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As an Airbnb host, the cleaning fee is the fee you charge and recover from your guests over and above the base rental price. It’s a onetime charge irrespective of how long the guest stays. Why? Because this is the fee you recover from the outgoing guest to prepare the place for the incoming guest. For example, if the base rental price is $300 per day and a guest stays for 3 days, the total base rental price will be $900. If, let’s say, you charge a onetime cleaning fee of $250, the guest will pay $1150 ($900 + $250). This $250 will help you clean the place and get it ready for the upcoming guests.
So, how much should you charge as a cleaning fee? Simple. Calculate your cleaning costs (labor + supplies like soap, sanitizers, microfiber cloths, etc.) and add a markup (profit markup). Now, let’s be clear here. The cleaning fee is not where you make a profit. Despite that, we need to add markup for 2 reasons: First, the cleaning cost estimate may not be accurate. So, we need some kind of buffer to prevent loss. Second, Airbnb charges a host fee (commission) not only on the base rental payout but also on the cleaning fee payout. In the previous example, if the Airbnb host fee is 3%, Airbnb will deduct this 3% from the total of $1150 (which includes the cleaning fee) and pay the balance to the host. So, if we don’t mark up our cleaning costs slightly, we might lose money.
Coming back to the formula: Cleaning costs + markup
Now, cleaning costs = (cleaning time x hourly rate) + supplies cost
Markup = Cleaning costs x markup rate/100
Expanding the formula, we get: [(Cleaning time x hourly rate) + supplies cost] + [[(Cleaning time x hourly rate) + supplies cost] x markup rate/100]
Now, factoring in the common element [(Cleaning time x hourly rate) + supplies cost] in the formula, we can simply this formula:
[(Cleaning time x hourly rate) + supplies cost] x (1 + markup rate/100).
This formula is the backbone of the calculator you see above.
[(5 x 40) + 50] x (1 + 10/100) = $275 (this is the onetime cleaning fee you should charge from your guest).
Remove the markup, and the cleaning cost is $250.
And remove the Airbnb host fee of 3%, the cleaning fee you would receive from Airbnb is $266.75.