Air B n B guests no longer need to clean up after themselves

[lonelylou09]

Wondering what everyone's thoughts are on the upcoming changes to Air BnB bookings where owners will no longer be able to ask guests to strip beds, remove rubbish or even wash up after themselves.
I'm a cleaner and I'm worried this will mean I can no longer do changeovers properly.
I currently do a 5 bed 3 bathroom that sleeps 10 and it takes me the whole check out time (5 hours) to turn the property over. That's with guests having to strip beds, remove rubbish to correct outside bins and at the very least load up the dishwasher and put it on.
If I have to add this on to It could easily add on an hour which means check out or in times would have to be adjusted and people already moan or turn up 2 or 3 hours early or leave an hour late.
So I'm guessing I'm asking what peoples thoughts are if you use air B and b. Do you do these things if asked and would continue too if you can't be asked to? Or do you think this isn't your place to do it? Does it make a difference if there is a cleaning fee charged separately?
My view is it's not a hotel ..its self catering and you should leave it as you found it. I always put a lot of effort into trying to ensure when the guests arrive it feels like no one was there before then and it's theirs for the week.
If I stay anywhere...even a hotel I'll strip the bed and set the bins ready to make it easier for the cleaner.
But although most guests are great you do get some that you just wonder what Thier own home is like.

yeah honestly I agree with most PP who said it puts them off.

I’m ND, dyspraxic among other things and I find organisation while traveling is a lot. So I hate having to complete a list of tasks before I leave, like the last time I stayed at one was in Malaga. I had to figure out how to get to the bins in this apartment complex. I ended up not using the kitchen stuff at all except the washing machine since my wee brain couldn’t work anything out, so thankfully I just had bags of plastic plates and forks etc to chuck away.

I got a good review from the host with no complaints but it was stressful. I didn’t leave a review for the host.

For the rest of the time in Spain I just stayed at hotels!

I hate airb&b for many reasons & rarely use it. They're never clean enough despite all the fuss about cleaning + cleaning fees

I think its outrageous that you are charged a cleaning fee full stop. Surely thats on the owner?

You pay to rent a property for a period of time, you remove all your stuff and empty the bins blah blah blah, leave it in a reasonable condition.

Its up to the owner to pay a cleaner (or do it themselves) so its up to hotel standard for their next guests, no?

That should be an overhead.

Whats next, chip in for the leccy and gas bill?

I'm paying for a 1 week stay not to be put on the lease agreement.

I was also so worried I’d bleed on the sheets because they specifically wrote that blood/stains on the sheet incur an extra charge.

I had some issues with heavy bleeding around then and despite wearing heavy period pants and doubling up on liners etc sometimes it could still leak.

Thankfully I didn’t get any on the sheets but
the thing is no one deliberately gets blood on bed, if it happens they can remove just like I manage to remove my stains at home - in the washing machine with some vanish . I don’t think a special fee on top of the cleaning fee is necessary. Just have a good under mattress sheet and some stain remover.

So yeah i definitely prefer hotels.

I will happily put towels in the bath, start the dishwasher with breakfast dishes, clean up anything actively manky (like large toothpaste smears, marmalade on the counter, if we have walked excess sand in), put rubbish in bins or outside if immediately accessible.

I will not strip beds, schedule my last morning breakfast early enough to wait for dishwashers to finish to unload (same people who want this buy dishwashers where quickest setting is 2+ hours and want us out before 10), do laundry, do any deeper clearing, play hunt the bin around large sites.

If you need to rely on your guests to heavy lift for you then you need to review your business model. Because whilst it might not be a hotel, its competition is hotels and the Premier Inn ain’t making me clean.

I think the issue is that they've done this as a blanket requirement. There's a big difference between a house that has the bins outside, an apartment that has the bins outside the building, and a farmhouse that has them at the end of a 2km track. I'm a host and our bins only get collected twice a week (collection literally in front of the house) with once being on a Saturday morning (so ask guests to put them out Friday evening). So if one guest decides "fuck it I'm not lifting a finger", then the next group arrive to full bins because they're not due to be collected for days and there's literally nowhere else for us to put them - not a great first impression.

