Niamh Shackleton
A woman was left unimpressed after discovering a long list of expectations from an Airbnb host.
TikToker Mel was looking for somewhere to stay for her and her husband, when she found a potential property for them to stay in.
Like many Airbnb places, the price of the stay came with an additional cleaning fee - this one priced at a rather hefty $125.
Advert
But it wasn't the cleaning fee that Mel had an issue with, it was the long list of chores she still needed to do before leaving the property (despite paying a fee that should cover someone else doing them).
In the TikTok posted in 2022, Mel read out of the list shown on the Airbnb's description.
"We ask that guests complete a few checkout duties before departing to allow time to prepare the house safely and on time," she began.
"Removing garbage, removing bed linens, starting the dishwasher and one load of laundry."
Going on to explain her anger at such requests, Mel went on: "Now, maybe this is like entitlement or privilege talking, however, if I’m paying $229 a night to stay somewhere, plus $125 cleaning fee, I’m not doing any f**king laundry. Full stop.
"I know it’s one load of laundry, it’ll take me two minutes to do, but it’s the principle that bothers me."
Many fellow TikTokers understood Mel's frustrations, with a handful of people arguing that cleaning fees should simply be included in the price of the property.
One person wrote: "Hotels incorporate that into their fee. AirBNB hosts need to do the same. I traveled to Alaska and it was cheaper to stay at resorts than AirBNBs."
"Fees should be included in the original price," echoed someone else.
Others suggested that they opt to stay in a hotel instead of an Airbnb because of the hiked cleaning fees.
"All the fees and then you still have to do laundry and take out trash? Cheaper and more convenient to stay in a hotel. Plus there’s room service," a social media user argued, while another said: "For $125 you can get a pretty nice hotel."
Airbnb have previously responded to Mel's comments and insisted that it gives advice to its hosts on keeping cleaning fees reasonable - even urging them to not charge one at all.
The company also told Business Insider that '45 percent of global Airbnb listings do not charge a cleaning fee, and for those that do, the fee on average is less than 10 percent of the total reservation cost'.
In a new statement to UNILAD, a spokesperson for Airbnb said: "This TikTok video is two years old and since then, we have made significant changes to the platform based on feedback from our community to prevent this type of behaviour.
"Following these updates, over 260,000 listings lowered or removed their cleaning fees – on top of nearly 3 million listings that don’t charge one. We regularly share guidance with Hosts on this topic, and repeatedly low ratings may lead to removal."