How are you dealing with getting rid of the cleaning fee?

[Joel1021]

Clearly ABNB wants us to ditch it.  They just reported that 40% of all hosts have dropped it and they are saying they will bump hosts up who do.  My bookings are down so I do need to do something.  My issue is my cleaning cost is high at $250 and I'm not sure how to spread that out in a way that makes sense.  My average booking is 4.2 days but I have lots of 3 night stays and a handful of 9-10 night stays.  Id like to hear back from hosts in similar situation who have gotten rid of their cleaning fee.  I tried adding $60 per day and removing the $250 charge  and a 10% discount over 6 days but that doesnt add up right.  My head hurt from all the math 🙂  Thanks

[Zheng49]

Currently don't see any signs where the cleaning fee is hurting the ranking. But I could easily get rid of my cleaning fee since it's just $10 for 1-2 days, and $15 for 3+ days....if needed. 

[Helen3]

Can you link to the information from Airbnb that says this @Joel1021 

Are you sure it's the cleaning fee that's hurting your bookings. Many areas are suffering from falling demand and oversaturated markets .

[Joel1021]

the market has def dropped but i want to make sure i ranking at the top and i cant seem to figure out how to do that with a $250 cleaning fee.

ABNB also announced 40% of hosts have dropped the cleaning fee

"In ranking search results, Airbnb is prioritizing hosts with upfront pricing and no cleaning fees, as opposed to those that might show a low rate only to surprise guests at checkout".

https://skift.com/2023/09/29/airbnb-ceo-on-essentially-eliminating-cleaning-fees/

[Zheng49]

Good catch. It's possible that's how it was initially. I did suspect something was fishy after the September release.

Although I remember trying to take out my cleaning fee and just worked into my daily price instead. The search ranking remained unchanged (at that particular moment in time. Algorithms can change on a whim) because the total was the same.

It's something worth trying though for sure. You can try working part of your "massive" cleaning fee into the daily and see how it affects your ranking. 

[Fiona256]

I've never charged a cleaning fee. I think it is wrong. I've explained the reasons before and I won't go into it again now.  Market saturation is the issue challenging many of us these days. The bandwagon has been flattened.

[Melanie597]

@Joel1021 I have struggled with this decision as well to keep or get rid of the cleaning fee.  So as of a few days ago I'm running an experiment to see if there is any difference in rankings and bookings without the cleaning fee.  
My normal fee is $125 & $126.  Seriously it won't hurt to try, and I can always go back and change it to have a separate charge again.  I basically gestimated and added into the nightly room rate.  

Example:

2 nights $650 + $125 cleaning=$725 /2 nights = $362.50 / night.

I honestly think I rounded up to $375 for the sales and innkeepers tax now being paid on a higher nightly rate including the cleaning fee now.  Looking at scenario- I probably should do the math again and adjust appropriately.  **This was just a trial to see what will happen with my bookings!

I pulled up my comps and rentals in the area, honestly there are very few here that do not charge a cleaning fee!  I'm hoping it will help in my rankings/algorythms.  We shall see.  

I'd like to know if others have experienced a change and how they handled it.