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I'm worried this ban will only affect honest hosts. Anyway, what Airbnb should really ban is hosts charging a mandatory cleaning fee when also requiring their

• ohnoitsahuman 3y ago
  It's hard to gauge cleaning effort: if a guest uses every dish in the kitchen without doing a wash up, they cleaning crew could be there for hours. But if a guest is tidy, then the cleaning fee should be nothing. The hard part is that you need to reserve and pay for a cleaning crew as if it was always a disaster.
  • adra 3y ago
    Any service that's so pedantic about cleaning isn't a service that most customers would want to use. Airbnb is trying to have it's cake and eat it too putting the responsibility on "hosts" to be the bad guys. It's just lazy and callous to not have strict bounds of responsibilities customers are expected to engage with.
    • scarface_74 3y ago
      And that’s reason #13563 I would never do an AirBnb and we just stayed in hotels during our year of “nomadding”.
      • noduerme 3y ago
        Good for you. We never used it in 10 years of nomadding. However, we did abuse it constantly by contacting hosts and then cancelling the request and paying them cash rent at a negotiated price for a month or two. Idk how well that would work anymore.
        • doix 3y ago
          It depends on the host. If the host is a "real person" (for a lack of a better word) then it works. If they have a bunch of properties and outsourced it to an agency or something, it won't work. Unfortunately the latter is becoming increasingly popular and harder and harder to avoid. I usually try to book places where it's a large house and they rent out the top floor or something. That way if there are any problems, the owner is right there to help and it's easier to negotiate the cash deals.
  • alistairSH 3y ago
    you need to reserve and pay for a cleaning crew as if it was always a disaster. Yet hotels manage this fine - it's just baked into the price. I don't have a problem paying a cleaning fee. I just don't want to pay the fee AND be required to do 90% of the cleaning myself. I'm happy to put the dishes in and then start the dishwasher. I'm not going to wait around for it to finish and then put them away. I'm happy to pile the used towels and bedding in a single spot, but I'm not going to do the laundry. I'll pick up any trash and wipe down the kitchen, but I'm not going to take out the trash or do a deep clean of the kitchen. Etc.
    • nick12r55t1 3y ago
      My wife and I have an airbnb and this is exactly how we structure our check-out. It still costs $250 per turnover for a reliable cleaning crew to come and clean the 3br, 3ba two level house.
      • mistrial9 3y ago
        that number is almost useless without context .. a dozen things factor into that, and the incentives, local labor market etc
        • nick12r55t1 3y ago
          Sure, and so is the $200 number in the first-level parent comment.
      • temporarara 3y ago
        $250 sounds like a lot of cleaning, multiple hours of cleaning by one person for sure, of course depending on your location. But that really gotta be some mansion or your customers are really the absolute worst if that's always required. Meanwhile my friend who does this stuff changes the sheets and towels and wipes the tables together with some light vacuuming and that's basically it, only a few times per year he does a more thorough cleaning. And he does it by himself since he has reasoned that he wants to check the apartment personally every time it's used anyway and he can carry those operations at the same time since it takes something like half an hour to do so.
  • drawnwren 3y ago
    It sounds like your two options are to either charge the max to all guests and the expense of less bookings or to take the loss on the extremely dirty outliers and expect it to be made up by the extremely tidy outliers.
  • throwaway290 3y ago
    > if a guest uses every dish in the kitchen without doing a wash up, they cleaning crew could be there for hours If it is $200 then that should cover 10 man hours of cleaning in a developed country. I had similar issues as a guest on Airbnb, paid a cleaning fee $100+ and then had complaints that I left food in the fridge (like normal a pack of milk or something not growing new lifeforms) and couch pillow on the floor. They sent photos to shove my nose into it. And it was a tiny studio not a big mansion with much area to cover I quit Airbnb 2-3 years ago and am happy without
    • lupusreal 3y ago
      Have you tried to hire a cleaning person recently? $200 will get a small apartment cleaned, maybe. For a thorough cleaning of a modest house prepare to pay 2-3x that at least.
