A common complaint around staying at an Airbnb is the dreaded check-out chores, like stripping the bed linen or taking the bins out.
But now the short-term rental service has updated its rules to prevent hosts from including such tasks in their house rules.
According to its community policy update, guests can’t be asked to do things that require “significant effort or time, or would typically be performed by a cleaner”.
As an example, hosts can’t ask you to wash and put away dishes, but they can ask you to put used tableware in the sink.
In a statement shared with Euronews Travel, 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.
“So we’ve redesigned them to make them easier to discover and clearer to set, alongside a new policy that keeps requests reasonable, with no surprises.”
Airbnb’s house rules updates
As part of the update, house rules are now shared on the listing page, in the trips tab, and in reservation reminders.
There are seven standard house rules hosts can share, which cover check-in and check-out times, the number of approved guests, smoking, approval for pets, designated quiet hours, and commercial film and photography.
Hosts will also be able to add “reasonable” requests, and these can be updated at any time.
Airbnb will flag any requests that do not fall in line with the new policy, and the host will need to remove them, or make an appeal.
The cleaning fee should only cover a standard tidy up between guests, and hosts are not allowed to charge guests for not doing something listed in the checkout tasks.