If one complaint rises to the top when discussing short-term rentals, it might be the cleaning fees. Airbnb, in particular, is notorious for a confusing array of expenses that are often difficult to interpret and understand. With hotels, these costs are baked into a single price, but with Airbnb, the fees are often unclear, according to some users.
In response, the short-term rental platform has promised that changes are coming.
While Airbnb is not scrapping the fee altogether, they intend to clarify it. According to the company, transparency benefits customers and incentivizes hosts to lower cleaning costs or eliminate them entirely.
Airbnb cleaning fees are single expenses charged and obtained by the host to cover tasks like freshening the beds and cleaning bathrooms ostensibly. The costs are over and above the base price and separate from other potential add-ons.
This past summer, the personal finance company NerdWallet reviewed 1,000 reservations made through the platform with check-in dates in 2022 or 2023. The median cleaning fee for one night-stays was $75.
Airbnb claims cleaning fees average less than 10% of the total reservation costs, which contradicts findings from NerdWallet. Instead, the personal finance website discovered that cleaning fees for the sample they analyzed were roughly 25% of the total property cost. Amazingly, for some properties, cleaning fees actually surpassed the nightly rate.
Perhaps the biggest point of contention with cleaning fees is how they show up. When customers search the platform, nightly rates are displayed, not the total rate, including fees. Since these fees can vary substantially between properties — even of similar value — it makes it impossible to compare listing prices at first glance.
The short-term rental operator is expected to update this search system in December when the option to display the total price is added to their site. Airbnb also now sorts search results by the lowest total cost, not just the nightly rate.
Dennis Shirshikov, a host operating on Airbnb, said that challenges with cleaning fees have led him to “strongly consider cutting them off.”
Some hosts, like Shirshikov, have experienced the downside of including cleaning fees. “If [guests] pay a cleaning fee, they sometimes leave the place looking like it’s been lived in and uncleaned for months,” he said.
Airbnb does not appear to be a fan of the separate fees, warning hosts that they can backfire. According to the company’s website, “With a higher [cleaning] fee, guests may expect to just walk away from your space at checkout as they would a hotel room.”
While many hosts likely charge appropriate cleaning fees commensurate to the work involved, others use the system to generate additional revenue. For their part, Airbnb warns against this practice.
“Aim to use the cleaning fee to cover the expense of cleaning — not to make additional money,” the company told hosts last year.
For some customers, it gets even worse. After paying a potentially heavy “cleaning” fee, some guests are still expected to deliver rather significant cleaning services themselves before departing the property. To help solve this contentious issue, Airbnb plans to make the cleaning requirements, like prices, similarly more transparent.
Until he learns how customers receive the new update, Shirshikov plans to maintain the status quo and continue charging cleaning fees. “Unless guests use it, it won’t mean much for how we do pricing,” he said.