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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 gu

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.

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.