Interesting article about ABB complaints on Twitter

[Laura2592]

https://www.businessinsider.com/airbnb-trending-twitter-customers-complain-host-cleaning-fees-rules-...

So, people don't want to pay a cleaning fee BUT ABB charges additional "service fees" that are not explained.  Responsibility is put back on hosts when the cleaning fee is just one part of that package. 

Guests don't like host rules. Again focus is shifted back onto hosts instead of explaining that this is an alternative form of accommodation and is NOT a hotel. 

Also interesting about the percentage of corporate rentals.  

[Laura2592]

@Pamela955 hosts don't benefit from those fees at all. Those are all collected by ABB. For a longer term stay it may be more economical to rent a corporate apartment through a hotel chain or just look on community bulletin boards to see who does short term tenants in the area. Good luck!

[Pamela955]

Thank you for your message and yes I realise hosts don’t benefit at all from these fees. I also realise AirBnB charges the tenant a cleaning fee which the host does not usually receive. All these extras fees go directly into the pocket of AirBnB ... quite frankly I think they should be brought to shame. Thankfully I’m a good journalist so this will be no problem to me to bring this matter to the international public. Shame on AirBnB ... they started out well but then, they go VERY full of themselves and way too greedy. I hope they fall hard. And soon. 

[Sarah977]

@Pamela955  Not sure where you got that false notion about the cleaning fee.

The cleaning fee is set by the host, not Airbnb. (As a journalist, you should be sure of the facts before stating something)That fee goes directly to the host. Some hosts, like me, have no cleaning fee and hosts who have a cleaning fee normally base it on exactly what they pay their cleaners and most hosts believe in paying a living wage.

But Airbnb does charge service fees on the cleaning fee. You don't see that as a breakdown, it is included in the Airbnb service fee total.

[Pete69]

Cleaning fee = a way of charging more for shorter-term stays, because Airbnb isn't set up to allow hosts to charge more for a 2-night stay versus a longer stay. There's no need for guests to feel ripped off or charged extra. If I could, I would charge on a scale versus how long guests are staying. Then I could eliminate the "cleaning fee". In the end, the price would be about the SAME, but guests would feel like they were charged fairly. 

[Karol22]

I just got back from a wedding at a resort where I stayed two nights. I was charged a resort fee, on top of a daily parking fee, on top of a transient occupancy tax, on top of other fees... there are added fees all over the place. I'm not complaining, I knew exactly what I was purchasing. I had a great time and my stay was amazing. Twitter has some utility in emergencies, but beyond that, it's a distorted version of reality. It isn't real, and I'm always wary of media outlets/sources using twitter to gauge public opinion.

[Christine615]

I read those comments early on and realized the people "complaining" are those who want the Four Seasons for $1.99 a night. It's not like we have a drought of demand right now as pandemic wanes.

I would love to drop the cleaning fee. it's ridiculous. But I added a modest one because Airbnb wasn't showing total cost initially, it was showing nightly rates. So if I absorbed it into as price increase I looked more expensive when in reality, those competitors nearby had cheap rates and $150 cleaning fees.

I explain that the $50 I charge is for help with the laundry costs. And I ask that guests tidy up after themselves, wash their dishes and return my space the way they found it (we strip the beds and do the laundry). So far it hasn't been a problem.

[Laura2592]

@Christine615 we charge a modest one as well. We have friends who are hosts in various places and all advised spreading the price out over the nightly stay with a small cleaning fee. Why keep it? Because in their experience, no cleaning fee led to much more difficult clean-ups. Guests got the feeling that they could trash the place a la rockstars at a hotel and there was no additional consequence. Psychologically a small cleaning fee is just a reminder that an actual human being owns this home and does not have deep corporate pockets. But increasingly on ABB there ARE deep corporate pockets for a large number of hotel-like rentals, so I can see where the confusion may lie.