Hometime is strategic in the way we display the cleaning fee to guests.
We implement a Resort Fee strategy to improve the optics of each property's listing.
High cleaning fees are a nationwide issue due to a large supply shortage in professional cleaning companies. As a way to combat this, Hometime has incorporated a strategy of placing a portion of the total cleaning fee into the Resort Fee.
How it works
The Resort Fee is a back-end feature of booking platforms, where fees can be incorporated into the listing and captured from guests through the booking process.
On Airbnb, the Resort Fee is averaged across the nightly rate and incorporated into the guest's total reservation value. The Resort Fee component is, therefore, not visible to the guest when booking.
If the Resort Fee is $100 and the guest enters a 5-night stay at your property, the nightly rate of the property will be displayed to the guest as $20 per night higher to incorporate the $100 Resort Fee into the 5 nights.
By utilising this feature, Hometime can standardise the cleaning fee displayed to guests across our entire portfolio, while still recouping the correct amount from the guest with varying cleaning fees across our properties.
The cleaning fee has been standardised based on the size of the property:
- 1-bed = $119
- 2-bed = $149
- 3-bed = $199
- 4-bed = $249.
How this works in practice for a two-bedroom apartment if the actual cleaning fee is $225...
The cleaning fee displayed to the guest would be $149, and the remaining $76 would be incorporated into the Resort Fee.
This both improves the listing optics to the guest, while also ensuring that we recoup the necessary cleaning amount to cover costs.
Hometime leverages this strategy for two key reasons:
- Having a modest cleaning fee improves conversion rates as guests feel they are getting a better deal, and the listing is competitive against other listed comparable properties in the market
- Having a modest cleaning fee assists in improving cleanliness guest review scores. If the cleaning fee is very high, this is met with high cleaning expectations from guests, and they expect perfection. If the cleaning fee is more modest, they will generally not have the same cleaning standards, resulting in better average review scores.