Airbnb bans asking guests to do cleaning chores

From November 20, Airbnb will not let you ask a guest to strip the beds, run a load of laundry, wash the dishes or take the trash out of the apartment. It will not let you charge a penalty if they skip it either.

Airbnb announced it on October 20. It takes effect on November 20, in every country.

House rules and requests move into one section

In Airbnb's Listing editor, the screen where you edit your listing, house rules now live in one section, "House rules and requests". It has two parts:

• Seven standard rules, with Airbnb's labels: maximum number of guests, quiet hours, events, pets, smoking, commercial photography and locking up when leaving.
• Requests to the guest: what you ask of them during the stay and when they leave.

The checkout instructions tab is gone. Whatever you asked the guest to do on their way out now goes under requests.

And all of it has to be written there before the guest books. What you say in a message, on a sign in the kitchen or when you hand over the keys does not count.

What you can ask, and what you cannot

Airbnb's test is simple: a request is reasonable if it does not take much time or effort, and if it is not a task a cleaner would normally do. Airbnb's own examples:

Two more things Airbnb does not allow:

• Limiting the use of anything you offer on the listing page, such as the air conditioning or the washing machine, or charging extra for it.
• Fines for not following a request. A "100 euro fee if the house is left dirty", for example.

What you can do is warn, in that same section, about fines from the building or the town hall, for noise for instance.

This is not new. What is new is that Airbnb checks it

In November 2022 Airbnb already said that guests should not have to strip beds, do laundry or vacuum before leaving, and that turning off the lights, throwing out food and locking the door is reasonable.

Now Airbnb checks the text of your requests when you save it. Anything that breaks the policy comes up underlined in red, with the message "Guests shouldn't be asked to do this task" and a tip to fix it. That underline is automatic. If you save the request anyway, Airbnb reviews it, and if it has to change, Airbnb tells you by email.

Rental Scale-Up, a trade publication, tested it on October 23 with several requests. Airbnb flagged "Please load the dishwasher and start it before you leave", "If you check out late, please strip the beds", "Please take your trash to the outdoor bin before you leave" and "A 100 euro cleaning fee will be charged if the house is left dirty". "Please put used dishes in the sink and gather used towels before you leave" passed with no message.

If the request is still there after the email, Airbnb can put a notice on your listing page saying it includes cleaning requests, and move you down in the search results. Fewer people see you, and of those who do, fewer go on to book, because the notice shows before they book.

What happens to the cleaning fee

Airbnb's ground rules for hosts already said that the cleaning fee covers normal cleaning, and nothing more. That does not change.

What changes is who does those tasks. If until now the guest stripped the beds or took the trash down, from November 20 your cleaner does it. That time is part of the cost of cleaning, and it belongs in the cleaning fee.

Two things worth knowing before you touch it:

• Airbnb shows the guest one price, with the cleaning fee inside, and that total price weighs on your position in the search results. I ran the numbers in August.
• In Spain, since October 13, the 15.5% host fee also applies to the cleaning fee. Of every euro you add there, you keep 84.5 cents.

What to check before November 20

1. The rules and requests of every listing, in the Listing editor. Airbnb checks them when you save, so you see at once what it flags. The messages show up mostly in text written years ago: "strip the beds before you leave", "leave the house as you found it", "100 euros if…".
2. Where those rules come from. If your PMS or channel manager (the software you manage bookings and channels from) sends them, fix them there. If you only fix them on Airbnb, they will be back the next time the software pushes them.
3. The cleaning fee. Set it at the real cost of cleaning, counting the tasks your team now does.

Before the 20th, at ListingOK we are checking the rules and the cleaning fee of every listing we manage. If you want us to look at yours, request a demo.

Airbnb asked in 2022 for requests to be reasonable. From November 20, it checks.