Dollywood? Protip

would take "cleaning fees" out. We hate it as much as the guest. However, if we unilaterally charge 0, and adjust the daily rate accordingly, our rate will show as higher than comparable places and not get seen by potential guests. So we all have to play that game. With the cleaning fee factored in, a two night stay in our place is less expensive than a hotel, and we provide a much better place; we would love to simply charge that rate and do away with the cleaning fee.

We also hate that if we give a discount for a weekly stay (we don't, because we don't really want weekly stays), the site picks up that nightly rate as the advertised rate, so if one then books a two night stay it will actually be more. We don't like that any more than the guest does. Like most hosts, we don't mess around with the rate: same rate every day, no matter what. I'm sorry this situation happened to you.

I'm talking myself into eliminating the cleaning fee, see what happens.

CUintulsa®

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This is a very welcome change, though not universally

Nov 28, 2022, 10:58 AM

applicable. This gets a little wonky, but stay with me:

Yes, a price that cuts through the mess of cleaning fees, etc is a great change. In the US it has been doing that for a while, I think. However, for total price to show in the search, one has to put in the specific dates in the search bar: not all searchers do that. Sometimes I do, sometimes not, because if a place I really want is unavailable on, say, the first or last day of my stay, I'm often willing to adjust. But if I specified the dates, I would never see that place at all. And many searchers just don't bother to specify dates. So, while this does help, it can actually be a complicating factor. Again, I would rather them just eliminate the cleaning fees. Way simpler.

The display algorithm has many hosts ready to leave AirBnB if a competitor comes along: BNB tries to keep it secret, but some hosts are good at playing it and therefore keep their units on the first few pages, while others who simply want to provide a good place, and who don't want to get into algorithm competition, get stuck way down the display. Prioritizing by total price vs daily rate seems like a great thing (I'm for it), but I'm not even sure it was prioritizing by price before. If total price becomes a factor in the algorithm we should be okay (we are very reasonable for the quality of the space), but people will find ways to manipulate that too. Again, just take out cleaning fees.

Edit: "Yes" on simplifying check-out requirements, though that probably hurts us: we already had no requirements. It's actually easier to strip the bed than to gather up what someone already took off. Here's a little behind the scenes factoid: when we see the bed stripped, we think, "Uh oh". Almost always this means they have damaged something. Makeup stuff can usually be treated out, but some people use some sort of peroxide stuff on their faces, and it will bleach color out of fabric. I can't imagine they do that to their sheets at home. We use white sheets for that purpose, but sometimes it gets on the bedspread. Just have to throw it away. Cost of doing business. No worries. We love our guests, and we hope they enjoy the time in our place. But there are all sorts of little things like that. The host forums are full of wild stories. We've been very fortunate to have wonderful guests.

Message was edited by: CUintulsa®