Airbnb bans making guests do dishes and take out the trash

I understand that there can be exceptional circumstances. However, I've stayed in more hotels by a factor of at least 25, and this has never happened once. In fact, any minor inconvenience at a hotel is usually remedied promptly, and user reviews generally feel accurate.

Airbnb wouldn't share any information about why the host was allowed to cancel (I understand there may be privacy concerns, but I'm left wondering if they simply found a better paying private offer, given it was for the holiday season and booked well in advance). In one case I found an alternative in the same building, so there was no widespread issue.

Those two are enough to put me off Airbnb forever. I just don't want the additional stress of wondering whether I'll receive a last minute cancellation, even if they're exceedingly rare.

What do you think would have been my experience at Airbnb?

The vacation rental companies offer very consistent cleaning services and local contacts for any issues with the house, and were relatively cheap because they were typically able to fill these houses with weeklong rentals all summer.

With Airbnb and VRBO, sometimes they are just a marketplace for the exact same rental companies that already existed, under the same terms and conditions, but a higher nightly price, and sometimes they are far less professional operations, and it's not easy to tell which is which when you are initially paying.

Last summer we rented a house directly through a vacation rental company that was also listed on VRBO for a third of the nightly price it was listed on VRBO for. We're dreading the day when the only option left is VRBO.

Call me lazy but I’ve always wondered why I need to take out the trash when a cleaning crew was coming in 10 minutes after I checked out.

Granted, Airbnb has taken on the hotel industry, and so I'm not surprised that their rules have evolved.

The ones requiring the most absurd cleaning procedures are the ones most likely to ignore the rules and continue their policy.

I welcome this move to ban host rules that detract from the experience.

I try to leave airbnb in exact same condition as it was upon our arrival (obviously I am not washing sheets). After reading comments here I feel weird or is this difference between Americans and Europeans? Do HN readers like to live like pigs to stay in mess and leave mess after themselves?

edit: I checked my airbnb receipts and I see everywhere only Airbnb service fee, there is no extra cleaning fee on any of them, if they charged extra money for some cleaning fee maybe my approach would be different

1. Just like all the add-on charges with air travel like having a checked bag or choosing a seat, a lot of negative experiences come from consumers making decisions solely based on price. This creates an incentive to leave things out to have a lower sticker price. Hotels with non-optional "resort" fees, cruises, and car rental all operate on this model.

The specific issue with Airbnb is the supposed lower cost comes for hiding costs like cleaning. Cleaning is expensive when you start talking about an apartment let alone a house. This is built in to the hotel price (minus tips, which are minor). Also, hotels avoid having the potential for a lot of cleaning (eg a full kitchen).

You might stay in an Airbnb and never use the kitchen, existing totally on eating out. Or you might cook a full Thanksgiving dinner for 20 people and use every dish and appliance in there. How are you meant to handle this when the cleaning cost could be $100 or $1000?

2. Airbnb like oh so many "tech" companies profits by pushing the negative externalities of their business onto people who didn't consent. The most notable negative externality is running an illegal hotel in a residential neighborhood. Hotels have staff, fire codes, licensing and inspections. Some random house does not.

Another is that the house owner never has to suffer from disruptive behavior from guests who may never return. I really think more places should restrict Airbnb to ADUs only when the owner is on-site.

Also, the evidence that Airbnb has driven up rents is undeniable at this point with more than a decade of evidence.

At the same time, hosts clearly profit off of unreasonable charges, like charging $300-500 to "clean" a studio apartment that might only take an hour. It's a bit like landlords stealing security deposits. It's particularly egregious when you're given a random list of tasks you must do, such as stripping sheets and starting wash cycles, etc.

Intermediation businesses are generally bad. The only way to increase profits at a certain point is by cutting costs and raising prices. The other parties want to avoid the middleman charges and go direct. It's why all these businesses like finding cleaners, tutors, etc all only go so far because people go off-platform.

They could take user feedback seriously, but chose not to. Case in point: we booked a place in Hawaii. We (2 people) arrived the day of, tired as heck from the beach activities. Place looked fine, except for the crumbs of food in the nooks and crannies of the kitchen. No big deal. We crashed almost right away, too tired to do anything else. An hour later, my wife jumped up, claiming some insect was walking on her legs. I turned on the lights sleepily, and lo and behold, there were cockroaches on the ceiling, scurrying about (and one had fallen and landed on my wife's legs). In the middle of the night, I contacted AirBnB help. They wanted proof. So I took a video and sent it, along with photos. Finally around 2AM they agreed that we should get out of there. We packed up and left for the beach, to wait things out.

My first reaction was: I should leave a review telling people about the roaches. But guess what? AirBnB cancelled our reservation, so there was no way to rate the place or leave a review! They did refund me, but we wasted a day trying to catch up on the lost sleep.