      • zeroonetwothree 3y ago
        $600 for a house is far beyond typical prices
        • lupusreal 3y ago
          If it just needs a sweep, or if some party animal trashed it?
      • renewiltord 3y ago
        We have a cleaner come in for a 1900 SQ ft place in SF and it costs $250.
      • antisthenes 3y ago
        $250 for a 2bed 2bathroom house in 2022. Two people spent roughly 2 hrs cleaning, so 4 hours of labor total + supplies. I think that's reasonable, but I wouldn't hire them for after every single short stay if I ran an Airbnb.
      • jghn 3y ago
        For my small house (~1200 sq ft) the woman who cleans my house charges me $150, and she's usually here for around 2-2.5 hours. She hasn't increased her rate for me for over 10 years, so I imagine she'd charge more if I started out new. So in other words, even 10 years ago she was charging roughly $75/hr, which is much more than the $20/hr that grandparent was citing.
  • FireBeyond 3y ago
    I pay a housecleaning company come every two weeks. Two people, sometimes three, between 2 and 3 hours. $150. Or $200 if it's been longer. I regularly see $300 cleaning fees. And when I've had limited options and paid those cleaning fees, I think "I'd have fired my housecleaners if this was what I was getting for my money, every week, sometimes twice a week". Let's be brutally honest - the hosts using professional cleaners are only paying for an hour or two. And oftentimes, I expect that their "cleaners" are the host's kids being handed a tub of sanitizing wipes.
• sneak 3y ago
  If you’re paying the cleaning fee anyway, why would you do any of that stuff?
  • bongodongobob 3y ago
    Because they'll charge you for it and ding your rating.
  • loeg 3y ago
    The hosts could leave you a bad review which can make it harder to book in the future.
    • AlexandrB 3y ago
      I love how we went from "the customer is always right" to this. /s
    • dawnerd 3y ago
      With instant booking isn't that pretty much pointless now? I'd rather have a low rating than be scammed.
  • mholt 3y ago
    Because hosts can leave bad reviews of guests. This happened to us once when we were new to Airbnb, we had that exact thought: "We paid a cleaning fee, we're pretty tidy anyway let's just let them do their job." But we got a bad review and now almost every place we book, I get a phone call asking about the bad review and I have to explain... "We paid a cleaning fee, we're already very tidy people, and we were stressed and rushed getting our family with young kids out the door on time. The mess they're complaining about was probably 5 minutes of sweeping, but now we are even more meticulous when checking out."
  • tgsovlerkhgsel 3y ago
    Have you watched Black Mirror's "Nosedive"? There is a rating system for guests, and losing "social credit" will make using the platform harder. This implied threat makes people "behave", with both benefits (the worst actors will be filtered out and can't repeatedly impose the cost of their actions on society) and drawbacks (feeling pressured to always give 120%, fear of bad ratings, getting excluded through no fault of your own if you just get unlucky).
• Scoundreller 3y ago
  I’d say if it’s not mentioned in the ad up-front, you don’t have to do any of that. I’ve found high cleaning fees to sometimes be an intentional discouragement to shorter bookings, but sometimes I’ve paid it because it was still the best option and I like that they maintained the option. Sucks that the only way to push on fixed costs (it’s not just cleaning) is via the cleaning fee.
  • notyourwork 3y ago
    This! If I show up after checking in and get a message asking me to do a bunch of things, I'm going to give them a hard no and point to the booking.
  • culopatin 3y ago
    That’s how you get a bad review and charges for $800 to replace a napkin. Airbnb will side with the host, not you.
    • Scoundreller 3y ago
      Reviews of buyers don’t matter much anymore since almost the entire platform is “instant booking”. Dunno what kind of rules exist on the host side to block bookings under a certain rating. I know eBay’s are garbage because they’re not in the business of blocking sales.
    • dymk 3y ago
      This doesn't actually happen even discounting the hyperbole. Airbnb sides with guests for little things. And hosts are much more affected by a bad review than a guest is.
