Airbnb guests giving bad press to host that put too many demands on the guest. From changing sheets to doing dishes, taking out the garbage.
Not sure what others are doing on this forum. I don’t charge a cleaning fee, I live in the home where the suite is located which is completely private but convenient for me to clean after the guest leaves. I don’t put any demands on guests other than remove their shoes in the suite, leave windows and door closed when using air conditioner and turn off the air conditioner when they leave the suite. I don’t want them to do the dishes either, I have a dish washer so i can assure that they are clean. From the article (s) is appears that if too many demands are put onto the guest by hosts it will sour people to Airbnb.
Airbnb guests have been posting stuff on social media about this for years. There’s a thread on the Airbnb CC that has been going on for ages full of entitled, immature guests who think it’s okay to leave a sink full of dirty dishes and garbage scattered everywhere just because they paid a cleaning fee.
Some are so clueless they think doing those tasks, that take all of 10 minutes, means they are “doing all the host’s cleaning for them”.
If guests who think like that stop booking, I think that’s great.
I host a private room in my home and guests share my kitchen. All my guests have cleaned up after themselves in the kitchen and almost all have left their bedroom and bathroom basically clean and tidy, with zero instructions or rules from me.
I happen to think that hosts who expect guests to strip the beds and start a load of wash, hump the garbage down the alley to the dumpster, etc., shouldn’t be in the hospitality business. If they or their cleaners can’t get that stuff done in the time they allot for cleaning, they shouldn’t be so greedy and should stop taking back-to-back bookings.
Guests cleaning up their own personal mess- washing their dishes, not leaving garbage scattered around, turning down the AC or heat, turning off the lights when they leave, is basic respectfulness, and a reasonable expectation and instruction. But paying guests aren’t free cleaners, to vacuum, wash linens, etc. And hosts who expect that should make that very clear in their listing info, not spring it on guests in the house manual or check-out info.
Your setup sounds very similar to mine, private, remove shoes before going upstairs, leave dirty dishes on tray no cleaning fee. When you leave, make sure all is turned off, lock the door, key in lockbox and have a safe trip home.
Keep it simple.
I understand hosts asking guests to do more. In my area it is difficult to find a good cleaning service. If you do then you will pay a substantial fee. Plus they have a very short window of time to complete the work. The majority of their weekly income depends upon how many cleans they can complete Sat & Sun between 10-4. They have 12 weeks to make the majority of their annual income.
It’s a catch-22, ask guests to clean up their own messes, run the dishwasher, take out trash & start a load of laundry to comply the cleaner’s requests or pay a much larger cleaning fee.
The combination of Higher property values/rents have pushed professional cleaners further from the rentals and the increasing abundance of new STRs has increased demand so fewer cleaners available & they can command a high price.
The only hosts I know who are getting the level of cleaning & inspections they need in the peak season are doing it themselves.
Remote hosts are taking a hard look at whether to continue as is or move to a property management company or allow guests to do their own exit cleaning with no fee.
I don’t understand this reasoning. What’s the difference if a cleaner is only given 2 hours to clean a place, before rushing off to the next 2 hr. cleaning job, or stays at the same place cleaning for 4 hrs.? They are earning the same amount of hourly wage.
And there are many jobs in life which are seasonal. Most seasonal workers do not expect to make enough money in 12 weeks to sustain them for the entire year, they have other work they earn money at the rest of the year. That cleaners in your area expect to live all year off 12 weeks work, is pretty outrageous.
Prices are determined by supply and demand. If the remote hosts in your area closed shop and the local hosts did their own cleaning, there’s no way your local cleaners would be able to charge what they do, expecting it to amount to a livable annual salary for 3 months work.
Yeah, I don’t get this.
We rarely have our guests do ‘extra’ work, or begrudge the little we ask. Of course, it depends on the season.
I live in New England and now the weather is close to freezing sometimes, so we need to blow out the water pipes. Do I ask the guests to do this alone?? Of course, not. Our foreman, Bob, comes and instructs them. Per the House rules we start at 10 am (not sunrise by any means) and the bell is rung to start their minimal chores.
Every hour we sound again the bell for a rest/bathroom break, which exceeds state standards . . . . by a LOT. [And this is MA!] The bell rings again, and the work continues.
In a short two hours the tasks were completed today, and the guests are on their merry way doing God-knows-what with their sorry lives.
I’m sure that some Hosts are unreasonable. We’re not like that. We emphasize the inside work where we can, cleaning the fan filter on the TV projector, cleaning the dryer vents to the outside, cleaning BOTH dishwasher filters (Didn’t know about ‘both,’ did you?).
We do these things not just to keep costs down (cleaning fees are just $400) but to help the guests themselves, whether they own homes or rent. 'How much do we charge for this tuition?, ’ You ask. Nothing at all. It is all part of our service, not just to community but to humanity itself.
Other short-term rental Hosts abuse this situation. We deplore that, condemn it, reject it entirely.
For us, this is all about the hospitality. It’s about giving. It’s truly about service. Our guests have never complained about their service to us. Part of it might be that Bob stands 6’8" at more than 300#. He is an authority figure and works bare-chested in any weather. But I think these guests sense the contribution they’re making and the skills they’re developing. They seem grateful.
They always leave with a “Thank you, Sir.”
