Cleaning fees can only be collected with every NEW booking. The more rooms we flip every day, the more money we make by the end of the month. For example, if your cleaning fee is $12 and people stay an average of 4 days, at the end of the month, you make $84 on cleaning fees. If the average stay is 1 day then you collect a cleaning fee every day, turning $84 into $360.
āthe money we makeā ??
My impression is that most Hosts donāt āmakeā money on cleaning. Many lose money on cleaning and accept it as a cost of doing business.
I would suggest that each turnover brings additional wear and tear, as guests roll their roller bags over the floors and have a reduced incentive to read the House guide for a shorter stay.
I sense that many Hosts feel that there is a āsweet spotā ā really a range of time. For me itās 5-7 days. Few would suggest itās two days, but maybe you are right, for you.
Well, a cleaning fee is not really supposed to be a way to end up with more profit- most hostsā cleaning fees reflect more or less what it actually costs to do the cleaning, whether they do the cleaning themselves, or pay a cleaner.
As a cleaning fee is a one-time charge for a booking, it takes the same amount of time, on average, to clean after a 2 night stay as a 2 week stay, if you are actually cleaning thoroughly between each guest. I have a 2 day minimum and 2 week maximum, and I spend the same amount of time cleaning, regardless.
What you are indicating you do is exactly what understandably pisses guests off- the host tacking on a huge cleaning fee to make their nightly price appear lower.
However, if you are only charging $12/night for a cleaning fee, I assume you are doing the cleaning yourself, so maybe what you mean is that you end up with more money in your pocket at the end of the month, because you are actually paying yourself to do a cleaning, itās like an extra salaried job?
That scenario I can understand as a reason to have a 2 day maximum- itās just not that common, because most hosts who do their own cleaning prefer to have to clean less times rather than more, because they have other things to do. For instance, I have an upholstery business, and can make more money spending the time it would take for me to clean working on my upholstery projects.
2 Likes
Yep. It works for us.
You werenāt asking me but I also often have a one night maximum. Even when I donāt I almost always prefer a one night stay from a first timer. I do have some repeat guests who ask for more than one night and Iām happy to host them.
I donāt have a cleaning fee so Iām not making more money but I really dislike people hanging out in the room all day. I feel that I have to tip toe around and keep the dogs calm. My absolute favorite guest is the one who arrives after Iāve retired to my room for the night and is gone the next morning before I get up. That only happens with one night road trippers.
If I lived somewhere that guests might come and just be hanger-outers if they stayed more than a night or two, I might very well feel the same. It would drive me nuts to have guests who just sat around the house all day. Iām just lucky that I live where no one books and acts like a couch potato. My recent guest, my first since I closed to bookings due to Covid and shared kitchen, came with her surfboard, rented a car so she could drive every day to her favorite surf break about a 25 minute drive away. She stayed for 2 weeks, and was off surfing every day until about 3, came home, showered and changed, did a bit of computer time, and then usually walked off to town to shop, grab something to eat, buy groceries. Came back around 8, then we stayed up til 1 or 2am many nights, drinking wine and talking- she was a really cool woman.
All my guests donāt surf, by any means, but they are almost always out and about a good deal of the time. And Iām a night owl, usually just quietly reading, and a late sleeper, so I never feel like I have to tiptoe around or be quiet- most of my guests are up and out the door before I even get out of bed.
But you are also lucky in that you are in a location where you can get enough business with 1 or 2 night minimums, and a lot of low-impact road trippers, since thatās what you prefer.
I somehow managed to choose settings when I first started hosting that, even when I didnāt have any real handle on what would work out well, actually has. I didnāt want to spend the hour and a half it takes me to clean and prepare the room for less than 3 nights, didnāt want to charge a cleaning fee, and figured if I didnāt particularly like a guest, 2 weeks would be the max I could put up with them. I didnāt research the market here, or talk to other hosts in the area, I based my settings on my own personal preference and lifestyle. And in fact, when guests come from other parts of Mexico, they sometimes only book 3 nights, and international guests often have 2 weeks of vacation time, so book for that length. My own personal preferences just happened to fit my market.
3 Likes
Luckily Iām in the same boat. My Airbnb fits my life very well.
1 Like
Thatās how I look at it too. Our cleaning fee is the same as the charge for one night. If I accept guests for one night, then Iām doubling my money.
I prefer not to have one-nighters but if Iām going to, itās going to be worth my while.
After every guest, everything needs to be thoroughly washed and cleaned anyway so I donāt feel that I have to justify the āpreparation feeā.
Maximizing profit from cleaning fees is an interesting perspective. Airbnb says that cleaning fees exist for hosts to cover the cost of preparing a listing for arrival and cleaning it after guests leave, which makes sense, but itās certainly not the only use for the fees.
I used the cleaning fee as a way to encourage longer stays. My wife and I did the cleaning ourselves because we couldnāt find reasonably prices and reliable cleaners, so technically, we profited from cleaning fees, but it was a very small profit compared to increasing occupancy.
If your occupancy is near 100% with 1- and 2-day stays, then thereās no reason to encourage longer stays as long as you can handle the cleaning. In that case, I would wonder if rolling the per-trip cleaning fee into the base nightly rate would actually be more profitable, but maybe in your market, the lower base nightly rate bring in more bookings even though the overall costs is higher. Cool stuff.