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The cleaning fee is used to prepare the space for the next guest, not to clean up after you leave. Part of the ‘social contract’ you make with airbnb is to leave the place as you found it. There is no ‘special exception’ for people to leave the place in worse condition.
Presented as a public service "copypasta"for the next time a guest starts complaining…
I would never present a representation of the cleaning fee to guests like this.
Why would guests consider it fair that they are charged to clean the place for someone
else?
The cleaning fee is meant to cover making sure the place is clean for guests when they check in and that is how it should be presented to guests if they ask about it,and what would make the most sense to them.
Candidly, I for one do not care if a guest considers it fair. Guests many times decide that the cleaning fee is ‘too big’. I do not think a guest should decide what I pay my cleaners.
Whether you personally care or not that a guest considers something fair isn’t at issue. And of course it’s not up to guests to decide what you pay your cleaners. (Nor do most guests have a realistic idea of how long it takes to clean, many assuming if they didn’t leave a mess, it will only require a change of bedding and a 5 minute bathroom cleaning)
You posted this as a “public service cut and paste”, apparently with the idea that other hosts could use it to explain to guests about cleaning fees if the guest complains.
I am saying that I disagree that it is a useful way to explain cleaning fees and certainly not one that would make an already cleaning-fee-disgruntled guest any less disgruntled, so I don’t see the point.
The purpose of explaining the reasoning behind something people might object to is normally to help them understand why things are done, in a way that makes sense.
I don’t charge a cleaning fee, but if I did, and a guest balked at it, I would say “The cleaning fee is what my cleaner charges me for XX hrs of work, which is required to make sure that all my guests, just like you, arrive to a clean space.”
I’ve never had a guest question the cleaning fee. But I prefer to call it the ‘preparation fee’ so that people understand that the fee is NOT for cleaning up after guests but to prep the place for the next guests.
My prep fee is a little over the price for one night and I prep the apartments myself.
I don’t understand hosts who have the fee they pay the cleaners as their cleaning fee. I don’t use cleaners but if I did, I’d see their fee as another cost that I should be making a profit from.
I don’t this is done literally - the cleaning fee may be the same as the pay for the cleaners, but I think that the amount is weighted so that the complaining Karens do not see an amount that they see as ‘excessive’. Despite hosts telling guests that cleaners deserve a fair wage, and despite hosts working 3x as hard as a hotel does to meet the very high standards that an airbnb aspires, Karens equate the fee as equivalent to mild extortion or a ‘guilt tax’ on the angelic guests who expect dirt and debris to magically go away at a price and speed that they think is reasonable.
Which is entirely irrelevant as we’re talking here about a monetary amount. No matter what you call it - it is listed on the website and guests have the option to accept these costs or not.
It’s not a hidden fee that just pops out of nowhere and some hosts factor it into their nightly rates while others keep it separate.
Eventually, regardless of what you call the fees, they are meant to ensure a clean and well stocked accommodation as advertised.
I don’t see why a host would see a need to justify or explain their fee structure to a guest, something that most guests wouldn’t even care about to know anyways.
Karens will be Karens, fees or no fees don’t make a difference.
Rolf I have to say I think this is a weird statement and probably falls into the realm of semantics. Logically, from my point of view as a host, I get paid by the guest after they’ve arrived and their cleaning fee covers the cost of cleaning the place after they’ve left. If it was a preparation fee I would expect to receive payment before they arrived and have it labelled “preparation fee” wouldn’t you say?
And really, I can’t get the distinction between cleaning up after a guest or cleaning up for a guest, it’s sort of both.
Yes it is a bit ambiguous in the description from airbnb too, but what I said was accurate.
Guests who tell me ‘but we are so clean’, or guests that tell me 'we paid for cleaning and it is not our responsibility to ‘leave the space as you found it’ (as per airbnb dictum) are possible recipients of this.
