What are Airbnb checkout instructions
In Airbnb’s 2023 summer release, they added a feature which allows hosts to show checkout instructions on their listing. This was done in response to public backlash when news stories about Airbnb hosts with outrageous checkout demands started appearing. These guests complained of long chore lists often accompanied by a cleaning fee leaving many guests to wonder what the cleaning fee was for.
Now hosts can choose from a handful of predefined options as well as add additional requests. Those predefined options are:
- Turn things off
- Lock up
- Gather used towels
- Throw away trash
- Return keys
Some of these items fall more into the chore category than others, but the spirit was to formalize a system for hosts with checkout requests.
Introduction to the analysis
Sometimes a company’s response to public outrage is more so about managing optics than it is about the customer experience. I wanted to know if that was the case here. For this analysis I gathered 30,000+ listings randomly sampled from the US as of July 2023 – a couple of months after the checkout instructions functionality was added. See the Github for this project to see the dataset and code used on the analysis.
With this dataset, we’ll see how often hosts are using this new functionality, which chores they are giving their guests and most importantly, is it impacting the guest experience.
How many Airbnb hosts have checkout instructions?
Analyzing the dataset, I found 18% of the listings had something in the “before you leave” section of the listing. Interestingly, this proportion was about the same for Superhosts and non-Superhosts alike. Superhosts had instructions 19% of the time vs 18% of the time for non-Superhosts.
What checkout instructions do Airbnb hosts have?
Below is a table showing which instructions hosts are giving their guests before checkout. I’ve presented them both as a % of listings with instructions and a percentage of all listings in the dataset. Turn things off is the most common instruction hosts have with 59% of listings with instructions (or 11% of all listings) asking guests to do this. The least common instruction was to return keys.
Do Airbnb hosts with chores have a cleaning fee?
Next, I wanted to look at if hosts with checkout instructions are charging a cleaning fee and how it compares to hosts without instructions. In the dataset, 90% of hosts had a cleaning fee and it was the exact same for hosts with and without checkout instructions. 90% of hosts in both groups charged a cleaning fee.
The amount of that cleaning fee was also mostly the same. Hosts with checkout instructions had an average cleaning fee of $97 compared to $94 for hosts with no checkout instructions.
Do checkout instructions impact the guest experience?
Here is the big question. The news articles that drove Airbnb to add this functionality would have you believe this was ruining the guest experience. But with Airbnb’s rating system we have a quantifiable way to check if this is true. We can compare the overall rating of hosts with and without checkout instructions as a measure of overall satisfaction.
Doing this we see that hosts with chores had an average overall rating of 4.89 versus those without instructions with a 4.84. So, while close, the listings with instructions had a higher overall rating on average than those without.
Out of curiosity, I wondered how checkout instructions impacted two of the other ratings – value and cleanliness. In both cases, I found the same thing as the overall rating. Listings without checkout instructions scored higher on average in these categories than those without.
Below is a summary of stats for listings with and without checkout instructions
If you’re wondering do any specific tasks fair better or worse against these averages, I’ve summarized that below. For the most part no one task differs from the others. If anything, the listings asking guests to throw trash away have the highest average cleaning fee of any task.
Airbnb including dishes as a chore for guests
One last thing I wanted to do was to examine the additional requests more closely since those are customizable. Hosts can put whatever they want in there. Parsing out the words and removing common words I found the top 5 words appearing in the additional requests to be: dishes, leave, dishwasher, check and start.
It stands to reason that the most common additional request has to do with dishes and/or the dishwasher. I then isolated only those additional requests that contained the words “dishes” or “dishwasher” and summarized the stats below.
It turns out not even the chore of doing dishes is negatively impacting these hosts ratings. Even with most of these listings charging a cleaning fee, and a higher one at that, the overall rating is still high.
Why did Airbnb add checkout instructions?
There are a few things to parse out with these results. Firstly, I am not considering occupancy rate. It’s possible that checkout instructions have a negative impact on occupancy rate, though I doubt this to be the case. When modeling out factors that have a positive influence on occupancy, I found the value rating to be a strong predictor. And we see above that having checkout instructions does not negatively impact the value rating. Therefore we can assume checkout instructions are likely not having a negative influence on occupancy.
Rather, it is more likely the news stories of outrageous experiences with chores came from a very small minority of guests. And the sensational nature of these stories made it easy to fall victim to the “hasty generalization fallacy”. In this logical fallacy a small number of events inform our entire thinking on a population – e.g., surely all Airbnb hosts are scammers with outrageous chore lists.
While we can see for ourselves using the data this isn’t the case, the easiest way for Airbnb to address the negative press is to add a checkout instructions functionality for hosts making it transparent for everyone.
Importance of setting expectations
But how do we explain that for the most part checkout instructions – even those with dishes – don’t seem to be ruining a guest’s experience? It comes down to communication and expectations. We saw when modeling Airbnb reviews that the absolute worst type of written review involves a bad host interaction. The opposite can then be true where positive interactions lead to positive overall experiences. A host who kindly asks guests to follow reasonable checkout instructions is unlikely to create a negative experience.
We also know that the accuracy of the listing description is a huge driver of the value rating and the overall rating. So, hosts who clearly communicate expectations about checkout instructions before a guest arrives are less likely to create a negative stay experience.
Key Takeaways
- The data shows checkout instructions in general do not have a negative effect on the guest experience.
- Most hosts with checkout instructions still charge a cleaning fee.
- Positive interaction and setting accurate expectations with guests are important when implementing checkout instructions.
