Adding a rental agreement to your booking flow on Airbnb doesn’t come without its pitfalls and downsides, which are well worth considering before you choose to proceed further:

Friction

Adding a rental agreement that your guests must sign and return to you adds considerable friction to the booking process.  And, any additional friction will ultimately reduce your booking rate – which is worth thinking long and hard about.

How much friction will it add, and how many potential bookings will you lose because of it?

Who knows, but this is certainly worth weighing up before blindly plowing ahead.

Airbnb doesn’t have your back

This rental contract is between you and your guests and has nothing to do with Airbnb the company whatsoever.

Therefore you won’t be getting any help from them as an intermediary in the case of any disputes.

Instead, any disputes will need to go through the regular legal process, often involving lawyers and courts, which can get expensive.

Workload

If you’re a busy host (which I hope you are), then building a new contract for every new booking that comes in can be a bit of a headache.

Plus, on top of that, there’ll be a lot of chasing guests for signed contracts along the way too.

Please ensure you seek the advice of an attorney before finalizing any legally binding document. Your agreement should be revised and updated habitually to adhere to any changing local or state laws.