This forum is dedicated to connecting hosts with other hosts. Sign up to get the latest updates and news just for AirBnb hosts! Note that we are not affiliated with Airbnb - we are just passionate hosts!
And that means that your cleaning fee is already included in your price.
I understand that but that doesn’t mean that you aren’t charging for cleaning. It only means that you aren’t charging for cleaning as a separate distinct charge/fee.
However, if your guests tend to have the same length of stay most of the time it likely doesn’t make that much difference anyway. I’m not suggesting that anyone needs to add a cleaning fee, I’m only pointing out that there is no such thing as “no cleaning fee”.
For example, you said that you consider cleaning as part of your job as a host. And the nightly rate is what guests pay you for your job as a host. You are not doing your job as a host for free. So anything that you do as part of your job as a host is what they are paying for, including having a cleaned room.
If I wouldn’t lower my nightly rate, because it is already more than fair, if I added a cleaning fee in the circumstances I outlined above, then no, I don’t really see it as being included in my price. I understand your point, but don’t see it the way you do. I haven’t upped my nightly rate because I decided not to charge a cleaning fee, which, I totally agree with you, isn’t fair to guests, as they are then paying more for a longer stay than a short one.
Because I set a 3 night minimum, the first night covers all my expenses, including my cleaning time, and every night after that is basically profit. So if you booked a week with me, you aren’t paying more than a 3 nighter because I’ve upped my nightly rate to include cleaning.
That I don’t have a cleaning fee, nor add it to the nightly rate is like me picking up most of my guests at the bus station- I don’t charge extra for gas money or add it to the nightly rate because I usually combine it with a trip to the store or some other errand, so I’d be spending that gas money anyway. And as my average stay length is about a week, whether I had to clean for a guest or not, I’d still need to clean that room on a regular basis, as I live where the dust and insect life and gecko poop makes that necessary. The only difference is that I wouldn’t clean as fastitiously as I do for a guest check-in, and might get the woman who cleans the rest of my house every 2 weeks to clean the guest room, which I do myself if I have a guest coming.
An expense I did up my nightly rate slightly for this season was having to hire an accountant, because the Mexican tax dept changed the tax reporting system last year, and changing the way Airbnb reports it, making it so complicated that I could no longer figure it out, nor want the headache of spending the time to figure it out and do it myself.
Those of us who travel a lot often stay at hotels.
I have paid resort fees to stay at hotels, which the guest is told covers use of the pool, sauna, tennis courts, hot tub, etc. I have also paid valet parking fees rather than self parking. I have also paid pet fees.
However, I have never once paid a cleaning fee at any hotel. I have stayed at hundreds of hotels on multiple continents.
This is one reason why cleaning fees really do need to go. Guests don’t understand why they are there in the first place. I sure don’t.
Another reason is that the Air cleaning fee ought to be flexible to accommodate long stays versus short stays, and it is not flexible, so far as I know. (If I’m wrong somebody tell me how it works.)
So, a guest who stays 2 nights requires one level of cleaning, whereas a guest who stays 2 weeks requires a different level. Specifically, at my place I provide maid service during a 2 week stay, I do not provide maid service for any stay less than 5 nights. (I would on request, and I say so in my listing. Never happens.)
Yes, well said! Hotels don’t charge cleaning fees but they do of course clean the facility.
It’s basically a marketing strategy question that we have here.
When I first started staying in AirBnB’s, at the start of the pandemic, I was rather taken aback to see cleaning fees added on top of the nightly room rate.
Because hotels don’t do this.
You hosts who charge cleaning fees are totally accustomed to the practice and you like the marketing boost it gives your listing when guests are searching for accommodations.
I understand why you like it, but I think it’s a little dishonest.
In my market, whenever I check a comparable property that has a noticeably lower nightly rate than I charge, I find a cleaning fee.
If Air isn’t going to get rid of the cleaning fee option----and I don’t think they will anytime soon----then I would like them to post the nightly rate for each property with the cleaning, pet, and any other miscellaneous fees selected by the host folded in.
This would be even better than what we have now, which is that a guest can search using the entire cost of the reservation (except taxes) once they enter specific dates, and so compare properties that way. This is a BIG improvement over what we had a year ago but to me it doesn’t go far enough.
