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Category: Pricing & Revenue
By: Megan O'Connor
Reply by Jake Anderson:
I dropped my cleaning fee from $100 to $50 and raised my nightly rate by $15. My bookings went up 35% the next month. Not even kidding. The psychology is real — guests see "$85/night" and "$100 cleaning fee" and mentally they're paying $185/night for a 1-night stay. That's nearly double the advertised rate. But "$100/night" with a "$50 cleaning fee" feels way more palatable even though it's almost the same. For short stays (1-2 nights), bake as much as possible into the nightly rate. For longer stays (5+ nights), a higher cleaning fee is less of a deal-breaker because it amortizes over more nights. If you're using PriceLabs (https://pricelabs.co), you can factor the cleaning fee into your nightly rate calculations automatically. Game changer.
Reply by James Wu:
I charge $0 cleaning fee and bake everything into the nightly rate. My listing shows up better in filtered searches because a lot of guests filter by "total price" or set a nightly budget. The downside is my nightly rate looks higher than comparable listings at a glance. But my conversion rate is great because there's no sticker shock at checkout. Also, Airbnb changed their search to show total price (before taxes) by default in many markets. So the "hidden fee" problem is getting smaller, but guests still don't love seeing a big cleaning fee line item. Our cleaning fee calculator at https://strspecialist.com/tools/cleaning-fee-calculator can help you model the impact on your bottom line.