Airbnb Cleaning Fees Are Too Damn High

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Full Disclosure: I’ve harbored an internal Airbnb gripe for a couple years now, but I’m a coward and I need to be reinforced by strangers online before going public with my opinion. Courage is hard.

Remember the good ole days in say, 2017, when Airbnb was the obvious choice of accommodation—both practically and fiscally—a welcomed player in a realm monopolized by stale continental breakfasts, misplaced key cards, and drop-down ironing boards?

While we’ve been busy canceling Ellen and fighting over the color of a gold dress, Airbnb has become the very thing it set out to abolish, or at least become complicit in hosts’ bottomless quest to murder our wallets.

 

The vacation rental company began trending on Twitter this week for the ever-growing Cleaning Fees charged by hosts, which are essentially just a more aesthetically-pleasing way of jacking up the nightly rates beyond reasonability.

Cleaning after strangers is necessary, but if you’re telling me pets, parties, and smoking aren’t allowed and that the rental should be left “just the way I found it,” what exactly am I coughing up $150 for? A shaman to rid the space of my flatulence? Lord knows, I’m in a longterm relationship and not having any sex in beds.

Airbnb should either cap the cleaning fees or require hosts to upload receipts that prove the money was used to clean my feces stains off the rim of the toilet.

Somewhere off a highway outside an airport, the staff at every Best Western in America celebrates with a single-serve cup of Fruit Loops. Hotels are back?

If Jimmy McMillan were still around, he wouldn’t stand for this. RIP to a man wise beyond his years.

Matt Keohan Avatar
Matt’s love of writing was born during a sixth grade assembly when it was announced that his essay titled “Why Drugs Are Bad” had taken first prize in D.A.R.E.’s grade-wide contest. The anti-drug people gave him a $50 savings bond for his brave contribution to crime-fighting, and upon the bond’s maturity 10 years later, he used it to buy his very first bag of marijuana.