In Praise of CLeaning feeS

A popular click-bait news article bemoans the financial absurdity of Airbnb hosts adding “outrageous” cleaning fees to their price. This article-- versions are swirling around the interwebs-- always includes a screen shot of a booking price breakdown where the cleaning fee is nearly the price of the single night’s stay, or even more, like a $125 night stay and a $150 cleaning fee.

“Ludicrous! Absurd!” the internet pontificates. This is an unsustainable business model! Airbnb shall crash and burn, and soon!

Cleaning shouldn’t be “hidden” work. Let’s foreground its value rather than try to hide it.

Oh, potential Airbnb guest and/or stockholder, fret not. Cleaning fees are your friend. Allow me to explain.

THE best part of Airbnb, in my experience, is that the platform allows hosts to host in way that feels comfortable, safe, and worthwhile to them. Cleaning fees are one tool hosts (like me) use to make our space available to more people.

First, remember that most Airbnb hosts have only one listing-- most folks aren’t “professional” hosts, but working people who are hosting space to make a little extra money (often to be able to stay in the home they are hosting!)

Airbnb hosts aren't operating on a margin where they have a thousand rooms, where a single percentage change makes a noticeable difference in the bottom line. For most hosts, our single listing is the whole kielbasa. Either we get a booking, or we don't.

When we get a booking for 3 nights, we're not only making three nights of income, we're not taking time away from our other jobs or from family time to clean the space. This gives us a great incentive to want to host longer stays. Remember, it costs us nearly the same to clean after a one night stay than after a week stay.

Supplies + Time + Care = a thoughtful cleaning fee

However, some hosts are willing to host guests for one night, if the guest pays a higher price. The only way to make this work in Airbnb's software is through the cleaning fee.

As a host, you can set two different cleaning fees-- One for 1-2 night stays, and one for “longer” stays. This difference is counter-intuitive to how must hosts use the fee. For example, I have a $100-125 cleaning fee for my 700 square-foot cottage. When I hire a cleaner, I pay her $100 dollars, but usually my family and I clean the space ourselves. If a guests stay one night, they pay $200 + $100 Cleaning Fee + $43 Airbnb Service fee + $34 in State and Local Hospitality Taxes, and their total for one night is $377. But if they stay 4 nights, their nightly price is around $250 per night.

Basically, cleaning fees are an additional fee for shorter stays.

The cleaning fee becomes a way of rewarding guests who stay longer, giving me more time to spend working and with my children.

If I didn't have the option of the cleaning fee, I wouldn't even offer 1 or 2 night stays. They're simply not worth the sacrifice in time. And of course, if a guest doesn't like a price, they need not book the listing.

The “shorter” cleaning fee option is really puzzling to me, since Airbnb requires hosts to maintain an extremely high level of cleaning, a level which does not depend on trip length. When you disinfect every surface, it takes time, regardless of how long someone has stayed. When you change the sheets, scrub, vacuum, mop, and restock the kitchen and vanities, carry in fire-wood, and clean the hot-tub, it takes the same amount of time for an overnight guest or a week-long guest.

Cleaning is hard work, especially in a carefully curated space. Although I designed my listing to be easy to clean, it still requires a lot of care because I have amenities that hotels don’t offer, like a well-stocked, esoteric library (books don’t dust themselves!) a wide variety of vintage games and puzzles, a collection of vintage LPs, an amazing 1950s stove, and a hand-built cedar hot-tub. These things take time and care to maintain. We have antique stained glass windows and a claw-foot tub. We offer a variety of ways to make coffee. We give you locally roasted coffee. And baked goods. And flowers from the garden. And handmade soaps. Details take a lot longer than a room at the Omni.

Hosting an STR really is hard work, and it requires a lot of heavy lifting. But it’s rewarding work, and in my experience, hosting for more than 9 years, the ability to set my own cleaning fee has helped me create a work-life balance with my STR that would have been harder without them.

Nota Bene: The Airbnb Service Fee is 3% from the host’s take and 14% from the guest’s total price. That line item is paying for AirCover Insurance, for software development, executive income, and it’s also now paying returns for stockholders. I implore the internet, bemoan not your host’s fees— for they scrub your toilet leavings. Ask instead where those corporate earnings are going.

How do you use your cleaning fee? Do you make sure to pay your cleaner (or yourself) a living wage? Hosts have to reap our own dividends…