      • culopatin 3y ago
        Of course not a napkin, but it’s happened to me that they pushed made up charges on to me. So you can’t tell me it doesn’t happen. A friend of mine came to visit me and stayed at a place for one night. They hit him with smokers damage. Not only he doesn’t smoke but also he was there only to sleep. How Do you even fight that?
• dcsommer 3y ago
  AirBnB should tie the cleaning fee to your rating, perhaps a cleanliness dedicated rating.
• _yb2s 3y ago
  At this point the cleaning fees are just a scam to make the listing fee seem artificially lower. People did the same thing on eBay by making the items almost free but the shipping expensive, until they fixed the eBay interface, e.g. by letting you sort by price + shipping and showing shipping fees before you click.
  • tentacleuno 3y ago
    No, they've worked around that too -- now sellers typically include a [completely unrelated] 0.99p item as an option in the listing, which then moves them to the top of the price-sorted view.
    • Scoundreller 3y ago
      Or on aliexpress, on items you’d usually buy multiples of, set the shipping to $cents for the first item, then it jumps to $$$ once you add a second to your cart. Sometimes I’ve just bought individual items from several sellers as a workaround.
      • mitthrowaway2 3y ago
        Usually when that happens, the shipping date jumps too, because it's chosen a faster shipping method. I'm not sure why but I'm not 100% convinced it's deliberate deception. However they also don't show shipping prices in the search view, and display the lowest-price configuration instead of the range.
        • Scoundreller 3y ago
          Some of these would be tiny items. But yeah, on larger items, sometimes the shipping price changed dramatically once you add the 8th item to your cart. I wish users could order stuff by sea for a discount. Sometimes I’m buying camping or sports stuff for another season and don’t need it coming airmail. Arriving months later can actually be beneficial. But I understand, too many people will lose their minds.
      • 3y ago
• standardUser 3y ago
  I've stayed at dozens of AirBnBs and I've never had an onerous list of chores or a noticeably high cleaning fee, so these complaints always baffle me a little. Are people reading the listing thoroughly? Are they choosing a place with lots of ratings and reading all of the reviews? I've definitely had some bad AirBnbs over the years despite my careful selection process, but my complains are usually about noise or a lack of supplies (extra towels and blankets for example).
  • smohare 3y ago
    [dead]
  • jamiek88 3y ago
    I literally lived in airbnbs for three years traveling across the whole of the contiguous United States and never once had this either. I did have them ask to put the trash can outside at some of them and most want you to remove your food from the fridge / freezer but that is about it. Just checked my account, we stayed at 167 places in the last 5 years.
    • Arelius 3y ago
      Maybe it's more common in larger group stays? The type you might not be visiting as much as an individual living in Airbnbs?
      • jamiek88 3y ago
        Wwe were a couple with two dogs renting whole houses as a rule but yeah that’s possible.
  • hklgny 3y ago
    I used to feel the same way, but over the past few months have started experiencing it quite a bit. I think it started in more touristy areas I didn't tend to go to, and now is spreading all over the platform. It's a terrible experience. last 2 trips I've gone on I've ended up in hotels because all of the airbnb's had cleaning fees close to the nightly rate and an actual chore list for check out. no thanks.
• kube-system 3y ago
  Honestly I think those requirements are perfectly reasonable for the originally intended purpose of the site, which is people renting out their personal homes. I have stayed in several Airbnbs that had the owner's clothes in the closet and pictures of their kids on the wall, and in those situations, it just seems rude to leave dirty dishes in the sink. These places aren't hotels. I agree that doing laundry is a bit onerous in clearly dedicated rentals, but in my experience those tend to have fewer requirements and tend to not care if you miss a couple steps unless you trash the place.
  • notyourwork 3y ago
    Those types of Airbnb's are long gone, now its entirely commercial.
    • kube-system 3y ago
      They are not gone, I book them all the time. They're hard to find, but they exist.
      • archagon 3y ago
        How are they even hard to find? They’re one of the three top level filter options.
