New Airbnb rules

This amuses me.

A holiday let is a deep clean every time. Cooker and fridge cleaned inside and out. Windows cleaned inside and out. All furniture pulled out. Inside and outside of cupboards cleaned. Bathroom deep cleaned, shower trap soaked. Skirting boards. All furniture dusted underneath. The outside space also needs to be done- hot tub emptied and refilled, plants watered, deck and outside furniture cleaned. Putting the welcome pack together, dressing the place so it looks like nobody has ever stayed.

Oh, and checking every piece of cutlery, every pot, pan, every glass. Cleaning the coffee machine. Getting the carpet cleaner out because someone has spilt something on the carpet/sofa. Sorting the rubbish. Treating stains on the bed linen. Mending the thing they've broken.

As a guest it amuses me because we really never met a clean AirBnd. We stopped using them as you pay way more than you get as a customer.

I can quite believe it takes 3 hours to clean a 1-bed cottage to the standard required for Airbnb hosting. Our let is bigger but takes 3-5 hours. We have a 80-point checklist, including safety checks, to make sure we don't fall foul of the 'there was a hair in the shower' brigade. You'd be surprised how many things we have to check because people mess up the TV settings, adjust the boiler, break stuff and hide it, put dishes away with food stuck to them .... In my experience most Airbnb hosts work really hard to provide a personal and often unique experience, and don't make a lot of money after all the regulatory costs and tax are taken into account.
At the end of the day it's a free country and if people think Airbnb is a rip off, they're welcome to stay in a Travelodge instead.

No, sorry. No one needs to clean windows inside and out or disinfect the shower trap after a weekend stay. And no AirBnB I've ever stayed in has been more than surface level clean, and frequently pretty grubby.

I think it is a good idea. Some hosts have become very unreasonable in their demands of guests for check out and then also charging a large cleaning fee on top. Whilst in some cases not actually paying for the correct cleaning service They need and therefore are expecting guests to do the heavy lifting. They have pretty much brought it on themselves.

I stayed in lots of Airbnbs pre COVID and usually they only asked for used towels in the bath, bins emptied into outside bins, any pots used are washed or put in dishwasher and dishwasher turned on and check out by 10. All pretty much a standard way most reasonable guests would leave a property.

After COVID it has not been unusual to stay in an Airbnb and find a long list of cleaning tasks - hoovering and mopping floors, stripping beds and putting washing machines on, full wipe downs of kitchens and appliances, bleach put down toilets, bathrooms wiped round, outside bins put out during the stay, dishwashers loaded and fully empty before check out and in some cases checkouts moved to 9am, plus £200 cleaning fee. I stayed in 3 Airbnb properties like this post COVID and haven't stopped in one since. They lost me, along with many others as a customer.

Owners were pricing their properties in line with hotels PLUS the cleaning fee (which wasn't always obvious until nearly checkout) making it more expensive to stop in an Airbnb. Then when you arrive you are confronted with a long list of checkout tasks which in many cases is doing the cleaner's jobs for them.

It seems some landlords of Airbnbs are hiring cleaners on domestic home cleaning style contracts - not having to strip beds, load and empty appliances, put loads of washing on and then transfer to tumble dryer ect. Instead of a holiday home cleaning contract. The cleaning company that cleans our house does do both holiday accommodation and domestic cleans and they are separate services that charge different amounts and require more staff. I've heard our cleaner's manager say on a phone call to her cleaners during a clean at our house, that they are not to strip beds, load and unload appliances and put washing on at the holiday accommodation as the guy running them is only paying for maintenance domestic cleans (not a deep clean) and not accommodation service cleans where bed changing/ appliance loading and unloading/ washing up ect are included.

You've been unlucky then.
I don't go for expensive Airbnbs, but they've always been very clean.
Cleaned windows are the kind of thing you might not consciously notice, but you probably would if you went to look out of one and it was smeared. Subconsciously they might make you feel like the place is not that clean too. If I were an owner/host I'd want to do this.
And I'd definitely take out and clean the shower trap, after every stay; things like clogs of soap and trapped hairs are exactly the sort of thing that guests pick up on and mention in their reviews.

That’s why I NEVER use them. I do enough of that shit at home. I use hotels.

Your comment makes no sense. I don't need to do it but the places you've stayed have been a bit grubby?

It shouldn't be 'surface level clean' it should be immaculate.

And you absolutely need to do the shower trap after every stay. It gets filthy and full of hair after even two nights, but most people don't see their shower traps every two days so you wouldn't know that. I found shit in the shower trap once. Actual shit.

In any case, it's not really the point of this thread. I think (with exception of the washing up, which I find odd) that this is a good move. It's stopping the shoddy hosts that were charging a hefty cleaning fee and then expecting the guests to clean themselves. Obviously that's not all hosts, there's plenty of good ones out there. But if you are a good host, and you're not expecting your guests to do your cleaning for you, then surely this rule makes no difference. Build your cleaning charge into your rental price and pay a cleaner to clean your property. Transparency for host and guest.

