During a recent stay in Stafford, she paid a £35 cleaning fee but was still asked to strip the beds, put on a wash, empty bins and carry rubbish down a long track to a recycling area.
“I don’t particularly mind doing those things, but it did make me question what exactly I was paying the additional cleaning fee for,” she says.
For Foskett, there is a difference between being a considerate guest – “putting your dirty dishes in the dishwasher” – and being “expected to prepare the property for the next guests”.
Through her cleaning business, she has also seen the other extreme, with teams arriving to find broken furniture, vomit and pet urine.
While she sympathises with hosts facing tight turnarounds and rising cleaning costs, these should not be passed on to guests, she says.
“If you’re running an Airbnb as a business, professional cleaning is a cost of doing business.”
Anthony Marsh, who co-owns a cabin retreat in North Yorkshire with his husband, used to list five of their 12 properties on Airbnb, but says the new rules have prompted him to reduce this number to just two.
His concern with the changes is that “Airbnb has effectively given guests permission to come and leave properties a tip, and a host can’t do anything about it”.
