Originally Posted by
stef315
I'm honestly sorry you think that because maybe you misunderstood me. When you have a business you have a give and take on what rates to charge to make a profit. A hotel charges rates that include cleaning fees so there is no reason why your rates can't be built to include part of the cleaning fees. I feel it would be less of a turn off and I am saying that as a customer.
When I stay at a hotel I do not make much of a mess at all but yet I have seen the messes people make. A long long time ago when I was in college I did some cleaning at a budget hotel. There was a big difference in the time it took for me to clean one room over another. The hotel still paid me an hourly rate but did not charge those guests less or more. When I leave a hotel I know this and know that they're paying less for my cleaning but that does not bother me. As a customer, it does bother me when an Airbnb or similar charges me a large cleaning fee and also has me do cleaning. It might be fair for you to charge that but it does make me less likely to stay in a place like that over a hotel. I am just being honest with how it looks from the customer point of view and that if your business needs those fees to be profitable than perhaps raising the rate is a better option.
I explained why. I pay $200 for cleaning regardless of whether a guest stays one night or 20 nights. Raising rates to cover that for every length of stay means those guests staying longer are paying more than they should. I believe in transparency so I am not going to gouge my longer staying guests. The cost is the cost and I am not going to hide it in higher nightly rates. Besides, if the net cost to the guest ends up the same anyway, I much prefer to be open and honest about what they are paying for rather than artificially raising my rates so people can make informed choices. I would be ripping of those longer staying guests if I raised my nightly rates to even out the cleaning costs as they would be subsidizing the shorter bookings. How is that ethical?
I am not a hotel. Vacation rental owners do not have a stable of cleaning staff on the payroll every day. We pay for a cleaning service, whether that is one person or a commercial agency and they charge by the clean, at least where I am. To compare a privately owned vacation rental to a hotel with cleaners on staff that are paid for a full shift regardless of how many rooms that are turned over that day is ridiculous.