Do you clean or own place or hire others?
I just opened my first Airbnb a month ago. Immediately I got feedback that my cleaning fee was too high (I had it at $60, but I am in a rural area). I lowered it to $35 and have gotten a decent number of bookings. However, at that price I have to clean it myself. It’s not terrible except when I have back to back renters I get tired! LOL. I just joined TurnoverBnb and for a 2 hour clean they quoted me $95! Uggghh. What do you do?
60 dollars doesn’t sound too high but I guess it depends what your listing consists of.
If you are cleaning yourself you don’t need to take back to back bookings you can block out dates between booking. @Cyndyrr327
We hire cleaners but their fee is higher than what the marketplace perceives as fair.
So in summer months, which is when we get most of our bookings and when the average stay is four or more days, we build half the cleaning fee into the nightly rate by dividing half the cleaning fee by four. We ‘eat’ the remaining fee. We show no cleaning fee, which guests like.
In winter when stays are much shorter, we charge half the cleaning fee as a cleaning fee and ‘eat’ the rest.
1 Like
Well, when I say back to back, it FEELS back to back LOL. I’m old. Really I’ve had 2-3 days in-between except once.
Ah in which case integrate the cleaning costs in your day rates or put the cleaning fee up to cover the cost of an outside cleaner @Cyndyrr327
1 Like
Is it a whole house rental or one bedroom in your home? If it’s a whole house rental $60 sounds too little. If it’s one bedroom than I would agree that $60 is expensive. It’s best to do your own cleaning. It will save you time and grief when it comes to scheduling. You can block days in between reservations to give yourself ample time to clean at your leisure.
@Ritz3 it’s separate from our house, it’s 2 bed, 1 bath
@JJD that’s exactly how I feel these days. We have a house cleaner for our own house and she wonders why I don’t let her clean the airbnb. I told her yesterday I don’t feel it’s fair to subject anyone to my extreme pickiness right now LOL
2 Likes
I agree with JJD. Cleaning by yourself does get easier. As you do that, you may think of ways to simplify your Airbnb offering so that it’s easier to clean.
We started our Airbnb rooms with more decorative “stuff” than we have now. Decorative pillows, a couple of knickknacks, etc. Those things are gone now. And we found a way to conceal extra bed linens so guests don’t randomly use them. We do leave them an extra blanket and a throw. We did similar things in the guest bathrooms.
Anyway, by “streamlining” our offerings, cleaning got simpler and faster.
2 Likes
Let me know when a guest complains that the fee was too low. THAT would be something…
I think when guests start complaining about line items in a booking that they will not be guests I would want. Deciding what is the ‘right’ price for cleaners to clean a host’s airbnb shows disdain for the process - guests do not know scheduling, availability, quality of the local workforce, and I would feel anger if a guest ‘decided’ that the cleaning cost, the cost you broke out of the cost of their stay, is ‘too low’.
1 Like
@Rolf it wasn’t a guest. So I’m in a college town so my big customers are college football travelers. I am part of a message board for these people and whenever they say “I can’t find a place to stay” I offer the link to my place. That’s where I got the feedback.
1 Like
I started with cleaners and a lower fee before the pandemic but then when I re-opened I found that it was harder to get cleaners that understood how to clean an airbnb and the prices were crazy.
I started to clean the suite myself and even raised the price a little and got no complaints and in many ways I find it easier. I really liked when I had 1 1/2 days between bookings but I’m trying to get as many bookings right now before my slow season so I’m having to do the turn-overs on the same day.
It really does get easier. I always have at least 2 sets of everything in case I don’t have time to wash in-between or if something gets damaged.
My daughter recently mentioned that she never thought that the 2nd floor of our home could ever look so clean.
Also, getting the right tools and cleaning products help too. I have a combo vacuum/mop that I use in the bathroom and kitchen with a self cleaning mop head. I used a cordless upright shark vacuum (easier than cords). My previous cleaner taught me a few tricks on cleaning mirrors and putting on pillow cases. A cover for food in the microwave is also a time saver. I have two so that one goes right into the dishwasher.
And as other hosts mentioned, you get rid of the dust collectors. extra decorative pillows.
I also leave one day a month to do a deep clean (shampoo rugs, clean ceiling fans, moldings, doors, etc.)
I’m not sure at this point I would go back to having a cleaner. I don’t have to worry if they will show nor do I have to check their work.
