As the cost of a vacation increases, some travelers pay more attention to something that does not work out: cleaning fees that are added to the payment for short-term rentals, which can reach hundreds of dollars per trip.
The corona plague has brought renewed attention to sanitation, but some guests renting short-term properties resent the cleaning fee, a fixed fee set by the host and varying greatly depending on the property and location. Some guests say they feel cheated when they see an attractive nightly price, and then run into additional fees of hundreds of dollars before payment.
Traditional hotels can add charges, such as resort fees, but usually do not list household bills. This is why industry analysts say that short-term rental cleaning fees can elicit a harsh response from guests, especially when they also receive pre-departure cleaning instructions.
“Once you’re finally going to click and pay, with the addition of Airbnb’s fees and taxes and the cleaning fee, the amount is suddenly not even close to what you thought the nightly rate was,” says Ashley Teague, a San Diego attorney.
Even some hosts are opposed to cleaning fees.
Linda Cal and her husband run two Airbnb properties in Flames County, California. She believes that cleanliness is part of the cost of running a business, under the responsibility of the hosts, which should not be a separate charge. She searched Airbnb in the Mammoth Lakes, California area for a one-night stay last fall, and saw rates of $ 80 per night, with a cleaning fee of $ 120. “There’s no way it costs $ 120 to clean a bedroom after we’ve only been there one night,” she says.
In the properties she manages, the off-season stay starts at about $ 125 per night for an apartment adjacent to her home, and about $ 180 per night for a two-bedroom cabin down the road. Both have no cleaning fees. The couple cleans the apartments themselves, but asks guests to wash dishes, consolidate garbage and remove bedding.
In the US, about 85% of short-term rentals include cleaning fees, according to data from the analysis company AirDNA, which includes data from Airbnb and Vrbo. Cleaning fees rose by an average of 9.8% from the first quarter of 2020 to the first quarter of 2021, and An additional 6.6% by the first quarter of 2022, according to AirDNA.
Fees vary depending on the location and size of the property, says Jamie Lane, vice president of AirDNA research. The average cleaning fee for one-bedroom properties has risen from $ 59 in 2020 to $ 73 in 2022, while the average cleaning fee for a property with at least five bedrooms, on the beach, is $ 410.
“We moved from $ 112 in 2019 to $ 137 now in 2022,” Lane says of the average rate hike over time, noting that he thinks the rate of increase is reasonable, given the plague effects and rising labor costs.
Airbnb recommends that hosts consider a minimum cleaning fee
Airbnb has reported that on average, the cleaning fee is less than 10% of the total booking cost. Airbnb advises hosts to consider a minimum cleaning fee – or not at all – if they ask guests to perform certain tasks, and warns hosts who charge high cleaning fees, from guests who might expect to leave without cleaning themselves, as in a hotel.
Vrbo announced that they are advising hosts to set minimum fees. Vrbo claims that more guests are paying attention to cleanliness following the corona plague, so it is possible that the hosts started charging more because they are improving their cleaning protocols.
Guests say some of their frustration stems from the way the cleaning fees are displayed while searching for short-term rentals. In the U.S., Airbnb’s price filtering software sorts assets by rate per night, not by total cost. Customers can find the total cost, excluding taxes, in lower case in the platform list view, but it is not shown in the map view.
At Vrbo, guests can filter the results by nightly rate or total cost with commissions. When guests search with dates, both prices are shown in the map feature, though taxes are not included.
After last year saw stormy reactions on social media to the high commissions, Airbnb announced their review. Airbnb also reviewed pricing views last fall, in which users saw new explanations, and in some cases, banners indicating the total cost without taxes. In May, the company said it would offer recommendations to improve transparency in pricing and navigation presentation for hosts and guests, and that it aims to set the review and recommendations by December 15th. Nearly four months later, Airbnb said it had no news to announce, but would continue to provide updates on its efforts.
Some hosts say they might leave the market if they cancel the cleaning fee and raise their nightly rate, as people will shy away from nightly rates that exceed nearby rentals.
The cleaning fee encourages a long stay
Cleaning fees can help hosts encourage longer stays, says Tarik Dogru, an assistant professor at Florida State University who has researched short-term rentals. The cleaning fee may exceed or approach the nightly rate for a one-night stay, but may make more sense for those booking a longer stay, he says.
Many hosts say that inflation has hurt them as well. Some hire a professional cleaning service and pass the cost on to guests, who feel the increased cost of cleaning.
Cleaning service companies say that the costs have risen in many markets, from the supply to the wages of the cleaning workers, through the cost of fuel for travel to the various properties. Cleaning workers also say that the cleaning work required in a short-term rental property, usually with several bedrooms, bathrooms and a full kitchen, far exceeds the effort required to clean a hotel room.
Cassie Murray cleans short-term rental properties in the Northern California area. For small properties, it charges $ 150 for a minimum of three hours of work. She says 20% of that salary goes to taxes, at least $ 10 covers her cleaning supplies and $ 10 covers fuel. “Thirty-three dollars an hour sounds great, but we don’t get health coverage sponsored by the employer,” she says.
Other hosts clean themselves, but use the cleaning fee to cover the time spent and sometimes the cost of the cleaning supplies.
“We need to be able to slightly increase the cleaning fee, to ensure we replenish that inventory without taking out of our profits,” says Kyle Stanley, a short-term host and property manager in California. If a cleaning team charges him $ 150, he says, he will charge the guest about $ 175.