Taking bins out at luxury Air Bnb?

[AirportLife]

Very first world concern by the way! Just interested if this is the norm or not. We are staying in a very special "luxury" Air Bnb in a European city for DH's big birthday. The place cost me a lot of hard earned money to rent for a weekend as a one-off treat. It's very luxurious and lovely. The manager of the AirBnb has asked us to take our rubbish to the bins before we check out. The bins are a 5-10 minute walk down the block.

I thought that as the place is getting cleaned etc we would be ok to leave rubbish? (We don't have much as we have been out everyday anyway.)

Is this to be expected or a bit annoying? Again I know it's only a first world problem and I'm not too precious to take the bins out, but I'm just asking as I was surprised, and thought that a luxury special holiday is the one time I might not have to do the bins.

Yanbu. I dont understand why the pricing of these places doesnt include cleaning, bins etc. I've just recently got back from a stay at a Landal park that was pretty expensive and required us to empty and take out bins, strip all the beds, wash dishes and put everything away on the designated shelves, sweep the floor. I'd rather pay an extra £50 than have to pack the night before and wake up early to get all that done before 10am.

Always baffled by the people who suggest it's shameful to leave your rubbish for someone else to clean up. What do you do when you stay in a hotel or a hospital or someone else's house? Do you take your own wheelie bin with you? 😂

I agree with you Op - as long as you haven’t left a stinking bin that’s overflowing, I’d have left it. I stayed in an air bnb last weekend & left my recycling in a bag as no instructions on what else to do. I also left veg waste in the compost bin. No bad feedback from the owners so I’m sure it’s fine! I didn’t really want to drive hundreds of miles with old onions in my car when the owners/cleaners presumably dispose of the few plastic bottles & veg peelings with their own stuff.

Hi OP, just for perspective - we have rented out our home on Airbnb before, it's not luxury :) but we've been on the other side of this.

We didn't ask guests to empty bins, strip beds or leave towels anywhere specific for the majority of stays BUT if our guests stayed for a few nights which included "bin collection day", then we had to ask them to put their rubbish out. We have a very progressive recycling scheme which means lots of stuff can be recycled, but actual refuse only gets taken once every 2 weeks... If we missed that bin collection we'd be totally stuffed!

Perhaps that might be the case here? Because if it's just a question of emptying out the kitchen bin then of course you're right and they should be including that in their payment to their cleaners.

In our case, I did have to try to find a way to politely ask guests to wheel the actual bin from the front garden to the kerb part-way through their stay, and back again - and it's certainly awkward! But that's also the reality of "living like a local" vs booking a hotel.

FWIW we always offered that one of our neighbours or the cleaner could do it if the guest wasn't able or didn't want to - for them to let us know so that we could arrange it, and they would know to expect someone wheeling bins around the front garden - and no one ever took us up on it.

Otherwise, maybe you've just learned to choose a hotel next time.

It's ridiculous how much air b&b charge for cleaning then ask you to
strip the beds / put the bins out. It's not a budget option like it used to be either by any means 😡😤

You're paying for a holiday rental that's been professionally cleaned and dressed before you arrive.
I'm baffled that there's so much indignation about being politely asked to put your rubbish in an outside bin when you leave. It's not difficult or "stressful". Its self catering accommodation.

It seems such a trivial thing to whine about.

You pay a lot to go to the cinema and some of that cost goes towards cleaning the theatre. That doesn't mean you leave food debris and rubbish all over your seat moaning th
no you gather it up and stick it in a bin when you leave (well most people do)!

Who is whining?

Like others i just said i don't want to do it, so i use hotels.

What's stressful? Needing to locate the bin, arranging time to walk the rubbish down there as well as get everything packed up. Finding out that there's a lock on the bin, or it's already full, or there's wasps. Getting bin juice on you. Finding out you forgot some large item of rubbish when you took it and now need to bring it with you as you rush for a train.

Even if none of these things go wrong i would be anxious all morning about needing to do it.

Is your ‘luxury’ place cheaper than a hotel? If so, doing the bins are hardly a big ask. Get your DH to do it if you don’t want to!

If not, then it’s a rip-off.

I was quite happy to tidy in the early days of AirBnB but with the extortionate cleaning fees, prices etc they can be more expensive than hotels these days. Add the ridiculous rules on top… no thanks I’ll get a hotel.

I would always expect to take out the bins. Mind you I booked a villa in Bali through Airbnb a couple of weeks back, when we arrived it turned out that there were “butlers” on call 24/7, daily cleaning and bed making, fresh sheets every three days, fresh towels daily if you wanted them, a turn down service every night….. It was a nice surprise 😁

You should have used a hotel is you wanted service

I'm with the OP. I have booked 4 or 5 times through Air BnB and never had taking the rubbish out as a requirement. That's a job for the cleaners. Which I have paid for.

It's particularly ridiculous for a short, weekend stay. I don't do stripping the bed or hoovering, unless we have spilled something. I wash the dishes and countertops, leave the place neat, rubbish in correct bins, recycling sorted properly. Treat the property with respect. And that's it.

This is a normal request.

Also leaving out recycling on the appropriate day.

Fair enough to put the bins out. Not fair enough for you to lug it for a 10 minute walk. In my own house I take it for granted that I only need to put the rubbish right outside my house. It can be frustrating also in Airbnbs when they don’t tell you what to do with the rubbish, and what gets recycled. If we’re staying in an apartment we try to stick to the one kitchen bin to save having to empty out loads of little bins with one thing in.

When staying in a hotel, generally you are eating out, even if you do eat in your room, it's brought to you already cooked so you wouldn't accumulate as much rubbish as a self catering holiday.

