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Just wanted to share my check-in or out early/late fee of $25.
Based on other hosts shared experiences of the early and late arrivers, suggested penalties and problems, I decided to implement a new house rule:
If your need an early check-in or late check-out, just ask, we may be able to accommodate for a $25 fee.
By way of background, most of my guests are international travellers from Europe, America and Asia (75% Asia). Due to international flight paths most flights arrive early am and 90% of my guests request early check-in or late check-out, which left me with resentful guests not able to check-in until 3pm or me changing my calendar to leave 1 full day between bookings to clean and receiving no income. I gave options of where people could store luggage but who really wants to walk around the city for 8 hours, in the cold, after a 10-25 hour flight?
I recently hired a cleaner to help me take same day bookings (and reduce my stress) but her fee is more than my cleaning fee (which I can’t increase as its already the cost of one night’s stay). This also hasn’t stopped the constant requests for early checkin and I am still training my cleaner to get the whole job done and am not confident to leave her to do a changeover without me. My rate is $50-60 for 2 people, $15 3rd person and $55 cleaning fee. I am priced right for my area and market. Cleaner charges $70 (best rate I could get).
So I put this fee in so I could still leave one day between bookings but recoup some of the cost. Everyone is now asking for early checkin and I am charging the fee, no qualms from guests about this at all as I am helping them. I will say no if it doesn’t suit me too. I never allow luggage to be stored without guest officially checking in.
Next guest however could not work out how to pay the charge (put through resolution centre) and she is a first time Airbnber. So I contacted Airbnb tonight, with a firm messag, to ensure they take responsibility for it being paid (after I went to enormous efforts to get my cleaner here on the Sumday pm before her booking). See attached messages, Airbnb responded within 8 minutes, (with a hilarious introduced message Airbnb style!
I have to say, I could not be more impressed with their response or the effectiveness of my new system
I have a pet fee and a second person charge and they have always gotten me my fee. I agree that it is hard to find these requests, especially on the App. I had a guy here on my patio and I was trying to help him find it and we gave up. I think Airbnb sends a link via email and if they can access their email they can find it. But when I was on my foreign trip this year I couldn’t access my email.
I worked out that requests for late check out were 50% of my work as most of my guests stay one nights and they all want a late check out.
I had to ask the cleaner what her schedule was, what time she was getting there, could she go in later. She had to try and rearrange her day, get back in contact with me, and then let me know where she was finished, I then had to contact the guests.
I now send every guest this message:
Please note we cannot offer late check outs, the villa is very popular and rarely vacant and the cleaner needs to make sure she has it up to standard for the next guest.
If you would like to request an earlier check in time please message me on your check in day and I will message you back when the cleaner tells me it is ready (normally after 1.00pm).
And it works well, I am happy to message them when she tells she has finished and no one requests a late check out.
I know you said your place was priced right for your area, but I’m not understanding why people are willing to pay a $55 cleaning fee and not and extra $15 or so per night? Are you sure? Have you tested out raising the rate to $70? I think that would make more sense all-around. You did say it was rarely vacant. Also consider doing longer minimum stays which cuts down on your cleaning fees. I have similar issues, and I’ve been afraid to raise my rates or increase my minimum stays as well, partly because of being a relatively new listing, but those rates sound really low…esp. for a villa! I do like your late / early fee though, good idea!
I charge the high cleaning fee as I rarely have bookings less than 5 days, my next 4 are 5 days, 7 days, 7 days and 2 months. It discourages short bookings and covers a tiny bit of my weekly professional cleaning for long stays. I often have groups of 3 so my overall charge is usually $75. Despite houses in my area being $1-1.5 million AUD for a 2 Bed people are charging only in my range for nicer (but much smaller) private rooms. Nobody has an issue paying the fees in principal and the extra person is charged automatically at time of booking. It seems the extra checkin charge through resolution Centre is hard for people to find.
Ok, I see. Sounds good. I get a ton of really short bookings, and it feels like I pay my cleaner half of what I make (which is not too far from the truth, really). I have had a lot of guests say they felt like my place was a bargain / good deal, and I agree, but it’s tricky to raise prices when your competitors underprice.
That’s good to hear! I seem to remember that they introduced a standard ‘if you over-stay you will pay’ clause a while back but maybe it was one of their experiments.
For me personally as a host it’s not a major issue because I’m on-site and can coordinate things and I’m here to throw out/encourage people to leave on time. But I’ve been co-hosting for an entire property for a few months and sheesh you can’t be flexible on a same-day turn-over. Every minute counts and it impacts on so many people if guests leave late - cleaners have families, children to pick up, strict schedules to keep etc. In some ways it doesn’t matter how much they pay for late check-out - the work has to be done and all the associated stress of hurrying, trying to find any available extra cleaners etc. How do you put a price on that?
I think a $25 fee is more than reasonable. I charge $100. But, that’s only if they don’t arrange an early arrival/late check-out ahead of time.
As for your international guests arriving very early in the morning and having an entire day to kill, well if they booked at a regular hotel, they likely wouldn’t be able to check in very early, and definitely not without a fee attached.
Part of their trip planning really should account for arrival time. I’ve had people offer to pay me 1/2 a day’s rate if they could arrive very early, like 8AM. If I’m not booked that previous night, I would certainly take it. If I am booked, they’re just gonna have to wait until the space is turned over.
