Airbnb guests will not have to wash dishes under new cleaning policy
Airbnb says hosts cannot demand cleaner-level chores such as washing dishes from guests booking stays from Nov. 20.
Airbnb is changing what hosts can reasonably ask guests to do at checkout. From reservations booked on or after Nov. 20, hosts will not be allowed to demand chores that require significant effort or would normally be handled by a cleaner, including stripping beds, taking rubbish off-site or washing and putting away dishes, according to the platform’s updated house-rules guidance.12
The policy does not mean every checkout request disappears. Airbnb says hosts can still ask guests to follow reasonable instructions, with exceptions for local circumstances such as drought restrictions or placing rubbish in a bear-proof container. The practical change is that a long list of cleaner-level jobs can no longer be presented as a mandatory part of the stay.1
That matters because checkout instructions have become a familiar source of friction. Guests have sometimes faced pages of jobs alongside cleaning fees, while hosts have argued that extra work pushes costs on to them. CNET reports that some hosts are already warning of higher cleaning fees, while others say their existing instructions were meant to be optional rather than punitive.2
Airbnb has been moving towards clearer pricing and stay expectations for several years. Its own newsroom has previously described efforts around transparent checkout instructions, total-price display and enforcement of guest ground rules covering cleanliness, noise and damage.3
Our opinion
This is a sensible consumer-facing correction, but it will only work if Airbnb makes the rule visible at the point of booking and gives hosts a clear way to distinguish a genuine local safety request from a prohibited chore list. Guests should not have to interpret conflicting instructions in an app, a welcome book and a message thread. At the same time, the policy does not make a home maintenance-free: considerate guests should still leave a property reasonably tidy and report problems. The useful test is simple — a basic courtesy is one thing; unpaid cleaner work presented as a condition of checkout is another.
The change should reduce unpleasant surprises, although its success will depend on enforcement and on whether hosts adjust prices or instructions in response. Airbnb has set a clearer boundary; now it needs to make that boundary easy to understand before guests book.