The washing up - not a big deal as we have a dishwasher. We don't ask guests to do it, but 99% of them have common courtesy and either fill it and set it going before they leave, or just wash up the last bits and put them away. It's no issue if the stuff from breakfast is left there, but I'm seeing people on social media saying that they will now no longer even bother loading the dishwasher their entire stay because "they've paid for cleaning", which is just hugely disrespectful.

And as for the cleaning time, I don't think people realise that it's a deep clean every single time, it's not the same as your usual weekend clean at home. Skirting boards, inside all drawers and cupboards, clearing out drains, not just replacing the bin bags but cleaning the bins themselves, cleaning windows/windowsills, refilling hand soap and olive oil, emptying and cleaning the entire fridge and freezer, disinfecting and cleaning the sofa, watering the plants, replacing all the loo roll etc on top of all the standard things and remaking the beds. If people are respectful then the cleaning is done within the time frame and the next guests get an early check in. If the previous guests haven't even mopped up their own spills or done any washing up all week, then it's the next guests that suffer.

Asking customers to strip the beds is a piss take, I don’t use air bnb anymore for this reason, so I welcome the changes.

But if a family has booked it, even a mix of two or three families, stripping the beds is going to be a specific someone's job who has to do at least two or three of them as well as pack bags, clean breakfast dishes etc (for up to 16 people?) before the ~10am checkout time. At home, you have all day to these tasks, but as someone said right at the start, this isn't what you want as you last memory of a holiday.

I don’t get the pearl clutching about paying a cleaning fee AND turning on a dishwasher and putting bin bags in a wheelie bin. A cleaning fee covers cleaning - toilets/kitchen surfaces/laundering bed linen and towels. Surely loading and turning on a dishwasher and putting recycling in bins is just basic - it’s not cleaning.

having said that I don’t understand hosts that require stripped beds - that’s straying into a cleaners remit imho

Having run an Airbnb, I think it will just encourage those who choose to live like pigs to lower their standards even more. On the whole I found the majority of people clean and respectful, but the occasional few I could not believe how they live.
I can only see prices rising as 2 cleaners would need to be employed.

It might look like property owners are making a killing, but trust me, once all the expenses are taken into consideration, there really isn’t a lot left in the pot.

I think a lot of the new rules have been misinterpreted by owners

You can ask for rubbish to be taken to an outside bin, just not off the property as some owners were expecting people to take the rubbish with them.

The cleaning fees were becoming extortionate but also leaving loads of cleaning rules, which was not good.

They also got a bad rep from owners making tiktok/youtube complaining how the place was left ie someone moved the tv remote (hmm) . One young couple were OTT ridiculous and it was never clear if they were playing it up for clickbait.

I would expect the place to be left tidy, so the cleaner can clean. I'd expect dishes to be washed up and put away. I'd expect rubbish to be taken out to the bins.

I'm not sure about stripping beds - that's a real chore, and surely you're paying for SOME freedom from the household routine?

I don't like it when my houseguests strip the beds. I want to work through the laundry when it's convenient - I don't want mountains of linen bursting out of the basket. I do this when I'm a guest, but I ask the host first.

Good, Its been getting ridiculous, long lists of instructions for vacating Nope, employ a cleaner!

That’s brilliant you do so such a thorough clean but I don’t think many do. The last place I stayed at was fairly superficially clean and ok enough it but it hasn’t been deep cleaned.

I mean one of the first things I noticed was a large web with a spider in it. And this wasn’t a big old house with high ceilings, it was a small modern studio. The fridge and sofa had definitely not been deep cleaned and I avoided using both.

Can you not just go and put the bins out on a Friday night?

I get that you are doing a decent clean after each set of guests but it isn't the same standard across the board. I've stayed in a few that weren't particularly clean and the drawers weren't even checked as they had the previous guests dirty knickers in them.

I've never been offered an earlier check in either. The last one I stayed at was check in at 4pm and checkout at 10am. So we stopped using them.

