Cleaning Fees

Chris1587
Level 2
Wells, United Kingdom

Cleaning Fees

As a sometime Airbnb user I would like to make hosts aware of something. I will never ( never ever ) book a place with cleaning fees. I can’t imagine I’m the only so please consider carefully before adding this extra cost to your prices. 

 

1. I would leave the place clean and tidy when I left anyway. 

2. What am I paying you for anyway? I expect you to have to wash towels and vacuum, why would I pay extra for this 

3. Clean is not an ‘optional’ extra. 

 

I pay more perhaps than the advertised fee by this standard I have set but that’s OK, it’s my opinion you’re just adding the fees so your prices seem lower. 

 

For instance advertised at £40 pounds, cleaning fee £17 plus Airbnb fee £15 - total £72 !! Sharp practice. 

 

So please, please have a bit of consideration before adding these fees. 

 

And to to the person who seemed proud of ‘a free basket of logs for the woodburner’.... c’mon. 

 

Rant over. 

175 Replies 175

@Tara92

I agree with you that there are more big moneyed corportations now.

You say "I wish there was a remedy for this, but in a country that frowns on regulation and idolizes the free market and extreme capitalism at any cost, I’m not sure what can be done."

 

There is indeed is a remedy to reduce corpororate ownership. That remedy is to REDUCE onerous regulations.

Regulations favor deep-pocketed, sophisticated corporations that have good lawyers, pr and strict administration. Ten years ago, mom and pops went out of business because they were limited in their ability to deal with dead beats and could not get enough rent to cover their costs. The "Smart money" swooped in and now we have more corporate ownership.

All West Coast cities have a lot of regulations that work against you, the renter.

While their regulations "seem" nice, they increase your rent and reduce your choices

Thank you for this. While I run and Airbnb, I also stay at them occasionally, but probably not as often as you. I've not encountered that type of cleaning fee, but I would never stay at a place that had something that high. 

As you prob know by now, Airbnb doesn't take a percentage of our cleaning fees, so that's why they're listed separately.  It also helps keep our listing prices competitive. It's hard to factor in a fee when you don't know if someone is staying 1 night or 6. Either way, you're usually cleaning and laundering the same amount. 

 

I read somewhere that Airbnb makes the majority of their money like a bank...investing the money held on payouts when people book.  

 

I also run a small candle and soap business. Etsy takes a percentage of everything...even our shipping. I absorb the credit card fees online, but in person at markets, I charge a couple dollars to cover them. They can add up at the end of the day. That's why I tip my servers in cash instead of including it on the credit card with my meal.  Been there. Sucks to have the restaurant yank the fee out of my tips at the end of the night. 

 

Anyway...Thanks for your input. 🙂

Catherine232
Level 10
Vancouver, Canada

Lol, as if being tidy was enough. Plus "tidy" is highly variable. Our last guests were relatively tidy but left a used condom dropped down the side of the bed. As many have said already, it's not about you, it's who was before you and we have had many guests who were...well let's just say they were not well brought up. And it's not because of the cleaning fee. Methinks cleaning fees aren't supposed to cover unsupervised children who scribble with indelible marker on tables, or who stick gum in the heaters. Do you think cleaning fees cover spaghetti sauce splashed up the wall? Many, many, many guests are clearly unfamiliar with how to wash dishes- we routinely check all of our cutlery and dishes because they are so frequently dirty (put away dirty). Anyone who criticizes cleaning fees simply has no idea what it's like to host. Our home has 3 floors, 4 bedrooms, two bathrooms, living room, kitchen, porch, study area, hallways etc. Not only do we clean all of it, every time, but when guests are dirty, I sometimes wash the wood floors as well. It takes us an absolute minimum of 4 hours, two of us, to prepare for each set of guests.

 

But you just go ahead and be tidy.

Oh!! So true! One host posted she had underwear tongs! The stories we could tell!!!

@Christine1 I'm the holder of the undy tongs! Also useful for other surprises.

