How to Set an Airbnb Cleaning Fee for an Aledo or Fort Worth Rental

The cleaning fee is a one-time charge per reservation that you set on your listing. Airbnb treats it as part of the total price of the stay, and since April 2025 Airbnb has shown total prices by default worldwide: search results include all fees before taxes, and the total with taxes appears before checkout.

That changes how a fee feels to a guest. Airbnb’s own guidance to hosts says that adding a cleaning fee raises the total price of a stay, and that its search algorithm prioritizes total price and listing quality. A guest comparing two similar guest houses sees one number for each, not a nightly rate and a fee.

Airbnb suggests hosts use the fee to cover cleaning supplies or a housekeeper. In practice, a fee that covers the real cost of a turnover includes:

• The turnover itself. Your cleaner’s price for one reset of the property, or the value of your own time if you clean it yourself.
• Linens. Laundry service charges, or detergent, water and drying time on site, plus wear on the sets.
• Consumables. Toilet paper, soap, coffee, dishwasher pods and the other supplies you restock after every stay.
• Periodic deep cleaning. A share of the deeper cleans that turnovers do not cover, spread across your bookings.

Costs that do not change from stay to stay, such as repairs or furniture, belong in your nightly rate rather than the cleaning fee.

1. Get a flat per-turnover price. A fixed price per reset makes the rest of the math simple. We quote every short-term rental this way before the first clean.
2. Add the linen cost for one stay. Count the sets each turnover uses and what it costs to wash or replace them.
3. Add consumables for one stay. Divide what you spend on guest supplies in a month by the stays in that month.
4. Compare totals, not fees. Look at the total price of similar listings near you for the same dates, because that is what guests compare.
5. Decide what to fold into the nightly rate. Some hosts keep the fee at cost and adjust the nightly rate; others absorb part of the fee to keep short stays competitive.

Review the fee when your costs change: a new cleaner, a switch from on-site laundry to a service, or a busy season with more one-night stays.

A single cleaning fee spread across one night raises the per-night total far more than the same fee spread across a week. Airbnb lets hosts set a lower cleaning fee for stays of one or two nights under Calendar, then the listing, then Pricing, Fees and Cleaning fee, and switch it on or off.

That option is useful on the Fort Worth side, where concerts and games at venues such as Ariat Arena bring one-night bookings. Airbnb’s guidance also suggests that new hosts consider waiting before they add a cleaning fee.

On Vrbo, the cleaning fee is entered as a fee rather than written into the property description: Calendar, then Settings, Pricing, Fees and Standard Fees. Vrbo says mandatory fees are always shown to travelers up front. If you list on both platforms, keep the two fees aligned so the totals guests see stay comparable.

In Texas, short-term rentals owe hotel occupancy tax. The state rate is 6% of the cost of a room, and the Comptroller says people leasing their houses must collect it. For stays of 29 nights or fewer, Airbnb collects the Texas state tax on the listing price plus the cleaning fee.

City hotel taxes are a separate question. When we checked in November 2026, Airbnb’s list of local taxes it collects in Texas did not include Fort Worth, Benbrook, Aledo, Willow Park, Hudson Oaks or Parker County, and Fort Worth asks hosts to collect its 9% city hotel tax themselves. Our guide to short-term rental rules and hotel tax covers each city we serve. For anything specific to your situation, ask a tax adviser.

Because the cleaning fee pays for the turnover, Airbnb keeps cleaning off the guest’s to-do list: hosts may not charge guests fees for skipped checkout tasks, and checkout requests have to be reasonable. Keep instructions to the basics, such as trash, used towels and locking up, and let your cleaner handle the rest. Our turnover cleaning checklist shows what a full reset includes.