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Is there a general percentage of the room rate to pay the the cleaner? 10%, 20%, other?
I pay $65 on a $177/night rental. 2 night minimum = $354
2 night cleaning is 18% expense ($65/354 ) and 12% of a 3 night rental ($65/$531)
It takes the cleaner about 2-3 hours to clean and wash/dry the sheets and towels
Was wondering if there is some formula for what the cleaner should be making?? I don’t plan to pay less, but I may charge more for cleaning.
As a Airbnb guest, it really annoys me when shopping for a place and the cleaning prices are all over the place for cleaning. Just wish there was a better way, no idea what that would be.
I try to juggle my tour schedule to cover room turns. When I can’t I have to pay my local service $45 + 5% sales tax, which is why my cleaning charge is $45. I also have a minimum 2 night stay.
My 5 bedroom takes 6 hours
My 3 Bedroom takes 4 hours
My 2 Bedroom takes 2.5 hours
It doesn’t matter the length of stay - this is the average time, and I pay $20 per hour.
Agree, it should be an hourly rate based on the average time it takes to clean, and set expectations about it sometimes taking longer and sometimes taking shorter. I’ve read a lot of stories about cleaners constantly wanting to charge extra when it takes them longer than their agreed-upon time, but of course they don’t say anything when the guests leave the place pristine.
I had a great house cleaner- this was for my own whole house, where I list my guestroom. She would sometimes stay a bit longer than the 4 hours I hired her for if she was in the middle of something and wanted to get it done (I never expected her to get to everything each time), and leave a little early the next time to balance it out.
She was fast and efficient and thorough. Worked for me for 5 years, but lost her when she was offered a full-time job at a big rental. She was too good, she ruined it for me- I’ve tried out 2 other cleaners since her and they just didn’t measure up.
@dalepa – you only have one listing? Why are you not cleaning it yourself? As others have said, cleaners are paid by the hour, and the going rate depends on where you live and the availability of cleaning people. Hotels barely pay minimum wage. Full-time professional whole-house cleaners in my area make a bit more than $20 per hour.
One listing of our vacation home which is 2 hours away and located in a small community. I was thinking that $20/hour felt about right, but wasn’t sure.
We started July 1st and quickly booked all of July and some of Aug, Sep and Oct already. My cleaner is now a critical component to the system, and I want to make sure they are treated fairly.
If I just look at July, the cleaning expense was 18% of earnings (cleaning cost/earnings) and was wondering if this was norm. ie, should I charge more or less for cleaning.
another marketing question would be,
should I just charge 18% more the the nightly and list $0 for cleaning?
or
should i charge $90 vs $65 for cleaning and lower the nightly rate by 18%?
I charge cleaning to my guests. I do this because it’s what people do here… and it’s standard practice for a rental home. I’ve paid a cleaning fee every time I’ve rented a home. If you look at rental properties in your area, you may be able to figure out what’s working for people - you have to compare apples to apples - full house is different than shared space. You could build cleaning into the price and I am sure guests would appreciate feeling like there are no “added charges” but for me, it’s a lot of shorter rentals, and the cleaning is significant in cost - I think people would be put-off by the rate increase.
It’s at least 200 per cleaning - I charge more than that in addition to the total. The cleaning fee is not taxed by the city but the nightly rate is, so it’s better for me to charge it separately. I also like to make people aware of the fee so if they want a cleaning during their stay, they expect it to be similar in price.
Being able to break out variable and fixed costs is such a huge advantage to hosting businesses, and provides transparency to guests as well.
I set my cleaning fee’s to cover all of the variable costs that happen when a guest check’s out. Basically cleaning and linens/laundry. I know exactly what this will cost every time (minus the variances for dirty vs. clean guests). I recently started a worker owned collective cleaning company as well and to price Airbnb turnovers we do an assessment of the property and go over a checklist with the owner. It really varies property to property but we always charge by the job and not the hour as that keeps the worker owners accountable to timelines without feeling the need to rush through jobs at the expense of quality as we deduct from the fee if there are valid cleaning complaints.
It’s always way more expensive to hire a company to do cleaning because of the taxes and benefits we provide on top of the actual labor, not to mention insurance, transportation, supplies, and a full-time manager to schedule and communicate everything that’s going on ever day. If you’re working with an individual who is happy to be paid in cash you won’t be able to deduct from your business expenses legally (in the US anyway) but it may be worth it because of the savings vs. a professional company.
I don’t let competition affect my variable costs strategy (cleaning fee’s). It’s very important for me to pay fair wages and to compensate the companies that do great work for me, and that has a real cost that doesn’t change from check-out to check-out. For a bigger house, sometimes the cleaning fee will be higher than the nightly rate on a mid-week day in the winter.
There are tons of differing opinions on cleaning fee’s, but this is what has worked very well for me and is now working well for my clients as well.
If I had a place where I paid a cleaner, rather than doing the cleaning myself, I might decide on the percentage to raise the nightly fee based on the average number of nights guests stay. So if 18% is what you’d need to raise it to to pay your cleaner for a turnover, but you get guests who tend to book a week, only entailing one cleaning a week, you could lower that percentage and it would average out with the shorter turnovers.
What a strange discussion this is on this thread. You pay the cleaner a fixed rate per hour. In the US that’s around $20. In the UK that’s around £10. Then, if you want them to clean hospitality standard, you could say that you pay them an additional 10% but it has to be top quality work. In all honesty, finding a cleaner who can clean at that level is very difficult. Out of five cleaners we had, only one was really hospitality standard.
Treat the cleaning expense like a fixed cost and incorporate that into you overall expenses to calculate your nightly rate.
Sorry is this question directed to me? No we don’t charge £0 for cleaning. Whether you charge for cleaning or not is not necessarily what the guest sees when they compare prices because AirBnB averages the total cost per night (inc. fees).
Also, we don’t charge the cleaning fee for cleaning per see. Rather, it’s to discourage shorter stays and encourage longer stays.
I have no cleaning charge, what you see is what you get, no surprises. I really do not care how it compares to the other listings because I am booked as much as I can be, so it works for me. I have always priced my listing higher than the competition.
I charge a flat fee for cleaning and pay my housekeeper a flat fee for each clean. I realize that the hours can change with every rental, but feel it all evens out at the end. I also only use one housekeeper, this way she will always notice when something is amiss…as opposed to a company that may send different cleaners every time, things always seem to get missed.
