Guest extended stay and cleaning fee did not change

[Normen0]

Has anyone else experienced this? 

I decided to try to the short stay cleaning fee as recommended by AIRBNB.  

First guest who booked under this new cleaning fee system booked two nights so the cleaning fee was $28. She just requested to extend to three nights and I accepted though the cleaning fee did not change to $50 as it should for a three night plus stay.  

A little aside to this. She requested this stay on Saturday and my price was $75/night (lowered it because things were slow). I pre-approved her request but she wasn’t sure and didn’t accept til close to 24 hours later. 

Meanwhile, while she was thinking about it, other listings were getting a lot of inquiries so I decided to up the price to my normal base price for the dates she requested and the rest of the week as things were now getting busy. So if anyone else booked the price would be better for me.    
When she accepted on Sunday, she booked the two nights at $75/night and $28 short stay cleaning fee and rightly so. No issue there. 
Today she extended for another night - a third night. 

Upon checking the fees, she was now charged $85 for all three nights and still the $28 short stay cleaning fee. 

I’m not upset at all. It’s one lady. I don’t get the sense she is going to be throwing any parties as she is actually isolating while waiting for her PCR test results. I don’t want to contact AIRBNB as I don’t think they will understand the issue. They seem to have difficulty with anything complex.  

The difference to me is only -$2 as there was an additional $10 charged on the first two nights, although she shouldn’t have been charged that but should have been charged an additional $22 for cleaning. 

I think this is a glitch in the system. Anyone else experience the cleaning fee not change?  I’m considering scrapping the short term cleaning fee all together.  

[Sarah977]

@Normen0  I've never heard of a short term cleaning fee option. Where do you find this information?

[Normen0]

@Sarah977 This was implementing in the latest upgrades. It took quite a while to become available for me. 

I tried to copy the link to an article on the Community Centre main board but it wouldn’t work.  If you go back into a listing and look at pricing and additional fees you may find your cleaning fee now has a short stay and long stay cleaning fee option. It also has a pet fee option.  Personally I’d like to see cleaning fees prorated. Not much difference between 2-3 nights if you ask me. And if I offer a five week stay it takes a heck of a lot longer to clean and should be much higher than a three night stay, both of which are deemed a long stay.  

[Sarah977]

@Normen0  I've never charged a cleaning fee. I have a 3 day minimum and a 2 week maximum. It's just a private room and private bathroom, it takes me an hour and a half to clean, so with the 3 day minimum (and most of my guests stay at least a week), it's not a big deal. 

My guests have almost always been clean and tidy, and even if they weren't, it's a small space to clean. 

While you have apparently found the short stay bookings to require much less cleaning than the long ones, I know it's possible, from other hosts' experiences they've shared, that some guests can manage to stay for one night and leave a disaster behind them, and others can stay for weeks and leave everything sparkling clean. 

That's why it always seemed somewhat logical to me to have a set one time cleaning fee no matter the booking length- you never know if a guest will be a pig, or an OCD clean freak.

But I also know that a set cleaning fee, no matter the booking length can be onerous for a clean and tidy guest who only stays a night or two. 

I hope the pricing glitches get sorted for you.

[Normen0]

Thanks for sharing your experience. It’s interesting to hear how others do things.
I didn’t charge a cleaning fee at first for my rental on my property. Then I started cleaning for someone else’s AIRBNB and then another and realized that while they were paying me well for my time, I was not valuing my own time at my personal AIRBNB and realized my time here was just as valuable.  
Yes, messes definitely vary by a lot of factors.  i am trying to be fair in the pricing of it. And as I age and now manage 6 units, I realize I may have get assistance and pay them. 

[Huma0]

@Normen0 

I am a live in host with three private rooms listed on Airbnb, so my situation may be different from others.

I have professional cleaners come in weekly to do the communal areas. I then keep on top of things in between and I always turn over the guest rooms myself. As I host long term guests, they have the option of cleaning their room themselves during their stay, or I can do it for a small fee.

Other than that, I don't charge a cleaning fee. There are several reasons:

1. I think it's annoying for the guests to have all these extra costs. When I book something, I just want to know up front what it's going to cost in total so I can compare like with like. The prices shown on listings in the Airbnb search results are therefore misleading.

2. I worry that it will create extra cleaning. If guests have paid a cleaning fee, then they might feel that they do not need to clean up after themselves at all. As I host long term guests, that could mean a lot of extra cleaning!!

3. I worry that it will set higher expectations from guests. Of course, I try to keep things as clean and tidy as possible but I have different guests staying at the same time and people have varying standards in terms of cleanliness. I don't want to be down rated on cleanliness because people think that everything must be spotless 24/7 when they've paid a cleaning fee.

4. From what I've gathered from guests and other hosts, there seems to be a lot of confusion over what the cleaning fee is for. Is it for cleaning in between guests? Is it for cleaning during their stay and then, how often? Is the guest expected to do anything during their stay or on check out, e.g. emptying the trash?

Of course, the cleaning time needs to be factored in to the room rate, because like you say, your time is worth something too. That puts me at a disadvantage as, on first sight, my listings may appear more expensive than some others when they are not.

Personally, I think Airbnb should scrap cleaning fees and linen fees etc. and that all hosts should just factor these into the nightly charge, the same as in a hotel. That way, there wouldn't be confusion over who pays what and when or over what the cleaning fee is for and we'd all be on a level playing field.

[Mark116]

I wouldn't miss the cleaning fee, it would mean that the listing prices were finally apples to apples.

While it is not ALWAYS true, I've found most of the time, guests who stay 2-3 days are less messy because they don't tend to cook at all.  No cooking massively reduces the time needed to clean the kitchen.

I wasn't aware we could do a short/long term cleaning fee and I will check to see if I have that option.