‘I should not have to be a maid before I leave’: Airbnb guest blasts $250 cleaning fee. She still has chores to do before checking out
In a viral TikTok video, an Airbnb guest called out hosts who charge a cleaning fee yet expect guests to leave the space "spotless."
In the clip, Jaime Colby Hidalgo (@sofloridagirl) shares that she gets "irked" when she stays in an Airbnb, and the hosts give her a "huge list of chores to do" before she checks out. Hidalgo points out that on top of having a list of household tasks to complete, checkout was at 10 am—earlier than the usual 11 a.m. checkout at most Airbnbs or hotels.
"Which royally made me mad," Hidalgo says of the checkout time.
As Hidalgo speaks in the video, she's seen performing a slew of tasks, including striping the bed, tossing the sheets and towels in the bathtub, loading and starting the dishwasher, and picking up random trash around the house, including water bottles and an empty plastic bag.
"A $250 cleaning fee is alot of money. I have no problem paying it but I should not have to be a maid before I leave on top of that," Hidalgo wrote in the caption.
@sofloridagirl A $250 cleaning fee is alot of money. I have no problem paying it but I should not have to be a maid before I leave on top of that. Everyone should be respectful of someone’s property when they leave but I should not have to strip all the beds, run and empty everything before a 10am checkout. #airbnbexperience #airbnbcleaning #airbnbreality ♬ original sound - Jaime Colby Hidalgo
Hidalgo emphasizes that while guests should be respectful of Airbnb owners' properties, they shouldn't have "to strip all the beds, run and empty everything before a 10am checkout," to accomplish that.
"This is crazy," she says at the end of the video.
The video has garnered over a million views and more than 800 comments as of Monday morning.
Last year NerdWallet found that the median cleaning fee for a one-night stay was $75, after analyzing 1,000 Airbnb listings in the United States. While an Airbnb spokesperson told NerdWallet that cleaning fees are generally 10% of the total reservation cost, NerdWallet's analysis found that the fee usually amounted to about 25% of the total price. About 40% of listings analyzed had cleaning fees in the 20% to 29.9% range. There were a few listings in which the cleaning fee was even higher than the nightly rate.
Commenters were equally disgruntled at the cleaning fee costs and what they agree can be unrealistic expectations on the hosts' part.
"Clean OR cleaning fee. Not both!!!" one viewer said.
"They need to give us the option to pay a cleaning fee OR do all the random tasks it’s the air bnb job to handle cleaning after guests not ours," another wrote.
"If they charge me a cleaning fee then I give them something to clean," a further user shared.
Others said that hotels were starting to look like a more attractive option than Airbnb.
"AirBnB is not worth it anymore except for super large groups. It’s ridiculous," a top comment read.
"Agreed! Now that hotels have breakfast again, it’s cheaper and way easier," a second viewer wrote.
Another person offered a unique perspective. "As a vacation rental cleaner, having guests do these chores don’t help us much, we also don’t get paid that whole cleaning fee either," they claimed.
The Daily Dot reached out to Hidalgo and Airbnb for comment via email.
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