Some hosts are threatening to strike, while others are plotting ways around Airbnb’s new restrictions. Guests, meanwhile, are celebrating.
AIRBNB HOSTS ARE melting down over a new policy banning them from making guests complete tasks that “would typically be performed by a cleaner,” like “stripping the bed, taking trash offsite, or washing and putting away dishes.”
The change, which applies to all bookings made on or after November 20, quickly sparked outrage after it was announced in an email to Airbnb hosts on Wednesday. Many began fuming online about losing the right to make their guests clean up after themselves.
“As hosts, we have a responsibility to protect our investments, our homes, and, in many cases, our personal living spaces,” one person wrote in Airbnb’s official forum for hosts. “The problem is that Airbnb increasingly expects hosts to accept the risks while limiting our ability to protect ourselves.”
What’s the problem? Hosts can still charge cleaning fees but they can’t force guests to do chores.
Yeah, but they were doing both.
Now they can’t have a cake and eat it too.
Exactly. If the hosts were able to both make guests clean up after themselves and charge a cleaning fee then the cleaning fee was just a money grab.
I rented an airbnb, my one and only time, where the host had an insane list of chores. For context: This was during the pandemic and it was me and my two best friends who just wanted to get out of NYC for the night to get some fresh air. I cooked at home and packed dinner, so we didn’t use the kitchen. We didn’t drink. We had a quiet movie night, enjoyed the trees and each others company and then went to sleep.
The next morning, I personally wiped the counters, wiped the fridge, took out the trash, stripped the beds, refluffed the couch, swept the fireplace… the works. I literally woke up 2 hours early to get all this cleaning done. They had a cleaning fee on top of all these chores, which I felt was odd, but it was a new experience for me so I went with it. I am big on rules and respect so i sincerely cleaned to the best of my ability.
After I posted a positive review of their home, they put up a review of me within seconds claiming I trashed the place. They were vying for an additional charge for me leaving the place messy. They said their cleaning lady called to complain about how I trashed the house. I messaged asking what they were talking about, absolutely confused, and they gave me a list of how I trashed their house.
- There were crumbs on the counter. I know I wiped it, but let’s give them the benefit of the doubt, maybe i missed something.
- They said one of the blankets was a little damp. After asking the other girls, I think my friend briefly sat on the bed after she took a shower. I had stripped the bed so this was a blanket in the hamper they were complaining about that should have been going to be washed. I didn’t notice anything damp when I stripped her bed, but we were trying to rationalize the complaint while we were all talking about it after.
- The back of one of the couches had a smudge on it. It was allegedly charcoal from the fireplace. I didn’t see a smudge, it was just me and two girls and none of us touched the back of the couch. I don’t know where this came from. You can’t see the back of the couch in any of the photos I took, and I can’t 100% guarantee nothing happened but none of us had any reason to touch the back of the couch and I was the only one to sweep the fireplace (which was full of ash from the previous people but it was on their ‘house rules’ to leave it clean and I was worried we’d be charged so I swept it)
They hosts wanted to charge me a $500 additional cleaning fee for the “trashed” house. I had after pictures of the condition i left it in and nothing came of it, so I think Airbnb said they didn’t have a case, but I never used airbnb again.
It cost more than a hotel would have in the area. Such a scam.
That’s a terrible experience. I’ve never stayed at one and never had a desire though I can see the appeal for some. When I travel I want to be taken care of. Not go through this.
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LOL
Apartments in SEA always charge electricity seperately.
Its by far the biggest cost - much more than the cost of the building. If you walk in and turn the air con on, and leave it on all night, their costs will be much, much higher than they would be for a more economical guest.
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Hotels and guest houses do not charge extra for electricity.
Serviced apartments generally do, even if you’re only there for a few nights.
It’s not the length of the stay but the style of accommodation.
If you rent an apartment on airBnB, or just because you saw the sign from the street, or because a travel agent arranged it for you, you’ll pay extra for electricity. This isn’t an AirBnB thing.
Landlords maldong they have to do even a small bit of graft to earn their keep.
Maldong, indeed.
“As hosts, we have a responsibility to protect our investments, our homes, and, in many cases, our personal living spaces,”
As hosts, you can go fuck yourselves after what you did with the house market.
“The problem is that Airbnb increasingly expects hosts to accept the risks while limiting our ability to protect ourselves.”
No, the problem is that you expect all the good from the hotel market without all the bad from the hotel market. Because let’s be honest, you’re not renting your house or your room for one night eventually, you’re trying to live off this, and that makes you a hotel.
