Frustration with finding a place due to cleaning fees being excluded in map view

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Sean95
Level 10
Toronto, Canada

Frustration with finding a place due to cleaning fees being excluded in map view

A prospective guest takes the time to punch in several filters and parameters, generating a map full of nightly prices. A careful comparison to find the best deal ensues, then you click on a place and OOPS there's an unexpected cleaning fee that now makes the selected property less appealing than the others. Now one must go back to the map and repeat the process N times until finding place where the TOTAL price is the same as the map price. This is very frustrating and time-consuming. It could be solved by adding a filter for guests to exclude places that charge a cleaning fee. Alternatively, the map price should include the cleaning fee to avoid these hassles for guests. Booking through AirBnB is starting to remind me of booking an airplane ticket, where some fabricated price is advertised at first and then a bunch of hidden fees are added at the last minute after having wasted the customer's time.

 

Thoughts?

1 Best Answer
Branka-and-Silvia0
Level 10
Zagreb, Croatia

That's not true. When you select exact days for your search you will see the average nightly price of each apartment with cleaning fee included.

 

For example: 

if my apartment cost 30 € / night + cleaning fee is 10 € and you want to book 1 night than it will be shown on the map as 40€ / night

 

if you want to book 4 nights than it will be shown on the map as  32,50 €  (4x30=120+10=130:4=32,50)

 

but then Airbnb add his service fee on top of it

 

Cleaning fee makes shorter stays nightly price more expensive than longer stays and that is logical because cleaning time and loundry service cost time and money. It is not the same if we have 7 check-ins and check-outs per week or just 1 , right?

 

 

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7 Replies 7
Zeke0
Level 8
Ithaca, NY

Hold ctrl when you click on a listing from the map. It opens up a new tab for you to browse the listing without losing your place on the map. Granted, I agree with you that there should be a filter for cleaning fees, but the prices are set by the hosts themselves and some charge more/less than others. A plain static filter wouldn't be a way to solve it because it'll exclude hosts that charge $5 or $10 for cleaning, which could be a steal compared to the listing.

 

The fees themselves are pretty self-explanatory and shouldn't be taken as "hidden" or compared to the fees that airlines tack on. Maybe they will go the route of adding unnecessary fees someday but at this point and time, each fee is pretty much a necessity.

 

Cleaning Fee - Goes to the host, some hosts clean their own places, some hire professionals to do it. Either way, it allows us to track incoming finances much more accurately knowing that "x" amount of bookings equals "x" amount of cleaning so we charge "y" amount for cleaning and the total of incoming "y" revenue is our budget for cleaning services/supplies. If you end up staying at a dirty Airbnb after you've paid a cleaning fee, I'd suggest you complain and ask for the cleaning fee back. If you didn't pay a cleaning fee and the place looks like it's not taken care of after each guest, then there's really not much else you can do.

 

Service Fee - Goes directly to Airbnb, it costs money to run a company.

 

Occupation Tax - Goes to the city, taxes need to be paid.

 

Just my 2 cents,

Zeke

1. Actually, in my original post, when I said "then you click on a place", I meant "then you open a new tab". And when I said "go back to the map and repeat the process", I meant "close the tab and click on the next place". Losing my place on the map was never the issue. Having to click a multitude of places and manually compare them is the issue.

 

2. Maybe there shouldn't be a filter to exclude hosts who charge a cleaning fee, but when a guest selects a price range as a filter, the displayed places should have a TOTAL price that fits  within that range. It's like when you buy on eBay, you can sort by "price" but you can also sort by "price + shipping". I agree with you, sometimes places charge a cleaning fee but the base price is so low that it's still a steal. But guests shouldn't need to waste time working out these totals on their own - the prices shown on the map should be total prices.

 

3. I think that the comparison to airlines is totally fair. Airlines have to pay airport fees, fuel surcharges, etc, and all these costs get added to the ticket price. However, that is their internal business concern and the amount passed onto the customer is the TOTAL amount. The vast majority of customers don't care about the fee breakup - they want to know what's the bottom line for THEM. And AirBnB shouldn't make it so difficult to obtain this information. I never implied that cleaning fees and AirBnB service fees are "unnecessary", but they are indeed "hidden" if they are not shown in a transparent manner during the search process and then suddenly get tacked on after the customer has invested time comparing options while only seeing partial information regarding price.

 

4. From your definition of the "cleaning fee" onwards, it seems that you totally missed the essence of my original post. I don't care about whether or not the fees are sensible or legitimate. All I'm saying is that they should be included in the initial prices that are displayed to the customer, rather than being tacked on in the final stages of booking. 

Branka-and-Silvia0
Level 10
Zagreb, Croatia

That's not true. When you select exact days for your search you will see the average nightly price of each apartment with cleaning fee included.

 

For example: 

if my apartment cost 30 € / night + cleaning fee is 10 € and you want to book 1 night than it will be shown on the map as 40€ / night

 

if you want to book 4 nights than it will be shown on the map as  32,50 €  (4x30=120+10=130:4=32,50)

 

but then Airbnb add his service fee on top of it

 

Cleaning fee makes shorter stays nightly price more expensive than longer stays and that is logical because cleaning time and loundry service cost time and money. It is not the same if we have 7 check-ins and check-outs per week or just 1 , right?

 

 

I second that the function FILTERS should provide a "total price" option. For instance, for a large number of listings worldwide the amount for 2 nights, say $100, equals the service fee and cleaning charge. If I set a price per night limit to $50 Ill have to browse through an assortment of listings with a total price of $200! Adding a "See cheapest first" option would help a bit. From a marketing perspective sure it helps Airbnb to promote cheap nightly prices but I do not underestimate the intelligence of general people. People using a FILTER is determined to find what they want, target price in mind, so why not enhance user experience for these people? I do not recommend a site like Hotels.com due to their failure to meet standards, however I hope Airbnb will consider allowing a better search. 

Thank you so much! When I wrote that post, I was searching for a place with a large number of filters, but I had not put in any dates. But after reading your response, I tried adding specific dates and I saw that you are right - the cleaning fee is amortized over the date range selected. 

 

I was annoyed that AirBnB only shows the base fee on the map if no dates are selected, but now I realize there is no other option, because the actual nightly cost of the cleaning fee for guests depends on how many nights will be booked.

 

Cheers!

The solution is to go to:

https://www.airbnb.com.au

instead of the normal:

https://www.airbnb.com

 

Apparently in Australia, you have to display the full price including the infamous cleaning fees.

 

PS.. You need to change your currency to US dollars at the bottom of the initial web page.

This deserves all the upvotes.

Thank you Aussies for thinking on the consumers! It's criminal this is not the behavior across all the regions. It almost feel like a usable site there. If your account is US based, you also gotta be signed off to see the full price on the map.

 

In my experience a lot of hosts are abusing the additional fees to bump their presence. A lot less would do that if the search page worked like that globally.