Hahahaha! So smart! I bought a rechargeable bath and tile scrubber. Sooooo useful. No more scrubbing and dealing with pubes by hand. YUCK.

Suzanne302
Level 10
Wilmington, NC

@Tara

 

Thanks for giving us your perspective! As a host, I agree, people who don't understand certain businesses make all kinds of assumptions, but usually (not always!) there is a logical reason for the decision a business makes.

 

And as a guest, THIS:

"What these separate fees have done is caused the whole experience of planning lodging somewhat unpleasant because it feels like constant disappointment each time you think you’ve found something you love in your price range, only to find out there’s so much in fees that it doubles the cost of the stay. It is a huge time suck too, which really stinks."

 

As it's been mentioned, when you put in actual dates ABB will factor in the cleaning cost to the nightly rate so you get an accurate number. Of course, they change things so often that I've experienced this off and on when I've been searching as a guest.

 

And as @Sandra856 said, I don't see one-night guests as a burden at all! I love 1-2 night guests, but we were just trying to make it clear to @Chris1587 (who has gone suspiciously silent, LOL) that we have the SAME cleaning procedure for a one-night stay as we do for a 7-night stay. Even if it doesn't look dirty, we still clean everything! And again, more wear and tear on linens and running the washer/dryer more often uses more electricity.

 

Thanks for being a rational, reasonable guest!

Suspicious? Pay my writing fee and I’ll reply to everybody. 

 

I try, whenever possible, to stay with people, that engenders a mutual respect and I’ve met some lovely people that way. What I’m seeing here is a flaming from the professionals who are, effectively, running a hotel business and for them the priorities, and probably the guests they attract are different.

 

To be honest if I’m paying you a £50 cleaning fee I might not be so careful not to leave a mess. (Which is not true but makes the point. )

 

In the last year I have stayed with someone who charged so little  I put my food on the table when they made dinner, someone who rowed me to their island, someone who gives all the money to an Indian charity and took us into town and showed us the sights, a musician who I’m still in touch with... wonderful experiences and a testimony to what Airbnb is about rather than an alternative to booking.com. 

@Chris1587 yet airbnb seems intent on turning the platform into a luxury experience with PLUS and all the crazy expectations on hosts 

It doesn’t seem to be true that ABB shows the rate with the cleaning fee factored in when dates are entered. I just did a search with dates angered and it said $243 per night. When I clicked on the fee at the bottom, it showed the rate of $243/night plus the cleaning fee and other fees as additional amounts. I wonder why there’s is confusion about how this works, or if I’m missing something. 

D2CF3331-959B-4D40-9AF2-648181941145.png

 

D58DD045-973C-40F8-887B-6E3D98823946.png

 

 

@Tara241 whether it actually factors the fee into the nightly rate seems to be variable-- I've seen that sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't-- but it does show you the actual cost.

 

Here's the result of a search without and then with dates:

Capture.JPGCapture.JPG

 

@Tara241

yes, you are missing something - Airbnb doesn't show prices the same way in Europe and in USA and that's the reason for this confusion.

 

I've posted this screenshots before but here they are again:

This is what you get when searching Zagreb, Croatia (the listing is mine)

It shows 40€ / night

 

studio40.jpg

 

 

If you click on it and want to book you will see the price breakdown:

30 x 2 nights = 60€  + 10€ cleaning fee + 9€ Airbnb service fee = 79€  ( 40€ / night)

 

 

studio40-1.jpg

 

 

But in America prices are without cleaning and service fee.

EU has different regulations and forced Airbnb to show all prices transparently.

 

 

Btw, I like "set up fee" as you named it 🙂

My daughter and I are also in photography and in foto community and  I worked as a freelance web designer as well ....so I know you can understand us, hosts 🙂

 

Wow. They must hire a company to come in. That's about the average price of a cleaning call to do a condo. 

As this thread has progressed, another thought has occurred to me about cleaning fees that we have not discussed: 

 

Some hosts may have a higher cleaning fee because the quality of the guests renting their space is not very high.  