No sympathy for these assholes that only deserve the worst after fucking so many cities and towns.
Some hosts are threatening to strike
Oh please… don’t threaten us with a good time. Please do, strike indefinitely. My only hope is that you start losing money and go broke because that’s what you deserve for making a business off the house market.
I don’t even understand why people use Airbnb.
Every time I’ve looked at Airbnb, a hotel was cheaper and easier. Hotels certainly have some hidden fees, but nothing like airbnb has.
Oh look, this house is 60 dollars a night. That could work for my two night stay… oh wait, now that I’ve clicked the listing, it has a 400 dollar cleaning fee. I’ve worked in cleaning. cleaning a house does not cost 400 dollars, and thats assuming you have professional cleaners coming in to clean it, which we both know you don’t. You expect the guest to do all the cleaning, and you come in, spend 30 minutes doing the bare minimum touchup, and want 400 dollars for it.
I paid $80 for a room in the middle of LA
grats?
Stfu
That’s kind of high for the middle of Louisiana. Just sayin.
Giving the year is extremely important context.
Literally a month ago
I think the hidden fees have been abandoned now. They were never a thing in Australia - the price is the price.
For groups of more than two people apartments and houses are usually significantly cheaper on AirBnB, and being fully self contained with a kitchen and laundry changes the calculation too.
Tenish years ago I would use air bnb because it was a good bit cheaper than a mid level hotel and you’d get a whole house with a kitchen. Means I’d save money and could cook. But that’s changed and it’s usually more expensive for air bnb now
Hotels don’t rent out houses in the middle of nowhere for my friends and me to get trashed at for the weekend. They’re really nice if you want to get out of the city and relax in someone else’s house for a couple days.
Yeah, I exclusively use it for less populated areas where the hotels are sketchy at best. Its worked out well for me, but maybe I’ve gotten lucky.
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Now, most Air Bnbs don’t allow you to have a bunch of friends to get trashed over a weekend… It’s in the listing rules.
We’ve used airbnb twice because it was for a whole house and I have a severely disabled daughter who can get loud and physically disruptive. Those were the only family vacations that we’ve ever been able to take because hotels generally can’t accommodate us. This isn’t a common requirement, and if not for that special use case, I’d pick a hotel every time.
I haven’t even considered an Airbnb in close to 8 years. Pay a cleaning fee and have to strip the bed linens, take out all trash, and tidy everything…on top of a moldy af bathroom, having to check all potential locations for the hidden cameras, and getting texts every 30 minutes telling (not asking, TELLING) me to leave a 5 start review. Fuck you
exactly.
This type of thing isn’t normal.
You can choose not to rent a place that has a chore list.
Like a moldy bathroom is a health issue. If you report it the listing will be shut down.
Hidden cameras are the same, not really a thing.
Sounds a bit like you chose the cheapest listing and like to complain that it feels cheap.
Weird to blame the renter for being cheap on a litany of health, privacy, and labor related crimes at the behest of a wannabe landlord
Sure.
The thing is the same principle applies in any market. If you want to buy a car, and buy the cheapest you can find, its not going to be a good experience.
I don’t believe Toyota is selling Corollas with mold sewn between the seat cushions. But sure, keep blaming the poors.
Ooh, sick burn. Amazing.
If you buy the cheapest corolla you can find, it will have all sorts of things in the cushion seams.
You have to try pretty hard to find mould in an airbnb listing. People will mention that kind of thing in reviews.
If you choose the cheapest airbnb, or the cheapest hotel, it’s going to be gross.
I dunno… I’ve never had an issue with my Hyundai, and was never told I had to keep it clean, while being charged a cleaning fee each month…
Sure, but you understand the absurdity of buying the cheapest car and then complaining about it.
I don’t even understand why people use Airbnb.
So, in the long long ago, in the before time, Airbnb was a way to rent out your apartment or home for a week, while you were on vacation, or to rent out a spare room with minimal headaches. In fact, after Craigslist more or less died, it was THE way to do it.
Over time, this changed.
When it first started it was good for traveling on a budget. But yeah then greedy assholes ruined it by trying to gouge every dollar they could out of it.
sometimes it might be useful for a large group visiting that needed a whole house rather than trying to get hotel/motel for each person a room, im guessing its convenience and simplicity for groups. not useful if you are 1-3 people.
the problem is that you expect all the good from the hotel market without all the bad from the hotel market.
