How to Save 3% on Every Airbnb Booking

Airbnb may display prices in US Dollars on their site, depending on your account or display-currency settings.

But if you choose to pay in a currency that’s different from the currency set for the listing, Airbnb says it uses its currency conversion rate and may include a conversion fee of up to 3% in the price you see.

This fee may not appear as a separate line item, since Airbnb says it is included in the converted price.

But there’s a way to avoid Airbnb’s currency conversion fee on some bookings.

You can do so by changing the currency of the site to the listing’s currency before booking a place. You can usually change this from Airbnb’s footer or your account and display settings.

You can double check that this worked by converting the old US Dollar price into the listing currency, such as Thai Baht, using google.com or xe.com.

Then take that number and compare it to the price listed on Airbnb after you select the listing currency.

Ensure that you use a credit card that doesn’t charge you foreign transaction fees. They may add around 2% to 3% of their own transaction fees, depending on your card issuer.

Credit cards that don’t charge foreign transaction fees are available in many countries.