I am a new Host

[Lance127]

I would like to talk with other hosts willing to share.....I have some basic questions to ask.  

Firstly.....I have been missing inquiry's because they are sent to my email.  I am not always sitting on my email.  I guess I need to setup some type of notification to my cell phone.  

Second question.....Cleaning fees charged?  

3rd question, 2nd guest fee charge?

 -Lance

[Ann3 · Accepted solution]

Hi, @Lance127 , There's a learning curve for sure! In addition to the Terms of Service (TOS) and Airbnb's help sections for hosts, it's helpful to read around in the Community Center and other forums, because just about every possible situation we hosts encounter (good and bad) is discussed.

Notifications: If you have an iPhone, go to Settings>Notifications>Airbnb and make sure you have Alerts set up, Sounds, Badges, etc. Then at the bottom of that screen click Airbnb Notification Settings and be sure to toggle on Push Notifications. I also have it send me a text message. I don't mind getting the alerts all three ways. The platform can sometimes be glitchy, so be sure you check your Inbox every morning even if you haven't gotten an alert. I opened mine the other day to find 2 inquiries I was otherwise not notified of. We are evaluated based on our response times, so that is important.

Cleaning Fees: It depends on how big your place is, and what the local market is like. Go to other listings in your neighborhood similar to yours and see what your competition is charging! You might decide to add a cleaning fee so you can be compensated for your time and supplies, and pass at least part of what you pay your cleaner along to the guest. I charge $60 for a 2 BR/2 BA cottage. My cleaner can almost always clean the whole place in 2 hours. I also factor in the time it takes me to turn the laundry around and the cost of supplies. 

Extra guests: I charge $25/night for every guest over 2. It incentivizes couples (less wear and tear on the house than my max capacity of 4) to book my place, in a way. 4 people means more mess, noise and wear and tear than 2, so that is why I charge more. Not everyone does.

Hope this helps! Every host has his or her own style. Be sure your house rules are clear on extra guests, quiet hours, checkout instructions, etc. Good luck!

[Kevin1322]

I co host with my other half. 

We opened new email accounts (proton mail, which I rate very highly) and used their phone app so we weren't tied to laptop or desktop. They also have a web app.

Cleaning fee: as we only host one room we just charge what one load would cost if we took it to the local launderette instead of doing it ourselves for washing the bedding sheets and towels. works out at 5.00 

Extra guests. Well, technically yes, but it's really a small reduction on the twin room price for single occupancy, as we are mostly one nights or two nights.

Basically our rates are at the affordable end, usually one night bookings for hikers and walkers, so we looked at what the per-night for two people price came in at to the guest, slightly under 50.00GPB  for two people, we get slightly over 40.00 GBP a night for twin occupancy, which is what we were aiming at,  and adding the cleaning fee brings the headline price down. 

This worked out well for us, for  two guests they see 25.00  a head in GBP and 30.00 a head in Euros seems to have also attracted a lot of German guests, more than 50% of our guests are from Germany/Eurozone.  I veered off into pricing a bit there, but I think we shouldn't lose sight of the service fee the guest pays on top when they look at what the room is going to cost (their bottom line)

Also.... Ignore pricing tips.   And regards smart pricing, that's another can of worms.

But as @Ann3  says, everyone has their own style and what works for them.  We are still learning all the time, only been  hosting since the end of last summer.

[Anonymous]

@Lance127   The "Cleaning Fee" is kind of a misnomer, because with or without the fee you still have to clean!  It's basically a flat supplementary charge for shorter stays - for example, when it takes a little more than the nightly rate to make it worth your while to host 1 or 2 night bookings. (You can also set minimum and maximum lengths of stay to account for this). Downsides abound: a lot of guests either find the fees excessive and mark you down on value, or they believe that paying the fee entitles them to leave a huge mess behind. 

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Kevin1322  is right - IGNORE price tips - they are usually stupidly low.

We clean our own place but set a cleaning fee quite high £45 for a 3 bed 2 bath place to encourage people who book for longer than our 3 night minimum. It also makes us feel better for the 4 loads of washing/drying and the hours it takes us to clean.

Extra guests we do not charge for but rather we set the price for the whole place we are willing to accept. Logic is that if you have a base price for 2 people and then charge more for more people then you can easily find lots of 2 person bookings which will cut your potential revenue, Others who do have costs linked to numbers of guests (slippers and coffee pods) have different views.

Also if you charge per guest you will have to keep eye out for people booking for 2 and bringing 4.

Finally just because only 2 guests are coming to a 2 bed its entirely possible that they will be using all the bedrooms - you cannot just assume that 2 guests = 1 room

Hope this helps

[Maia29]

I charge a cleaning fee per stay of $30. I depend on my adult daughter to clean it, so she makes money and has a free place to stay as well. I would still charge a cleaning fee even if she didn't clean it. My place is on the lower end of the price range for a two bedroom, one bath downstairs private duplex. 

Also, lowering your nightly cost and upping your cleaning cost is a clever way that I have seen other Airbnb hosts do to force their listing towards the top of search results. Their nightly rate is lower, but they make up for it with higher additional costs such as deposits, cleaning costs, extra fees per guests, etc. (I'm not a fan of this AT ALL-I think it's very misleading).

I charge an extra $10 per guest after two. I find that a lot of guests ignore this though.

I depend on my Iphone notificatons from Airbnb to make timely responses to guests.

[Sarah977]

@Ann3 @Maia29  Receiving text notifications has nothing to do with an iphone. You can get text notifications on any cell phone. I even get them to my old school dumb phone.

[Maia29]

@Sarah977. You’re right. It’s all about enabling notifications on whatever phone you have. 😀