Cleaning Requests and Cleaning Fees

[Peter1]

A Guest recently complained on TikTok that her Host asked her to do some cleaning duties before checking out, even though the Host charged her a cleaning fee. 

What are your thoughts about this?

"'It does have a $125 cleaning fee as most Airbnb’s do, and I don’t have a problem with that, but this is what I do have a problem with: in addition to that $125 cleaning fee, we ask that you remove garbage, fine, remove bed linens, fine, start the dishwasher and a load of laundry,' she says in the video. 'Now, maybe this is entitlement, or privilege talking, however, if I’m paying $225 a night to stay somewhere plus $125 cleaning fee, I’m not doing any **bleep**ing laundry. Full stop. I know it’s like one load of laundry, it will take me like two minutes to do, but it’s the principle that bothers me.'"

https://www.dailydot.com/debug/airbnb-guests-clean-fee-tiktok/

[Ted307]

@Mark116 

I believe people who are hosts are naturally more inclined to be neat. I think that people who are bothered so much by requests to merely be tidy, would never choose to be hosts. (they might not even choose to be guests).

We used to rent our cousin's beach cabin in the summer for a couple of months. We always spent a day before leaving to totally turning it over for him. Washed sheets and put back on the bed, wash all the towels and fold them and put the away. We mowed the lawn, did electrical maintenance and installed a range hood with some light over his stove, with his permission, because he is family. He was always happy to have us rent from him in the summer, we paid him over the long term rate he could get locally because we were from California, and we thought what he was asking was way too cheap. This was before AirBnB was available. It was just common courtesy to treat our summer rental well. When we later rented a cabin in Prescott for the summer, we treated it the same as we did our cousin's place and left it as we found it. I look at the cleaning fee like an insurance payment. I pay insurance but the other drivers make the claims!

[Sharon1579]

I completely agree with you. I clean 4 places and most people ignore signs and hosts don't help buy not stating 'strip beds, load dish washer and take out rubbish including sanitary towels etc'

we are paid to clean and make up beds. 

I'm trying to find out if that insistence to strip beds because of Covid is still in place ????

[Mandrake-And-Karen0]

I completely understand how/why a guest may feel that way for being charged a sizable cleaning amount as part of the booking!

We don't charge a cleaning fee for short stays.  Also we don't ask our guests to do anything other than tie up their trash. 

As a guest, I am not comfortable with hosts entrusting other guests to wash bedding for me before I arrive.  I don't know if the pre-washed bedding was checked for stains, pre-treated, disinfected, etc., or was really even washed. I've seen some guests of ours put dirty dishes in the dish rack so that it "appeared" (if I didn't have eyes that work)  that they "cleaned" the dishes.  Maybe in their minds they did.  Everyone has different standards of clean after all.  I certainly wouldn't permit other guests to set the standards of cleanliness for future guests' bookings.

If I am charged a cleaning fee my expectation is that I would be expected to do nothing other than make sure to put trash in the trash bag and tie it up and possibly take it outside.

What are we paying for if a host is expecting previous guests to leave a place in the condition in which they checked in??  Also, what are hosts doing with the money that they were paid if they are not using it for cleaning??

In my opinion,

A host should:

Either charge more so that they can provide full service cleaning after each guest stay.  And require absolutely nothing except for the guest to enjoy themselves.

Not charge a guest at all for cleaning and  charge an affordable nightly rate while you require whatever you want guests to do- at least those who are willing to book and meet host's expectations.

Include the cleaning fees in the nightly rate instead of itemizing it and again, don't expect  guest to do anything other than doing their dishes and  clearing out their personal items.