Not the case unfortunately. Our green wheelie bin is 20m from the front door. Airbnb have doubled down on me not being able to require my guests to take these out. Our landfill (for a house that sleeps 12) is collected every 3 weeks so you can see how problematic this is - I will have to rely on the goodwill of guests (luckily I usually have great ones).

We have a holiday cottage and stay in them.

I would never leave dirty pans or dishes in the sink - it's reasonable to clean up actual food mess and load a dishwasher (if there is one.)

We would also leave used towels neatly in the bathroom or in the washing machine.

The trouble with running a dishwasher/washing machine is they can take HOURS to run, and you don't always know exactly what time the cleaner is coming. I would do it and walk out the door at our own place, I may or may not do it elsewhere, but then leave a note it needs to be run as that can be done with someone in the house cleaning around.

Lots of cleaners have their systems - we don't ask for beds to be stripped etc and we don't strip when we're staying elsewhere.

On the bins - man alive, we've obviously followed the rules while staying in Italy. But in the UK this should (and can) be made straightforward for the guests and that is the right thing to do. They shouldn't have to go hither and tither dealing with it.

@EggsistentialCrisis but by having a holiday let you're operating a business premises. Your guests shouldn't really be using domestic waste provision at all. Pay for a commercial collection. Likewise, pay for a professional cleaning team who will bill you for the time/people it takes to turn a property around. That's what your price + fees are supposed to cover.

Airbnb hosts can't have it both ways. They're either running a business or they're not. All those fees and charges are supposed to be for the service provided by the business. If there's a cleaning fee, customers don't clean. At the moment the expectation seems to be "pay hotel prices, do the work yourself".

yes the best one was this co-working space abroad I was staying that decided to have no communal bins or skips on the property.

They gave us an address to take the trash to!
So I had to use google maps to try and find the trash drop off place. As someone with no sense of direction it almost brought me to tears and no I didn’t find it 😆

What if Friday isn’t check out day? You would have to potentially go into the house that is occupied by your guests and remove the bins from there. Not really tenable. And what if you don’t even live near the property? Are you going to drive 20 miles to take the bins onto the kerb when your guests could easily do it? Just needs a bit of a sense check. I’ve actually been told by Airbnb support that the dishes and bins rule has been so controversial they might well reconsider those ones.

Then I have to go over and enter the property when the guests are still there, which is just invading their privacy. They literally have to pick the bin bag up, walk from the kitchen to the front door (genuinely 5 steps) and then put that bin bag in the bin outside, which is the one that gets collected. Guests can't manage that and would rather I go in on a Friday night, their last night in my property, go into the kitchen and do it myself?

I do check in at 4pm and check out at 10am and if I know we'll be done with the cleaning sooner (I help my own cleaner and my husband deals with the garden) then I'll message the guests. I'd say about 30% of the time they can get into the house an hour early.

We do a lot of self catering and sometimes Airbnb. We always clean up and strip beds. This won't change for us.

However, we tend to spend the day before checkout cleaning and packing in a leisurely way then travelling home that night, rather than dashing around the next morning to be done and out by 10am.

It's a pisstake how check-in and checkout times never changed back once COVID was over. That's always pissed me off.
So there should be no complaints that they just don't have time now to get it ready for the next guests.

This only works if you’re on NDR and many hosts don’t qualify due to low occupancy so this isn’t actually the case.

Most self catering not necessarily air b&b I've stayed at haven't been too demanding and I don't mind emptying the bins into the wheelie and making sure pots are washed up though maybe left drying for cleaner to put away. I'd leave in reasonable state anyway but expect the cleaner to do majority and the service cost to include that.

Bed stripping and other cleaning tasks assumes everyone's fit to, but can be a lot of effort for someone with physical/energy impairment.

I'm in a rural village in the South of France. There is no commercial collection. It would take them longer to walk from the kitchen to the toilet than it would from the kitchen to the bin outside. I also do pay for a professional cleaner and am also there myself every changeover day to make sure the place is spotless. The fee I charge guests for the cleaning goes straight to the cleaner, I'm not putting it in my pocket and neither are any of the other hosts I know in my area.