Is asking a guest to wash their own dishes a step too far?
Airbnb says it is, and last week announced new rules taking effect Nov. 20, stating that hosts can no longer require guests to strip bedsheets, do laundry, wash and put away dishes, or haul trash off-site.
Hosts who rent their home via the homestay website say it’s perfectly reasonable to ask guests to do these chores while still imposing cleaning fees. One superhost says they are “the most basic component of a self-catering stay.”
“Airbnb is forgetting its founding principles,” said Harry Newington, an Airbnb superhost who started a petition on Change.org with currently more than 20,000 signatures to protest the changes. “These were to encourage hosts to allow guests into their homes, for those guests to respect the home they’re in, and, in return, to experience a homely environment that is distinct from a hotel.”
Now a $100 billion company, it’s long past its days as a cool service-economy business. The company, so big that it’s now being blamed for high rents and housing shortages in several European cities, needs to address its identity as a short-term accommodation platform. Should guests pay to stay in a homey environment with a unique set of rules, character, and quirks, or should the experience feel more standardized, like a hotel, without long chore checklists?
Airbnb has walked this fine line since two roommates, Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia, founded the company 18 years ago. They needed extra cash and charged people to sleep on an air mattress in their San Francisco apartment.
While hosts are rankled by the new rules, some guests are applauding them, saying they are fed up with what they call crazy checkout chores that go far beyond washing dishes. Travel blogger Meredith Thomas, who has been living out of Airbnbs for the past two years, said she nearly stopped using the platform after a stay in Denver where rules included removing shoes before entering the house.
“When we arrived, there was an entire massive binder of house rules and instructions,” Thomas said. “I was flabbergasted, as the unit was already super expensive, as was the cleaning fee. They also required us to drive garbage down the road, run laundry for towels and sheets, do all the dishes, etc., etc., etc.”
Melissa Hennesey Masters, who runs an off-the-grid Airbnb in rural Vermont, asks guests to address dishes, trash, and other items not because she’s being unreasonable, but because they could attract animals or insects. This is why Airbnb’s new rules represent a challenge.
“Our goal is to treat the morning of checkout as part of their stay, not a checklist of tasks,” she said. “However, we do ask our guests to keep their dishes washed during their stay for the sole purpose of not attracting bothersome insects or wildlife, which here in Vermont can include anything from ants and mice all the way up to bears.”
She wants to keep stays at her Airbnb relaxed because, as a guest at other Airbnbs, she’s encountered difficult hosts. She once stayed in a house where she said the owner asked her to add half a dozen chemicals into a hot tub and then take a water sample to a testing facility.
“This was definitely an unreasonable request,” she said.
Before we get back to the Airbnb policy tug-of-war and identity crisis, let me step in as a travel writer and as someone who’s stayed at both Airbnbs and hotels to offer some perspective. Hotels offer an easy-to-follow list of dos and don’ts. Do leave a credit card number upon check-in for incidentals (aka overpriced minibar Snickers); don’t trash the room like a coked-up 1970s rock star. Do leave a towel on the bathroom floor if you want a fresh one. You know the drill.
Call me old-fashioned, but that’s one reason I prefer hotels. There are (usually) no surprises, and staff are on-site in case there are hiccups. Airbnbs are more of an adventure, and sometimes not in the best ways.
I’ve had plenty of positive Airbnb experiences, and the pluses are that they let groups stay together in a house and are often cheaper than hotels. But the negatives stick in my brain.
I once stayed in a sweltering Airbnb infested with stink bugs and couldn’t reach the owner. Last month in London, my Airbnb apartment wasn’t ready at the designated check-in time. I was told it wouldn’t be ready for another three hours. I needed to get ready for a dinner reservation I’d made weeks in advance. I was out of luck.
Another pleasantry of hotels is not worrying about being rated as a host or a guest. I’m fearful that if I forget to strip the sheets from a bed, I’ll be penalized. Hosts rely more on good reviews than large hotels, and I’m reticent to leave a review that could hurt a host’s income.
We asked Globe readers: “Have you rented an Airbnb and faced an unreasonable list of chores to complete before checkout?” The 100-plus responses were almost evenly split.
“The list of expected chores has become ridiculous,” Bonnie Akerley of Westford wrote. “After being an early adopter of [Airbnb], I now much prefer booking a hotel where I don’t have to strip beds and take out the trash and recycling.”
“So, so many chores,” another reader said. “Checklists, on the last day of vacation, are totally stressful. I don’t actually mind doing my dishes or starting the dishwasher before I go, but the fear that I’m going to miss a glass my kid left somewhere and get some ridiculous fine is really unappreciated.”
And then there are guests like Mary Gray of Burlington, who thinks the current Airbnb policies are completely reasonable. She said she doesn’t mind cleaning up after herself. Amy Jones of Watertown said she’s stayed in three Airbnbs since June and has not encountered a cumbersome list of rules or chores.
“I would never leave dirty dishes,” Jones said. “It takes two minutes to strip a bed. I was going to gift an Airbnb to my daughter and new husband, but they declined and chose a hotel because they didn’t want to do any chores.”
The chore tiff seems minor compared to other host-guest skirmishes that abound in all corners of social media. Or, as one Redditor told me, the current controversy is “not even the tip of the iceberg; it’s not even located on the tip of the iceberg.”
I’m not sure what that means, and when pressed for details, the mysterious Redditor went silent. But from conversations with others and the forums that abound online, the company still faces many simmering issues it needs to address.
Alex Foti, president of Bretton Woods Vacations, which manages more than 120 rentals in New Hampshire, said the new rules will have little impact on his properties. But he’s generally unhappy with Airbnb’s direction, which prevents hosts from requesting a signed rental agreement, government identification, or even a guest’s cellphone number.
“Hosts are being asked to welcome strangers into their private homes while being denied basic information that helps them manage those stays responsibly,” Foti said.
Clearly, the problems go deeper than a sink full of dirty dishes.
“This is about shared responsibility,” Alexia Georghiou, a frequent Airbnb guest, told me after ticking through some of her bad experiences. “Maybe there needs to be set expectations from Airbnb about what the host should provide in terms of cleaning and what the guest should do. Like at a hotel.”
It seems the company needs its own chore list, and the top chore isn’t stripping sheets or taking out the trash. It’s deciding on a clear business model that can satisfy guests and hosts.
Christopher Muther can be reached at christopher.muther@globe.com. Follow him @Chris_Muther and Instagram @chris_muther.