 

Let me explain: 

I co-hosted a whole-house property over the summer.  The home was adequate but it wasn't luxury.  It had a fresh coat of paint on most things, the hardwood floors were patched but nicely refinished, the bathrooms were, well, bathrooms - nothing wrong, but nothing especially special about them either. The kitchen had new tile that wasn't quite finished (no toe kick) and the appliances were mis-matched (at the beginning of the summer the refrigerator was just plain OLD - I was glad it finally broke so the owners had to replace it).  I could sort of equate it to the first apartment you might rent for yourself - nothing "wrong" but nothing is perfect either. 

 

That being said, the house was a little ways outside of downtown too, so guests would have to drive everywhere.  It was a 2-bed, 2-bath house with a full kitchen and it could house up to 8 people.  It was priced at $65/night with a $45 cleaning fee and we had a 2-night minimum (so spread that cleaning fee out).  The average stay was 3-nights.   I thought this was a fair price and expected the guests to be of the same quality as the guests that stay in my own 1-bedroom guestroom space in town (that I rent for $45/night with a $15 cleaning fee).  I coulldn't have been more wrong. 

 

The "cheapness" of the home attracted pretty crappy guests who treated the house pretty poorly.  One guest threw/dropped their eyeglasses into the toilet and flushed them down causing the toilet to back up (but of course, not right away and since we couldn't tell WHICH guests had done this, Airbnb wouldn't pay the homeowners for the damage to the toilet and calling the plumber).  One set threw something on the ceiling of the kitchen by the stove - I'm thinking pancakes - that I had to get on a ladder to clean off.  One set stayed for 4 weeks and never cleaned the coffee pot after making a pot probably on the first day - and it got moldy.   Another group left 5 bags of garbage inside the house when there are garbage cans right off the back porch.  One group left an out-of-date uncooked chicken dripping in the fridge.  I kid you not, the guests treated the house like it was a flop home.  I swore that I would not co-host again without making the fee $75 the next summer.  I would work my a$$ off between guests getting things washed, cleaned, mopped, and reset and only once did I get the place cleaned in less than 3 hours (it was a turn for one couple staying in one bedroom to another couple staying in one bedroom so laundry was a minimum and I didn't have to make 2 beds, only one).   I complained so much about how awful the guests were, that it never occurred to me that it might be better to just raise the price and eliminate this type of budget renter who were all, clearly, raised in a barn by wolves. 

 

Oh, and by the way, at that cheap price, we had about 35% of the guests lower the "value" score.  One group of 8, who broke the recycling can inside the house that we asked them to replace for $30, actually gave us a 3!  Lets do the math there... 8 people for 3 nights at $65 plus $45 (we typically charged $10 per air mattress set up but they decided to bring their own instead) plus the cost to replace the can.... That's $11.25 per person, per night.  WHERE THE FCK ARE THEY GOING TO STAY ELSEWHERE FOR A BETTER VALUE?!  - a shelter perhaps or sleeping on a park bench?!  They couldn't even pay to park overnight in a parking deck and sleep in their cars for less. Plus they left the place a wreck - with a few dishes in the sink, the glass dining table completely covered in food and grime, and so much long hair everywhere!  Yes, I'm still bitter.... 

 

But I thought, if I'm going to have to clean more, I should charge a higher cleaning fee.  I mean, we received 5-star ratings on cleanliness on all but 1 reservation all summer (yup - the folks who let the coffee pot get moldy and never bothered to clean it for 4 weeks themselves or call and tell me to come clean it - I was there every Monday exchanging sheets and towels - these two women were TEACHERS!) I wanted to charge more because the guests treated the house so poorly and it was taking me way longer to clean up after them.  In reality, we needed better guests who wouldn't treat this house like this. 

 

So that's my thinking, perhaps that is why there is such a high cleaning fee on some listings - enough so that it doubles the cost of the space. Perhaps the guests those locations are attracting are less than quality guests who, over time, have forced the cleaning fee higher and higher because of the extra work being required of the cleaners.  

 

IDK, it's speculation on my part and just an observation based on my own experience and feelings. JM2C.