Lower rent higher cleaning fee or higher rent lower cleaning fee?

[Sean Wilt]

Question.  I'm thinking higher daily rent with a lower cleaning fee is best?  Say $400/night as an example with $150 cleaning fee which would be the going rate in my area so cleaning fee would essentially be a pass through expense.

I am seeing a fair amount of my competition though that charges upwards of $395 for a cleaning fee which would be WAY over what a cleaning service would actually charge.

Is this a viable strategy to attract more people to your listing?  Perhaps from a platform optimitization perspective? my personal feeling is seeing that large of  cleaning fee is a real turnoff and feels a bit like gauging the guest.  But I may be missing a viable strategy here.

Thoughts?

[Eric A.]

@Sean Wilt pricing strategies and human nature have been studied for years. If you notice when car rental companies or airlines quote you a rate it’s always an upfront desirable rate and then comes the fees. Why? It’s because human nature and selection processes almost always encourage the purchaser to buy. People don’t seem to care as much about additional fees if they think their initial purchase price is a deal. So, we price our properties fairly and have a slightly higher cleaning fee and we never have people complain. Again, the end game is occupancy so play with the numbers and always monitor your competition.