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Welcome to the Community Center! I'm @Elisa , one of the Community Managers for our English Community Cent...
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So, while Airbnb has been raising service fees, canceling reservations and issuing vouchers in an attempt make up for lost revenues, it appears that some other short-term rental related businesses have been working on their side-hustle, and are now offering online courses and issuing cleaning "certifications": www.cleaningcertification.com.
The course material is only a compilation of information that is available to the general public from the WHO, CDC, Mayo Clinic, etc. For $20USD and 30 minutes of your time, you can get a decal badge, similar to the Superhost badge, to display on your listing.
The course providers are spreading the word via affiliates to endorse and market their offerings in exchange for a 10% commission. I am sure that eventually the larger OTAs such as Booking.com, Expedia.com, Hotels.com, and probably Airbnb will buy-in after they are able to negotiate a higher commission. Then, they too will promote this cleaning certification, or another one, to hosts and guests.
If nothing else, this is proof that businesses really can teach some folk to suck eggs, @Debra300, and their $12 badge illustrates little more than they got their own certificate in PowerPoint skills.
A fool and his money are soon parted.
@Debra300 Airbnb , without informing hosts, now has their cleaning protocol "quiz" (open book) and certification available. It was reported on another hosting forum, she answered the quiz and got her badge.
You have to scroll down and click on where it says "read through that overview" (it's underlined).
@Lizzie Why has this not been posted here? It was buried in "Airbnb Updates" and nowhere does it say that this is what a host has to do now to get the badge, nor that the badge is now available. Hosts have been asking and asking about this, yet neither you nor anyone has responded to these questions about when and how hosts can get this cleaning badge. Airbnb has not made this in the least bit evident. THIS NEEDS TO BE POSTED ON THIS FORUM; PROMINENTLY.
Thanks for sharing that @Sarah977 , I figured they were refitting it to accommodate the CDC's recent proclamation that that the virus wasn't being transmitted by surfaces for the most part. My wife heard about the "Badges" it on the radio and told me 2 days ago and asked if we had one, I told her I didn't think it happened yet.!!!!!
@Brian, this is not the new type of communications you promised is it? I know layoffs and terminations happened but in the rollout department? This really should be front page news on here and in our message and email boxes.... JR
@Debra300 @Melodie-And-John0 The host who reported this on another forum also said that they backtracked on the 24 hours between reservations.
Thanks for the notification. I will check it out when I get some down time from work and house projects
@Sarah977, @Melodie-And-John0, and @Gordon0,
I read Airbnb's Cleaning Overview, and took the 10 question quiz. Anyone who's been following the news, and reading coronavirus and COVID-10 information on the web sites of their respective countries federal health agencies and other notable scientific/medical institutions would already know the information and answers to the questions. Just a note for other who plan to take the quiz, be sure to scroll the page up to see all of the answer choices.
At this time, this protocol is only for US based listings. I was only able to select my Atlanta listings to participate in the enhanced cleaning protocol. I received a little note saying that my other listings were not yet eligible. As of now, there is nothing new highlighted on my listings regarding the cleaning protocol, but Airbnb did say it will take a while for something to show up. This is cool by me, because I am not accepting reservations at this time.
However, it is a bit frustrating that Airbnb did a soft rollout of the enhanced cleaning protocol by quietly updating the original announcement, and they acknowledge within the revision that it was a hot topic in community conversation.
Hello @Sarah977, @Melodie-And-John0,
Just to let you know, as of yesterday, all hosts based in the USA have been sent an email regarding the launch of the Enhanced Cleaning Protocol. More information can be found by visiting this dedicated cleaning page in the Airbnb Resource Center. Once again, please note this is for US host at the moment, but it will be available soon to other countries.
We've also shared this update with the relevant information here in the Community Center, so please do share it around to get the word out. 🙂
As you can imagine there were quite a few things to get in place to enable us to launch the initiative and so in order to get everything ready for announcing it to you and other hosts, we did update a few things on the site a day or so before, to ensure that it was all working well. I think this must have been where some of your hosting friends must have spotted the information, ahead of time, Sarah.
