This is getting so exciting!! I wonder who will get the final word in!!
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Jefferson is usually determined to be last but maybe this time will be different.
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Back on topic: since NYC is so specific about recycling, most/many/some guests get it wrong. My preference is for them not to take out the trash because at a minimum I have to inspect it, and often/sometimes have to re-sort it.
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‘Those hosts are essentially using the cleaning fee as a higher booking fee, and I know guests hate it. I also think it unethical. It’s basically click bait.’
Wow @muddy, judge much? ‘Unethical, click bait’, that’s pretty strong language, hold up there. Salaries are higher in the city (of San Francisco) especially if you need someone professional on-call for a customized response window. Ultimately the total & itemized costs are transparent to the booker, and as someone who does all her family traveling on Air (6 trips this year) I don’t find it hard to follow what the ultimate cost will be.
Having said that we booked a cabin in Tahoe with a $199 nightly rate and a $175 cleaning fee, which does seem egregious.
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I think you misunderstood what I was saying.
I wasn’t judging hosts for charging a high cleaning fee if that’s what it costs to have the place cleaned. I’m well aware that salaries vary greatly between countries and areas within those countries. I can afford a house cleaner where I live in Mexico, but I’d never be able to afford that when I lived in Canada. And I’m all for paying cleaners a living wage, as well as employing them for however much time it takes to do a good thorough cleaning.
I was talking about hosts who purposely list a really low nightly rate to get a lot of views and then add a cleaning fee that is far more than it actually costs to clean the place. There are hosts who use that strategy, even though it does quite irritate guests, seems counterproductive, and yes, I find it unethical click bait.
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I have a whole-house on AirBnB but because I am remote, I use an agent. They book cleaners etc. My off-season nightly rate is $145 (Aus). The cleaning contractor charges $160 for a clean, whether its after a day or week or whatever. The agent takes 16% of the gross nightly charge. Maths making sense yet?
Add to this, if the house has been vacant for a length of time, the Agent will send the cleaner in to “assess” if the house needs cleaning before a guest arrives…(yes, I know… It always will need a clean, wont it!). So for sporadic bookings, there is usually two cleans.
So I have to make any booking a 3 day minimum. Even at that, I make $45.40 for the 3 nights.
That doesn’t count for power used, water usage, damage, missing items etc.
To pre-empt any replies, the agent is (almost) the only game in town. (There are alternatives but they dont get the business like the BIG agent.
The cleaning fees are standard across all cleaning companies. The nightly and weekly accommodation rates are standard across all houses in “bands” of equivalent types and standards of houses.
There are worse issues with this, and I will prpbably make a seperate post if I can find an appropriate section.
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One of my competitors does this. $500US cleaning fee on a $400-800US nightly rate. Three people working all day cleaning should cost less than $100US in our area. It might be “click bait”, but I suspect they do it to penalize short stays - they have a one-night minimum and almost no one else in the area accepts less than three nights. It seems to work for them - their calendar seems to fill up.
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I just took out my cleaning fee. It was only $60, but I realized that my purpose for having it was to offset the cost of having shorter stays. I had already changed to a six night minimum, so I guess it doesn’t really make sense to keep the fee.
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That is why I haven’t ever charged a cleaning fee. I have always had a 3 night minimum, it takes me about an hour and a half to clean the private room/private bath, so spread out over 3 days, (and most of my guests stay a week on average) the cleaning time is minimal and factored into the nightly rate.
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Hotels hire a person for a shift, say 8 hours at whatever minimum wage, but 8 hours every day for full time and that person cleans however many rooms are dirty, starting early in the morning as people check out.
For a vacation rental, each home/apartment/etc must be cleaned in the window between check out and check in (Maybe 10.11AM- 4/5PM). Guests cannot be relied upon to give a check out time with enough notice that a cleaner can reliably schedule around it; the cleaners can only schedule 1-2 homes in that area on that day, perhaps more if it’s an actual crew. But then they only get cleanings on check out days, so no guarantee of work, unless you are a large property manager with enough places and enough check out frequency to keep them busy.
Plus the owner may need to have those cleaners available when they get a last minute same day booking for one night, etc., so short notice.
Then put those cleaners in an area that has boomed with STRs and is a small town and you will see owners easily paying $30/hour and cleaners claiming 3-4 hours to clean, partially because they may be new to a particular house and partially because they may not be motivated to be moving at maximum efficiency, or perhaps they physically cannot move at maximum efficiency for all of the high season. So, cleaner set ups for STRs is expensive.
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There are plenty of homes that would take 3-4 hours to clean properly regardless of the efficiency or house familiarity of the cleaner. It took me 8 hours working non-stop, and I’m fast, to clean a 1 room cabin that a long term renter had moved out of and left filthy.