I like quiet at night and space during the day so unless it’s just for 1 or 2 nights I avoid hotels and stay in rental properties either from owner sites, something like Sykes or Airbnb. The quality of Airbnbs varies hugely. You can tell which ones are just let out sometimes by a local owner who cares for it and which ones are purely a business and often owned by someone with several and everything is quite basic and unloved.

Honestly, I've stayed in a lot of Air BnB's where inside the cuboards were dirty, dust behind furniture, smeary glasses in the cupboard etc. Clearly no more than a wipedown of surfaces, a scrub of the loo and a quick hoover was happening. TBH, it's not really a problem, except when you're being charged a hefty cleaning fee, and having to clean the property yourself.

Never stayed in an AirBnB - because of all that horseshit.

A budget hotel is the same price and I'm not running around like a daftie doing household chores.

Well I've never been to an unclean one. I've been to a couple of minging ones advertised by an independent agency. The point about any holiday let is that it's run by the individual owners in the way they see fit. That's not just Air BnB.

I take huge pride in my business and I really want to give my guests a great experience. They get something far better than a hotel (private outside space, hot tub, separate kitchen and sitting room for £150 a night) for less money. If people think that's stupid then fair enough!

The irony of this thread is holiday let owners being called greedy bastards who don't care, now suddenly it's I care too much, it needn't be that clean.

This isn't the point of the thread, though. You may well be a fantastic host with a impeccably clean property. The problem isn't you, and this policy shouldn't make any difference to you.

The problem was an increasingly large number of bad hosts, who were charging hefty cleaning fees, and then leaving a big list of cleaning that they were expecting the guest to do, under the threat of extra charges or "fines". They can now no longer do that. There's more transparency. As guests, we now know that the price we see on AirBnB is the total price, inclusive of cleaning. That's a good thing, surely.

We do all of this and more, every single time, on AirBnB and on another platform

And guess what, we have a 5* rating for cleanliness, but we aren't the cheapest to book. You pays your money... etc

I stayed at an Air B n B in Bologna where they didn't even come in to make the beds or clean the bathroom whereas at another one in Ferrara, a cleaner came in every day. It seems to vary.

If I'm going on holiday in England, I always book a Premier Inn. Guaranteed good night's sleep, a decent bar and decent breakfast for around £140.

Yes, to clean interiors of windows and the shower trap being cleaned. These are basic requirements. Maybe not the exterior of the windows, but they're probably done by window cleaners every month or so rather than the changeover cleaner (especially if not all at ground level). A manky shower trap is a definite no - that must be cleaned between guests. Guests aren't going to accept marks on windows nor hairs in a shower trap.

I didn't say it wasn't. I was replying to the comment that I spend too much time cleaning.

The new rules make no difference to me. I don't ask guests to do anything at all, although in over 800 stays only one person has left dirty dishes so I've never felt the need to. I've also never stayed anywhere that has asked me to do any cleaning and I've done 30 stays. But for Air BnB it was a problem because there is a perception that all properties give cleaning jobs. That's why they've made this announcement.

I’ve never done a household chore on holiday either.

Can you find me a budget hotel that has a kitchen, dining room, living room, three double ensuite bedrooms and either an enclosed garden or a hot tub. If you can we may possibly consider staying in a budget hotel, otherwise, no thank you. We don’t go on holiday to sleep in a shoebox with pub style carpets.

I have stayed in over 50 Airbnb's here and abroad and never found a dirty one so not sure how you have been so unlucky.

What we get as customers is a living room with comfortable sofas, a fully equipped kitchen with a dining table, a separate bedroom, often a garden or balcony we can sit on to eat meals. To get that in a hotel would cost a fortune

Again, not my experience at all.

Maybe the window cleaning is not absolutely necessary but the shower trap is. How often do you clean your shower trap. I clean ours every 3 or 4 days and there is only me and DH and we both have very short hair but it needs cleaning that often.

I'm not sure if I want to admit this, but I'm not sure exactly what cleaning the shower trap entails. I've got long hair so go down the shower plug hole about once a week with the drain snake, is that the equivalent? And if it ever starts to drain slowly I chuck some Mr Muscle down.

Nor did I until I had a holiday cottage! It sounds like you don't have one as you can't get down the drain without one. It's a kind of cup with a little water in it. It gets hair and gey slimy stuff in it ( soap scum/shower gel/poo once) I soak it in the sink while I'm cleaning the rest of the bathroom ( obviously the poo one didn't go in the sink)

In your own home you can do what you like though. Nobody's reviewing you or asking for a refund if it's dirty.

Thanks, that's useful to understand. It makes sense on a short stay. I suppose I'm looking at it from the perspective of a longer stay - 1 or 2 weeks. I'm paying anything up to £3k so to be charged an extra cleaning fee seems a bit of a pisstake. But I can see why it eats into your profits for a shorter stay. Although presumably you are still making a profit on short stays otherwise you wouldn't do it.