Charging a cleaning fee boosting bookings

I heard some buzz a year or two ago about AirBnB encouraging hosts not to charge a cleaning fee. However, as best I can tell, it doesn’t offer any boost in the search algorithm.

It’s the slow season in my city. I allow one-night stays–that’s most of my winter bookings as my competitors don’t allow one night stays and/or have a $100+ cleaning fee.

In winter, I charge about $95 a night and no cleaning fee, which I highlight in the title of my listing. I was getting very few bookings. A few days ago, I changed it to $65 a night with a $30 cleaning fee, and my listing is suddenly jumping in views and bookings, still mostly for one-night stays.

Surely guests are clicking the “show total price” button. As best I can tell, the algorithm is rewarding me for having a low nightly rate.

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That has to be it, @Xena. When booking as a guest, I used to pay attention to whether there was a cleaning fee. I wanted there to be none. I wanted it rolled into the price, as I did with my listing. I know! I know all the reasons hosts were fine with it, but my own choice was one price off the bat. Now that there is one price off the bat – “show total price” – I don’t care at all how it breaks down.
But the algorithm does care, it looks like. I’d do the same as you, and play the game.

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The cleaning fee has been a bone of contention for hosts and guests for many years but I can only comment on my own experience.

Both our apartments have a cleaning fee which is more than the nightly price.

Every host, every rental, every location, every guest is different of course, but I’ve always managed to be fully booked year round - despite (?) the cleaning fee.

But if any host who finds that any tweaks to their listing, including changes in the cleaning fee, makes a difference to their visibility then that can only be a good thing.

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The algorithm rewarded you for reducing the nightly rate I think…

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Does that mean that if you get, say, a four night booking then you’re $90 out of pocket or are you managing to attach the cleaning fee to every night booked?

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Yes, I would be receiving $90 less for a four-night booking. However, I get so few winter bookings, I would see a four-night booking as $290 I didn’t have before.

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So how do you prevent people from booking in your high season? Are you only opening up a 3 month window?

I’m not sure how this would be a problem specific to me, but I manually open my calendar and manually set the prices, so people booking for summer aren’t paying my winter rate. However, I cater more to last minute bookings.

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Sorry I wasn’t clear. So you lose $90 approx. per booking (per earlier posts) by doing it this way. Meanwhile your calendar is open for the high season (presumably the summer based on your post) and you still have lower rates and perhaps longer bookings (yes?). So you lose even more per booking?

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I’m not sure the ‘loss’ totally computes where you can set a different custom rate for every single night available and where most bookings are for short stays anyway.

The cleaning fee would be disproportionate if it always really covered the actual costs of the cleaning/laundry etc, so inevitably some of that cost is absorbed in a flexible nightly rate that is set to cover base costs and make some profit whilst still attractive. Low profit in winter off season is balanced out by higher summer rates anyway.

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Apparently even just moving your photos around or slightly amending some text makes the algorithms think something exciting is happening and moves you back up in the listing ranks! We certainly get more views immediately after some editing…

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I don’t really see how I’m out money by lowering my nightly winter price and adding a cleaning fee in winter. In summer, I charge a cleaning fee and am as booked as I’d like to be at a rate 2-3x what I charge in winter. I had been dropping the cleaning fee in winter to attract bookings, but most nights were sitting empty even when I was the only unbooked non-sketchy BnB in my price range.

People who bitch about the horrors of a ‘cleaning fee’ often also misunderstand how the platform or how fees in general work.

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It’s been an ongoing conversation here for years that tweaking listings is a good thing. I’ve left our listings untroubled for months (many months) and found no negative effects but as I said above, every host and every situation is different.

Although hosts report an increase in visibility, I’d like to know if the tweaking increases the conversion rate and not just the visibility?

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