I’m not running a hotel. Although hotels provide accommodation and I provide accommodation it is not the same business model. I don’t have a staff, multiple similar rooms or numerous other locations. If I did then it would be easy to integrate my fixed costs into the nightly rate but I don’t have the economy of scale that hotels do so adding my fixed costs to my nightly rate would increase it disproportionately.
For example, every single time that a guest checks in, regardless of the length of their stay, it costs me an average of $34. So because I have $34 of fixed costs that don’t vary by length of stay I need to recoup $34 for every single stay. I do that by charging a one-time cleaning fee of $34 for each stay that is booked regardless of the length of stay that is booked, e.g. I’m recouping a fixed cost in a fixed manner.
Not only does it keep my bookkeeping straight but, more importantly, it allows me to keep my prices lower than they would have to be if I tried to recoup that fixed cost in an unfixed way, e.g. some unpredictable random addition to my nightly rate.
If I wanted to make sure that I always recouped that fixed cost without applying it as a fixed fee then I would have to add $34 to my nightly rate.
That means that someone staying for one night would pay the same price that they would with the cleaning fee ($200/night + $34 cleaning fee=$234 for a one night stay), because the new price with the fixed costs included would be $234/night.
However, someone who would currently pay $1234 for 6 nights ($200 x 6nights + $34 cleaning fee) would have to pay $1404 ($234 x 6). They would have to pay an additional $170 instead of just paying one $34 cleaning fee. And if they’re going to pay an extra $136 for no reason at all then I might as well charge for parking like hotels do
Just imagine if I didn’t do my own cleaning. My fixed costs could easily be $200.
Because you offer a cleaning after 5 nights, this applies to you, but not to the majority of hosts, who don’t clean during a guest stay of a week or two. As has been mentioned, some guests can leave a huge mess after one night, some leave it clean and tidy after 2 weeks, and there is normally no different “level of cleaning” required for a 2 night booking than for a one week booking- the place has to be thoroughly cleaned regardless. I have exactly the same cleaning routine whether a guest stays for 3 nights or 2 weeks and regardless of whether they left it messy or clean and tidy. I’m not sure what you fail to understand about that.
And yes, there is a place in your settings, although I don’t know exactly where it is, to apply a lower cleaning fee for short bookings. But most hosts wouldn’t want that, for the above reasons and because it’s much more of a hassle to have to clean after a one night booking than having to clean only once a week. The cleaning fee, for most hosts, is a way of discouraging one-nighters, or having them pay for the hassle of having to clean after only one night’s booking fee.
I wholly agree. It doesn’t make any sense to me to have the total price of the stay on the map. The total price of the stay was already and still is in the list you scroll through anyway. It seems silly to repeat it on the map when they could put total nightly rates on the map instead which would actually be useful.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe there are other people who really want to search on the map by the total price of the stay but that’s just not how I shop. And it makes it difficult to compare to the price of other accommodations that aren’t on Airbnb because everything else is by nightly price (hmmm. maybe that was the plan? hadn’t thought of that).
That’s true. I have that set, it’s a different cleaning fee for 1-2 night stays. I lowered it by $2, lol, just to appease the algorithm.
As a host, ultimately, whatever works for each host seems perfectly fine to me. Without the option of a cleaning fee, I would just be more restrictive about minimum stays but I’ve mostly already gone in that direction anyway. Or I could make up for the higher nightly price by offering more of a discount for each additional night of the stay or something. There are definitely workarounds but for me personally, it’s just easier to do it in a straightforward manner.
As a guest, I am truly annoyed though. I’ve been looking to book a couple of separate trips and have found that hosts who have dropped their cleaning fees have merely dropped the fee and increased their nightly prices to cover the cost. Because I’m looking for 6-9 day trips the additional cost is outlandish. There is one area we’ve nixed altogether because most of the hosts had “stopped charging for cleaning”. Of course, it may not have been as obvious if Airbnb wasn’t putting the total price of the stay on the map. Timing matters
Mostly I feel like I’m being punished because a bunch of millennials don’t have the life skills to understand fixed costs and it pisses me off
Obviously, it would be different if hosts just decided to take off the cleaning fee and not raise their prices but that isn’t what I’ve been witnessing (but of course not).
