Cleaning fees: added to daily price forces hosts to cancel cleaning fee

[Olga6]

I removed cleaning fee as it makes daily price too high since now it is added on map search.

Even if place is available on 3 nights minimum it is added on a day rate. So wrong!

It is virtually forcing hosts to scrap cleaning fee. 

For my flat in London cleaning between guests + laundry service goes to a minimum of £120. 

This doesn't include things like upholstery cleaning, carpet cleaning, windows cleaning.

Just basic, if guests are not too messy. 

For bookings over 1 week we provide FREE of charge once a week basic cleaning and change of laundry. 

This amounts to £80-£100 per week extra or even if the booking is just 8-9 days.

There is no way on the platform that this can be advertised as a perk that comes with the flat. 

Further, Airbnb is offering option to forgo cleaning fee for short stays. This makes no sense as the place needs proper cleaning even if guests stays only one night!

Are we to recycle used sheets and towels!?

If anything, it should be reversed, discounting cleaning fee for long stays. 

My place is on minimum 3 days but I recently accepted booking for just two nights: nightmare!

Not only that red wine is poured over white upholstery but the smell of the place is beyond believable!

We can not get rid of it still, 10 days after check out. 

Anyone struggles with same issues?

Any advise is welcome. 

Olga

London

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Olga6 making the full price available to prospective guests is a good thing and usually a legal requirement in Europe. It applies to all hosts so makes no difference to competitiveness. The split between nightly rate and cleaning fees is down to the hosts discretion and trying to game the system with low nightly fees and high cleaning fees is wrong - Airbnb is right to stop this.

[Olga6]

The think is: prices of cleaning services and laundry went up and also the cost can not be build into the price as it is the same cost for 1 night stay and 7 nights stay. 

So basically that makes short stays too costly for host.

I don't think you can build your profits on hiking cleaning fee.

I suppose it depends on the property buy guests can see what the fee is and agree to it or not.  The way it was before was still totally transparent. Gests wouldn't book property with unreasonable cleaning fee. 

[Karen114]

@Olga6  What @Mike-And-Jane0  said is true.  Everyone's prices are going to be up if it's across the board in your area.

Since all of the hullabaloo about cleaning fees, I did remove mine as well.

  I did some calculating of my fixed expenses such as cable, electricity, taxes, garbage removal, water etc and figured out what those charges were per month and divided it by 30 days.  This gave me a number that is my break - even pricing.  Then I multiplied that by 2.5. which gives me my absolute lowest number for nightly rate and will not go below that. 

I did this with me paying for cleaning and then another model with guest paying for cleaning. 

I also worked very hard to find a more reasonable cleaning service.  I am a big proponent of paying the cleaning service what they are worth as they can make or break your business. However, if you can find one less expensive and does a good job, this will help. 

Math doesn't lie so take some time to run your numbers and you may be surprised and may be OK with picking up the cleaning costs and having a decent nightly rate as well. 

[Olga6]

We have same person working for us for 15 years.

She took a break last year and we used few replacements. sat 3 years ago service was £12 per hour.

Now it is £18! That is a good cleaning and reliable person.

Agencies are even more costly. 

**

**[Inappropriate content removed in line with the Community Center Guidelines]