Every single one of these stupid middle man, gig work bull shit “disruptive” companies in a nutshell.
Air BnB, Door Dash, Uber, etc etc.
They want to sit in the middle scraping money from “gig workers” doing a “side hustle”, while skirting all the regulation from the industry they are apeing.
The thing is that this hurts the few hosts who still use airbnb in the original somewhat harmless way, by inviting people to stay in their homes while they’re on holiday or to use an extra room. It does not negatively affect the types of hosts who are actively ruining cities, as these hosts already hire cleaners and property managers.
Of course, the people this hurts should ideally move to somewhere less shit than airbnb. Personally I use homeexchange, but that only makes sense for people who don’t need extra money. Fairbnb.coop seemed promising except that it has been offline for months.
The thing is that this hurts the few hosts who still use airbnb in the original somewhat harmless way, by inviting people to stay in their homes while they’re on holiday or to use an extra room.
That’s what cleaning fees are for. These assholes pretend to charge a cleaning fee and then make guests clean after them. Cleaning fees exist for this sole reason, so the guest pays for the mess they do. And if the mess is too big, airbnb will protect the host anyway.
They are complaining because they can’t keep being a hotel but treating guests as tennants.
Of course you can’t have it both ways - either charge a cleaning fee or demand your guests to clean up after themselves. In an ideal world people would clean up after themselves.
Yeah, seam normal to leave stuff the way it was.
But don’t expect me to clean up mess that isn’t mine.
How? They can charge a cleaning fee still, they just actually have to do the cleaning.
Plus I’m sure airbnb will keep things reasonable if not in favor of the host. If you stay for a full week and use every dish and pot in a place without cleaning any I’m sure airbnb would allow an extra fee. If you make breakfast before you leave and put dishes in the sink now the host has to deal with it.
Pretty reasonable
Based on my own experience with homeexchange: I don’t want to hire professional cleaners to come clean up my home after hosting guests. I don’t want to clean up after my guests either. I allow them to stay in my home without a cleaning fee, and part of the social contract is that they clean up after themselves.
It’s the exact same as when I allow my friends to stay in my home while I’m away. They clean up after themselves.
Cleaning up after staying in someone else’s home is just obvious common decency. What has happened here is that airbnb no longer is a platform for letting people stay in your home, it’s a platform for running hotels in buildings where people used to live. Some people are still however left on the platform inviting people into their homes without hiring dedicated cleaners, charging cleaning fees, or running a big operation. These people are fucked over by this.
My partner’s grandmother used to lease out a few free rooms in her house using airbnb. She stopped partly because the mess some privileged assholes would leave behind would take her days to clean up.
Cleaning up after staying in someone else’s home is just obvious common decency.
The thing is? Most AirBnB listings aren’t someone’s home. They are just an investment property.
With “most” being an important word. You still have normal people trying to get by, but they are being drowned out.
Airbnb started out as a service that made it easier for people to pay rent, and has transformed into the main reason why people cannot afford it. It is so far gone by now that there’s nothing left to save, but in principle rules like this makes it harder for normal people to make ends meet by allowing people to stay in their guest room.
Last time I checked there were still normal people on airbnb. As there’s no real alternative out there and people need the money I assume they are still around.
There’s still alternatives, if you don’t like Air BnB. Self managing your rentals is still there. Of course, instead of paying Air BnB you need to pay a marketer, probably the local tourism board, etc etc.
I get it, the service went down hill, though, for the people trying to just let out a room while they are away for a week. But the vast majority of Air BnB listings are not that, anymore.
Yeah. I would love to see a service pop up for short-term rentals where people can only rent out places where they actively live at least part time, but I agree that this is not what airbnb is any more. At this point airbnb is little more than a cancer in the housing market.
If friends come over I don’t expect them to vacuum, do the laundry and redo the bed.
They also don’t expect the place to be spotless like a hotel when they arrive.
If they stay for a couple of nights or while I’m around, no. Sometimes I’m gone for weeks and I allow friends to use my home, at which point I absolutely expect them to at the very least vacuum.
Do you charge your friends for their stay? Do you charge your friends a cleaning fee, while still expecting all of that?
Obviously not?
However, I did at some point consider renting out my free room for a few months at a time. In the end I didn’t have to do this as my partner moved in with me instead and we share the rent. If someone paid money to live with me in my home I would still, very much, expect them to clean after themselves. I also expect my partner to contribute to cleaning even though we split the rent.
