Australians who booked with Airbnb and were charged in US dollars could be eligible for compensation after a federal court fined the company A$15m for not making clear some bookings were not in Australian dollars.
Airbnb has also been ordered to pay out up to $15m in compensation to thousands of affected customers in refunds and conversion fees, with customers expected to get an average of A$230.
Between January 2018 and August 2021, Airbnb was found to have made false or misleading claims to about 70,000 customers who were given pricing in US dollars. The website displayed the prices using a “$” sign but did not make it clear the prices were in US not Australian dollars.
Airbnb admitted it breached Australian consumer law through this practice early on in the case, which was brought by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) last year.
In a federal court ruling on Wednesday, Justice Shaun McElwaine said the company did not clearly disclose that the pricing was in US dollars, except at the bottom of the first three webpages of the booking and then more prominently on the fourth page when a user confirmed the booking.
The court noted that 2,088 customers complained to Airbnb about being charged in US dollars. Customers were told the currency was what they had selected, which was false.
The company later blamed a software bug that had failed to default customers in Australia to the local currency. The court found that the Airbnb board was aware of customers complaining about the issue as far back as 2018.
There were about 77,000 reservations made by 63,000 users in the time period covered. Airbnb has already refunded the full price of accommodation to 8,000 more users, amounting to A$9.4m, but the court found the total value of the difference between Australian and US pricing for the bookings in question was $16.8m. Of that, Airbnb would have received about A$9m in revenue.
McElwaine inferred that Airbnb likely benefited from customers assuming the pricing was in Australian dollars because it would have made accommodation appear cheaper than that of rivals given the exchange rate.
As part of the orders agreed to by the ACCC and Airbnb, the company will pay a $15m fine and A$400,000 of the commission’s court costs.
The ACCC chair, Gina Cass-Gottlieb, said the decision to pay compensation will provide “a meaningful outcome for the affected consumers”.
“Eligible consumers will be contacted by Airbnb within the next 45 days and invited to lodge a claim, but they can also contact Airbnb to ask about their claim if they think they are eligible for compensation and have not been contacted by that date,” she said.
Susan Wheeldon, Airbnb’s country manager for Australia and New Zealand, said the issue had been promptly rectified by the company when brought to its attention.
“Currencies that use a dollar symbol are typically accompanied with a three-letter currency code, except USD, which, before our update, appeared with the currency code only on the final booking page,” she said.
“While only a very small percentage of Australian guests are believed to have been impacted, we are disappointed that this happened. Airbnb would like to apologise to those guests.”
