increase cleaning fee after booking?

[Ryan-and-Darnie0]

Hello all,

For one of our listings we have nearly 100 reservations already confirmed for this year. Obviously, all fees were set at the time of confirmation, so all of these reservations have a set cleaning fee. 

But, our housekeeper recently informed us of a significant rate increase (44% increase) for all cleans going forward. The result will be a significant operational cost increase for this listing since we can't pass the increase on to our guests as I suspect there is no way to apply this rate increase to existing reservations, correct? (and I'm not sure that would really be fair anyway.. although, do hotels charge fees at reservation or check out? it's been a while). 

We can't be the only ones to have faced this before, anyone have any advice? 

Thanks!

[Sarah977]

@Ryan-and-Darnie0  The fees, and anything else, like cancellation policy, that were in place when the guest booked have to be honored. The only other choice is to cancel yourself, which wouldn't be a good choice.

So if you can't come to some more equitable arrangement with your cleaners, them bearing in mind that these reservations were already confirmed and that you can't up the fee after the fact, then you'll either have to eat the difference or look for new cleaners who charge more or less what the cleaning fee was.

[Pat271]

You are obliged to honor the fees in place when the guests book. Refer the housecleaner to the current schedule, and ask if the changes can begin to be applied to future bookings, and not current ones. That seems only fair, as the housekeeper gave you no notice.

If he/she refuses, I would seriously consider putting feelers out for a new housecleaner.

[Ryan-and-Darnie0]

Thanks for the replies. We figured these would be the only two real options. Just fishing for any other potential creative ideas. 

To be fair, she gave us about a month's warning, but only 13 of our current reservations came in after that, so we still have about 87 at the old rate, and her rate was probably below market. It would be nice if she honored her old rate for our existing reservations the same we are required to do, but we only schedule cleanings with her a month in advance (perhaps that is the real mistake here).

R&D

[Sarah977]

@Ryan-and-Darnie0  You sort of indicate that you may have been paying her below market rate for some time so if she's a good cleaner you'd like to retain, maybe see if she'd meet in the middle for the existing reservations or at least half of them. That might be a fair compromise.

A good employee is worth keeping if she is one.

[Ryan-and-Darnie0]

Totally agree 🙂

She's great, but in this case she's more of a service that contracts out the work to other cleaners and we pay her what she charges more-or-less. 

I don't have the data to confirm it, but her rates were probably below market before. If that's the case, moving to a new cleaner may not help anyway.

Ideally the cleaning fee is passed through to the guest, maybe plus a little to cover our supply costs.  I think probably our mistake are 1) not monitoring and matching market rates, 2) accepting reservations too far in advance when our costs could be much higher, and 3) not negotiating locked in cleaning fees for confirmed reservations. 

[Dimitar27]

Find another cleaner. You can't change the reservation. Every reservation works as a contract between you and your guest.