There’s no need to discourage one night stays. You can prohibit them on the platform. As I recall you have a 3 night minimum.
I don’t know if it’s true that the majority of hosts do not clean after a week or two. It might be, or might not. When we stayed 10 nights in Costa Rica, that host required cleaning of the unit after 7 nights.
I’ve had guests stay 2 nights to about 73 nights, I think it was. Most of my bookings these days are for 7 nights, I don’t know why, I offer no discount.
But there is no question that I clean more after 7 nights than I do after 3 nights. The entire inside of the fridge, all furniture is moved out and cleaned under, upholstery shampooed, rugs shampooed, etc. This is stuff I rarely do after 3 nights.
One other curious thing I have to mention here. …
The guest horror stories I have been reading on this forum lately sound like they’re from another planet. I consider it unusually messy if the guest leaves their breakfast coffee cups in the sink on check out.
This is why I book flights on the websites of the airlines I like, rather than shop those cheap ticket sites. While the cheap ticket sites may show the total price, what looks like a great deal almost always turns out not to be, when you find out it’s actually 3 flights that go from Vancouver to Salt Lake City, to LA, to Puerto Vallarta, with an overnight or two somewhere and having to buy expensive airport food for 2 days.
Oh yeah, when I was younger I used to book flights like that on purpose because I felt like I was getting extra adventures for free At some point, I became fatigued with extra adventures and just started going directly to the JetBlue app to find out how much it was going to cost me to have one of those nice singular pod things on a direct flight.
Well, I have no upholstered furniture to clean and no carpets or rugs except for a small one that gets thrown in the wash every few bookings or more often if it looks like it needs it, but I do exactly the same cleaning for a short booking as for a long one. Thorough vacuuming from ceiling to floor, moving furniture to vacuum and wash underneath and behind, dusting and damp wiping down the furniture, wiping down high touch surfaces with bleach or Lysol wipes, and of course the bathroom gets cleaned and sterilized exactly the same. (Guests share my kitchen, so I might be cleaning the fridge more often when I have a guest in residence than when I don’t)
Things like cleaning the ceiling fan, washing windows, taking down the curtains and washing them happen maybe once a month or two, but have nothing to do with the length of a booking.
When I first started hosting, I would ask guests who booked more than a week if they would like me to do a quick cleaning, and linen change, but they all said that wasn’t necessary, so that taught me that guests prefer their privacy and I don’t even ask anymore, just hand them clean towels and sheets. Like you, I get guests who don’t leave a mess, nor do they like living in a mess, so it doesn’t even get very dirty or messy while they are in residence.
As far as there not being a “need” to discourage 1 night stays because you can set a minimum of 2 or 3 nights, of course you can, but many hosts have nothing against one night stays as long as they are fairly compensated for cleaning. It’s much the same as a host having a 4 guest maximum, but preferring to only host 2, so charging an extra guest fee for more than 2.
One of my young guests told me about the website “Sleeping in Airports” It tells you what airports you can sleep in without being disturbed by security, where the best locations in the airport are to bed down, etc. Probably of interest if you’re 18, but at 73 I want direct flights whenever possible and a bed to sleep in.
A young boarder I had when I lived in Canada, when hearing that I was going to Mexico, said “Oh, you should take the Green Tortoise Bus- they have all these beds that fold down at night and everyone sleeps in the bus- they only stopped every 2 or 3 days for us to take showers someplace, but it was so much fun!”
I said, “Sounds like a great way to catch scabies and get kept awake by the partiers.”
There was definitely a time I’d have been interested in that! I went to Europe a few times between 18-22 and used my train pass for a place to sleep as often as not. I’d get on in Copenhagen and wake up in Southern France, have a banana with some Nutella and go to the beach. It was truly awesome. Geez, I guess I’m old enough to say, “oh those were the days”
If your STR is not special in some way (e.g. a tree house, a castle with a moat), and in an area with hotels, hotels are your direct competition, as well as other STRs.
No, my rental isn’t a castle or a treehouse, there are tons of hotels in my area and no, hotels are not my competition. Believe it or not, lots of people prefer renting an str and renting a private room in a local’s home, or an entire home, with a yard, a living room, and a full kitchen is nothing like renting a hotel room.
