Are STR cleaning fees and rules too strict for guests?

When it comes to STR cleaning fees, rules and expectations what is the norm? Are your cleaning rules too strict? What is too strict?  Let’s unpack this.

There has been lots of chatter about STR cleaning fees and chores that are creeping into the short term rental businesses. This is really polarizing in social media and lots of people seem to have opinions on the subject. This is getting picked up on lots of media outlets and is being amplified as anything polarizing generates clicks. Unfortunately, this click-bait pits hosts and guests against each other and this is not how I want to run my hospitality brand.

Lots of comments that unreasonable cleaning fees and “chores” are what is pushing many people to book hotels rather than STRs. There is a lot to discuss here.

What is a reasonable fee? 

What are reasonable requests that hosts can ask guests to do?

Hotels vs STRs – The difference when it comes to STR Cleaning fees and rules

Firstly, hotels and STRs are completely different products. Apples and Oranges. They are different experiences and have different pros and cons. They are different to stay in and different to manage. The biggest frustration I have is when people try to compare the two and draw illogical conclusions. 

Airbnb is now showing the total stay fees including the cleaning fees. I am totally OK with this as I am very transparent with my guests as to what the cleaners do and what the guests are required to do.  

As a rule, hotels don’t charge cleaning fees separately as they are included in the cost. Most stays in a hotel are only 1-2 days so the nightly rate can absorb the costs from the different areas of service. Hotels enjoy an economy of scale, centralized laundries and systems and processes that allow the back of house processes to be optimised. The average room turn around takes 20-30 minutes tops. Admittedly, the rooms are smaller, have very little clutter and no kitchens etc. If there is excess trash, it is all whisked away and sorted by different people. But there are multiple people, all doing micro tasks and repeating those multiple times a day – a well oiled machine. This is the theory anyway. 

Short Term Rentals or Vacation rentals are entire homes with kitchens and often with multiple bedrooms and bathrooms. It usually takes many hours to turn around a home to get it ready for the next guest. The crew is much smaller and each person has to do many different tasks. It is a different physical and mental load when you are multitasking and sometimes under a time crunch. Most stays in STRs are longer than the average hotel stay. To manage revenue and costs, dividing up the accounts into room costs, cleaning costs and other fees just makes sense. Cleaning staff are often outsourced and are often paid by the job. 

The values that I have set for my company means that I pay over a living wage to my cleaners. Without them I wouldn’t have a business. I negotiate with them how much they would like to get paid for each house and I pay this. 

For owners, we simply pass through the fees we charge for cleaning through to the staff who are doing the cleaning. It just gets too muddled to try to have a per night cleaning cost built into the nightly rate. That said, I have never had any of my guests complain about paying a cleaning fee. Plus we get 5 star reviews for cleaning across the board. So for me, the chatter on social media is just noise from uninformed windbags who want to moan and complain about the click bait on-line. 

Guest expectations – What do we expect our guests to do? 

We don’t actually ask guests to do much. Remember that we offer a home experience so we just expect our guests to behave as they would in their own homes – I wouldn’t even say we have STR Cleaning fees and rules that are too complicated or extreme.

Wash your dishes and sort the trash. I am not a fan of asking people to strip the beds or mop the floors or do the gardening – that is a little excessive. The reason we don’t ask people to strip the beds is that the cleaners can check for stains easily and deal with them immediately. 

Trash is a different matter

Trash in our city is very strict and needs sorting – this is not uncommon in many cities. So we do ask that guests sort out the trash as they go and provide the different recycling bins and the information on how to do it – it isn’t hard. But if we have guests who expect our cleaners to pick through their nasty trash, we do have to have some awkward conversations afterwards. But this is a rarity as we do educate our guests in advance. 

I get that people don’t like to do “chores” and when they are on holidays, they want to pay for somebody else to pick up after them. Heck, I hate doing chores, period, but unfortunately I have accepted them as a part of life. 

However, for the most part, I do believe that guests are wanting to do the right thing so it is my job to keep them informed, give them the tools to thrive in my space and treat them like adults.

Guest communication is key

So my check in instructions are very friendly – not strong rules. (Feel free to swipe this email for your own copy and paste replies.)

Our check out instructions are:

****

Hi again [guest name},

Just a quick heads up that tomorrow [date] is check-out day. Check-out time is at 10:00 AM unless you’ve made alternative arrangements with us already.

We hope you’ve had an awesome stay.

If you wouldn’t mind just giving the house a quick tidy-up before you leave that’d be great. There is a little check list inside the welcome book to remind you if needed. Oh, and one last thing, if you could remember to leave the key in the box after you check- out that’d be amazing.

Hope you’ve had a great stay at our house and that you have a safe onward journey.

Any questions just let me know.

Thanks,

Tracey

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Takeaways

Being a hard ass, enforcing strict rules and treating people like children is the fast track to having people rebel and be disrespectful. As I said before, I see hosting guests as a collaboration and a partnership. I provide value in meeting their needs and they provide the cash. Win-win. So my communication is all about information, support and value.

If you want a full list of my guest communications, you can buy them here. I have great reviews for many years and my guests are happy and well behaved. Click here to grab them for yourself. Adapt to your situation and you’ll get happy guests. 

The takeaways here should be that as a STR owner, you should be negotiating with your staff as to what they should be paid fairly for their work and what their jobs entail – check lists are essential. 

The guests should also be aware of what they get for their cleaning fees that they pay. 

Mostly, don’t get drawn into the polarizing arguments on-line and actually have a business you are proud of. 

Don’t forget, I am always here if you want to have a quick call and chat about your business. I can help you create sensible guidelines for your staff, your guests and your time. Click here to set up a free 15 minute call.