NYT (“Airbnb Says Guests Shouldn’t Have to Do the Dishes Anymore“):
Airbnb said this week that it will restrict the chores that hosts can require of guests, including stripping beds and washing dishes, after complaints from travelers about cleaning duties imposed on them.
The policy, announced on Tuesday, will apply to bookings starting Nov. 20 and asks hosts to set “reasonable” house rules and to disclose them in a designated section of their listing. Hosts may not introduce new requirements or requests after a guest books, including through messages, signs in the home or conversations with guests.
Checkout chores should not “require significant time or effort, or would typically be performed by a cleaner,” Airbnb said.
Hosts risk receiving a warning or being less visible on listing searches if their rules violate the new requirements, Airbnb said.
“House rules help guests understand what hosts expect, but we’ve heard from our community that they can be confusing, onerous and hard to manage,” the company said in a statement on Thursday.
[…]
Changing consumer preferences and regulations have forced Airbnb, a start-up that rode the highs of the “disruption economy,” to adjust its business model. Originally founded as a platform to match homeowners to travelers looking for short-term rentals as an alternative to hotels, the company this year added independent and boutique hotel listings in an effort to become a “one-stop shop” for travel, Brian Chesky, its chief executive, said in an earnings call in August.
In a May interview with The New York Times, Mr. Chesky acknowledged that some hosts were asking guests to do too many chores. Putting trash in a bin is fine, he said, but guests should not have to take the garbage out.
“No one should have to put the towels in the washer and start it,” he said. “For hosts, it’s to remember to be as hospitable as possible. These people are on vacation and they’re on vacation from their chores.”
I saw a discussion of this on Reddit yesterday, and the response was almost universal: it was about time. Why should we have to do chores on our vacation, after all?
I use Airbnb or VRBO three or four times a year, exclusively in situations where I need a whole house. There’s really no easy substitute for a family beach vacation or a weekend get-together with a large group of friends. It’s not only considerably less expensive, but communal space is also extremely desirable in those situations. If I’m just staying overnight by myself or with my wife, I’ll opt for a hotel.
I honestly don’t mind running the dishwasher, which strikes me as a perfectly reasonable ask. Check-out is generally at 10am and check-in at 4pm. That’s a pretty narrow window. In, say, a beach town, owners likely contract cleaning services, and they can’t possibly start servicing every property at 10 and stay long enough to run and empty the dishwasher.
I don’t think I’ve ever had a host ask me to wash towels, although I’ve sometimes done so on my own. Unless they’re using a service that simply exchanges the towels, the same logic as with the dishwasher applies: washing and drying the towels takes a long time; if the cleaners can simply toss them in the dryer, it expedites the job considerably.
On the other hand, I stayed at one place where the host demanded that I not only run but unload the dishwasher before leaving. I refused, on the grounds that it’s unreasonable that I be expected to get everyone fed early enough to have 90 minutes to run the dishwasher before check-out.
Just about every place I’ve stayed has asked that guests wheel the trash cans to the curb upon leaving. It’s not that big an ask, but I agree that the cleaning crew should do that.
Regardless, I’ve always viewed staying in a rental-by-owner home as something fundamentally different than staying at a hotel. In the former, I’m paying for a place to stay, whereas the latter comes with expectations of service. But, again, my use case—staying with multiple people—may be different from the norm.
