So now that the cleaning fee has been around for awhile and experienced guests know it may effect the final cost I’m wondering if stating you don’t have a fee in your title might be helpful.
My place is a small couples retreat that I clean myself. If I were to do a cleaning fee I was thinking around $35-50 at the most. But I could also just raise my nightly rate by $5-10 and state there is no cleaning fee added on. I have already been advised by some knowledgeable folks on here that I need to up my nightly rate anyway, so this may be the time to revamp the cleaning fee add-on as well.
I know I have personally been stunned at some of the cleaning fees I’ve seen and how much they can change the final price. I looked at one beach house that had a $500 cleaning fee! Which for my 4 night stay upped my nightly rate by over $100 per night.
So now that I’m gearing up to hopefully re-start my rental I was thinking of stating in my title that they won’t have extra fees. Has anyone seen or done this?
When this topic was discussed pre-pandemic I ended up agreeing that cleaning fees were a net negative and I removed my very small one ($10) years ago. But I put it back during the pandemic and had almost as many bookings as I could have during the months I was open. Now I’m reopen with limited availablity and I don’t think it hurts me at all. My prices remain at average highs.
I’ve seen it when I’ve looked at listings as a guest. It doesn’t make much difference to me. If anything I wonder if that’s the only thing that listing has going for it. I need to use my title and that character limited first paragraph for the important information and I don’t think fee structure is the most important info I need to give them.
I briefly tried no cleaning fee (I tried a lot of stuff!), rolling it into the price. I made a big deal of “all inclusive, no hidden fees or taxes” in the listing verbiage, but that was before Airbnb started collecting state sales tax and annoyingly left me to pay the local lodging tax.
I don’t collect the lodging tax separately, I just raised the rates and pay it so as not the bother the guests. Therefore the Airbnb sales and my lodging tax are on different bases and the math doesn’t quite work out. As I am an accountant, makes me bananas. But I digress.
My no fee experiment didn’t seem to make a whit of difference. People are used to seeing add-on charges, and anyone with half a brain looks at the total price. It might be off putting if it were huge, = or > than 1 night rental cost.
It’s a moot point here in Europe, the price is shown as total, including all taxes and fees; even the “nightly” rate is adjusted to take account of any extras above the base rate.
JF
I’ve always had a cleaning fee. Not $500 but hefty enough. I do the cleaning myself.
I refer to it though as the preparation fee. It pays for the supplies that are needed at every turnover, for the welcome gifts and so on.
I’ve been having back to back guests in two apartments for years and so having a reasonable cleaning fee obviously hasn’t put people off.
Having a cleaning (and/or preparation) fee makes sense given that there is a relatively fixed cost of cleaning and restocking per reservation and not per night. That said, I don’t like add-on fees and I really wish hosts could specify the fee for their accounting but Airbnb would roll it into the nightly rate that the guest sees when booking a reservation (in all markets, not just the markets that force Airbnb to do it).
However, It appears that the real subject of this thread is the marketing psychology of putting * No Cleaning Fee * in the listing title.
I’m sure some hosts want to go for the lower base nightly rate and that probably works on some guests in some markets, but putting * No Cleaning Fee * in your listing title is an effort to target guests that are annoyed with extra fees, not necessarily to save those same guests money. The reason I say not necessarily is because having a cleaning fee appears to penalize guests that book shorter stays. Whereas rolling the cleaning fee into your nightly rate most definitely penalizes guests that book longer stays.
I’ve seen a few listings that tout * No Cleaning Fee * in the listing title, but I have no data on how successful they were. @dpfromva’s experience is the first I’ve read about a host that tried both. That it made little difference is a good data point.
Anyway my personal opinion is similar to @dpfromva in that I expect price-conscious guests to be savvy enough to look at the bottom-line and not just the base nightly rate. A separate cleaning fee then becomes irrelevant, except that it encourages longer stays (or discourage shorter stays), which I always thought was a good thing.
