If you want the vacation rental cleaning fee explained without spin, here it is: the guest pays it, a cleaner earns it, and the interesting part is everything that happens in between. Owners rarely see this money, but how it's handled affects your bookings, your reviews, and sometimes your effective management rate.
Who actually pays
On Airbnb, Vrbo, and most direct booking sites, the cleaning fee is a separate line the guest pays once per stay, on top of the nightly rate. It's not owner income. It's a pass-through meant to cover the turnover: cleaning, laundry, restocking, and a walkthrough.
The owner pays only when the fee collected doesn't cover the actual cost. That happens more than you'd think, especially with large homes, heavy linen loads, or pet stays. A four-bedroom house with a hot tub and eight beds takes a crew several hours. If the listed fee is set low to look competitive, someone eats the difference, and it's usually you.
Where the money goes
There are three common models:
- Pass-through. The cleaning fee goes to the cleaning crew, in full. The manager doesn't touch it. This is how we do it.
- Manager-retained. The manager collects the fee, pays a cleaner less than that, and keeps the spread. Not always disclosed.
- Commissionable. The manager takes their percentage on the cleaning fee too, then pays the cleaner. Your "25%" is now a bit more than 25%.
None of these are scandalous on their own. The problem is when owners don't know which one they're in. Ask your manager plainly: who receives the cleaning fee, and is it included in the commission base? The answer should take one sentence.
How the fee affects bookings
Guests hate cleaning fees more than they hate a slightly higher nightly rate. Both platforms now show total price up front, which softened the sticker shock, but a $300 fee on a two-night stay still reads as a penalty. For short stays, a high cleaning fee kills conversion. For week-long stays, it barely registers.
Our approach: set the fee at the real cost of a turnover for that specific home, no more, and let the nightly rate carry the profit. On short-stay-heavy homes like The Weekender in Neskowin, which sleeps three, the fee is modest because the turn is quick. A big house with a bunk room and a hot tub costs more to reset, and the fee reflects it.
Pet fees are a separate thing
All four of our homes take dogs, and we get asked about this constantly. A pet fee is not a cleaning fee. It covers the extra work a dog stay creates: hair, the occasional accident, deep vacuuming, a wipe-down of the yard. Keep it separate on the listing so guests understand what they're paying for and cleaners know what to expect. Rolling it into the cleaning fee makes every guest pay for dogs, which annoys the ones who didn't bring one.
What a cleaning fee should buy
If you're paying for a turnover, here's what it should include every single time:
- Full clean of every room, including under beds and behind the couch cushions.
- All linens and towels laundered, not just the ones that look used.
- Kitchen restocked with basics: dish soap, sponges, paper towels, trash bags, coffee filters.
- Hot tub checked and chemically balanced.
- A photographed inspection with a checklist so damage is caught and documented.
That last step is where cleaning and management overlap, and it's where the real value sits. A clean without an inspection is a missed opportunity. We wrote about that in The Inspection After Every Stay.
Setting the number
Don't guess. Ask your cleaner for their actual rate for a full turn of your home, including laundry. Add supplies. That's your fee. Check it against comparable listings in your area and adjust the nightly rate, not the cleaning fee, if you need to compete. And revisit it annually; cleaning labor costs on the Oregon coast have climbed, and a fee set three years ago may be quietly underwater.
We include cleaning coordination and post-stay inspection in our 20% fee, with the cleaning fee itself passed straight through to the crew. If you'd like to see what that structure looks like for your home, our earnings review lays it out. And the full list of what's covered lives on the owners page.