Welcome to Your Airbnb, the Cleaning Fees Are $143 and You’ll Still Have | Hacker News Reader

Welcome to Your Airbnb, the Cleaning Fees Are $143 and You’ll Still Have

wsj.com

55 pointschewz56 comments

This is lamenting about the chore requirements some Airbnb’s instill, which I haven’t seen as much, but a recent discovery I made that is helpful to get around the other annoyance (ridiculous cleaning fees) hinted at in the article: in NL it’s illegal to unbundle price and cleaning fees, so if you browse with a Dutch VPN you get a map with both price and cleaning included, unlike in the States: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32780998#32786503

Alternatively, you can use Airbnb.com.au to get total prices including fees in the listings directly.

Sometimes I find it's difficult to differentiate between 'BNB's and 'hotels' on sites like booking and expedia. I was explicitly searching for hotel-looking rooms and booked them (checking on google maps those were not condo buildings or something). To my surprise - first one was indeed hotel-like, seems converted office building, self-check in with a digital lock. Second one - literally located in the office building, self-check in again, neighbors were insurance and tax offices. Both were good I would say - cleanness, location, price. Yet, I would prefer if listing/search explicitly said - self-checkin/office bulding/etc.

Airbnb has allowed hosts to ratchet up cleaning fees ridiculously. They look for any excuse to remove your negative review so they can keep that property (income stream) producing. And the hosts have become more and more draconian now that they are people whose sole income is being a property manager, as opposed to when they were just people getting some money for an extra bedroom.

I would short the stock but I don’t know what’s going to bring it down, where’s the competition. Hotels?

A lot of the airbnb listings are hotels now. AirBNB is becoming a general discovery platform.

> I don’t know what’s going to bring it down

Regulations, hopefully. AirBnB is partially responsible for the housing crises that we're seeing worldwide. Hopefully regulation will catch up sooner rather than later. Tourists are not more important than locals.

When I go to a hotel, I never let any staff in. DND 24/7. I'm very clean, very organized, and very private. I don't really have to clean much when I leave, in fact if anything the room is likely cleaner than when I found it. This is how I was raised. I wouldn't pay for anything I normally wouldn't do, and my time is very valuable (a lot more so than money). AirBNB offers a better experience for me most of the time, but the locations and amenities of hotels are usually better. Hidden fees are awful, and let's not get surprised. You can contact the host before, and the barter system is in full effect on AirBNB. It's a lot less IRL with hotels (unless you're standing at the front desk). Anyway, I'm in the weeds too much on this. Consider yourself lucky you have the options and make a great memory.

Is it just me, or does this article look like a textbook example of a press hit / submarine marketing (as described by pg [1]), for Hilton's recently-launched anti-AirBnB campaign [2]?

I don't know if I can trust this. It's almost ridiculously anecdotal, and in a big enough market it's unfairly easy to find anecdotes to support almost any claim. There are no metrics about typical cleanup expected or whether cleaning requirements are truly growing; running a dishwasher and cleaning your own messes seems patently reasonable as part of the "deal" of this kind of rental. And as a very infrequent AirBnB user, it's not clear to me how the $143 cleaning fee works. Is it only applied if you make a huge mess? Are the expectations on cleaning and possible fee made clear going in? Or is this always charged and part of the standard fee?

I wish this kind of PR nonsense didn't exist; if so, the organic decision to write about this might be signal about a real trend. But given that it does, this may just be an attempt to pipe lies into my brain. I am suspicious.

Edit: This line is extremely telling when carefully parsed: "[AirBnB] said around 55% of its active listings charge a cleaning fee, which on average makes up less than 10% of the total reservation cost."

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/AirBnB/comments/wwqibv/hilton_launc...

> it's not clear to me how the $143 cleaning fee works. Is it only applied if you make a huge mess?

The cleaning fee is added on to your bill on the checkout page when you make the booking.

It is charged no matter what. Even if you never need to clean anything at all.

This is unscientific, but I suspect reflects the way a normal person might perceive Airbnb's fees as high:

I went to airbnb.com logged out, selected the first posting listed, and tried to find the fees. There was no way to see the fee amount, or even know that there are extra fees, without first selecting a date range. I selected three days, and got this fee breakdown

$614 x 3 nights: $1,842 Cleaning fee: $258 Service fee: $296

The unlisted fees increased the list price by around 30%, or $500. If I had been looking for a place to stay, found that place and decided it was reasonable, and then saw that number after I had already mentally committed, I would be frustrated.