Additionally, if you are in a competitive market of similar price/size listings except the other listings have a cleaning fee but you roll it into your nightly rate, you could find yourself hosting only 1-night stays because your bottom-line price is much lower for those stays. You’d be losing money on cleaning because you’re cleaning every day but you only raised your nightly rate a fraction of your cleaning costs. While that scenario seems unlikely, it should illustrate the problem.
I don’t charge a cleaning fee, but I only host a private room/bath and do the cleaning myself. I also have a 3 day minimum stay and the majority of my guests have 1-2 week (my max) bookings.
So for me, it works out without the nightly rate having to be high to incorporate cleaning. A minimum 3 night booking works out to a half hour of cleaning per day, and for a week or two, the time is negligible.
I can’t really see an entire house listing that takes hours to clean and that accepts one or two night bookings being feasible to work the cleaning fee into the nightly rate, without the longer-term guests feeling “penalized”.
This is just one of the reasons why I have a cleaning fee. I’ll take a one-night booking once in a while although with two apartments, co-hosting another and more or less back-to-back bookings and doing the cleaning myself (plus a freelance job 
) the one-nighters have to be worth my while.
It’s perfectly okay with me if one-nighters don’t stay with me very often because of the cleaning fee but when they do, I’m more than happy with the money.
Loads of the fiercely competitive listings in the closest city to me have “no cleaning fee” in their titles, @Primdawg . So they have decided it works.
I’m in a different market, so it’s of no benefit here to make it a selling feature, but I can see their point.
My destination is not a one night kind of place. For the most part it is a weekend getaway so I have a 2 night minimum, a 3 night minimum for those weekends that have a holiday on Monday. My plan is to block off Tuesday and Wednesday nights as most of the tourist attractions and restaurants are closed those days anyway, especially in the dead of winter. I can clean and turnover the whole place in about 3 hours. There are very few places like mine in that it is for 2. Most places around here are for big groups or families. I’m going to do a bit more research in my market to see what is more common and how much the fees tend to run. I guess I like the wording of “no added fees” instead.
What about the fees Airbnb adds?
Increase your day rate and add your cleaning fee @Primedawg
I’ve never had a cleaning fee since I do all the cleaning. I also do many 1-3 night stays so it would up my total price quite a bit. I did increase my nightly rate to account for expenses related to COVID protocols and have lost some repeat guest because of it. I don’t think that stating no cleaning fee would be the best use of your title. I do look for moderate cleaning fees as a guest since I usually book stays of a week or less.
I don’t list “no cleaning fee,” and it hasn’t made a difference. I just upped my prices from last year by $10-$15 a night and I’m getting guests! IB helps, too.
Shared home host with a private bed and bath. I do the cleaning and instead of a fee (like other listings in the area), I upped my rate. I offer more than the average home share host here so I’m comfortable charging about $10 more per night than others in the 'hood. I have had guests comment on the lack of a cleaning fee and that’s why they’ve chosen me; and the higher price pre-Covid had me busybusybusy. I think guests will see your place, do the math, and decide yes or no based on your listing vs their idea of value and amenities. The more detail oriented will see you don’t have a fee and your higher price and be happy, too.
If no additional fees is what you want to promote, why not switch to the host-only fee model?
Your time has a value just like any other service provider why wouldn’t you want charge for it ? @Christine_Shirtcliff
I understand your point. As a retiree, I see it as one thing I do to stay active. My husband helps and feels good about it since we mainly live off my retirement income. We enjoy the extra income, but frankly appreciate the socialization in our home share. Keeping our price low in a competitive area brings us repeat guests and delightful new faces when we are open. We don’t travel like we used to so we bring the world to us.
I don’t charge a separate cleaning fee, but that doesn’t mean I don’t put value on my time for cleaning.
It takes me an hour and a half to clean the guest room/ private bathroom. But I have a 3 day minimum and most of my guests stay 1-2 weeks. Spread out over that number of days, the cleaning time is minimal, so I just factored it into the nightly price.