How to Add a Cleaning Fee on Booking.com (and Make Sure It Syncs)
You add a cleaning fee on Booking.com in the extranet under Property, then Policies, then Additional fees and charges, where you pick "Cleaning fee," say whether it is already part of your rate, choose a payment type and enter the amount. If you connect through a PMS or channel manager, check whether it actually sends the fee over, because some tools leave fees for you to set in the extranet yourself.
If you came to Booking.com from Airbnb, the cleaning fee is easy to miss. On Airbnb it lives right in the pricing screen. On Booking.com it sits in the policies area, which is the last place most of us think to look. Here is how to set it up and what I check every time.
Where the cleaning fee lives in the extranet
Booking.com explains the steps in its partner help article on managing service charges. The path is:
- Log in to the extranet.
- Go to Property, then Policies.
- Find Additional fees and charges and click Edit.
- Click Add another fee and choose the cleaning fee from the fee type list.
- Answer whether the fee is already included in your rate.
- Pick a payment type from the dropdown and enter the amount.
- Click Save.
If you need a fee that only applies on certain dates, Booking.com's article says to contact them through the extranet inbox, so plan for that before a holiday season rather than the week of.
Included in the rate or added on top
This one question decides what the guest pays, so slow down here.
- Answer "No" and the cleaning fee is added on top of your nightly price.
- Answer "Yes" and Booking.com treats the fee as part of the price you already set, so the guest does not pay anything extra for cleaning.
Uplisting's guide to adding a cleaning fee on Booking.com puts it plainly: when you answer yes, the cleaning fee is taken from your accommodation price rather than added on top.
Which one is right depends on how you priced the listing. If your Booking.com rates were copied from Airbnb, where the cleaning fee is separate, you almost always want "No." If you deliberately raised your nightly rate to cover cleaning, "Yes" keeps the guest from paying twice.
I wrote more about that tradeoff in cleaning fee vs nightly rate.
Why your PMS may not be sending the fee
This is the part that catches the most hosts. Plenty of channel managers sync rates and availability to Booking.com but leave fees alone. Uplisting, for example, says its cleaning fees do not sync to Booking.com and must be set in the extranet directly. Hosts on the OwnerRez forums have posted about the same surprise in a thread on cleaning fees not syncing to Booking.com.
Before you assume the fee is live, do this:
- Open your PMS help docs and search for "Booking.com cleaning fee."
- Check the extranet yourself under Additional fees and charges.
- Run a test search for your own property on Booking.com for a future date and look at the price breakdown.
- Look at your next real reservation in the extranet and confirm the fee shows on it.
If you manage through Guesty, OwnerRez, Hostfully or Hospitable, each one handles fees a little differently, so read the specific article for your tool rather than trusting what worked on Airbnb.
How it compares to Airbnb and Vrbo
Each platform handles the same fee in its own way. Here is how I think about them side by side.
| Booking.com | Airbnb | Vrbo | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Where you set it | Extranet, Policies, Additional fees and charges | Listing pricing settings | Listing fees and pricing |
| Can it be built into the rate | Yes, by answering that it is already included | You can set the fee to zero and raise the nightly rate | You can set the fee to zero and raise the nightly rate |
| Watch out for | PMS not syncing the fee | Guests comparing total price | Fee display and taxes, see my Vrbo cleaning fee guide |
Commission and your cleaning fee
Booking.com's article on how commission works says commission is calculated on the total value of each reservation. The article does not spell out exactly which extra charges count toward that total, so I would not guess. Look at a commission invoice line for a stay that had a cleaning fee, or ask Booking.com through the extranet inbox, and then price the fee with that answer in hand.
The Genius cleaning fee waiver
Booking.com has a Genius value add that waives the cleaning fee for Genius Level 2 and 3 travelers. According to its partner article on the cleaning fee waiver for Genius travelers:
- You have to be in the Genius partner program.
- The cleaning fee must be charged separately. If you answered that cleaning is already part of the room rate, you cannot offer this.
- You turn it on under Opportunities, then Genius partner program, then Value adds, then Waive cleaning fee.
- You can pause it for set periods in Advanced settings and track bookings under Analytics, then Genius report, then Value adds.
Remember that your cleaner still gets paid on those stays. A waiver is a discount you fund. I would only use it during slow weeks, when you would rather have the booking than an empty calendar.
A worked example
Say your cleaner charges you a flat amount per turnover, and you set your Booking.com cleaning fee to match. On a two night Genius booking with the waiver on, you collect no cleaning fee, so that full cleaning cost comes out of two nights of revenue. On a seven night stay, the same cost is spread over seven nights. That is why some hosts only switch the waiver on when they also have a longer minimum stay.
Setting the amount
Your cleaning fee on Booking.com should usually match the same real cost it covers on Airbnb: what you pay your cleaner, laundry, and supplies for one turnover. I walk through that math in how much to charge for an Airbnb cleaning fee. Keeping the fee consistent across platforms also means one less thing to explain when a guest compares listings.
Make sure the cleaning is worth the fee
Booking.com guests score cleanliness as its own category, and a low score follows you around. I covered how that score works in the Booking.com cleanliness score. The fee only feels fair to a guest when the place is spotless on arrival.
That is the reason I built Clyn. Your cleaner takes photos in the Clyn app at the end of each turnover, Clyn's AI checks every photo against your standard before the next guest arrives, and blurry photos get retaken on the spot. You end up with a dated photo record of every clean, which also helps if you ever need to show the state of the unit.
FAQ
Can I charge a cleaning fee per night on Booking.com?
Booking.com lets you pick a payment type from a dropdown when you add the fee, but its help article does not list the options. Check the dropdown in your own extranet, since the choices can vary by property type and region.
Why don't guests see my cleaning fee on Booking.com?
The most common reasons are that the fee was never added in the extranet, your PMS does not sync fees, or you answered that the fee is already included in your rate. Check the Additional fees and charges section first.
Should I offer the Genius cleaning fee waiver?
It can help fill gaps, especially on longer stays where the lost fee is spread over more nights. On short stays it can wipe out most of the margin from the booking, so turn it on with a plan rather than leaving it on all year.
If you want every turnover checked before check in, you can try Clyn free on one property at clyn.com.