Booking an Airbnb rental with a group of friends, family, or coworkers just became much simpler. Airbnb has introduced a split payment feature that eliminates the need for one person to cover the entire cost up front and for groups to manually calculate each share.
This split payment capability stems from Airbnb’s acquisition of Tilt, a peer-to-peer payments app with functionality similar to Venmo.
With the new option, a primary trip organizer books a listing and pays their portion to reserve the reservation. The remaining group members then have 72 hours to sign in to Airbnb and pay their individual shares to complete the transaction. Each participant must download the Airbnb app and create their own account to use the feature. Split payments are supported for groups of up to 16 people.
Group travel is common: a survey of Airbnb users by DKC Analytics found that 79 percent of U.S. travelers took a group trip in the past five years, and 43 percent reported losing $1,000 or more because travel companions failed to pay their share. By making it straightforward to request and collect payments, Airbnb’s split payment feature helps distribute costs fairly and reduces the burden on organizers.