and New Zealand country manager Susan Wheeldon said the company was sorry for misleading any customers.
“While only a very small percentage of Australian guests are believed to have been impacted, we are disappointed that this happened,” she said in a statement.
“Airbnb would like to apologise to those guests.”
