EmailKid

Did a search, and found nothing about this ridiculous fee. Is this a new normal?

OK, have not traveled since Covid started, and have not stayed at AirBNB even longer, but even inexpensive properties seem to have a $35 cleaning fee (looking in Washington state). That is ridiculous for a one night stay, easily raising the price by 40%.

And I have not found a way to get an all in price to search, which would be very useful

lowfareair

You haven't been searching too hard. Cleaning fees are absolutely (and sadly) the new normal. You should be lucky it is only $35, I've seen 1 BR apartments have $150 or more.

ihispanic

While you cannot search by an "all in" price, the total cost for each property is included in the search results. (At least it is for me when using the desktop version of the web site.)

Cleaning fees definitely hurt the economics of one-night stays. Personally, I don't see $35 being excessive. A professional cleaning service needs to factor in labor, supply, and transportation costs. Even if the host does the cleaning themselves, why would they underpay themselves to do an undesirable task? Few people like to clean up after others.

xooz

It is a big part of the loss of value of booking AirBNB vs a hotel. At least at a hotel the cleaning is included, and possibly shows up in the middle of your multi-day stays....maybe...

EmailKid

Well, while I was never a frequent user, looks like they pretty much lost me.

It was convenient to use a cheap place to sleep after a positioning flight and fly out in the morning. So only sheets would need to be washed in my case.

So now I will have to expand my search if all I need is a place to sleep. So while I have not written off Air BNB entirely, it is getting pretty close.

Not that there is anything cheap related to travel these days with gas prices going up and supply chains struggling

fifty_two

It is not a new normal , its just host finding ways to get more bookings and therefore money.

The cleaning fees are displayed in the final price , not when you are searching , otherwise the property might disappear from your results

In hotels also there are cleaning fees (its obvious) but they are hidden/included in the price , and with scaling it can be spread across all bookings therefore its pretty small cost per night and room

If the cleaning is done by an external provider then yes 35$ is not much

EmailKid

Um, how is it not the new normal if pretty much everyone in US does it

You are right about trying to get more money, alas in my case (and I am probably not alone) it means LESS (in my case ZERO) bookings as I tend to look for short term and in some cases almost doubles the price.

So to avoid wasting time, I have stopped searching AirBNB even though pre cleaning fee (prior to Covid) I was a regular user. Guess they are trying to weed out the price conscious ......

And just yesterday saw that someone was looking to hire cleaners here on Gulf Coast for $10 per hour.

fifty_two

it is not a new normal in the sense that's an old trick which became more popular over the years

Annerk

I've been staying at AirBnB's since 2015.

The cleaning fee is why I don't stay at an AirBnB for a stay of under three nights.

You have to look at the benefits and cost of an AirBnB and weigh them against the cost of a hotel.

I have yet to find an AirBnB for less than a hotel for a stay of one or two nights once I add in the cleaning fee. The exception was a B&B in a small town in Peru which rents rooms through the AirBnB platform, and doesn't have a cleaning fee.

The only time the cleaning fee for a place I've rented was over $35 was a two weeks stay at a beautiful luxury flat in South Kensington. Because the rent was only $250 a night (a room in a nice but not luxury hotel in that or a similar area was running well over $400 USD a night at the time of our stay) and we were there for 14 nights with no service during our stay, I didn't mind paying the $95 cleaning fee.

Need

I wish the cleaning fee is ONLY $35. Since 2020, I have stayed at Airbnb 6 times. The cleaning fee were from $90 (cheapest) to $295 for a 2 to 5 nights stay.

EmailKid

That is just crazy

Stayed in Brooklyn in November for three nights (IIRC), and the cost plus cleaning fee wasn't all bad. Just a bus ride to the subway, so one connection and I was in Manhattan

Even the weather wasn't too bad. Had my New York pizza and some other stuff ...... made for a great long weekend.

The only thing that didn't make me happy was that my next to guaranteed upgrade on flight to LGA on UA didn't materialize Something about some rich Astros fans buying a bunch of FC tickets to go see playoff game in New York .... ooops, going Off Topic ......

So ya, the cleaning fee sucks, and I will continue to boycott AirBnB if it's ridiculous.

jackal

Well, it's not Airbnb that implements the cleaning fee--it's individual hosts. But I guess you can boycott an entire platform if the majority of people who list their inventory on the platform engage in that kind of behavior and you don't like it.

But the reason that hotels (almost) never charge cleaning fees and short-term-rental properties (almost) always do is because they are different business models. A hotel typically (well, pre-Covid, anyway) cleans your room every day, meaning the cost of cleaning can be built into the nightly rate. They also typically have on-staff housekeeping, which they pay very low wages to, so the actual cost to the operator to clean your room is pretty minimal ($15 or so for the 30 minutes spent cleaning an average low-mid-end hotel room). And the math is easy: stay 1 night, it costs hotel $15; stay 2 nights: it costs hotel $30; stay 10 nights: it costs hotel $150.

