Some hosts are threatening to strike, while others are plotting ways around Airbnb’s new restrictions. Guests, meanwhile, are celebrating.
AIRBNB HOSTS ARE melting down over a new policy banning them from making guests complete tasks that “would typically be performed by a cleaner,” like “stripping the bed, taking trash offsite, or washing and putting away dishes.”
The change, which applies to all bookings made on or after November 20, quickly sparked outrage after it was announced in an email to Airbnb hosts on Wednesday. Many began fuming online about losing the right to make their guests clean up after themselves.
“As hosts, we have a responsibility to protect our investments, our homes, and, in many cases, our personal living spaces,” one person wrote in Airbnb’s official forum for hosts. “The problem is that Airbnb increasingly expects hosts to accept the risks while limiting our ability to protect ourselves.”
That’s pretty normal. Ever get work done on your car? You probably paid $60-80 an hour labor, but the mechanic only makes $20/hours
The mechanic shop is a business with overhead; they sell the service of the labourer and use the markup on that service to maintain the shop, advertise, and pay employees in downtime (well, that’s what they’re supposed to do)
The Airbnb host is hiring the cleaning service and shouldn’t be using that to profit; it’s simply a cost of doing business. Shops don’t add 20% to post prices when you order online.
That’s not really the spirit of what the cleaning fee is supposed to be. I can see covering overhead of arranging for a cleaning service being legitimate. Using it as a profit center is wrong. Employing a mechanic as part of an auto service center is different because that is their primary profit center. A host is supposed to make money from the main lodging fee, not an inflated cleaning charge.
That’s much like adding a profit margin to a shipping charge.
If the cleaning fee is always charged, then there’s no good reason for it to be a separate line item. There may be bad reasons relating to platform fees or taxes.
I think a reasonable profit is okay, but 3x the basic cost is excessive.
Cleaning fees are something Uber has reasonably received much criticism for, and something I saw as a problem trying to use the platform myself. One thing is they for a long time did not include the cleaning fee in the pricing you’d see in a search… you had to read the description for each property to see what it was. That meant you might see one property for $200, and other for $100, which seemed like a relative bargain… but then turns out the $200 one had a $50 cleaning fee and the $100 one charged $175, for example. I think they finally changed that a few years back but it’s hard to see how AirBnB could not have understood why that would be a problem in the first place.
A car repair business has many more expenses with specialist buildings, equipment purchase and maintenance, staff, insurance, and so on, than a typical landlord. Plus you don’t have to pay rent on top of the service fee when they’re fixing your car.
If the shop gives me a bill with a $75 “labor” item, but actually pays the mechanics $25, I’d also have a big problem with that
That’s literally how that works though, so you likely have a big problem with all work being done. How do you think they pay rent for the shop space or keep the lights on? There is no “this goes to keep the lights on” surcharge. It’s built into the pricing. A business generally cannot charge exactly what their employees make. It’s not even a “capitalists shave money off the top” issue. I literally run my own business and I don’t pay myself what I charge by the hour. Some of that goes into paying for software or hardware or general business overhead (accounting, website fees, etc).
I agree that in general some margin on labor can be expected to recoup capex. But ~70% is just too much, especially for the original example of a “cleaning fee” on top of the “everything else” charge that you already have to pay.
Actually when I still had a car and took it to my favourite shop, the itemized bill included parts, labor, and a “workshop charge” to pay their rent and stuff. Speaking to the mechanics they did actually get all the money in the “labor” item (minus payroll taxes). I liked that approach.
Oh, the Airbnb cleaning fee is a scam for sure. I thought you were taking issue just with the fact the mechanics are not paid the full labor amount. I don’t work with cars so I’m not going to speculate on appropriate overhead or shop/mechanic price split, but I have never personally seen a bill itemized as you describe for basically any of the trades. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, I’ve just not personally experienced it. Glad to see it working for that shop though.