Last time I checked Ainbnbs also didn’t always charge a cleaning fee; it was up to the host to do so or not. I haven’t used airbnb in years though, so it might have changed since then.
I must say I’m a bit horrified by the seeming reluctance of people in this thread to clean up after themselves. To me this is a minimum fucking standard of human decency, whether it’s a public space, a friends’ place, somebody else’s home, a hotel room, a café, whatever. I can see how being charged a hefty cleaning fee fucks with willingness to tidy up, but these cleaning fees are so high precisely because of people who don’t give a fuck and leave behind an absolute mess wherever they go. These people are the reason we cannot have nice things.
how people get away with thinking a HOME is an investment is insane to me. Homes are for living in.
I’ve often thought of, instead of buying my first home, to wait, save, and buy one of those homes that’s been split up into two nice apartments? Then live in one, while renting out the other. I don’t think I’d want to do Air BnB though… Rather just find a nice tenant that won’t eff the place up, be the landlord I always wanted (free rent for December plus they get all the extra sweets I bake).
I was actually surprised, all the places I’ve rented, none gave discount during December. I figured it would be a thing people did, like Christmas bonuses at work.
I’m renting from someone like that right now. Works great, I get to keep a little garden, I do some home maintenance without having to go through all the home ownership stuff. And rent is cheap. No in-unit laundry, but I can’t complain about that given the other advantages.
I’ve never heard of rent being discounted in December. Christmas bonuses aren’t as common as they used to be, either.
Yeah I’ve never heard of it either, I guess I just kinda assumed a landlord with a great tenant would show their appreciation in some way, and the best way I could think of, is like a “half-off rent for Christmas” sort of thing.
Anyway, if I ever become a landlord, that’s what I’m doing.
That’s some real saturnalia spirit. Though I think more people’s idea of a great landlord is one that gives you a discount on rent when times are tough rather than for any specific holiday. But you go off and make the world better how you want.
No, landlords don’t give discounts in december. That doesn’t make any sense.
If they were better people, they would. Just another example of how slumlords are terrible people. Rich enough to own multiple houses yet can’t share a sliver of wealth during the one time of year it’s needed most? bah! humbug!
No they wouldn’t.
You’ve just invented a bizarre test of how a good person ought to behave.
Why not donate that money to a refuge or something.
There’s a reason why landlord’s don’t discount rent in December - because its daft.
found the landlord!
Homes are for living in.
This is the same thing Xi Jinping said when he intentionally crashed the housing market.
Is that what you COMMUNISTS want, to destroy the wealth of hard working housing speculators?
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) stop. i can only get so hard.
Yes, in fact.
The hostility these people have for their customers is really something to see.
You can kind of feel that hostility when just staying in a lot of those places. Which I refuse to do anymore. But I learned slowly after several bad experiences. I always justified it by “this doesn’t usually happen and I’m saving money”. Then at one point I realized it happens 50% of the time and you’re saving not much if any money anymore. Airbnb hosts are largely selfish assholes who lie on their listings and don’t care what happens to you or if you have a problem. I had my car broken into at an Airbnb and it was a whole debacle I won’t go into, but the host ignored my calls and texts for hours after it happened. That’s probably my worst experience but I’ve had at least 5 other memorably bad times as well.
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I don’t see the problem really.
Stay in hotels of you don’t like it.
DonaldGloverGood.gif
Who’s taking the trash out now dumbasses? Not me. You deal with the insane rules of your strata. Not my problem boo. (I also think AirBnB is an evil model and wouldn’t use the app but…I could not resist)
they might as well spend the money to have a houskeeping service.
They won’t strike. $10,000 says they don’t strike.
They need airbnb to pay for their overpriced mortgages, so a strike means selling off their assets.
so a strike means selling off their assets.
thousands of new houses hitting the market at once, driving down prices for people who are desperate to own a home for themselves?
oh dear, the horror. Please don’t let that happen /s
Oh don’t you worry, billionaire hedge funds will snap those up first for rentals
Theyre actually also relatively (by their own standards) strapped for cash these days.
Yeah, this will happen, but the smarter ones will wait it out another year or two ish, for prices to crash further, before they switch from ‘survive downturn’ to ‘exploit market bottom’.
Hrm. Either that or negotiate private sales at something like a 30% to 50% lower price, but for cash, and also in a way that somehow doesn’t get publically recorded… some kind of shell company / legal fiction shenanigans.
