Gone but Not Forgotten: The Airbnb Living Wage Pledge & Airbnb Cleaning Fees

In 2017, Airbnb promoted a new badge for hosts who promised to pay their cleaners a “living wage.” The definition of a “living wage” was unclear, but most hosts took it to mean above minimum wage. I for one do not think the American minimum wage is a living wage.

I opted “in” to the Airbnb Living Wage program, but almost as quickly as it was announced, it disappeared, and I never saw a badge nor heard of it again. When I contacted Airbnb I was told that the program is “not available at this time, but if it becomes available in the future, hosts will be informed.”

Because the “program” disappeared almost immediately, I have wondered if it was proposed simply as window dressing, as a band-aid to the internet's joyful complaints about Airbnb cleaning fees. If so, this is a shame-- The idea was solid, and travelers need to understand how their lodgings are cleaned-- we need more transparency and more valuing of cleaning, not less. Visible cleaning fees encourage economic thought. Travelers who stay in an Airbnb for a single night need to understand the environmental and economic costs of a one-night stay. It requires nearly as much domestic work as a multi-night stay, and the environment and your wallet will thank you for longer stays. (I break all this down in my post In Praise of Cleaning Fees).

91.5% of all domestic workers-- workers who work inside of a home-- are female, and most of those workers are immigrants and women of color. It is news to no one that house cleaning is traditionally a female job, and, therefore, devalued.

I'm not playing that game.

And for a minute, I thought Airbnb wasn’t going to either.

As a domestic worker, I'm in a place of real privilege. Although I clean up after other people, I do clean a home I own. And I clean it alongside my husband, and with the help of my children. (It's important to both of us that the whole family is invested in our family's economic engine- cleaning is not seen as “women’s work” in our household).

When I do pay a cleaner (when we are on vacation, or ill) I can afford to pay them fairly and well above the “going rate” in my community, which is between $12-20 per hour.

When I pay a cleaner to clean my cottage, I pay them a flat $100-- I estimate it will take them 3 hours to clean (It usually doesn't-- it takes 1.5-2) and then I “tip” an extra $25 on top of that, since we are located pretty remotely, and gas and time are expenses. If the clean was onerous, I’ll pay more.

There is a $100 cleaning fee attached to my Airbnb listing. If I always hired domestic help, I would need to charge a higher cleaning fee or raise my nightly fee. But, as I wrote here, the cleaning fee encourages guests to stay longer, which is my preference as a host (and as an environmentalist). Hosts need to be able to charge cleaning fees, not only to foreground domestic work, but to encourage multi-night stays.

I continue to think that the Airbnb Living Wage Badge was a wonderful idea-- it foregrounded the humans behind the scenes. EVERY hospitality business should commit to paying far more than minimum wage, and every stay-- at an Airbnb or at a Hotel, should be transparent about how much they are paying their cleaning staff.

I encourage both Airbnb hosts and Airbnb guests to host and to travel with intentionality-- with awareness of how their decisions are affecting their community.

If you’re a host, consider including in your listing description that you do pay your cleaners a living wage. You might even consider explaining what you do to clean the space. Foreground the work that goes into hosting. Hosting is theater, but its also hard work. Most Airbnb hosts are women. Don’t devalue yourself and your work.

If you perform domestic work, hire domestic workers, or travel, I encourage you to read more. The National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA) works for the respect, recognition, and rights for more than 2.2 million nannies, housecleaners, and home care workers who do the essential work of caring for our loved ones and our homes.

I also recommend Meg Conely's Substack “HomeCulture”-- it's great, and she always engages with ideas about domestic work— transparency about its value is front-and-center in everything she writes. Here's her piece on care work in Harpers Bazaar from earlier this year.

There is still a link about the Living Wage Pledge in the Airbnb Host Resource Center

And Airbnb still has an announcement up about how important it is to them.

But the option to add it vanished, after that brief moment in 2017.