After that experience, I stopped booking AirBnBs if I could help it. They (and VRBO) are a last resort for me (no pun intended).

It’s ultimately an issue of consistency. If I book with a name brand hotel I have some comfort knowing they have corporate standards that tend to be enforced consistently across properties. If a Hilton, Marriott etc hotel has issues it tends to get dealt with quickly because those brands know consistency is their brand. In extreme cases they will kick hotels out of their brand. That randomly named hotel that used to be a brand name was likely kicked out of the portfolio for compliance issues.

With an AirBnb it’s a total crapshoot. Sometimes it’s totally fine, other times you’d end up in the dirty lair of a psychopath.

For me personally I only ever use Airbnb's now for big trips with at least 3-4 bedrooms needed. These types of Airbnbs usually have more professional management in any case. But otherwise I think Airbnb just offers a poor value:

1. For a long time Airbnbs skirted hotel taxes and other fees. Those days are long gone, so I often find Airbnbs to be just as expensive or more than hotels when you factor in cleaning and other fees.

2. Like this article points out, quality control and rules can be all over the map, and people are sick of it. With a hotel you usually know what you're getting, with an Airbnb it's always a crapshoot.

3. A huge benefit with a hotel is that if something goes wrong you can almost always be moved to another room, sometimes a different hotel. With Airbnb, while they may help you rebook it's much more fraught and you don't know what the next place will be.

So for me I use hotels for most stays now, though I am curious about house swapping for longer overseas trips. I have friends that have raved about it so it just seems like a better option.

Most guests of AirBNB like clean homes, and usually tidy up pretty well themselves. Maybe there's a way to incentivize those who choose to, or want to and offer a discount if they want it.

Turn it off and come back to a sauna that will take 3 hours to cool down. I'm not doing that.

My maid service will not wash dishes. They need me to clear the sink every time before they arrive. It's often a point of contention, because I leave dirty dishes quite often, and I simply forget what needs to be done. I don't have a problem with doing it for them, I just forget.

But I believe that the reason they will not wash my dishes is because of food safety. In a commercial kitchen, even the dishwasher needs to hold a Food Handler's card or certificate. The sanitizing of dishes and utensils is serious business. If they're not clean enough to eat from, you could be passing foodborne illness.

I would never want to stay at a place that didn't professionally wash its dishes. I've never stayed with AirBNB and I plan to keep it that way. Thankfully, the hotel industry is still a quite viable business, and hotels have staff, insurance, and regulation on their side, even now. I recently had a "staycation" in a 98-year-old classic hotel, and it was so wonderful, worry-free, and pleasant, and cost-effective. I am thankful that they are still operating like that.

I'm a host, I've had hundreds of stays over several years, and I have stellar reviews. It's a large house so there's a $250 cleaning fee. I ask guests to start the dishwasher and take their trash to the dumpster at the end of the street.

I'd say I have two types of guests. The first type is the 99% - they are friendly, grateful, and make the whole thing worthwhile. People who ask for recommendations on the area, leave a nice note in our guest book, and are grateful and respectful of our home. They never complain about taking care of a few things before they leave, and often ask what else they can do. It's honestly a source of positivity for everyone involved to have them stay in our home.

I can count on a single hand the number of times I've had the second type of guest. Exploitative people who have it out for us the second they check in and won't be satisfied until they've extracted money and apologies. As a host, I have literally zero recourse against these people. The system is set up to let them behave this way, and they make me more cautious and my home more expensive for everyone else.

Getting to my point - everyone comes to conversations about Airbnb with an enraged, polarized point of view. It's still a thriving platform with absolutely everything in a single place. The homes range from bare bones crash pads and neglected side projects to true luxury experiences. The guests range from people you are happy to have met to true predators.

Unfortunately, Airbnb and Vrbo have created an absolute race to the bottom. As a host I have next to zero ability to screen who stays with us, and I'm basically at the mercy of bad actors. They extract huge fees and are unhelpful to me and barely helpful to my guests. They introduce ham-fisted rules like this every few months and are revenue optimizing themselves off a cliff.

This is a market that could benefit from more choice.

There's also quite a big perception bias towards guests when it comes to discourse about Airbnbs. As a host I have to deal with so many unbelievably disgusting and disrespectful people renting my places on a regular basis, but nobody is ever talking about that. Social media would have you believe all guests are victimized angels and hosts are greedy and evil. I would love to see some of these people host and find out what it's really like. If you've worked in retail or hospitality you know.

Airbnb has actually gotten extremely sensitive about this perception the last couple years. They've changed a lot of policies to bend over backwards for guests to avoid the PR. Any guest you see complaining online about a recent experience should be taken with a _large_ grain of salt because Airbnb very rarely sides with hosts anymore and it likely means the guest did something very egregious to get penalized.