Airbnb CEO on ‘Essentially’ Eliminating Cleaning Fees

[TravelTime]

Interesting approach. I think cleaning fees should be part of the cost of doing business and included in the nightly rate. The CEO makes a good point that you do not book a hotel room and see cleaning fees as an add on.

Airbnb CEO on 'Essentially' Eliminating Cleaning Fees

Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky shared details about his plan to "essentially" eliminate cleaning fees over the next year or two.

skift.com

 

[TravelTime]

This is a good quote from a host on Facebook re cleaning fees especially when other hosts complain about cleaning fees for one night stays:

Listen people. Cleaning fees are dumb and unnecessary. You don't charge separate fees for plumbing, for insurance, for electricity, for maintenance, for gardeners. No..because you used all these expenses when you determined your nightly rate. Same applies for cleaning fees. Simple calculation. Look at your last 6 months or year. Add up your total cleaning costs. Add up your total occupied nights. Divide total cleaning costs by total occupied nights. This is your average nightly cleaning cost. Add it to your nightly rate.

 

[DRIless]

I've never had a complaint about the cleaning fee. What this will mean to me may be that I'll make the minimum stays longer for my pet friendly homes and miss out on the two night stays I was allowing.

What I have had guests complain about is
"but your rate was $79 a night, why is the total SO MUCH"
well, Airbnb upfront quoted the guest the least expensive nightly rate, they did not 'announce' that weekend rates were more. So wen the guest's total was presented for a long weekend they had only one night at that $79 rate and two nights at the much higher Fr&Sa night rates. Seems like their showing total prcing upfront fixes their problem with that, too.

 

[The Colorado Kid]

Interesting approach. I think cleaning fees should be part of the cost of doing business and included in the nightly rate. The CEO makes a good point that you do not book a hotel room and see cleaning fees as an add on.

Airbnb CEO on 'Essentially' Eliminating Cleaning Fees

Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky shared details about his plan to "essentially" eliminate cleaning fees over the next year or two.

skift.com

The biggest no-duh since the captain of the Hindenburg said "Do you smell gas?"

 

[rickandcindy23]

Peacock Suites charges cleaning fees at checkout. I get six per year. Never know when they will use the six. It's always been like that.

Not that I have Peacock Suites on Airbnb or VRBO. I am glad Koala asks for additional fees during the listing process. I always worry with Redweek that I will forget to disclose fees.

 

[Ken555]

If the company wanted to truly be consumer friendly the toggle for the total rate would be the default behavior of the site, not an option. I actively avoid Airbnb’s, haven’t spent a night in one since pre-Covid and will only book when other options are inferior or unavailable. They are pretty much on my no fly list these days due to various reasons including but not limited to fraudulent reviews, inaccurate pictures, erroneous descriptions, seriously cheap furniture, etc.


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[geist1223]

I agree that cleaning fees should be part of the Rental Fee. Also disclose all Rates. Also I do not want a List of things to do before I checkout.

 

[TravelTime]

Just curious…How did the tradition to single out cleaning fees (but not other costs) come about?

 

[Luanne]

What I object to with airbnb and Vrbo are the "fees" that aren't explained.

 

[rapmarks]

My owner ship comes with a $138 cleaning fee per checkin. The same resort costs vacation club owners a low points total and no cleaning fee

I don’t get many rentals through Airbnb but I got a one night stay through them. I had a week stay. The weather is beautiful all week and all I got was $100 plus cleaning fee

I use lots of Facebook sites
One woman said she and her mother had been staying in a hotel and asked if anyone had any thing available as they had at least two more weeks I offered her two weeks in two bedroom at three hundred a week She came to resort, looked at the free laundry room, didn’t bother to look at the cottage and said no thanks. She preferred the hotel room to a stay in to a resort in a two bedroom unit at half the price

Someone will ask on rental site if anyone has certain dates. I will reply yes and never hear from them. Or someone will post a rental, a person will reply I need the following week, I will respond I have that week. Again, no response

 

[am1]

This is a good quote from a host on Facebook re cleaning fees especially when other hosts complain about cleaning fees for one night stays:

Listen people. Cleaning fees are dumb and unnecessary. You don't charge separate fees for plumbing, for insurance, for electricity, for maintenance, for gardeners. No..because you used all these expenses when you determined your nightly rate. Same applies for cleaning fees. Simple calculation. Look at your last 6 months or year. Add up your total cleaning costs. Add up your total occupied nights. Divide total cleaning costs by total occupied nights. This is your average nightly cleaning cost. Add it to your nightly rate.

If you average your cleaning expense based on occupied nights when you were charging a fixed cleaning fee and now just add it to your nightly rate you will have a lot more short stays going forward and cleaning expense will go up.

I am surprised anyone writing that would be capable of managing airbnbs and even have the capital to possibly be the owner.

Does Airbnb charge a service fee on the cleaning charges? If not maybe they want in on that by rolling the cleaning fee into the nightly fee where they do charge a percentage.