(The nightly price is high because I live near a very expensive area and that was the first thing Airbnb tried to promote to me. But I think this would work to reduce the cleaning fee percent, because the cleaning staff are being hired from the same lower cost of living area that services the cheaper properties in the area as well)

But like, do you rent out an Airbnb?

-- rented an airbnb - said in the description: "recommend" we use the $30/week cleaning service they can kindly provide - we declined after we arrived - they opened a complaint with aribnb and airbnb just charged us for it anyway --

Airbnb is not a solution for me anymore. Their prices are really similar to hotels and resorts but with the added value of having to clean, cook, etc...

There's also the issue with housing affordability in the Airbnb's era.

"...live long enough to become a villain.."

If the cleaning information is included in the listing that'll help the market optimize. As is, because it's hidden, guests don't know what they're getting into

One thing seems odd to me... about a guest's rating (not a host's):

"she got a three-star review because the cleaning wasn’t up to the mark. Her perfect five-star rating dipped to 4.1."

Can guests see their own star rating? I didn't even realise guests had them on AirBnB. I can't seem to find mine anywhere

If you're in California or the EU, submit a CCPA or GDPR request, respectively.

A meta question on the WSJ headline - do American really use the plural for linen to refer to sheets, etc?

Yes, the word ‘linens’ is used to refer to bedsheets, bath towels/washcloths, and kitchen towels/washcloths in the US.

I went back to booking actual hotels or classic bnb's and will never look back, airbnb was cute while it lasted I guess but good riddance!

I had never actually tried Airbnb after reading about all the issues people have been having. When I take time off work and go on vacation, the last thing I'd want to do is leave it up to some random person in a strange city to screw us over, get stranded with all the luggage, and then having to fight with Airbnb customer support. I'll pay more for a basic hotel room to get predictability.

One of the big things hotels could do tomorrow to disrupt Airbnbs is to put laundry equipment in rooms. The last time I went to NYC and LA for a week, doing laundry was a non trivial aspect of my trips.

I spent 3 weeks in Europe this summer, in Airbnbs, and being able to pack less because we could do our own laundry without using external services was a vacation game changer.

Non of the residential style hotels I use in the Bay Area make laundry easier in any way at all. It seems like a huge miss.

Many hotels do not even offer a microwave (ex. in NOLA). Laundry machines are too much to ask.

I never used laundry in a hotel, until the last time. It was almost trivial, in the 3-star hotel in Dallas, the laundry room was easy to find, the front office had detergent ready for $2 or something, and actual washing+drying cost another $2.

I know some people take issues with using public laundry machines, but then Airbnbs' are technically public machines too. So I don't really see them as a game-changer.

I’ve always used hotel laundry machines & as a general rule, have always been able to find them. Dead simple for me.

Some hotels do have them but they don't advertise it. It might be just one small room on a particular floor.

I think this is becoming more of a thing. It seems like the modern developments are built as both hotels and apartments where every unit could realistically be used for either purpose. And it seems like the idea is that if the hotel doesn’t need so many units, they can sell them off.

I would never use Airbnb for a vacation, but if you’re staying anywhere for more than a week it gets cost prohibitive and really boring to stay at a hotel. I get so sick of eating out every damn meal…

Nice to have a kitchen but the costs of letting Airbnb's business model thrive far outweigh such benefits to me.

The "authenticity" of a good airbnb is still quote unquote authentic, it's a branded commodity once a real home but not while I enable the fragmentation of the neighborhood I'm larping as a resident of

About 6 years ago I took a trip to Boston and decided to stay just outside of the main city in Everett.

I picked a single room place with a private bathroom. It was $37 per night with an all-in cost of $188 for 4 nights which included $20 "cleaning fees"[0] and $20 "Airbnb service fee". It was an overall success, the room was very comfortable and the hosts were nice. Hotels were over triple the price at the time and 7x the price to get one in the main city area of Boston.

I just checked the rates today and it's about $105 per night for an Airbnb in Everett and I'm guessing fees will be higher. For the same trip it would likely be $500. Hotels in the main city area of Boston are about $200 a night, that would have saved a ~30min bus ride each way making it much more desirable because a ~30 bus ride really means at least 45 minutes each way to make sure you're on time. I only picked Everett because even in 2016 hotel prices were ~$200 a night in Boston itself.

Prices changed a lot but I'm 99% sure I'd pick a hotel too at these price points.

[0]: This was an imposed fee by Airbnb. The hosts said I left the place in very neat order, basically all I did was sleep there.

