I used to be an active Airbnb host for a vacation house I own. For reference it was a 4 bedroom Victorian.
I had to pay $150 to clean the house each time I had a booking, that's what it cost me. I passed it along to guests at exactly that cost.
Not sure if it was "worth it" for some guests, or people staying only one night. But that's what I had to pay, it wasn't part of any nefarious strategy. In developed countries it's going to cost to clean that place, that's just the way it is. You don't have the economies of scale that a hotel has with a team of maids.
I'm clearly not a single guy renting 4 bedroom victorian homes. I'm more talking about the people who charge you $80-150/night to clean a 1 bedroom studio, especially if it's a guesthouse in their back yard and I'm asked to do half of the work (put dishes in dishwasher, take out trash, take sheets off bed, etc) and still charged more than I know it costs to clean. Also the fact that it doesn't show up on the map when plotting trips, I have to go into the listing and wind up rejecting half of the options after.
At that point unless I'm looking for a specific experience (cabin in the woods, victorian 4 bedroom home) I'll probably just get a hotel to not have to deal with it.
I think my biggest issue is the DAILY clean fee. I'm fine with a one time clean fee if I'm there for 3-5 days. Hosts aren't coming in and rolling my sheets every night.
Fair enough; not everyone is abusing that feature, and I can understand how a large home like that would legitimately cost $150.
But many are, and Airbnb isn't doing anything for the UI that lets you adapt for that and sort by total cost. There's almost an arms race for how much of the cost you can obfuscate that way.
I had to pay $150 to clean the house each time I had a booking, that's what it cost me. I passed it along to guests at exactly that cost.
Not sure if it was "worth it" for some guests, or people staying only one night. But that's what I had to pay, it wasn't part of any nefarious strategy. In developed countries it's going to cost to clean that place, that's just the way it is. You don't have the economies of scale that a hotel has with a team of maids.