This forum is dedicated to connecting hosts with other hosts. Sign up to get the latest updates and news just for AirBnb hosts! Note that we are not affiliated with Airbnb - we are just passionate hosts!
Many many years ago when my eldest daughter was at kindergarten they did a Mother’s Day thing.
On the whiteboard was - what would your mummy like on Mother’s Day.
On the board was
A beer
A washing machine
A bunch of flowers.
From my girl - perfume, jewellery,
money!
25 years later - nothing has changed except maybe Travel!
Why surely she could do with the money pre Xmas
I don’t have a housekeeper now but when I did I gave her a month’s fee and more in the years when I could afford it. Cleaning during COVID might justify extra generosity!
@muddy It varies state-to-state. So be careful thinking you know what a server gets paid “in the US.”
For example, California servers get $14/hour and 20% tips (with an average check for 2 being ~$50). So if a server works only one $50 table, per hour, they’ll earn about ~$25 an hour. Most full time servers (~38 hours a week) can make $50K a year easily. Good hustlers can make double that. No education. And they can pretty much work anywhere at a moment’s notice with little training/ramp up. I shed no tears for server incomes (at least in California). Many other states are doing the same already and/or will be there soon. So let’s be careful when it comes to what American servers get paid. It’s a lot more than you think.
As for tipping housekeepers? Also, in California where our listings are, our cleaners make over $50/hour. Period. We’d like to do something nice for them, but when they make that much money already, it’ll be a struggle to convince my wife to give them even more money. And with our life’s savings tied up in these little STR businesses, we don’t exactly have cash to spare ourselves.
Remember also when you put that into CAD, we’re talking $32/hour for typical servers and $63/hour for typical housekeepers. It’s a decent gig for low skilled, zero education required work.
Yes, I am aware that it varies by state. It also varies by province in Canada. Some provinces have a higher minimum wage than others.
Don’t be patronizing. Of course I know the exchange rate. But putting something in terms of a different country’s currency is immaterial. If you go to Mexico and eat out at a restaurant and say “it was so inexpensive”, as if that’s some universal fact, because you are basing your notion of inexpensive on how it translates to the US dollar, that isn’t relevant. The meal may not be inexpensive to someone who lives and works in Mexico and earns pesos.
You mentioned that you “found out how little waiters get paid in the US, the business owners basically expecting the customers to be paying their employees’ salaries in the form of “tips”” You also mentioned that “Canadians don’t often realize how little workers in the US . . . get paid”
In California (and many other states), the notion/realization above just isn’t accurate. They make good money. That is all.
Nobody discussed wages in Canada/provinces at all. Not sure why you’re even talking about it. I truly mean no offense or patronization.
Anywho, back to tipping the housekeepers. I just don’t think it’s going to be an easy thing for us to do. We already pay them a lot of money. If others do it, you are generous and I commend you. I think a decent consensus above seemed to land somewhere at maybe 10% of the year’s wages. On the surface, that sounds reasonable.
So I did a little exercise. One of our listings has a single housekeeper for all turns. The last 12 months, she made $17,780 (I was pretty surprised when I totaled it up). A 10% bonus of ~$1,800 seems absolutely massive. . . I just don’t think I can get there.
That is very little, since they have no health benefits, hours are limited, or erratic, and vague (good tips on some nights and none on others but bosses expect you to be there on slow nights for example), that is before taxes and and remember, the ‘server’ has to sometimes ‘grin and bear it’ when a Karen comes in, rowdy drunk guys paw you, or those sweet adorable kids destroy the place.
I always said that the folks who should be making the most money are the ones who do the hardest work - moving stuff, for example, or working in fast food; where the work atmosphere is tough and it stresses your body. Sadly these days people who look after the elderly or teach our nation’s children get low wages while ‘white collar’ folks who sit at a computer all day make a lot more.
In Seattle, the minimum wage is $15 per hour. Don’t live there any more, but they’ve done the right thing.
reminder: the ‘minimum wage’ was defined when created as the minimum for a wage earner to live on. NOT a wage for a teenager part time, NOT a wage that requires 3 jobs to support a family, NOT a wage that defines ‘unskilled’.
For me it is not about being generous, I want her to really be there for me when I need her and remember my “generosity” when I am in a bind and out of town and I need her to help. It is transactional for me.
