tbf you'll see this on a lot of hotel bookings too. We just got back from a week in NYC, and most booking systems (either hotels or airbnbs) were a massive slog. Try to airbnb an okay place in the Bronx for $110/night? Click through and see an $80 cleaning fee. Try to book a hotel in Manhattan? Bam, $100 tourism tax.
Really not loving all these systems that go out of there way to confuse me into paying more money.
When you think about it the cleaning fee really does need to be separate because it's a one time fee. So with your scheme it's $190 for one night, but but $121 a night for a week.
That said I used AirBnB for the first time last month, and I was very confused by the different pricing on different pages. The UI did seem to be purposely confusing. It should have been listed as total price for the dates I am searching for.
An example is Cologne's "Culture tax": https://www.stadt-koeln.de/politik-und-verwaltung/steuern-ge...
So you think you should be able to violate the spirit of the law? Why shouldn't you pay that tax as a tourist?
I've been looking into AirBnB for certain situations, and because people tell me they are cheaper than hotels. However, I have found that in a lot of cases, hotels end up being cheaper. The big gotcha is the prices shown are the fee for the room (or house or whatever), but then at the end they tack on exorbitant "cleaning" fees that I have found to be greater than the rental fee. They have taken to using big graphics promoting living wages as a way to justify the extensive cleaning fees. In the end, it is much less hassle for me to just book the hotel. They have dedicated staff that allows me to arrive and check-in whenever, rather than having a small window of time before the "host" goes to bed or what not.