I was posting to hopefully help hosts who have PITA guests who think that cleaning fees are negotiation points rather than set costs for a guest. Perhaps what I posted could be copypasta’ed and save time for a host who has a cranky guest…
I’ve never heard of AirBnb expecting guests to leave the place as they found it. A guest, by definition, doesn’t clean. And I wouldn’t want my guests to clean. Who knows their standards?
“Leave it as you found it” has never made sense to me, either. Hopefully they found it squeaky clean, with freshly made beds and clean towels and empty garbage cans and obviously no host expects that.
I guess it’s semantics whether it’s called a preparation fee, a cleaning fee, or whether it’s for cleaning for the guest who has paid that fee or the next one. But whether cleaning is accounted for as a separate fee or accounted for in the nightly rate, as far as I’m concerned, everything a guest pays covers that guest’s stay, not the next guest’s.
If a guest pays a pet fee, it’s for that guest’s pet, not the following guest’s pet, right? If they pay for parking, it’s to cover that guest’s parking, right? So why would the cleaning fee they paid cover cleaning and prep for the next guest?
If a host considers it that, who paid for the cleaning for the very first guest you ever had, since you didn’t have any guests before that? And why would it make sense to a guest that they are paying to prep the place for someone else?
We use the phrase “We sincerely appreciate all of our guests who leave the studio in the condition they find it upon their arrival”.
I know that I’m already annoying a set of guests who don’t want to be burdened with chores but that’s ok, we don’t want these guests anyways. We don’t expect the place to be left “squeaky clean”, but at least leave the furniture where they were before and maybe put the iron back in the cupboard instead of leaving it on the floor.
There is a difference between being an inconsiderate pig or a decent human being.
Well, if it was squeaky clean when the guests moved in, and you don’t expect it to be when they leave, how does “leave it in the condition you found it” make sense?
I don’t think that instructions to guests which are not specific and open to interpretation are useful.
Much better to say exactly what the expectations are, IMO. “Please make sure all furniture you may have moved is returned to its original placement, garbage gathered up and put in garbage can, and dishes washed.”
In German (where I come from) the term “condition” means that the accommodation is supposed to be left intact - as in asking the guests not to damage the place or rearrange furniture or misplace items other then where they originally found them.
You’re splitting hairs, while a general comprehension of leaving a place in the state (condition) that they found it in is a common phrase here. Apparently, this means something very different in other places.
To go to the lengths of specifically writing every single thing that we expect the guests to do or not do would definitely put everyone off.
Guests with a healthy dose of common sense clearly understand what we mean, and those who lack basic householding skills won’t do what we want no matter how we word it.
For sure, words can carry different connotations in different languages.
I was just listening to a podcast yesterday on Canadian radio, where the question of what are the factors that determine “reasonableness”, was put to 5 intellectuals.
One of the interviewees was originally Bulgarian and she said that in Bulgarian, the word for “reasonable” carries the connotation that it would be something perceived and determined by others, as to whether you would were being reasonable or not.
Whereas in English, someone might consider themselves to be the judge of whether they were being reasonable.
Didn’t the phrase “Words matter” come into fashion lately…or has that trend gone?
“Leave it as you found it” is rediculous. You expect your guests to get down on their hands and knees with a rag and spray bottle and wipe around the toilet? You think they need to launder, fold, replace linens? Vacuum, mop?
I believe the cleaning fee is separated out for two reasons:
1.) Marketing. Makes your nightly rate “seem” lower.
2.) To give people some incentive to book longer stays.
“My vacation is only seven days long, but since my Airbnb has a lower cleaning fee, I will call in to work and extend my vacation. Surely my boss will understand” s/
@Rolf I think I am missing something here because I do not understand how this even remotely relates to this discussion.
Sarcasm. I added the reference, see above.
It’s more like instead of splitting my one week vacation two places I can consider staying at the same place longer since it’s cheaper and less time lost in packing unpacking and moving.
All depends on the types of visitors your market gets.