{"id":119,"date":"2025-09-19T18:40:00","date_gmt":"2025-09-19T18:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/good-worldwide.go-vip.net\/upworthy\/2025\/09\/19\/airbnb-superhosts-hate-cleaning-fees-and-checkout-chores-ex1\/"},"modified":"2025-09-19T18:40:00","modified_gmt":"2025-09-19T18:40:00","slug":"airbnb-superhosts-hate-cleaning-fees-and-checkout-chores-ex1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/goodinc.com\/qa-upworthy\/2025\/09\/19\/airbnb-superhosts-hate-cleaning-fees-and-checkout-chores-ex1\/","title":{"rendered":"I’m an Airbnb Superhost and I never make guests do ‘checkout chores’. It’s paying off."},"content":{"rendered":"

Nine years ago, way back in 2016, my husband and I started renting out the basement apartment of our house as a short-term rental on Airbnb<\/a>. We live in a college town<\/a> and figured we’d get some guests during football game weekends and graduations<\/a>. We didn’t realize at the time how many people come to our town to visit their college kids or check out the school, so we were pleasantly surprised by how regularly we were booked.
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In 2019, we moved into the house next door and now rent out both floors of the old house as separate units. We love being Airbnb hosts<\/a> and have had a very successful run of it, with almost 1,000 5-star reviews, Superhost status, and lots of repeat guests.<\/p>

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Being regularu00a0guests haas helped make us good Airbnb hosts. Photo credit: Canva<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure> <\/p>

Part of the secret of our success? We don’t charge a cleaning fee or make guests do check-out chores. <\/h2>

In fact, we find both things rather loathsome. <\/p>

What makes us good hosts is that we’ve been Airbnb guests<\/a> for years. As a family of five that travels a lot, we’ve found far more value in short-term rentals than in hotels over the years. We love having a kitchen, living room, and bedrooms and feeling like we have a “home” while traveling. We even spent a nomadic year staying at short-term rentals<\/a> for a month at a time.<\/p>

When you’ve experienced dozens of Airbnbs as a guest, you learn what guests appreciate and what they don’t. You see what’s annoying and unnecessary and what’s to be expected in comparison to a hotel. We started taking mental notes long before we started our own rental about what we would want to do and not do if we ever had one and have implemented those things now that we do.<\/p>

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Chasing Tom And Jerry GIF by Max Giphy<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure> <\/p>

As guests, we know the pain of the cleaning fee, so we don’t charge one.<\/h2>

It helps that my husband has a flexible schedule and grew up helping with his parents’ janitorial service, so most of the time he cleans the apartments himself. We could charge a cleaning fee for his time and labor, but even if we were paying for outside cleaners, we still wouldn’t put a separate fee onto guest bookings. It makes far more sense to us to just wrap the cleaning fee into the price.<\/p>

From a host’s perspective, the one-night stay is where the cleaning fee question hits the hardest. Whether someone stays one night or 10 nights, the cleaning cost is the same. But spreading the cost over 10 nights is a very different beast than adding it to one night, especially from a guest’s perspective. On the host side, if we had to pay cleaners without passing that fee onto guests, we’ve barely make anything on one-night stays. But on the guest side, a $100 a night stay suddenly jumping to $150 or more because a cleaning fee was added is painful, and often a dealbreaker. You can see the conundrum.<\/p>\n

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$200 cleaning fee Airbnb pic.twitter.com\/vZQy5KxLRl<\/a><\/p>— Disgraced Propagandist (@DisgracedProp) April 19, 2024<\/a><\/blockquote>