Short-term rentals typically do not clean mid-stay. They clean one time: when the guest checks out. It also takes significantly longer to clean a typical short-term-rental property. In addition to multiple bedrooms and bathrooms, they also have kitchens, dining rooms, living rooms, and sometimes (depending on the type of property) game rooms, decks, barbecues, hot tubs, etc. Many (if not most) short-term rental hosts use professional cleaning services that charge higher costs and pay higher wages than hotels typically pay on-staff housekeepers; my cleaner in a relatively low-cost-of-living area charges me $75 for the standard two-hour clean it takes to clean my two-bedroom properties (and it takes that much for her to hire and keep good cleaners on her team that are reliable and willing to work hard on tight turnaround days). That relatively higher cost also doesn't scale by length-of-stay; a guest who stays one night incurs a cost to me of $75 per night, while a guest who stays 10 nights incurs a cost to me of $7.50 per night. (And actually, in my experience, guests who stay one night actually cost me more, since they tend to be renting a property to throw a party or do illicit drugs or something, and my cleaner has walked into a trashed home so many times after a one-night stay that I quit allowing them.)

So while it is entirely possible for a STR host to include the cleaning fee in the rate, invariably, someone loses. If the host doesn't charge a cleaning fee but bumps rates up by $75/night to cover the cost incurred on a 1-night stay, now the person staying 10 nights is penalized to the tune of $675. If the host bumps the rate up $25 a night assuming the average length of stay is 3 nights, then the host ends up eating $50 on a 1-night stay, but a guest staying 10 nights is still penalized to the tune of $175. The fairest and most equitable way for all parties involved is to set the charge equal to the actual cost, and if a cleaning costs a host $50, then you can't really complain about a $50 cleaning fee, because you're simply paying the cost that you incur for the host, and complaining is basically you asking the host to subsidize your stay. If the presence of a cleaning fee means you are going to favor hotels over Airbnbs for short stays, well, then, that's the way the cookie crumbles (and it makes sense, because it costs less for a hotel to clean up after you than for an Airbnb to do the same). And if you're going to complain that even a $35 cleaning fee is too much...well, why don't you go be a housekeeper for a week and tell us how happy you are to be making $15 an hour to scrub pee splatter off of toilets and launder sheets full of bodily fluids and fish hair out of shower drains and scrub grease off of the wall behind the stove for 8 hours a day? You can't expect an Airbnb host to have the same ability as a hotel to staff a low-wage cleaner full-time and only have to pay $15 or so to clean up your room behind you, even if it's just a small private room in a home.

And I do put my money where my mouth is: I travel as frequently as the next FlyerTalker, and even as a STR host with multiple properties myself, I basically never book stays on Airbnb or Vrbo, because the value proposition is simply not there for my typical travel patterns (short stays, almost always of just one night, at lower-end properties like Choice and Wyndham)...and that's OK. I am not my own target demographic for my own properties.

arollins

Well said jackal something else to add is that most hotels also have industrial washers, dryers, ability to purchase cleaning solutions at a much lower price, as well as ample supply of bedding, towels that can be replaced ASAP in case of damage, stain, etc. The average Airbnb/VRBO/etc. host does not have any of this, some use their own washer/dryer, purchase cleaning on sale at regular B&M stores or warehouse clubs. They may have extra replacement bedding/towels, but it certainly comes at a higher cost. Finally, most host also tend to block the day before/after of a rental to allow for cleaning, that's at least 2 days that cuts into the potential rental income of the host.

jackal

Yep. My cleaner mostly uses the in-home washer/dryer, and I'm grateful that she doesn't charge me extra if she has to take laundry home with her (some cleaners do).

I buy most of my supplies at Sam's Club, including towels and sheets (both from the Member's Mark hotel series, which are a step up from the cheapie lightweight but rough hospitality ones). If a guest stains a set of queen sheets irreparably, that's a $50 cost to me for a new set. I've looked into buying sheets from a hospitality store, but what on earth am I going to do with 12 sets of sheets and a pile of 144 pillowcases?! The economies of scale are different for a small-time host versus a hotel.

BamaVol

We don’t generally consider an AirBnB or VRBO for under a week. Typical cleaning fees, and I’m talking going back at least 3 years, have been $100-150 for a weekly or monthly stay. We have stayed at a place three times now on Cedar Key that is cleaned by the owners who live next door. They do not charge a cleaning fee. But they seem to be the ecxception.

I did get one refunded 3 years ago when we showed up at a condo that hadn’t been cleaned by check-in time. I tipped the cleaner instead. The poor woman lost her entire crew of 7 to enhanced unemployment payments. I understand their point of view, it paid better to not work than work. But they left their employer flat to do the work of 8.