They’ll want to be confident in future property tax hike and climate disaster / insurance rate hike projections before they do that though, and that just will take some time.
Totally agree. This is like the people who threatened to leave New York if they changed the property tax on second homes. It’s a bluff.
I mean, I suppose they could create their own website, with black jack and dish washing fees.
But good luck convincing users to go to the actively user hostile (even more hostile) version of Airbnb.
Adults do their own dishes.
I’ve had to do maintenance on cars I rented from Turo several times. In some cases I do think the hosts were negligent, but I’m willing to put up with a little extra fuss to rent fun cars cheap.
As long as I don’t have to track down another proprietary Mercedes Benz wiper blade.
As a neighbor of one of these, I had a guest try to confront me. I live in a narrow street and have lots of colonial walls that make drives sketchy. I can’t safely back out to leave my home if the guests street park…rather than for some reason use the completely functional driveway the building has. They do so anyway. I have them towed. One lady came out while I was sitting on the stoop because I had told my daughter I was calling the tow truck (not even loudly, she must have been creeping). She tried to shame me by saying “you just have to ask nicely” to which my response was “you just have to read” and pointed at the sign, and the yellow line reading “do not park.” She really wanted me to feel bad or something, which I didn’t, and I still do not. I have explained to the owner that I won’t be asking nicely to use my driveway in the home I pay for from the guests of a hotel, I will be documenting, and I will have them towed. Hasn’t happened in a while. Idk why this bitch thought she could talk to me like I was an npc in my own neighborhood.
I’m not sure what this has to do with hosts being upset they can’t find guests for not doing dishes. Also, maybe you should have treated them like a person and asked them to move rather than potentially causing them to lose their car at worst and hundreds of dollars at best.
She should have read the sign for sure but that’s still a dick move
If it was a neighbor, sure. It’s not.
It’s a constantly rotating series of customers of the person leeching off the housing crisis.OP should not need to ask every time they need to use their driveway. The guests rotate so they would need to do it every time. The no parking sign serves that purpose much better. And OP isn’t causing them to lose money or their car - they are doing it to themselves, by illegally blocking OP and violating the entirely reasonable rules.
Found the lady who parked in the wrong spot!
maybe they should read. it’s part of the process of getting a license.
“Strike” would imply you work lmao
I’m more upset with the guests. Why leave a hotel or Airbnb a motel or a private home as a chaos? It’s an insult to the people that work there and to the hosts. I’ve glanced into hotel rooms that were disgusting . It’s the same in cafes and bakeries, people get up from their tables and leave their mess behind for the next guests. People have no respect these days.
I mean I agree with not leaving any place behind in chaos / gross. It’s disrespectful and makes you an unappealing person. That doesn’t mean I want to do chores like taking out trash and doing laundry and dishes when busy traveling or on vacation though. I’m being charged for a cleanup to occur, I’d rather pay a small amount more to have the cleanup team spend an extra 25min doing those sorts of things. I’m not throwing garbage on the floor though. When I leave it looks like a responsible grown up spent some time here and didn’t get around to taking the garbage out or doing the laundry yet.
It’s the same in cafes and bakeries, people get up from their tables and leave their mess behind for the next guests. People have no respect these days.
Dunno about where you live, but in my area it’s pretty difficult to figure out which eateries have employees bus table and which ones expect customers to.
I’ll err on the side of busing my own table, but I’ve had employees come out and tell me not to. So on the other hand, I don’t assume that people who don’t clean up their own tables do it out of rudeness. They may misunderstand the establishment’s practices and/or come from a culture where it’s rare for customers to do that themselves.
Is this bait?
You don’t even have to click into the article to read what they’re referring to. The post pulls the relevant quote.
new policy banning them from making guests complete tasks that “would typically be performed by a cleaner,” like “stripping the bed, taking trash offsite, or washing and putting away dishes.”
Why is a guest responsible for taking trash offsite? Making sure trash is disposed of in the bin, sure, but to use your bakery example it’d be like expecting patrons to change the trash bags and take it out to the dumpster. No respectable business operates like that.
What’s insulting is being charged a cleaning fee when you know that there is no cleaning being done between guests.
Airbnb is not saying you can leave a place in “chaos”. They’re saying you’re not a paid employee and shouldn’t be tasked with things employees would likely do.
The only thing I can see disagreeing with is the dishes thing, but presumably if you were to load and run the dishwasher before leaving the host could say you didn’t put them away which is unreasonable in my opinion. You still can’t just leave trash and dishes strewn about.