100%. We stayed in a place for a month last year and there were a lot of checkout chores, which was really annoying, it was enough work to get my family all packed up and out by 10am (+ dog and cat) without having a whole list of jobs to do for the host, who charged a hefty cleaning fee. I had kept the place clean the whole time, even had my robot vacuum with me…
There is a lot of attention on this, so now I put in my description: NO checkout chores!
This type of article has been around for years. I have speculated here before that in conference rooms all over the world, editors are saying to their contributors ‘right, I want an article a day about Airbnb’.
I think that’s a great idea! I have to admit that I am irritated by hosts who complain that guests didn’t complete the check-out ‘checklist’.
we hosts need to take control of this situation, and if means throwing some other hosts under the bus over this, so be it. The hosts who spring a long list of jobs on guests, esp on checkout morning, deserve a low rating IMHO. I’m surprised more guests aren’t wising up and asking about Checkout Chores before they book.
My son-in-law who travels a lot on business mentioned this to me years ago. He’s not a guy who would leave a mess behind, he barely even uses the places he stays to do more than sleep, shower, make a coffee or heat up some take-out.
Said he really resents paying a cleaning fee and then finding a heretofore unmentioned check-out list to strip the bed, start a load of wash, and hump the tiny bit of garbage he created down the elevator to the dumpster. He does it, because he’s a responsible person, but he’d never book there again, and lets the host know why.
All we ask is that no food be left out. We have people strip the beds to our surprise. Our only complaint is the guests who seem to think that lumping all their damp towels together on the hardwood floor or an overstuffed chair is helpful.
It never occured to me when I started hosting to tell the guests what to do with the bedding, I just figured they’d leave the bed unmade like everyone does at a hotel. But I get lots of seasoned Airbnbers, who I guess have had all manner of instructions re what do with the linens. After finding some guests stripping the bed and leaving the bedding either balled up on the bed, neatly folded, left on the floor, or just an unmade bed (which is what I prefer) and once discovering it perfectly made, as if no one had slept there and I wasn’t going to change the sheets, I now try to remember to tell them to just leave it as is, unmade.
In a business model where we all strive for an unbroken string of five-star reviews, it seems these hosts are creating a situation for themselves where resentment (and poor ratings/reviews) are inevitable. Why go to all the effort of building up a track record and then embedding this kind of poison pill?
Well, at least some of these places are run by property managers, owned by investors, or even ones where the host themself manage, but own a dozen properties. I don’t think they care at all if they get 5 star reviews, as long as they get booked and the money keeps rolling in. Like the ones who own Airbnbs where there are a constant stream of partiers, making the neighbors lives hell- they just don’t care.
We’d like to think that guests all look for places with high ratings, but that obviously isn’t the case.
I’ve now taken to saying to guests (as checkout approaches) “Some guests strip the bed linens – you don’t need to worry about that… it’s our job – you worry about getting your bags packed and catching your plane, we’ll take care of the beds” (or something like that).
It is the case with certain types of properties – but if your market is party bros, not important. If the opportunity presents itself, I take the opportunity to ask guests “why did you choose us?” – and quite often one of the reasons is “good ratings/reviews,”
Definitely true for the type of listings we have. I’ve had guests say, “You had wonderful reviews!”
And when my very first guest said after she arrived and we sat down over coffee, “You had no reviews!”, I said, “That’s because I just started and you’re my first lucky guest.”
Before she left, she said she was looking forward to leaving me my first review and it would be a great one, and it was.
I’m very appreciative of the fact that most of my guests have taken the time to leave lovely, thoughtful reviews.
I have to agree that there are some mucky mucks in some office in a big high rise building saying “Let’s write some shit about airbnb hosts!” BUT…If hosts were to ask me to do a bunch of cleaning for them, strip the bed, put in a load of laundry ect I would want to tell them to piss off, I’m staying the night I’m not the cleaning lady and, I probably paid a cleaning fee. I probably would never stay there again either! I am in a unique situation where I can clean our airbnb and actually prefer to, I’m just too anal to leave it to someone else but not everyone can. People are going to start leaving airbnb’s and go back to hotels if there are too many demands put on them. Some hosts are just in it for the loot as Muddy states and they don’t care if they have good or bad reviews as long as the money rolls in…sad for those of us that do care about providing good service and are so pleased when our reviews reflect that degree of service.
The going rate is $35-$50/hour per cleaner. So the common rate is $150 for 2b/2b no laundry-2 people 2hrs. Laundry, load dishwasher, make beds, take out trash…2 more hours $300 for 2b2b with linens!
Guests won’t understand. Depending on pricing there isn’t enough margin to absorb it. If guests pick up a bit, it keeps things reasonable.
There’s been lots of posts in my area with $700k + properties complaining that cleaners should not earn $50 an hour. Not my fight. Not my market.
Just saying come walk in the hosts shoes in my area & it is not so black & white.
I get it that the cleaning rate is high and can make hosting not worthwhile. But like any business, the business owner has to decide if it’s worth staying in the business, or looking for another way to make money. And there are things that hosts can do to offset costs, like having a 5 night-week minimum. If that doesn’t work in the area, then it doesn’t work. I do my own cleaning, and decided from the beginning that I wasn’t interested in taking one night bookings, and having to clean every day, so always have had a 3 night minimum. That doesn’t really lose me bookings, as this is an area where guests aren’t just passing through or coming for 1 night, most guests book for at least a week. So I’m lucky that way, but I realize all areas aren’t like that.