RR
Housekeeping isn’t low-skilled labor. Pretty much every job requires a certain skill set to do well. Being a good cleaner/housekeeper requires being detail oriented, aware of proper hygiene, being organized and efficent, and fast without sacrificing being thorough. I had a cleaner I didn’t have to tell anything to. She whipped through my place, never missed anything, and was able to organize her cleaning so she knew exactly how much time to leave at the end to wash the floors after all the rest was done. She would remember the deep cleaning stuff she didn’t get to the last time and basically rotate the deep cleaning between rooms over the course of a month, so everything stayed looking good all the time.
Other cleaners didn’t last long, as they missed a lot of stuff, would move on to another area when the last one wasn’t properly done yet, or it took a long time to train them and they’d still miss stuff. Or they were slow. I have one now I like- she misses things, but she’s very open to learning and she works non-stop for 4 hours.
As far as paying your cleaner an $1800 bonus, there’s no need to do something if it’s a financial burden. 10% is a lot- that’s more than an extra month’s pay. And unless someone is an entitled ingrate, no one is going to feel bad about opening an envelope and finding $500 inside that they didn’t anticipate.
There’s no competition to see who’s the most generous or appreciative host. There’s all kinds of ways to show appreciation. You could even make a nice dinner and invite her and her family over, buy her a nice box of fancy chocolates, or Christmas presents for her kids if she has any. You could give her a free stay at your Airbnb if she has friends or family come to town. When it comes to gifts, as they say, it’s the thought that counts.
It is hard to find a good cleaner. I do everything I can to let her know how much I appreciate her work.
So do I, and the number one thing I do is pay her well and pay her promptly. Now I also say thank you, I don’t charge her when she dropped the coffee pot, I am cleaning myself next week to ease her holiday work load. But it comes down to the money in the end.
RR
Maybe see how many times she showed up to clean, x 10$?/ If I had someone on hand to come here and turn it over on a usually strange schedule and who did a nice job, I’d be very happy to pay an extra 10$ for each of those times at the end of the year.
Think of it as thanks, not generosity with a string attached.
When I was a patternmaker and technical designer, I was always happy to get those red envelopes of crisp new cash or checks. Sometimes I got 2x for Christmas and New Years (Chinese, which is later) and then the owners also took everyone out to a very elegant dinner party. The Biltmore in LA…
And yes I did walk out on them to host after I got that nice thank you $ again and (was finally ready and) had suffered covid in the pre-known-mid-January-2020 phase of it, not blaming them…
That’s spot on. It’s really all that matters to me and it’s all that matters to them.
I’ve always tried to be super respectful, patient, and kind, while also doing fun/considerate things with and for our crew. . . Turns out, if someone will pay them $10 more per turn to do the same scope of work, they’re gone. Like, GONE. No matter how well we communicate, how sweet we are, how much we go on site and help them, how well we keep them stocked, or how kind/understanding we are when they have an issue and need to bail last minute. It all comes down to money.
We’re going to bonus them. We want to bonus them. It’ll be cash, because that’s all that they really want. Hopefully it makes them happy and hopefully it creates more loyalty.
Does anyone remember years ago when they gave 4-Quarter Superhosts those beeswax candles? I was at a small group summit with leaders from the Airbnb exec team shortly afterwards. We deduced that each candle cost Airbnb over $50 to land in each of the Superhost’s hands once you factored in the cost of the “creative” group employed to procure, the cost of the “organic” candle itself, shipping, etc. I’m like “just give us $50, that’s what we really want.” Coincidentally, they began giving 4-Quarter earning Superhosts a $100 Airbnb credit the following year and from that point forward. Way better than a candle!
There is no actual string attached. I just hope they will remember it when I need them. She could quit the day after but I hope she does not!
I am going to direct tip her helpers as well
RR
I’ve been a Superhost since the program officially began in 2014. The award has always been a $100 voucher for travel on Airbnb. I got my first one in 2015. Perhaps you got the candle for being a member of a test program that began earlier.
This is NOT about anyone on this thread. Really rich, I mean they name buildings after them, old money, people are very frugal.
My ex-husband was in construction and did a lot of work for people with homes all over the world and had $80,000 art sculptures in the center of the circular driveway. They would negotiate and offer some kind of trade such as vacation time at their home on the beach (private island, gated, private bridge) before spending a dime. They had their in-town car, nice but a year or two old, maybe an Audi and had the Mercedes S-class to drive occasionally for an event.
It’s how old money keeps it. Often new money spends it before they get it.
Does she do the laundry too? Just curious:)
I do laundry, it’s way too much to put on the housekeeper IMO
RR