        • kube-system 3y ago
          That's not really what I'm talking about. Yes, the "room in someone's home" is a subset of "people's personal homes", but some of my best Airbnb experiences were entire homes that were someone's personal home (or duplex style arrangements), that were being rented out on a temporary basis. There is no filter for this.
  • jupp0r 3y ago
    That's all fine. The $200 cleaning fee on top of that isn't. The $200 cleaning crew will do the dishes no problem.
• statguy 3y ago
  You knew this when making the booking? Why didn’t you book a hotel instead? Airbnb or the host have no incentive to change if people like you keep going back. They will change only when it starts to hurt their bottom line.
  • Cheer2171 3y ago
    > You knew this when making the booking? You know about the cleaning fees at booking, but not necessarily the "rules" about cleaning.
    • mrgoldenbrown 3y ago
      Anything not disclosed in "house rules" section at the time of booking is not your responsibility.
• lukan 3y ago
  "I'm worried this ban will only affect honest hosts." EMF meters(like in the airplane to spot mobiles) are quite cheap and if you find an active one, you can probably sue the host, but at least reporting should have some effect, even though no instaban. "If a guest reports the presence of an indoor camera after that, Airbnb says it will investigate and that it could remove the host’s listing or account as a result." I do think that many hosts are scared of loosing the income, so they will comply.
  • noodlesUK 3y ago
    > like in the airplane to spot mobiles What are you referring to here?
    • renewiltord 3y ago
      Yeah I've often forgotten and left my ipad on cellular or my phone non-aircraft-moded. No one has ever said anything so it's unlikely they have automatic detection.
      • lukan 3y ago
        It also never happened to me, but I heard of stories, where the stewardess walked around with one. But they might have gotten less paranoid about it(since nothing ever happened?). Chances of bad interference are probably very low.
        • deleted 3y ago
          [deleted]
        • ptero 3y ago
          I think (although not sure) that cell phone on planes ban was much less about interference with plane electronics and more about the poor handling of a rapidly moving phone on ground cell networks at the time. Enough flying phones would cause a significant performance degradation. The issue of handling fast switching was solved, but any "because security" or "because safety" laws tend to stay for a long time.
• mrgoldenbrown 3y ago
  You can avoid those listings if you want. You are only responsible for the tasks they specify up front in the listing under "rules". If they didn't list it up front, before you book, you don't have to do it. If they try to spring some tasks on you upon arrival, that's their problem.
• ezfe 3y ago
  I always refuse to do everything except load and start dishwashers, if I filled it, take the trash out. I have 15 reviews, ALL positive.
• nradov 3y ago
  Why would customers even put up with this type of abuse? I don't get it. Just stay somewhere else. If I'm staying with a friend or relative for free then I'm happy to pitch in with household chores, but if I'm paying then screw that. I honestly can't understand why anyone would use AirBnB when there are so many better options available.
  • deadbabe 3y ago
    AirBnB is the only decent affordable option for a large group of people who want to stay together. Other than that, I see no point.
• deadbabe 3y ago
  One hack you can do is tell the host you have a disability and will not be able to carry out those tasks.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
• wdb 3y ago
  Yeah these days it is cheaper to rent a spot at apartment hotel. Might pay $75/night for it but to need to do any cleaning
• VeejayRampay 3y ago
  go to a hotel then, they have paid cleaning staff to take care of that stuff for you
• booleandilemma 3y ago
  A $200 cleaning fee is more expensive than a night at many Manhattan hotels. Actual hotels. With full service. Is airbnb even worth it?
  • tensor 3y ago
    Not for a night no. It's more of a replacement to renting a service apartment for longer periods of time (e.g. a week or more).
  • archagon 3y ago
    FWIW, the last hotel I stayed at in Manhattan was $300 a day and had no service. And this was a big name hotel too, not some budget option.
• scosman 3y ago
  Re: will only affect honest hosts It still probably helps reduce surveillance a fair bit: - honest host who currently disclosed cameras will stop - dishonest hosts who are worried about getting caught will stop (most aren’t tech savvy enough to hide cameras, catching them isn’t hard, and they don’t want to risk getting kicked off platform) - really dishonest hosts who hide cameras will get kicked off platform if caught (and potential civil/criminal cases) Not perfect but a good move and should help.