I hope you find the information useful.
Thank you,
Lizzie
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Thank you for the last 7 years, find out more in my Personal Update.
Looking to contact our Support Team, for details...take a look at the Community Help Guides.
Thanks @Lizzie , I did it, just waiting for the badge now.😀! It was a bit less of a change than I was expecting. Stay well, JR
That's great to hear @Melodie-And-John0 . Yeah, hopefully the majority of it will be things hosts are already doing, but it will also help to offer a bit of guidance where/if needed.
I hope you are doing ok.
Lizzie
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Thank you for the last 7 years, find out more in my Personal Update.
Looking to contact our Support Team, for details...take a look at the Community Help Guides.
@Melodie-And-John0 I've just read the manual and I'm shocked to see you say that you intend to agree to the list of steps that ABB has outlined. I found the whole thing beyond any other bad ABB idea thus far. I think there are hospitals that are less rigorously cleaned than this new initiative.
no @Lizzie I don't think most hosts are or will be doing what is listed.
And @Debra300 I'm same as you, based in US, but have received zero communication from ABB about this... found it all on my own.
@Kelly149 , Ive had friends catch MRSA while recovering from surgery in hospitals so I wouldn't say they are they are the cleanest places ever. We actually implemented much of what they are promoting over the last few months including a 24 hour clean out period. With 3 listings, the 24 break makes clean-outs less stressful when we are busy and we don't mind doing it in stages. Were not doing all this for free, our prices are nearly 20% higher than last year and we are starting to see the travel season ramp up, with no complaints about the prices. I guess we will see what happens but my recent customers have been happy with our changes so far and happy customers usually translates into more $$$$$.
@Melodie-And-John0 yes, I've upped my cleaning fee too and I've had plenty of guests think that I was too wordy or too bossy but I've never gotten less than 5* about cleanliness and I have a barn in the country.
Like you, I think there is "much" that makes sense in the cleaning list, but IMO the entirety of it is absurd.
So, you'll be washing all your walls and baseboards with soap and water, EVERY checkout, you'll be taking down and washing curtains, EVERY checkout, you'll run every item in the kitchen thru the dishwasher, EVERY checkout....
We slightly increased our cleaning fee. My space has hardwood floors, so we run a damp mop/Swiffer along the baseboards when cleaning the floor. Disinfecting soft surfaces will be new items in our cleaning process. For the curtains, lamp shades, and seating, we will use the sanitizing sprays that I previously mentioned. We already clean the blinds as part of the window cleaning. There aren't many rug disinfectants on the market. I found some online suggestions on how to make disinfectant carpet powder, and will give it a try. To disinfect the walls, I was planning to spray Lysol towards them, and run the ceiling fans (they would have been cleaned first, because we clean from the top down) to help with disbursement and avoid saturating the drywall.
Due to the virus we've thinned out some of the nice to have kitchen amenities. We provide our guests only a small selection of cookware and enough diningware and utensils for 2-3 people, because that is the maximum occupancy. Our checkout reminder asks guests to put their dirty dishes in the dishwasher, but not to run it. We do this, because we often find additional items that should be included. Now we will have to add a few more plates, glasses, and utensils in each cycle. Since it is a countertop sized dishwasher, we will still need to manually wash the larger pot and pan, because they won't fit in the dishwasher.
We've never had a lot of wall decorations or chotskies, because it's more to dust and clean. We will be removing the extra throw pillows and blankets, and the bed pillow shams. As always, we will provide enough towels for a couple of nights stay, and there is a washer and dryer in the space that guests can use during their stay.
Thanks for the follow up message. The timing of the rollout was a bit poorly executed though. The updates to the original announcement for the enhanced cleaning protocol was rather surreptitiously done on June 4, and it was 4 more calendar days before the formal email announcement of the launching of the protocol. Is the message going to hosts with a personal US address or hosts with listings that have a US address? As of now, I've not yet received the message, maybe it will arrive later today. Also, there isn't a notification on my dashboard.