4 Likes
I think we’d end up in divorce if I tried to teach my husband!
3 Likes
How old? I’m going to bet (crossing my fingers) that there are plenty of hosts here and throughout the world, who are older than you and yet manage to do back-to-back turnovers alone and happily.
Look at it this way, it’s a great way to keep fit and it’s cheaper than going to the gym. 
You just have to be very organised and make sure that you’ve got the right system and the right tools of the trade.
Having two rentals means that I have same day back-to-backs often for both apartments. Now that’s tricky.
You can do it. As @JJD says, it gets easier. You get fitter and more organised. You develop little tricks of the trade that speed thing up.
And to horrify you even further I co-host for a neighbour (tourist season only) and have had THREE same day turnovers. (Which I wouldn’t want every week!)
When you prepare the rental yourself, you have much higher standards than cleaners do.
Both apartments have a $100 cleaning fee. I’m worth more.
2 Likes
I was whinging to my Dad about trundling up and down stairs to launder stacks of towels, blankets and bedspreads, and he replied, “That’s keeping you fit.”
It takes relatively little time and effort for me to clean the suite, so it’s DIY. Except I have emergency backup cleaners who can swoop in if I’m traveling or otherwise delayed. It’s too much to pay relative to my nightly rate to do more than occasionally I feel.
I’ve dropped the cleaning fee and raised rates a bit in response to the the snotty tic-tokers.
A side benefit is that I’ve learned a few things from the cleaners. They put the sleeping pillows stacked in front of the sham pillows on a flat bed quilt instead of folded under the quilt, which is way easier to straighten and looks nice. D’oh why didn’t I think of that?
3 Likes
Are they your target customers?
1 Like
@Cyndyrr327 I have just a single room, private bath listing but guests share my kitchen. It takes me about an hour and a half to do the bedroom/bathroom and another half hour to make sure my kitchen is presentable for guests.
I have a routine down- I move half the stuff in the bedroom to one side of the room, clean the empty half including washing the floor, go clean the bathroom while that is drying, then go back and do the other half of the bedroom. Felt pads under furniture makes it easy to slide around.
I get a lot of reviews that mention that the place was immaculate and don’t think I’d get that if I didn’t clean myself.
I leave one day between bookings. It isn’t worth stressing myself out trying to do back-to-back bookings. I didn’t start hosting to add stress to my life.
I’m 72- I consider that old.
1 Like
If your cleaning fee is perceived as “high”, then you are more likely to get lower ratings for cleaning if it’s not perfect, so if you go with a higher fee and a cleaning company, you definitely will want to thoroughly inspect their work every time. Even if you think they always do a good job, what eventually will happen is that they will try to speed up their cleaning time or they will swap out an experienced employee with an inexperienced one.
You can roll the cleaning fee into your nightly rate, but if you’ve been hosting for only 1 month, you probably don’t have enough data on length-of-stay to know how to average it out properly. Well, unless your settings for length-of-stay are very restrictive.
In my area, for whole-place listings, the cleaning fee is usually about the same as the price of a single night, and listings without a cleaning fee (i.e. where they roll it into the nightly rate) end up being very expensive for stays longer than 2 nights.
1 Like
@Muddy, I’m still on the other side of 70 and I’m not old - so neither are you.
Preach, sister! Our management company was charging guests $150 for a clean, plus charging us $50 for linens rental, and I could see from use of the smart lock that the cleaner was spending 40 minutes* in the apartment after each visit. I would go and check and find crumbs and small globs of jam on the kitchen floor, body hairs all over the bathroom floor, etc. It didn’t really affect me directly because if a guest dinged us for cleanliness, it would reflect on the manager’s rating (she listed the place under her own profile). And she was an experienced host so she must have known what level of corner-cutting in cleanliness the market would tolerate. But it just bugged me! Now I do the cleaning myself, and it takes about 3 hours (not including laundry time), but at least I know I’m presenting an immaculate place every time, and it doesn’t feel like I’m cheating the guests with that cleaning fee. (I also reduced the cleaning fee.)
*I’m glad that labour costs are high in Australia, because it means people work for a living wage, but $150 for a 40 minute clean is ridiculous!
1 Like
Wow – what a difference!
I’m surprised about the linens rental. Is there a reason you just don’t own your sheets? I’m assuming you’d need to have two sets of everything. That way you can make the beds and either do the wash then and there, or do it later (or bring to service provider) for next stay’s use.
2 Likes