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Definitely. It takes me between 3 and 4 hours to clean our 490 sq ft apartment and the same for the 600 sq ft apartment. And I’m hugely familiar with both. (And hugely efficient too, of course 
)
I have to be especially efficient on the days I have 2 same-day turnovers (not now but pre-covid) but with a 5 hour turnover window, it can still be done with a lot of work. If one of the guests will be arriving late so much the better but it still needs corners to be cut.
The trouble with cutting corners though is next time I have to do the jobs that I missed out on the double turnover days. 
However, there’s more to preparing a rental than just cleaning.
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Totally, @Muddy! Anything over a week’s stay is a whole new level of deep down cleaning & dirt. No argument there. When I clean our places (not something I usually do, so maybe 10-20x a year) I time myself so the manager can get a good feel for what cleaners should charge in terms of time. Most of our guests are so nice and so clean that it’s touching every surface, but it’s not that slow. Then you have a guest who left it looking ok at walk in, but you realize you need to remove every single shelf from the frig & freezer due to a small spill in the shelf supports; or the stovetop &/or oven require 2-3-4x as long to clean; etc. For a 1200-1500 sq ft place that is left in excellent condition, 2-3 hours, but the slightest increase in dirt level (oh, left open a window on a windy day and filled the tub & windowsill with sand) and poof, you add an hour. It makes a huge difference how people leave it.
We did add an extra washer/dryer in the garage & my manager lives on the same street, if the guests leave early in the morning, she will go start the laundry at 5-6-7-8AM when they are gone, which makes the clean much more efficient.
There are so many different set ups at all our places, but whatever the case of the vacation rental, cleaning a hotel room is always going to be more cost efficient because of the full time staff. My point being, the cleaner fees that feel outrageous are based, usually, on the reality of the situation.
And AirBnB is no longer about being cheaper than a hotel, it’s about being better than a hotel, more interesting, more private, more bedrooms, a real kitchen, etc. etc.
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Hotels don’t charge a cleaning fee and you can bet housekeeping is rolled into the booking fee. It’s certainly not free. I think its unethical to add a sneaky thing on the end after you lured them in with a nightly rate. I can’t tell you how many guests have told me they appreciate the “no cleaning fee” at our place.
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@cheena39 It’s not a “sneaky thing”. There really isn’t any way to roll it into the nightly fee for many hosts’ listings, because it’s only a one time fee, so it would end up making their nightly rate on a place that’s not cheap to begin with even more expensive.
Let’s say it costs a host $175 to get their 5 bedroom house cleaned, for which they charge a nightly rate of $300. If someone books for a week, that cleaning fee spread out over all the days ends up being $25/night, so the nightly rate becomes $325. But if a guest only booked for 1 night, the place will be $475 per night.
So how is the host supposed to list their nightly rate if they don’t have a seperate cleaning fee? Is it $325/night or $475/ night?
Rolling the cleaning fee into the nightly rate only really works for hosts who would tend to get the same length bookings all the time, for instance who only take week-long bookings, or mostly one nighters, or hosts like me who have small spaces which don’t take hours to clean and don’t take 1 night bookings.
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As a guest - cleaning fees DO put me off, especially if the fee is more than a night’s stay. I view it as “bait and switch”. As a host, I price to accommodate my expenses - including cleaning. I might feel differently if I had a larger place.
Because each property is different, it is good that Airbnb & VRBO gives us options on how we handle the cleaning fees.
My 1,600 sq ft was $150 for the service to clean. That didn’t include me doing laundry. The $150 was whether it was 3 or 7 nights…so was the laundry.
Truth is the turnover was just too much work. I now use it as LTR (same net revenue)
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Know that feeling well, however it’s in the past for us now. We’ve decided to keep the buffer night, meaning we always have pretty much 24hrs to clean and prep.
Our places are around 55m2 (~600 sq. ft) and there were occasions when we had to turn both round in about 2hrs.
Not fun when it’s 44C but at least the floors dried quickly!
As regards the cleaning fee, I’m thinking about getting rid this year, Airbnb is the only platform we charge it separately on.
JF
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Yes ofcourse for a one night stay that could be the case. But the difference is those large hotels have cleaners on staff (prob minimum wage or close to it) do speedy turnovers for small identical rooms all in one location and use industrial bulk washers +bulk cleaning products. It’s efficient, quick and the price per unit which is built into nightly rates is relatively low.
Now having lived in SF and hired cleaners before, oh boy- you’re paying a very competitive price for a company or independent person to travel to your one apartment and clean on an irregular schedule an entire living space.
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@cheena39 Part of the issue is the way that AirBnB shows our rates, and how people search.
I have much different rates in high season than low season (2-3 times higher), and sometimes discount a short “hole” even more if it’s just a few weeks out. AirBnB will show guests the “hole” price, and then they think that applies to a week in high season.
I’ve been accused of “baiting and switching” when they inquire on high season dates without looking at the price, then get shocked when the right price shows up when they go to book. What AirBnB shows as the price is out of my control.
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