@Emily and @EllenN the reason I think I personally wouldn’t charge a cleaning fee for a room in my home and build it into my rate is exactly why you mentioned, the constant cleaning. With a whole house, the main cost-suck time for me is those turnovers. So I have a rate that’s enough to cover the utilities, materials, linens, snacks and such with some profit and put my actual time cleaning into the cleaning fee. But if it were in my home and I’m basically always cleaning I’d charge a daily rate that makes it worth my time and if I really wanted a cleaning fee then the costs of doing the laundry and my time for cleaning that individual room.
I think that this could end up as quite a debate. 
I used to run a traditional B & B in my own home and yes, every day I had to make sure that the common areas (entrance hall, stairs, bathrooms, dining room) were clean and tidy but then again, I’d do that anyway whether we had guests or not. That would, as you say, take about 30 - 45 minutes a day.
Now that we have a separate apartment as a rental, then it’s a full 3 - 5 hours cleaning after every guest. This might be five times a week or every two weeks. Although our average stay is four days so roughly twice a week is usual.
It’s not easy no matter which way you look at it!
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I charge what I pay my cleaning lady if I need to use her. I don’t use her every time and sometimes I pay her more than what I charge but that’s how I calculate my cleaning fee.
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We charge $35 for a studio rental. It takes about 1.5 hours to clean and so the price includes our time and the costs of laundry, supplies, etc. Itʻs cheap actually, my time is worth a lot more. But itʻs reasonable. We have a 2 night minimum because we both work, and cleaning everyday is unfeasible. It makes it worth it to host short stays but doesnʻt price us out of the market. We like to get $99/nt but go down to $79/nt when it is slow.
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I completely understand @Magwitch’s point of not charging for a separate cleaning fee since it looks like a sneaky add-on. I wish I could somehow add the the $90 cost of a professional housekeeper into my base price in a way that’s fair, but I can’t figure out how to do it–if the guest stays for two days, then I’d need to increase my nightly price by 45. If the guest stays for a week, it’s a price increase of just 12-ish. $12-45 is a HUGE range. And because I can’t predict how long each guest will stay before they book, then it’s just too tricky to assess the best nightly price.
Maybe after 3 years of doing Air I can get a good, consistent average number of nights the guest stays, then I my nightly rate can reflect the cleaning fee cost. That’s pretty much the only way I can think of to figure out how to build it into the rate. Because like you, I think it looks like adding on the cost of what should be included.
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I don’t charge a cleaning fee as it is unfair to people who want to stay just for one night. And I really prefer having people make short bookings, since this usually means they check out in the morning and I have the flat all to myself most of the day. Not charging a cleaning fee means that I get lots of people who stay for just one night. They usually check in late, go to bed, get up in the morning and leave. Minimum disruption.
I am a live-in host who rents out one or two rooms in his own flat.
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We don’t charge a cleaning fee, but I have been contemplating it since we started. The fact of the matter is that we do earn a lot less money with one-nighters, because of all the washing we need to do. So I would love to add a one night or 1th night surplus.
But since it’s called cleaning fee, and I don’t want people getting overly fussy about the cleanliness, I have decided not to charge for the moment.
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Cleaning fee is a misnomer. It should be prep fee or turnover fee. Because people are paying a quote FEE, they feel entitled to give the white glove tests in some cases. So calling it a cleaning fee puts us at a disadvantage.
You can make more money on short stays if you charge a cleaning (sorry, prep) fee. You won’t feel so resentful. If someone wants to book one night, they surely can, but I try to talk them out of it because it’s not a good value for them. It’s not possible to build a rate that’s fair into the nightly rate. One option is to have a three day minimum if you don’t want to charge a cleaning fee.
I have been an Air host for almost eight years now. I have always charged a cleaning fee and it has not cost me bookings. The type of guest I want to get is not one who is all worried or cheap about a paying a cleaning fee. I mean… prep fee.
