175: To Airbnb is Human

Me taking every amenity I can when Airbnb cleaning fees come with instructions to mop the dang floor.

Have you ever gotten hit with a cleaning fee for an Airbnb that then asked you to clean it to a degree that felt, well, extra, you’re not alone!

Around this time last year, the issue of exorbitant fees for “cleaning” fees became such an issue that Airbnb actually addressed it in the way that any corporation addresses anything, which is to say, like “there’s a plan.”

According to a NerdWallet piece from July of 2024, these cleaning fees were pretty common and reasonable-ish, citing a 2022 internal study which found that in “1,000 U.S. Airbnb reservations with check-in dates in 2022 or 2023…the median cleaning fee per listing for a one-night stay was $75.”

However, they wrote, “cleaning fees vary widely,” and that Airbnb had a different perspective than NerdWallet, going on to say that…

An Airbnb spokesperson told NerdWallet that cleaning fees are on average less than 10% of the total reservation cost at properties that charge them. Meanwhile, NerdWallet’s analysis found that cleaning fees amounted to about 25% of the total price paid. In fact, almost 40% of listings had cleaning fees from 20% to 29.9% of list price.

Yowza!

Listen to this week’s show here (no video this week because we were in person!!!!):

From Airbnb’s side, cleaning fees “one of several fees that may apply to a reservation.” They consider it a tool that “hosts keep their listings in good shape and plays a key role in an effective pricing strategy.” The host is allowed to (and in fact, encouraged to) choose from two kinds of cleaning fees: A lower, single-night rate for short stays or a standard fee for longer rentals. This fee is designed to cover “housekeeping you expect to do after hosting guests.”

Now, most of us may not even notice these fees; the addition of taxes, state and local fees, pet fees, and whatever else they may decide to extract from us for the pleasure of sleeping in someone else’s twin bed on someone else’s minimally clean IKEA sheets (more on the laundry situation in a few) mean we usually just swallow the sticker-shock and sign over our life rights/first born/one or both kidneys.

But that surprise at the total cost — and what it’s meant to pay for — is where folks were noticing an issue with regard to cleaning fees.

Again, from NerdWallet:

Nightly rates often don’t correlate with total price anyway. One listing with a $40 nightly rate could total $90 because of a $40 cleaning fee and $10 service fee. Another listing with a $60 nightly rate could turn out cheaper — $73 total — if it has a $13 service fee and no cleaning fee. A traveler with a $50 budget might be seduced by the $40 listing, only to owe more than if they had booked the $60 listing.

The change that Airbnb rolled out was to allow travelers to search by total cost, rather than list cost. And because that cost might include these sneaky fees, it may disincentivize some hosts (which are often huge corporations in an other themselves) from bilking folks through “fees.” But you know that when it comes to corporate greed, where there’s a will, there’s a way to squeeze just a little bit more out of the customer.

As we talked about in this week’s episode, these additional fees, even when shown transparently, become especially galling when we, the guest, are also asked to complete the very same chores that a cleaning fee might cover, like running the laundry, vacuuming, taking out the trash, etc.

NerdWallet continues:

Airbnb has warned hosts that cleaning fees can backfire by creating unrealistic expectations of how much guests will offer to help at checkout.

“With a higher [cleaning] fee, guests may expect to just walk away from your space at checkout as they would a hotel room,” according to a memo posted to Airbnb’s website before the cleaning changes kicked in.

LOL. “Offer to help” is….really doing some work ther.And people notice it! In a Reddit thread from earlier this year, one guest noted that their total cleaning fee was an extra $255, but that they, the guest, were still expected to “strip beds, put all towels in the bathtub, and collect all garbage and remove from the house.”

What’s reasonable with Airbnb cleaning fees?

The poster asked if they were “being unreasonable to not want to do those things with such a big cleaning fee,” adding that they were “happy to do dishes and start the dishwasher, but I feel like if I’m paying a cleaning fee I don’t want to be doing chores.”

The comments had a number of hosts who stated that their cleaning fee went directly to their professional cleaners, which seems reasonable. A professional cleaner should be able to get in and out of a small unit that was stayed in for two to five days for under $300. The problom, though, is when as consumers, we’re hit with these fees, tons of instructions that feel like chores, AND a place that doesn’t look like anyone actually cleaned it, professionally or not.

OP was in exactly that scenario citing “dust everywhere, toothpaste splatter on backsplash in the bathroom, hair in drawers, lots of little things. It’s definitely not getting $255 worth of cleaning between guests.”

So what’s the solution? Protest and risk your rating? Try to be as tidy as possible? Accept that under late stage capitalism, everyone is extracting money from you at all times because regulations are a hope and a dream?

In the Airbnb that I stayed in, there were next to no check-out requests, which was nice (I still stripped the bed because I am A Good Person). However, we had a different issue that would have been solved by a more professional cleaning (maybe): Sour-ass towels.

You know the type. Really fluffy towels that are so coated in fabric softener that they never really seem to get dry and thus, smell like a bacteria colony has had a full-on Weekend at Bernie’s. I desperately wanted to leave a note or at least some instructions on how to strip them (IT’S VERY EASY) but had some other notes (like the AC that straight up did not work) and didn’t want to pile on.

But maybe I should’ve just gone ahead and done it anyway because………I don’t know. Airbnb etiquette remains murky and none of us know what to do.

ALSO! Tune in this week to hear about how our pets became best friends or at least how Bingo the Cat became obsessed with Lola and she tolerated him to a shockingly high degree. We’ll be back on YouTube with our next show, I promise!

In the meantime, hit us with your Airbnb cleaning fee stories. Send a voicemail, email, whatever.