I don't see the logic in singling out the cleaning fee. I guess it's because AirBnB gives us the opportunity by calling it out as a seperate fee. I always look at the total, including fees. That's the only number I care about and that's what I compare to hotels. I think AirBnB would do themselves a favor by incorporating the cleaning fee into the base price and not calling it out separately.
As for the chore list, I may recall a couple annoying ones from years past, but usually it's a non-issue. Though unfortunately I don't think this is something you know until after you book.
The cleaning fees on AirBnB are dishonest (hidden by default), ridiculously high, and redundant with giant list of chores that make me do all the cleaning anyway. They're predatory and greedy and deserve all the calling out they get.
AirBnB cleaning fees are the same garbage as eBay sales for $1.99, $50 shipping, and should be banned by policy.
A fee is something additional, tacked on for something special, something that I can avoid.
Like a car rental 'return with have a tank of gas'-fee. I can avoid that.
But I am sick of these websites that show price X, but then tack on 5 fees that I cannot avoid.
Hotels with resort fee. I can't avoid it, ergo it should be part of the base price.
Restaurants with extra fees to pay their people extra. Can't avoid it, should be part of the base price.
It's becoming harder and harder to compare things. Nothing is stopping people from wanting X per night, but advertising X-Y and adding fees to make up for Y. And that is deceptive advertising.
These are a result of some jurisdictions, such as certain municipalities, having it within their bylaws/legislation that these fees must be applied and that they must appear as separate line items (like taxes). The result is the effect you see, where the displayed price does not include those fees due to the nature of the rest of the markets not having such fees and coding in those edge cases is like dealing with taxes... A near impossible task to keep up with.
The outcome is that the systems are built to allow such additional fees and by default (or exclusively) they are not included in the base price (which is generally the same across markets).
And thus we have what we have... And some abuse this to add even more fees of course.
I'm sure a billion dollar company with 5,000 employees can't find the time to include a computed "total price" column in their database for total price. Sorry, not buying it.
Something being a separate line item does not mean it can't appear in the total price. You have to intentionally build a system to be that deceptive.
Most non-American jurisdictions include tax in the listed price. Even AirBNB does for German customers: https://i.imgur.com/j7ot5xz.png
Look at my screenshot. For german users, the map display price is $131. That's the $81 base price plus taxes plus fees. All shown in the initial UI where it's easily understood by the user, nothing hidden.
This is really the kicker. Not only is the phenomenon really shitty, but Airbnb's refusal to police the practice shows that their interests are firmly aligned against actual guests and instead aligned with hosts.
A lot of the platform's problems come down to this alignment problem. As Airbnb has matured as a service I've found that hosts have gotten lazier and lazier - the chore lists are a relatively recent phenomenon of the last few years. The platform is rife with "hosts" who have no interest in actually running a hospitality business, and are only interested in passive income, and Airbnb itself refuses to uphold any consistent bar and forcing poor hosts off.
This has been wildly destructive to the trustworthiness of the business.
I would be more willing to attribute this stuff to growing pains if I didn't feel like these issues are only symptoms of a significant misalignment between guests and Airbnb corporate.
> eBay sales for $1.99, $50 shipping, and should be banned by policy.
eBay deprioritizes listings like those, and is generally up-front with fixed&calculated shipping costs.
In an effort to compete with Amazon, eBay really wants sellers to offer free shipping but sellers hate it because it’s often not a fixed cost (especially here in Canada).
eBay used to exclude shipping costs from their commissions. So sellers, like me, used to list things for $0.01 and $X shipping (literally in the title) until eBay caught on.
But nobody was stopping you from paying more for the same item with realistic/free shipping.
Plus you get a bad rating if you miss something on a long list. They should tell me ahead of time that I should schedule an hour to complete all the tasks before I’ve come up with my itinerary with an early morning flight.
The fees vary wildly, from reasonable to outrageous. Some cleaning fees I've seen are as much as $500. At the time I was looking, these were not shown by Airbnb until checkout. It was an awful experience.
The reasoning for showing cleaning separately is so that the daily rate isn't inflated. If I was wondering how many nights to stay, and saw the cost for one night as say $300, then I'd guess five nights would be $1500; in fact though the cleaning cost (usually paid direct to the cleaners) might be $150, and $150 for the accommodation, so five nights total cost would be a more affordable $900.
Edit to add: we have one Airbnb apartment, and zero chores for guests to do; our cleaners get our cleaning fee and we have laundry costs on top of that. Not all Airbnbs are a ripoff.
Right, so including the cleaning fee in the base price would incentivize owners to keep the fees low, as well as creating a much better experience for renters trying to find places in their budget.
As for the chore list, I may recall a couple annoying ones from years past, but usually it's a non-issue. Though unfortunately I don't think this is something you know until after you book.