Having said that hotels provide room service on a daily basis and empty the rubbish bins daily.

Staying in self catering accommodation, you are likely to accumulate more rubbish (unless you don't plan on eating there at all). I personally would expect to empty any indoor bins to the outdoor bins, rubbish can smell so I can understand why they wouldn't want it inside their complex.

I suspect that a slight exaggeration given that the OP has described her day to day life as a fog of taking the bins out. Which, unless she's a refuse collector, seems unlikely

Book a luxury hotel next time. Self catering is self catering!

Urgh. Who doesn't take their own rubbish out.

Quite normal I would say. At least for us it is. I always put the rubbish in the outside bins before we leave, whether asked to or not.

Once more, do you empty your own bins when you are at a hotel? Take your rubbish home in a little bag? How about when you are at the office? Do you keep your sandwich wrapper and banana skin in your handbag rather than throwing it into the communal bin because having somebody else take out your rubbish would be unconscionable?

of course not. It’s as daft as the poster upthread giving the OP her ‘tip’ (ugh) to never ever expect anyone to dispose of her rubbish, which is ludicrous.

And before anybody says, “but Airbnb isn’t the same as a hotel”: no, it isn’t. But (1) when you are asked to pay a separate cleaning fee, it isn’t unreasonable to expect that that might exempt you from a 20 minute round trip to dispose of rubbish (I believe what the OP says about the length of the walk because nobody else knows where this place is) and (2) when you are sold a luxury experience, presumably at a luxury price, you don’t expect that to include ‘walking down to the bins with a bag of rubbish’.

The protestations from Airbnb cleaners are irrelevant. If they are underpaid for cleaning Airbnbs, that’s on the owners. If the owners want to charge me £60 for cleaning a not particularly big two bed apartment, don’t then claim that there are only two hours of cleaning time budgeted and that’s why the guests have to take your own rubbish to a bin somewhere else. It’s cheapskating by the owners. As is, “the Airbnb might not be scheduled for a clean for a couple of days after you leave and the bins will be manky”: that’s on the owners too.

The bit about ‘we split out the cleaning fee from the accommodation cost so that we can claim it back!’ is similarly irrelevant to guests. Who gives a stuff about the owner’s tax affairs? If that’s what you are charging for cleaning, and it’s on top of the accommodation cost, it’s unreasonable to expect guests to do part of the cleaning for you. What next? Just giving the bathrooms a once over when you leave because the cleaners we’re only paying for an hour each at minimum wage, despite charging you a £60 cleaning fee, are a bit pushed?

Iamthewombat

Self catering and hotels are different beasts with different "rules". I stay frequently in both. Normal to take your rubbish out to the bins in a self catering cottage, not normal in a hotel where you probably wouldn't even know where the bins are.

There aren't cooking facilities or a large fridge in a Premier Inn though. The bin is under the desk and it's tiny and clearly made for a dainty tissue or a screwed up note. If you've cooked in an Airbnb there's often leftover food, chicken and fish bits and all sorts in a bin. If it's left there for a couple of days it can attract vermin and start stinking

We have an Airbnb and we ask guests to remove bins on checkout for this reason. It's 1 minute up the drive on the way to where their car is parked and we only ask that recycling is separated.

We clean our Airbnb ourselves and we only get weekend bookings. That means we sometimes can't get into clean until a few days later so if someone has left a stinking bin it causes huge issues.

If on the other hand people have just had takeaways or drinks in the house and it's 'dry' rubbish - tissues, pizza boxes, toilet roll interiors, wine bottles I'm happy for guests to leave it.

We've had guests who have resolutely refused to remove bins and have stuffed them full to the bin bag ripping and then when full just left their crap on the counters or the parents who have left dirty nappies stacked up on top of a bathroom bin. We caught that in a few hours if then leaving but The place stank for days.

Having said that I wouldn't expect a guest to take their rubbish 5-10 minutes up the road. If that was the situation I'd arrange a on site outside bin that I could decant from and take it to the final location myself. Seems unreasonable for them to expect that if you.

It's self catering so normal. It's why I don't book self catering. No such thing as luxury self catering, give me a hotel any day

In our case, I did have to try to find a way to politely ask guests to wheel the actual bin from the front garden to the kerb part-way through their stay, and back again - and it's certainly awkward!

I don’t know why. The last Air BNB I stayed in, we were there for a month. The owner’s rep (her sister) just asked us to put the wheelie bins and recycling out on the appropriate days. It seemed an entirely reasonable request to me.

In my experience, all holiday flats, cottages etc ask for this and I usually stay in fairly expensive places (mostly because one of my travelling companions is exceedingly picky). I would never leave an overflowing bin or anything with food, but I actually don’t think it’s too big of a stretch for a cleaner to dispose of a rubbish bag as part of the service.

I think cleaning fees should be included in the initial advertised rate. It is rather eyebrow raising when you pay the cleaning fee then have a long list of very specific tasks to complete before an early departure (Lake District cottage, I’m looking at you). I always leave the place tidy, dishwasher on, in good order as well as being clean, but not deep cleaned. I don’t want to be stripping beds and mopping the floor, polishing etc.

The bed linen thing started with Covid. We were asked to strip beds and put the sheets in black plastic bags. I assumed it was so they could be decanted into the washing machine without needing to be touched. Give that it takes about two minutes to strip a bed, I can’t see the problem.

Told you! That was why I put this in my post, above. I knew that somebody wouldn’t read it:

And before anybody says, “but Airbnb isn’t the same as a hotel”: no, it isn’t

If you own a cottage and want it to be like ‘normal’ self catering, don’t charge a separate cleaning fee. Easy.