Hello, I’m hoping you can give me a piece of advice. We are soon to be new hosts and since we live out of the area we will be hosting remotely and have arranged for a co-host to handle everything. We have a signed contract saying we will pay him 25% for everything (including cleaning) but when we went to enter this into Airbnb we discovered that they make it so the co-host gets the percentage of BOTH the booking fees and cleaning fees. How would you recommend we handle this? I really don’t want to pay an extra amount just because Airbnb won’t itemize the percentages. Thank you
25% of what? The nightly rate? Your net profit from Air? Sounds like you need to hash out the contract a little more. You could raise rates and not charge a cleaning fee to avoid him getting a cut of that fee, but then they are still getting more from their 25% as well.
The more I’ve thought about this, the more confused I am about your post. Are you actually going to charge the guest a cleaning fee but not give the cleaning fee to the person cleaning your house?? Or is your property manager just supposed to arrange for a cleaning person who you will pay separately?
If you’re only paying your property manager 25% for managing the rental AND for cleaning, they are getting seriously ripped off (unless you’re a really high nightly rate and have a high minimum day stay for your guests or a few other scenarios that aren’t likely if you’re a brand new host.)
As an example, I charge around $100/night for my 2-bdrm, whole-house rental. I clean it myself, and it generally takes about 2.5 hours (but it has been up to 6, depending on how messy the guest was.) AirBnB’s living wage standard rate for cleaning is $25/hour for someone not employed by a cleaning company that provides insurance, etc. Let’s say I get a 1-night booking, so I’m getting $97 from AirBnB for that reservation. Using the living wage cleaning fee, I would then have to pay anywhere from $62.50 - $150 to have the house cleaned, potentially resulting in a loss for me (which is why I clean the house myself.)
In my made-up scenario here, you’re getting $97 for a 1-night booking and paying your property manager 25%, so about $24. That $24 is for them to clean AND manage the listing AND interact with guests, which means they are making, at most, about $8/hr, and at worst, maybe $2-3/hr. Does that really seem like a fair deal?
Now, if the property manager is not actually the one cleaning and you’re paying for that separately, then please disregard my entire post. 
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The contract says 25% of booking fees 0% of cleaning fees.
The co-host is not doing the cleaning. Is there anyway to set it up on Airbnb so only 25% of the booking fees goes to the co-host and no percentage of the cleaning fees?
No. Not that I can see.
Simplest way is for your co-host to invoice you on a monthly basis for services provided and you pay in line with agreed payment terms.
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I agree with Helsi- you’re just going to have to pay him yourself rather than going through Air.
I’m even more confused than ever. What does the “including cleaning” mean in your first post?
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Can you recommend the easiest way to pay him ourselves? They aren’t able to get mail in Mexico so we will need to use some sort of alternative payment method. Our co-host does have a cell phone and wifi. Thanks 
September 20
I agree with Helsi- you’re just going to have to pay him yourself rather than going through Air.
Ann_Drais:
we will pay him 25% for everything (including cleaning)
The co-host is not doing the cleaning.
I’m even more confused than ever. What does the “including cleaning” mean in your first post?
You can’t send mail to Mexico???
I have no clue. Wire transfer? Paypal? Direct bank transfer (ACH)?
You “can” send mail to mexico but a good portion of it is stolen so most people find other ways…
I think you can go to WalMart and wire money to other countries.
We have a place in St Lucia but live in the US. We wire money down from our US bank to the St Lucian bank regularly. Then we transfer money from our St Lucian bank account to our St Lucian staff’s bank accounts to pay them. Works OK for us.
OK, thank you for the information.
Maybe things have changed but when I used a co-host the % of revenue split was separate from the cleaning choice.
As far as payments, does Square work in Mexico? If so, he could invoice you and you could pay the invoice by credit or debit card. Or if he’s in a city with a branch for a major US bank like Bank of America or Wells Fargone, he could get an account at that bank and you could make a deposit into that account at a US branch of that bank (though there may be a problem with transmitting money out of the US in such a manner).