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One of the great things about the separate entrance I added is that I no longer have to worry about cleaning the rest of the house. Although it will take a few more years to re-coup the cost, (Feb 2018 edit: I have now made as much Airbnb money in the last two years as the remodel cost. I had my best year yet in 2017 so accounting for paying myself for doing air I would say I’ll have recovered the cost this year. So 3 years total, not a few more years) it was definitely worth it. Occasionally I have guests in my part of the house for some reason and I hope none of them notice the dirt.
On the issue of how much to “pay myself” I also have to consider where I could get a job working only an hour or two a day. Where I could get time off whenever I wanted? Where could I work for 15 minutes, leave and do something else and finish two hours later? Where I could clean in my PJs? Where doing that work wouldn’t interrupt my dog boarding business? By the time that job deducted taxes, social security and medicare and considered my costs of getting to and from work, buying clothes, etc to prep for work I’d be taking home $9 an hour even if I were nominally getting $15/hr.
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Absolutely. How I wish that Airbnb would change the name to ‘preparation fee’.
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If they did, I would probably charge one. I think cleaning fees indicate to guests that they can leave the space as they made it since they have paid for cleaning. And since guests think that they are paying cleaning, I don’t charge and I average out the [well, some] costs over many guests, some of whom stay for 2 nights, and others that are here for a week or 10 days.
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The vast majority of my guests leave my place spotlessly clean. I charge over $50 but under $90 for a studio apartment with garden/patio area, all of which I have to clean to prep for each guest. So clearly they don’t think that by paying a cleaning fee they get to be slobs.
You have a separate space, so I think that the calculation “feels” different than renting three rooms in my house. I have had no one leave a mess. Some guests do require more scrubbing [about three groups total]. I fear that this would change if they thought I was being paid to clean rooms contained within my home.
[Sorry, babbling… had to do some steroids today. They are evil.]
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Right. If I had rooms inside my home for rent, I’d charge way less for cleaning fees.
I have a three bedroom, 1.5 bath house with a total of 1800 sqft. It takes about 5 to 6 hours to clean after each guest to get it right. Some guests take 9 hours and others take 3, but we use the average. I pay $20/hr because I want my cleaner to feel good and get a living wage rate. The cleaner lives near by and we pay them to drop by to curb the trash. I checked the other apartments in the area and what they charged and I found free then a big jump to $100 up to $150. I require a two-day minimum and considering the size, location, and amenities (free parking that costs $20/night at a hotel), and the cost of a hotel with a two-day stay, I am still charging less with a $99 fee. I threw out the extremes and knew I would not be free or charging $140. Then the math for the local hotels.
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But WHY?? Where is the logic in this? I just do not understand. Why should I pay extra for the room to be prepared for my stay? Surely that’s part of the deal? Should I pay extra to get the address or a key?
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At least in the US, paying a cleaning/prep fee for a vacation rental is typical. A hotel room it’s built into the price, but vacation rentals are typically managed off-site and therefore require a cleaning crew or even for hosts who manage on their own it again is not their own home that they clean as they go. And each group will have different stay lengths. So for whole place rentals a cleaning fee is a way to cover the fixed, individual stay costs and make it fair and balanced whether you stay 2 nights or 2 weeks. Because to fix it into your nightly rate could make it extremely cheap for a 1 night stay and you not able to recoup your costs, or price inhibitive for a long stay.
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I understand that. It is normal in Europe to charge a cleaning fee for a whole rental because of the reasons that you cite. What I don’t understand is that why it cannot be incorporated into the overall price when you rent a room in your own home and/or an attached rental that you clean yourself. Calling it a “preparation fee” or “turnover fee”, when you have to do it anyway, is illogical to me. Call me Spock, I suppose !
For the reasons many other hosts stated above. One night’s rate is different from seven nights. Eliminating the cleaning fee would make short stays completely non lucrative. If I could not charge a cleaning fee, I would have a five day minimum. If you think of it like that you are actually doing potential guests a favor… making your place available for short stays.
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Ok understood. In which case it should be be called ‘short-term’ fee or ‘last-minute’ fee, no?