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I have an ongoing debate with a fellow host, who believes in very high cleaning fees…HOWEVER, she was not getting many bookings (as result of her high daily rate PLUS the high cleaning fee), so she lowered her room fee A LOT! (by almost half). I am thinking of DROPPING my cleaning fee altogether, and raising my daily price a bit --so over a month, I would be making a bit more than with my current cleaning fee…which is VERY LOW at the moment…
My host friend says even though a guest stays just one night she “makes” $70 in cleaning fees…and desires more one nighters for this reason. She says more people see her place listed that way by having a low daily rate She said if I raise my daily fee + eliminate the cleaning fee people would first see the higher rate and not book–or they have put in their limit and won’t see my place offered on the list of my location.
My rate is already very low ($95), cleaning fee also very low (was $15 I raised it recently to $20) --so what say you hosts? (P.S. I am right on the beach)
I have a $15 cleaning fee. I prefer people who stay longer, so as it spreads out, the rate is cheaper. I still get alot of one nighters. My nightly fee is slightly lower than others…i.e. $49 versus $50. Some charge $60 but have a pool or such. At this rate, I am booked a majority of the time.
I thought of raising the nightly rate, but worry I will not get booked as much. I really like how the cleaning fee works. I discussed it with several guests and they all said they liked how I had it set up.
I have a three-night minimum and charge zero cleaning fee. I sell my room as all fees and taxes included in the base price. I rarely get bookings longer than a week, which is good, because I am generally so over having a guest in my house for that long no matter how friendly and awesome they may be.
I don’t charge a cleaning fee because we have so many one or two night bookings. I am going into slow season but with 33 good reviews so far so I will revisit the cleaning few or higher daily rate when November comes around.
Yes, my daily rate is lower because I charge a cleaning fee and I get lots of hits and bookings. Do not raise the price,lower it and raise the cleaning fee.
I think your friend might be misunderstanding how AirBnB shows the rates. If you enter in the dates into the search engine, it shows you the nightly rate with the cleaning fee factored in. So if your nightly rate was $50 and cleaning fee $30 then the rate it would show would be $80/night. If you searched for three nights it would show you $60/night ($150+$30)/3.
It only shows you the room rate without the cleaning fee if you don’t put dates in. I think most folks search with dates because they need specific dates.
Even if you manage to hook them in with a high cleaning fee, they will see the total price before they book and if they are price sensitive will balk at it. So I don’t think it makes too much sense to try to game it that way.
Ultimately it is cheaper for longer term if you have a high cleaning fee. So if you want to discourage short stays that is the way to go. When my husband was unemployed it was great to have one-nighters to be completely full, but now that we both work full time, we’ve increased it to 3 night minimum, which saves our sanity. Also I think if you have far enough advance time (say 1 -2 months) it works out better because you have more time to fill the dates no matter your setup. But yes, a lower nightly rate and a cleaning fee will encourage longer rentals over the long term. If you want to have shorter stays then I would try higher nightly rates with no cleaning fee – you’ll be cheaper than your competition for 1-2 night guests.
I do not charge cleaning fees. And I have had a 95% stay during all winter.
I do also not demand a deposit.
Because of these two factors I do get more bookings than the competition in my area.
New host need advise on cleaning fee. I only charge $60 aud for a house. It is low as I’m only starting and want to attract more customers. $60 can cover 2-2.5 hours of cleaning if I use a cleaner. So far I have hosted 4 groups, my cleaning time was 4 hours, 4 hours, 2 hours and 6 hours respectively. The 6 hours group also left me with more than 20 stained towels to deal with, which was another extra 2 hour work in laundry.
If I increase my cleaning fee, I feel it is not fair to some very clean and tidy group. As we can see, there is a group who left my place very clean. But for those really messy and awful guest, what can we do? I don’t think I can claim their security deposit as there was no damage, just dirty every where in the house, especially kitchen, bathroom and bedrooms.
I found a great laundry/dry cleaners that did my sheets and towels at a very reasonable rate, I just dropped them off and then picked them up. Some even pick up and deliver. Alternately, you can use a hotel linen service that supplies you with clean fresh linens as often as you need them. (they own the linens). It’s a painless way to deal with laundry–plus it all gets done at once.
Hi Taratree, thank you very much! I just wonder does your dry cleaner treat all the stains? Could you please also let me know how much is the rate approximately? Your help is high appreciated! I will also consider the linen supply service, but I have invested over $2000 AUD into linen and towels, so I will have to stick with the current sets for a little longer (I only operated one month )
My laundry company charged me a dollar per pound (U.S.A) I live in Venice, CA. As for stains, you should just put on some “Soil Love” (I get at the dollar store), other cheap good methods are hydrogen peroxide, lemon juice, and baking soda or borax…(make a paste with the latter two). I have had to throw a few sheets away due to Acne medication a guest used (bleached the color out of my sheets/pillow cases). Getting stains is to be expected now and then, and having to throw out linen is the cost of doing business (can donate to a homeless shelter or animal shelter -get a tax credit for doing so) Hosts need to expect that damage to anything is to be expected. To prevent make up stains on towels, provide plenty of make up remover pads or sheets and tissues in the bathroom–with a sign, "PLEASE use makeup remover sheets/pads to remove make-up–NOT the towels, THANK YOU! " Good luck…remember, there are COSTS to running a business, add these costs to your overall pricing to reduce your loss.
most of my guests stay for a short time, I struggle to get anyone to stay more than one day! So adding a cleaning fee works, as I get to collect it regularly. Within 20 hours of most guests booking in, I start laundering the linen again. If I have guests Friday, and fresh guests Saturday, I get 2 cleaning fees, which fills me with the joys
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