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Someone told me that if I reduce my cleaning fee on a property that usually books at $1200/night on the weekends will help get me more bookings after I have already reduced the nightly rate by 1/3rd, but I just don’t see that making a difference since its already at such a high rate.
Thoughts?
By the way, my cleaning fee is currently $230.
I think you’re asking whether reducing your cleaning fee will help . . . get bookings.
I wouldn’t think so because the prospective guest should be able to see the total cost, which includes the cleaning fee.
The rationale to reducing – or better, eliminating – the cleaning fee is to avoid the complaint that some guests have that they are being ‘fee’d to death.’ There’s the daily room rate fee, perhaps an additional guest fee, the cleaning fee, the taxes (not a fee but that’s something that currently they don’t see in the listing and it’s just another ‘cost’ that seems like a hidden cost).
So, if you can eliminate the cleaning fee, I don’t believe that will increase your bookings but it might increase guest satisfaction. Some, here, too believe that a guest will take better care of a property when there is no cleaning fee because they won’t think to themselves "I can make a mess. I paid for the cleaning!)
If you’re looking for how to adjust the pricing, or setting discounts, so as to recapture the cleaning fee in the daily rate, forum members have ideas on that. Just ask – but if you do, please let us know how your rental works, whether there’s a minimum stay and what it is, what your average stay is, whether it’s a Saturday → Friday required booking, that kind of thing.
I think that’s a great psychological point. Hotels never charge a cleaning fee. They know what they are doing, I think.
This month I eliminated my cleaning fee but raised my nightly base rate to USD 179. This nightly price rises with demand because I use Smart Pricing so actual bookings are sometimes higher.
I am not seeing any effect on my bookings rate yet. Things are a little slow for me, I think this is because of the economy.
Please note: Eliminating my cleaning fee made my total price for the booking look better. I attended a Zoom meeting with AirBnB officials earlier this month. Not a coincidence.
What DID increase my bookings, to my surprise, is in October I started offering a 10% discount for 7 nights. I received several 1 week bookings almost immediately.
This is interesting, Why/How did it make your total price look better?
For example, if I had a $200 daily rate and a $200 cleaning fee but then I eliminated the cleaning fee and made my daily rate $250, on a four-day booking wouldn’t my total cost be the same?
Who told you this? Was it a highly experienced host familiar with the demand for your sort of listing in your location @turnercress ?
There are lots of factors affecting bookings. Demand is one of the key ones along with supply. Price is just one of the factors. How much it’s a factor depends on demand and supply in your area.
My pricing in in the top 10% of my type of listing in my location but I still get all the bookings I want because I have designed my listing to appeal to the sort of guests I enjoy having stay, This has led to me having been a Superhost with five star reviews for the six years I’ve been hosting.
Agreed 100% and I suspect that it can be a lot less important than many hosts seem to think. The key is value for money.
My rentals are both just slightly less per night than the very best hotel nearby. But they are, I think, fantastic value for money. This can be demonstrated by the large number of repeat visitors that I have built up over the years.
Companies such as Porsche, Ferrari or Bugatti, and any companies selling luxury goods just wouldn’t exist if everyone bought with only price in mind.
I don’t think, at the OPs current rate, that dropping the cleaning fee will help get more guests. To folks who can afford $1200 per night, the cleaning fee is the proverbial drop in the bucket.
As both Host and guest, when I go looking for a listing to stay at, the thing that irritates me most are those hosts who charge a low nightly rate and huge cleaning fee. I’ll never book a listing at $60 per night and a $40 cleaning fee for example
i think a cleaning fee is not in the mix of things that enter into a booking. People really do not say “I loved everything about the place but I decided to look elsewhere because of the cleaning fee”. Only on Reddit etc do people come out braying how they are swearing off airbnb because they protest the realistic costs of cleaning.
I think it’s more realistic to say that hotels don’t show the cleaning fee as a line item. When we stay at a hotel, the price includes all sorts of items that we might not even use like the spa or the business center - we’re still paying for them.
Then there’s the dreaded resort fee.
We’re paying for cleaning in the total, as we do if we stay with an Airbnb host who has no cleaning fee.
Anyway, I prefer to call it ‘the preparation fee’.
As a guest I assure you it factors into my decisions, not because it’s a cleaning fee but as part of the price. I have clicked on a listing, because I always use the map, and eliminated a listing after I saw the cleaning fee. I can’t wait until Airbnb puts all hosts on a even footing with fees displayed in the price at the beginning of the process.
Yes, that is true. What I’m responding to is the fact guests don’t like fees tacked on, just as I dislike resort fees or worse, wifi fees, at hotels.
Also, soon I will no longer be disadvantaged on the ABB platform for having low or no cleaning fees. I live in a market where hosts lower their nightly rate and then tack on a really high cleaning fee.
I’ve been out of the USA for awhile so I don’t know if ABB has officially announced what is going to happen on the platform, so I’ll leave it there.
I put a small $10 cleaning fee in during the pandemic as I really was being extra careful and leaving 1 or 2 nights between bookings. But aside from that I agree with you that it might marginally help me once they do away with cleaning fees.
I don’t know what they officially announced but I read this in an article dated 22 Nov:
"But that’s set to change in December when Airbnb plans to roll out a toggle so travelers can opt for search results to display total price, including all fees . Users who don’t toggle the total price display will still see nightly rates only.
The company in November 2022 also adjusted its search algorithm to rank listings by the best total price rather than simply accounting for the nightly rate, which may sway hosts to lower or remove cleaning fees."
I don’t know how many people use the search features effectively but this will help me in my searches.
I’m trying an experiment as I’m getting no bookings as well. (But then Iowa in the winter isn’t really appealing, all we have to brag about is the wind chill) I’m keeping one duplex listing the same, and removing all fees (including cleaning) in the other listing, and adding “NO FEES” to the title. Interested to see if I get more views.
I think you’d better say ‘NO CLEANING FEES.’
Otherwise a guest might think you had elected to pay the Airbnb fees for them.
Also, I don’t know if you have additional guest fees.
Trying out rolling in the guest fees, so added ‘$0 Cleaning & Guess Fees’ to the title. I still have a $25 fee/night for more than six guests. Not gonna waive that one. Thank you for pointing that out.
179 seems a little high. Where are you/how big is the space etc?
I like the fun/game aspect of the title. Guess [the] fees. Nice!
LOL. But then you don’t mean to say $0 Guest Fees since you charge fees for over six.
I think I’d say only NO Cleaning Fees in title. Nothing about guessing or guest fees.
Within you could say additional guest fees apply only to the number of guests in excess of six.
It definitely a factor, especially in lower-priced listings and for short stays. The lower the priced listing, the shorter the stay the harder it will be shopped for factors like this. Hotels are loving the high cleaning fees issues with Airbnb and enjoying the increase in their bookings.
[quote=“Rolf, post:8, topic:55453”] I
think a cleaning fee is not in the mix of things that enter into a booking. People really do not say “I loved everything about the place but I decided to look elsewhere because of the cleaning fee
[/quote]
Of course they do. Not for private room listings like yours where the cleaning fee might be $10-$25, but certainly they do if the cleaning fee is $200.