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by dcx
1368 days ago
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Is it just me, or does this article look like a textbook example of a press hit / submarine marketing (as described by pg [1]), for Hilton's recently-launched anti-AirBnB campaign [2]? I don't know if I can trust this. It's almost ridiculously anecdotal, and in a big enough market it's unfairly easy to find anecdotes to support almost any claim. There are no metrics about typical cleanup expected or whether cleaning requirements are truly growing; running a dishwasher and cleaning your own messes seems patently reasonable as part of the "deal" of this kind of rental. And as a very infrequent AirBnB user, it's not clear to me how the $143 cleaning fee works. Is it only applied if you make a huge mess? Are the expectations on cleaning and possible fee made clear going in? Or is this always charged and part of the standard fee? I wish this kind of PR nonsense didn't exist; if so, the organic decision to write about this might be signal about a real trend. But given that it does, this may just be an attempt to pipe lies into my brain. I am suspicious. Edit: This line is extremely telling when carefully parsed: "[AirBnB] said around 55% of its active listings charge a cleaning fee, which on average makes up less than 10% of the total reservation cost." [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/AirBnB/comments/wwqibv/hilton_launc... |
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I went to airbnb.com logged out, selected the first posting listed, and tried to find the fees. There was no way to see the fee amount, or even know that there are extra fees, without first selecting a date range. I selected three days, and got this fee breakdown
$614 x 3 nights: $1,842 Cleaning fee: $258 Service fee: $296
The unlisted fees increased the list price by around 30%, or $500. If I had been looking for a place to stay, found that place and decided it was reasonable, and then saw that number after I had already mentally committed, I would be frustrated.
(The nightly price is high because I live near a very expensive area and that was the first thing Airbnb tried to promote to me. But I think this would work to reduce the cleaning fee percent, because the cleaning staff are being hired from the same lower cost of living area that services the cheaper properties in the area as well)