Removed my cleaning fees but raised the price of the properties per night.
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We pretty much have to - ours is a whole house rental, and we have a cleaner who gets the whole $100 cleaning fee.
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Just because you have a cleaner to pay doesn’t necessarily mean you “have to”- it’s sort of dependent on whether the length of bookings you get tend to be similar, or are all over the map. If the majority of your guests stay 3 nights, for instance, you could just add $33 to the nightly rental fee. But if you get some 1 nighters and some 2 weekers, it would be problematic.
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No! I don’t check into a hotel For the night and then get presented with a bill for cleaning the room as well, it’s ‘all in’.
Build Your cleaning cost into the nightly rate. If it’s not financially viable to let for one night, then limit reservations to 2 or 3 nights to make it affordable for your guests and worthwhile for you.
This misses the point that the amount you add to the nightly rate will vary depending on the number of nights that are booked. We have a neighbor that has a $500 cleaning fee (very large home) and stays that range from 1 night to 14 nights. How do you propose they “add it into the nightly rate” since AirBnB doesn’t currently have the ability to divide the cleaning fee into the number of nights requested)?
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Also, one of the reasons I have a cleaning fee equivalent to a one-night stay is to discourage stays of only one night.
However, when I do get a one-night stay, I am being paid double the regular rate which makes the minor inconvenience of such a short stay well worthwhile.
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It would be too hard for me to add into the nightly fee I think. Our hotels charge $112 a night and I charge $90 for a 2 bed 2 bath home with screened in porch. I raised price before I get way less bookings so I went back down. I manage it for a friend and clean it myself plus supply all the supplies like toilet paper, trash bags, soap, dish soap, shampoo etc . I have the cleaning fee added to their list of items they are paying for when they book it. I don’t charge it after their stay or anything like that. It’s paid with their booking.
I recently “eliminated” our cleaning fee by setting a 5-day minimum stay and then building cleaning costs into the overall price. I did this in part because I heard speculation that ABB would prioritise listings with no cleaning fee.
I agree with many others here that it’s frustrating to not have a tool to spread out the fee over stays of different length, because what it means is that guests staying 6, 7, or more days are paying more than they really need to. I make it up to longer-stay guests by providing more luxurious amenities and food, and by offering discounts for stays of a week or longer.
One of the things I was hoping would happen when I eliminated the cleaning fee was guests would leave the apartment cleaner. Nope, hasn’t happened! When I used to visibly charge a $150 cleaning fee for weekend stays, some people would leave the place super clean; recently I had a 5-day stay with no cleaning fee (none visible to guests, at least) and they left amounts of food on the floor suggesting that they had just eaten their meals out of their hands while roaming aimlessly around the apartment.
Objectively speaking, it doesn’t make a big difference, because I spend about the same amount of time cleaning whether there’s 2 crumbs or 2000 crumbs on the floor – I still have to dust, vacuum, mop, wash linens, scrub shower stalls, etc. But on an emotional level, it bugs me to enter the apartment and find it a huge mess.
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While some guests may leave it cleaner when there’s no cleaning fee, I don’t think that’s a major factor. I host one guest at a time and I’ve always been grateful and impressed by how clean most guests leave their room and bathroom. But most of them are seasoned travelers with several, if not pages of reviews- they like those 5* ratings and “left it so clean” reviews, which mean they get easily accepted right away. And they’ve stayed at so many Airbnbs that have varying expectations that they just clean up as a matter of habit, rather than check exactly what you ask to be done. (Solo seasoned travelers also seem not to spread out so much, keeping things pretty neat and tidy throughout their stay, and because they share my kitchen, they clean up there after every meal they prepare.)
Whereas someone who books a place for a holiday and may be a newbie or haven’t had many stays may have a different attitude and perception.
When it was check-out day for my most recent guest, and I told him not to bother stripping the bed or doing anything really, he said he already had- he works as a travelling chef on fishing charters, private yachts and research boats and said they always have to strip their beds and tidy up their rooms at the end of a trip and he’s just used to doing that.
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That’s right even they leave it clean you still have to wipe everything down, sweep, mop and Lysol etc.
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I also charge a cleaning fee that goes to my cleaner. It helps with taxes because it’s not considered income on my taxes, whereas if I just included it I would have to declare it as income.
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If you are referring to your taxable income for the IRS in the United States, it doesn’t make any difference whether you include your cleaning rate in your rental fee, or charge the cleaning rate as a separate item. You get to deduct the cleaning expense either way, so your taxable income is the same amount in either case.
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I just booked a place for 5 nights and after I was charged I saw the breakdown of fees. Nowhere in the listing was there a cleaning fee until after the booking was made. Between cleaning/ taxes/Air fees the price went up $250 and I was using the $100 voucher.
I thought Air was adding all the fees in a booking so you could see them, but not in this case. They have gotten so expensive and anything but transparent don’t think I’ll be using them in the future and they’ve been my go to for years.
The STR is a tiny, 250 ft, I’m one person and cleaning is $80. As a host I never charged a fee.
From a guest, former host perspective.
PLEASE PLEASE do not give a low ‘value’ rating for this. $80 is a reasonable cost for cleaning depending on the area. Paying a living wage is important and a cleaner has the right to ask for what they need - the specificity of the job (time, date, unknowns) mean it is not ‘just cleaning’…
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This is a place I’ve looked at for quite some time and is really lovely. My problem with booking was all costs including cleaning were not revealed till after the booking.
I’ve canceled so I won’t be reviewing.
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there is a way to do it with rulsets, but it’s not straight forward. That’s how I hide my cleaning fees.
Wow.
We have a 3100 ft2 house and charge $160 cleaning fee. I always think that is a lot but it actually costs more than that to clean unless we do it all ourselves—but we don’t have that kind of time.
FYI we are in CA where labor costs a good amount.
I charge a small cleaning fee so I can increase my revenue for one night stays as it takes up more resources to host one nighters.
No, but if i did I’d incorporate it in my overall fee. I think it’s unfair for a potential guest to think the $ is one thing and then find add ons afterwards.
I recently lowered mine and am considering going without it all together because I’m currently in my city’s off-season. I host a guest suite in the lower-level of my home. My market is oversaturated with multi-property hosts, so this gives me a competitive edge. However, during the tourist season, I don’t really see a reason not to charge a cleaning fee because I’m still booked as much as I want to be and it makes the shorter stays a little more worth my time.
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