  • chgs 3y ago
    A host can’t complain about you breaking the camera if they didn’t say there’s one there. cctv cameras in non public places and with no oversight (including video doorbells etc) are a cancer on society
• Salgat 3y ago
  There is no situation where cameras are acceptable in another person's living space, so whether this only affects honest hosts is irrelevant; as long as it reduces usage, it is a good thing. Imagine hotels arguing for allowing cameras in their suites because they are "honest".
  • lazyasciiart 3y ago
    I believe the argument is that dishonest hotels will simply say "Yep, we got rid of cameras too!" without actually doing so.
    • Salgat 3y ago
      You could never trust a host to respond honestly about that anyways, so it's a moot point. AirBNB up until recently never acted on indoor cameras, and didn't care if a user reported it even if they felt the host hid/misled that information.
    • lotsofpulp 3y ago
      I have never heard of hotels putting cameras inside rooms.
  • rolph 3y ago
    imagine a hotel charging you because when you obstruct the camera with some object, your video [profile data] couldnt be provided to a data broker
• lucisferre 3y ago
  They should ban any hosts that require guests to do cleaning to be honest.
  • matsemann 3y ago
    Why? Lots of people would rather do a little themselves to get the price down. Why should your preference dictate how everyone does it? And it varies from market to market what's the norm. For instance for cabins in Norway, the norm for a long time was that the renter brought their own bedding and cleaned everything, mopped the floor etc before leaving. Long before airbnb was a thing. Should an American company decide that this Norwegian way of doing it is no longer ok..?
• mx_03 3y ago
  Next time book a hotel then. The only way things will change is if all of use refuse to keep giving them our money.
• swatcoder 3y ago
  Your family was asked to do about 17 minutes of convenient, easy preparatory tidying that most considerate people would do even without being asked (as in a hotel or when visiting a friend). Yet you benefited from coming into a home that, presumably, had all of its floors vaccuumed, its kitchen and bathroom surfaces sanititized, its linens folded and/or readied, etc. Whether it was the host or a service, somebody followed up behind you and likely spent at least several hours preparing the place for the next guest. And instead of it being bundled into your daily room rate like in a hotel, since it's only being done once per stay, it was applied as a per-stay cleaning fee. That's eminently fair. There are about a thousand of things to complain loundly about with AirBnB and countless things in life more broadly -- being asked to tidy up a little bit or to pay a per-stay fee to cover cleaning? Not really a compelling one.
  • noslenwerdna 3y ago
    I think the point is it should be part of the upfront cost when searching, rather than something that shows up at the end.
    • swatcoder 3y ago
      Yes, that is one of the many valid complaints one might have with AirBnb and AirBnb browsing is much less frustrating in the markets that have forced them to do that. But I don't read that as what the above commenter was complaining about.
  • linehedonist 3y ago
    You empty the trash from your hotel room? Really?
    • swatcoder 3y ago
      If there's an appropriate place for me to do so, yeah. And if there's not (as often), I at least gather all the trash together and make that task as easy as possible for whoever's stuck with the thankless job of cleaning up after me. It's wild and disheartening that people here feel justified in not doing basic tidying of whatever mess they made when traveling or that it's some big demand of a host to ask them to.
• sourcecodeplz 3y ago
  Vacuum, mop the floors, scrub the toiles and sinks, clean the dust / hairs. Of course there is a cleaning fee.
• tensor 3y ago
  I've also noticed that now some hosts are able to use external services and require a security deposit not managed through airbnb. Supposedly these are only via "airbnb approved platforms," but I still don't like it as there is no real oversight. For example, I found one that wanted almost $1000 as a deposit, and had a whole bunch of rules by which they would charge you extra. Not cleaning dishes, or not well enough would ding you $12 per item! Not putting the keys back in the lockbox on time would be $28/h. There was even a db meter that supposedly didn't record audio. The issue is where is the line? What do they consider clean a dish "well enough"? What is the db limit? Can I see the meter? I just avoided it as it sounded too irritating to deal with and with the deposit outside of airbnb there is no room for argument.
  • EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 3y ago
    That's even worse with Booking (half of their listings are now Airbnb-like rentals). After I paid the full non-refundable amount, I was requested to send an extra deposit, pass video-based verification, holding a passport next to my face, explain the purpose of my travel etc.
    • ipaddr 3y ago
      Issue a Chargeback.
• EasyMark 3y ago
  I just move on when I see requirements like that. Some of those I do as a matter of course (clean any food mess/dishes if I have a kitchen). I think my mom beat that one into me. I'm definitely not doing laundry with a house cleaning fee is tacked on. Probably why I stay at hotels 95% of the time.
• dangus 3y ago
  I don’t understand why this is a worry. There’s no such thing as an in-room security camera in a hotel. Airbnb should have had a clear ban on indoor security cameras a long time ago. You might as well say that “laws only apply to law-abiding people.” That’s not a reason to not have laws.
• klinquist 3y ago
  I'm a host. I charge a $200 cleaning fee and my cleaners charge me $250, so I lose money on cleaning. I ask guests to: * Strip the beds (otherwise, I find that people re-make beds and it's hard to tell if they have been slept in), * Load and start the dishwasher (the dishwasher takes 4 hrs, and the cleaners travel to my remote house, and I want to make sure they can finish in about that time) * Take the trash down to the garage (to avoid ants) I pay a neighborhood kid to take the trash bins from the garage to the street on trash day. I successfully manage my place remotely (3hrs away) via a good cleaner and home automation (detailed here: https://www.linquist.com/airbnb/automation https://www.linquist.com/airbnb/automation). 4.99 stars, superhost.
  • EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 3y ago
    As you spelled out your reasons, it makes sense. But usually, you don't go over reasons with guests, and they feel like the host is treating them as his poor relatives doing chores. It's totally different at a hotel, where guests feel like they're being served.
    • klinquist 3y ago
      I do go over the reasons in the automated message you receive the night before checkout.
  • moralestapia 3y ago
    Tbh, those are problems that you have to solve, somehow.
    • klinquist 3y ago
      Given my airbnb rating and constant positive feedback, I'd say that my existing solution is sufficient.
      • MissTake 3y ago
        Give it time. I'd not be surprised to read that Air BnB are going to curtail this behavior next. The only reason you're doing this is to game the system. Be honest and charge more.
• barbazoo 3y ago
  No come on, some of those are crazy, no one is expected to clean the oven after normal use. I've seen this lots but I've never actually done any of the things they ask me to. Bringing out the garbage? Sure, but only if it's overflowing while I'm there. I will start the dishwasher. We've also never received a bad review so I think at least where we stayed, while those things are explained in their handbook or wherever there's no downside to just not doing them.
• moralestapia 3y ago
  Why do you have to do all that, though?
• SergeAx 3y ago
  What will they do if you refuse?
• jvvw 3y ago
  Is this partly about norms I'm different countries? If I were renting a holiday cottage in the UK (airbnb or otherwise), I'd expect to do the washing up and take our rubbish, and possibly strip the beds. I wouldn't expect to clean ovens or put laundry on. Staying in Finland recently we had to make our beds at the start - no idea if that is normal there but wouldn't expect that in the UK unless you were at a youth hostel. I assuming the cleaning feel covers mopping, hoovering, cleaning bathrooms, making up beds with fresh laundry. Some places do feel like they overcharge nonetheless for the number of hours required and I presume that it is more an overhead person stay charged to discourage short stays.
• legendofbrando 3y ago
  Don’t do the cleaning and leave a medium review that politely says you were not informed of cleaning policy beforehand. Host has no way to penalize you (outside of a bad review) and you can respond to their review (if they criticize you) saying you were not informed at booking. Keep your review and response cordial and any future host evaluating you will assume that the past host was weird. There’s no way anyone can verify the claim by the other host that they articulated the cleaning policies.