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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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
As a host yourself, you should understand that the cost to clean the unit is the cost to clean the unit. If you only stayed for two nights, would you expect that cleaners would do something like “cleaning lite”? My cleaners give the house the same level of all over cleaning regardless of how long guests stayed. They don’t charge me extra if the house is a disaster after a big group or a group that stayed longer or had dogs or small messy kids (I usually tip them in that scenario). So my cleaning fee is a fixed cost charged by cleaners. The fixed cost is obviously market-related, with big urban areas or areas where it is very difficult to find cleaners perhaps charging higher rates. Hopefully hosts are not using cleaning as a profit center. Hope that helps.
Hotels used to clean your room every night of your stay. So it was straightforward for them to include the cleaning fee - it was about the same every night you stayed. Cleaning between guests was only marginally more expensive than cleaning when a guest was in the room.
Most STR’s only clean before a guest arrives. So the math just doesn’t work out the same as a hotel that cleans regularly.
A hotel also has cleaners on staff- they arrive in the morning and clean rooms all day until the end of their shift. They can just be directed to clean whichever rooms are needed, as needed.
That is totally different from scheduling cleaners for what might be every day, if you take one-nighters, to 2 weeks, or whatever, between cleanings. Finding someone who can accommodate an ever-changing schedule, not to mention them having to drive from one cleaning job to another, perhaps 3 in a day, catering to how each host likes things done and set up, means str cleaners are going to cost more than daily, full-time hotel employees.
Also, cleaners are ‘by appointment’ and have narrow windows to work in - after guest 1 and before guest 2 - and have to get to your location. Thinking that a cleaner will work for minimum wage or a similar wage is absurd - and insulting considering that the cleaner is under pressure to be ‘perfect’.
Im not commenting on the price. But I will say it is the same effort of cleaning after 1 day VS 7 days. So cleaning fee is not a counting days kind of thing.
