Revenue management, answered

Is my cleaning fee too high for my market, and is it costing me bookings?

Possibly, but the cleaning fee itself rarely kills bookings alone. The real issue is how it affects your total price perception at the search-results level. If your nightly rate looks competitive but the total at checkout spikes hard, conversion drops fast.

By Jack Murphy, Head of Revenue Management at UpRev. Running pricing for US vacation rental managers since 2017. Last updated September 1, 2026.

Benchmark Against Your Actual Comp Set

Pull your direct competitors by bedroom count, location, and quality tier, and compare total checkout price across two-night, four-night, and seven-night stays. A cleaning fee that looks reasonable on a week-long stay can look punishing on a weekend. If your two-night total is consistently higher than comparable listings, that is your answer.

Watch Length-of-Stay Patterns, Not Just Occupancy

A high cleaning fee often shows up as a shift in booking behavior rather than a drop in occupancy. Guests start booking longer stays to justify the fee, or they avoid you entirely on short windows and book a competitor. If your two-night bookings have thinned out while longer stays held steady, the fee structure is likely redistributing demand rather than losing it outright. That distinction matters when you decide whether to adjust the fee or use minimum-stay rules to protect margin.

Fix the Structure Before Cutting the Fee

Before reducing the cleaning fee, evaluate whether you can absorb part of it into the nightly rate and lower the displayed fee. This changes how the listing appears at the search stage without actually reducing what the guest pays. For portfolio managers, this adjustment needs to be consistent across comparable properties or you create internal comp-set problems that distort your own pricing signals.