 

[TravelTime]

If you average your cleaning expense based on occupied nights when you were charging a fixed cleaning fee and now just add it to your nightly rate you will have a lot more short stays going forward and cleaning expense will go up.

I am surprised anyone writing that would be capable of managing airbnbs and even have the capital to possibly be the owner.

Does Airbnb charge a service fee on the cleaning charges? If not maybe they want in on that by rolling the cleaning fee into the nightly fee where they do charge a percentage.

Why would this cause a host to have more short stays going forward? How would how you calculate your average cleaning fee across all your nights cause a host to have more short stays going forward? It is just how you are doing your math to provide a different perspective. Nothing changes since this does not change anything about how you are actually doing things. Am I missing something? Or did I misunderstand your comment?

As I understand, Airbnb does not charge commission on cleaning fees. I think from what I read that they are proposing eliminating transparency about cleaning fees to renters. But still not charging a commission on cleaning fees. They might eventually roll it all in and charge a commission on all of it. Who knows?

Hosts are complaining because they say if the renter sees the total charges, they will not look competitive. But then renters get to the shopping cart and abandon if they see too many fees. It seems like a wash to me but then I am not a host. However, as a renter, I have abandoned places once I click through. In the end, I decided staying at AirBnbs is not for me. I will stick with other types of vacation.

Hosts are also complaining that cleaning fees are the same whether a stay is 1 night or 7 nights. That is why this person suggested averaging all cleaning fees across all nights, rather than looking at it as distinct time frames. The person was just proposing looking at this differently and more optimistically. Many hosts are small time landlords with little capital and inexpensive, cheap units. So these types whine a lot about AirBnb.

 

[4TimeAway]

Only stay when with traveling dogs. The fees get out of hand.

$100/night rent plus $200 cleaning and $100-$200 for 2 dogs plus all the other items. 4 nights $1,000 in a crappy place. 2 nights impossible to even consider.

 

[Brett]

Only stay when with traveling dogs. The fees get out of hand.

$100/night rent plus $200 cleaning and $100-$200 for 2 dogs plus all the other items. 4 nights $1,000 in a crappy place. 2 nights impossible to even consider.

yes, pet fees are high
I think there are some hotels that accept pets without additional fees

 

[am1]

Why would this cause a host to have more short stays going forward? How would how you calculate your average cleaning fee across all your nights cause a host to have more short stays going forward? It is just how you are doing your math to provide a different perspective. Nothing changes since this does not change anything about how you are actually doing things. Am I missing something? Or did I misunderstand your comment?

As I understand, Airbnb does not charge commission on cleaning fees. I think from what I read that they are proposing eliminating transparency about cleaning fees to renters. But still not charging a commission on cleaning fees. They might eventually roll it all in and charge a commission on all of it. Who knows?

Hosts are complaining because they say if the renter sees the total charges, they will not look competitive. But then renters get to the shopping cart and abandon if they see too many fees. It seems like a wash to me but then I am not a host. However, as a renter, I have abandoned places once I click through. In the end, I decided staying at AirBnbs is not for me. I will stick with other types of vacation.

Hosts are also complaining that cleaning fees are the same whether a stay is 1 night or 7 nights. That is why this person suggested averaging all cleaning fees across all nights, rather than looking at it as distinct time frames. The person was just proposing looking at this differently and more optimistically. Many hosts are small time landlords with little capital and inexpensive, cheap units. So these types whine a lot about AirBnb.

Cleaning costs are based on two things. Amount of guests which should not matter if staying 1 or 7 nights so we do not need to talk about that. The other being time stayed in a place. The longer one stays the more cleaning there is. But there is also a fix amount of cleaning needed to be done (bare minimums) regardless if one stays 12 hours or 1 week.

If the cleaning fee prior was based on per stay say $50 most people would not stay for 1 night. If one were to average their cleaning cost over nights stayed the last year as suggested and that works out to be $15 a night then a one night stay is now $35 cheaper. Actual cost to clean the unit is more then $15 after a one night stay. With that math a week stay would be "charged" $105 for cleaning now making longer stays more expensive. I would rather less longer stays then a lot of short stays. Hotel units are a lot smaller and they have fixed staff and accept the good with the bad (short and long stays) but also usually offer daily cleaning anyways. But I have seen some skip to cleanings every other day while staying.

Hopefully this is a better explanation and you can understand. Why just averaging costs based on a different model and applying it to a new way would not work. I tell my wife and kids you cannot live in a bubble and need to factor in many different things of just what you think it the right way.

I am forever grateful that the bean counters at Wyndham decided to offer free housekeeping for Platinum members. The only way it made sense for me to rent 1 or 2 nights in their larger units. They lost a lot of money on me for that.

 

[Tank]

I think AirBnB does everything to try to make a reservation cheaper to get more rentals clicks excepted.
They make no money if they don’t rent.

I feel they don’t really care about the bottom dollar providing the unit to rent.

Every adjustment puts less $ in the pocket of the provider

This particular move does not affect me as we are not charged extra for cleaning fees.