Never used ABnB but why do users care about their guest rating dipping? Do you get charged more or denied properties if you have a lower rating?

> denied properties

Yes. The host is not required to approve your request to rent. At the end of a booking, guest and host leave reviews for each other. If I'm a guest regularly reviewed for trashing the place, the next host isn't going to want to rent to me.

I had a single bad experience with a host who incorrectly said I did damage and asked for money. Airbnb found them untruthful and didn't make me pay, but did let them leave a negative review saying I damaged their property.

I left a long negative review of the host. Because a single sentence in that review covered a topic Airbnb considered not the host's fault they deleted the entire review and didn't let me leave another.

I have been unable to use Airbnb again because every host will decline when they see that negative review.

Can you not just make a new account? Or does Airbnb do some verification that stops that?

Yeah, you provide ID to Airbnb.

For that money I'll clean the room myself. I bet they even hire a cleaning lady "off the books".

The point of the article is that hosts are demanding you clean the place yourself (and the list of chores and what to clean is growing), yet they also charge the cleaning fee.

Cleaning fees are usually required by state and local authorities that provide a level of service found in hotels. Clean basins, wash towels, sweep floors, empty garbage.

If the guest decides to leave a ton of dishes in the sink and throw up on the floor, my cleaner needs to work harder than what she gets paid for so I pay her more. I hand that cost down to the dirty guest.

I see my comment triggered an Airbnb host. You are missing the point. What people are upset about is that they are NOT leaving these places dirty, in fact they are essentially required to perform a long list of tasks (well beyond just wash the dishes and take out trash), yet they still must pay the full (and often excessive) cleaning fee.

Anyway, love how you, the owner, would never consider cleaning the place yourself. Guess that is below you. It's either the guests or the cleaning lady, but you yourself could never be bothered. Weak sauce.

> Cleaning fees are usually required by state and local authorities that provide a level of service found in hotels.

In that case there really is no reason why the fees should not be included in the original advertised cost of the stay.

No idea what's the norm for hosts but I always break fees down and explain what they are for in my listings.

Is the total cost including fees the first (and only) price customers see or do they first see a price without fees only to see the fees after some series of steps?

I'll still have what? The title should be shortened if it can't fit into the character count.

> Airbnb ratcheted up its cleaning protocols during Covid-19, with a 36-page handbook requiring that hosts wash all hard surfaces with soap and water, vacuum the floors and disinfect switches and electronics, among other things.

How often is Covid spreading through touching a random door handle or light switch?

Very clean areas are always appreciated, but this seems to be mandated cosmetic theater and wasteful from the perspective of cutting costs for everybody.

Never, it's not surface germ. There were zero cases of surface transmission last time I looked.

IIRC there was a case in NZ that seemed likely to have come from a contaminated package of imported food.

The difference between zero and near-zero is essentially irrelevant anywhere with community transmission, but it does matter anywhere with a working zero-Covid policy.

I thought we were over this in like June 2020. Do they still have that policy? Trust the science!

> How often is Covid spreading through touching a random door handle or light switch?

Every time the calendar says April 2020.

Oh, and save the masks for health care workers---they don't work; you may use an ad hoc cloth mask, if you like.

> Last month, Amanda Morari spent her sister’s bachelorette weekend at a lakefront cottage in Ontario province.

As a Canadian it felt a little weird seeing "province" tacked on to the end of Ontario (and Quebec, earlier on in the article). Is this an Americanism, and why?

I get that there is Washington State and Washington, DC, but there's only one Texas, one Connecticut, one North Dakota...

No Canadian I know calls it Ontario province or Yukon territory (though I suppose the NWT is the lone exception.)

Probably just ignorance, I never hear Americans calling American regions provinces

> never hear Americans calling American regions provinces

We don’t have provinces [1], but semi-sovereign states. “Ontario province” is roughly analogous to the “state of Georgia.”

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Province

Ontario is also the name of a smallish but reasonably well known American city which might be relevant.

Even worse, it's ontario.ca.us, as opposed to the much bigger ontario.ca.

(ontario.ca.us is not registered, but that's what it would be if it were.)

I'm used to hearing Province of X but X province just sounds weird. Province of Alberta sounds right but Saskatchewan Province is just odd.

This the WSJ, which is not Canadian.

There are several American towns named Ontario, which the writer may have been trying to differentiate from.

Most Americans don't know what Ontario is, I bet.

Isn't it pretty much the same as your example of Washington?

you know, to differentiate it from Ontario, CA, where all your UPS packages go missing or get stuck in "processing"

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