This is a warning to hosts experiencing guests trashing your home due to a party. Our experience gives me much less confidence in Airbnb's Aircover and supposed crack-down on parties. They seem to be more guest friendly when it comes to parties and are not willing to reimburse fairly for the deep cleaning necessary after pot smoking/parties.
In August, we had a group that was one of our worst groups ever and we've been renting vacation homes for over 12 years. The guest said they were having a family gathering but proceeded to have an all weekend party--smoking pot throughout our home, stain quite a bit of the bedding, broke a number of things and left the home in an overall disastrous state. It took 5 people a total of 21 hours to get it ready for the next same day guest. On top of the disrespect she and her group showed, they are denying damage instead of owning up to their behavior.
To make matters worse, we had a guest checking in the same day and that guest had zero empathy for our situation--they said they were showing up at 4 whether it was ready or not. Our adult daughter has been cleaning for us over the Summer as we transition to a cleaning service now. So, she had to call in my wife, me and my parents to help clean. It was incredibly depressing and overwhelming to see our vacation home in this state. We provided extensive photos of the pot, mess, chat transcripts discussing the situation, etc.
Of the 21 hours, 3 hours was repairing damage and a broken chair which Airbnb covered. it is a 7 bedroom home with 15 person capacity and typically takes 5-6 hours to turnover. We collect $190 for cleaning which is below market of $250 which we'll be paying with the cleaning service. Long story short, Airbnb claimed that $10.55/hour ($190/18 hours) was a fair rate for cleaning and they didn't see the need to reimburse beyond our normal cleaning fee. After an extensive search to find the cleaning service we will be using going forward, the rate is clearly $40/hour+ in our area... for a quality, experienced cleaner or cleaning service. If you are a cleaning company, you can pay $20/hour but then there are housekeeping management, supplies, etc on top of that leading to an effective rate of $40/hour or more.
BOTTOM LINE: if you are in a situation where you need to clean up after your place is trashed, hire a cleaning service and get an invoice so you have proof. Don't try to do the work yourself. Airbnb will not reimburse and make uneducated, false claims on market rates for housekeeping. We would attempt to get ServiceMaster or another much more expensive, last minute service in to help clean in the future so we have an invoice to hold Airbnb accountable for covering extra cleaning fees.
