Airbnb Just Banned Checkout Chores. Here’s What Your Guest Manual Should Say Now

What changed, in 90 seconds

Airbnb announced the policy on October 20 and it applies to reservations booked on or after November 20, 2026. The trigger is the booking date, not the stay date. A reservation made on November 19 for a March stay runs under your old rules. A reservation made November 20 for this weekend runs under the new ones.

Hosts can generally no longer ask guests to complete tasks that take significant effort or time, or that a cleaner would normally do. Airbnb’s own examples: stripping the bed, taking trash offsite, washing and putting away dishes, and starting a load of laundry. Hosts can still ask guests to put dishes in the sink, gather used towels, sort trash into the indoor bins, switch off the air conditioning and lock up. Hosts cannot fine guests, cannot withhold anything for unfinished tasks, and cannot restrict an amenity the listing advertises. Cleaning fees are untouched.

Enforcement runs through the Listing editor. Flagged text is underlined on save, Airbnb emails you with fix tips and an appeal path, and an unresolved listing can show guests an “includes cleaning requests” alert, then lose search visibility.

The same October 20 update also limits separate rental agreements and ID collection. Those changes affect professional managers more than the chore rule does, and they are covered in our explainer on what hosts can’t do from November 20. This article stays on the checkout rewrite.

Rules versus requests: the distinction your old checkout list ignored

Airbnb’s new editor splits what you tell guests into two categories, and only one of them is binding.

House rules are the seven standard settings: maximum overnight guests, quiet hours, events, pets, smoking and vaping, commercial photography, and lock up at checkout. Guests must follow these. If a guest breaks one during the stay, or says before check-in that they intend to, you can cancel without penalty.

Requests are everything else you add in the same section, including every checkout instruction. Airbnb’s policy language is that guests “are encouraged” to follow requests. There is no cancellation right attached, no fee, and no fine. Your tools for a request are the review and the Airbnb-provided quick reply that resends your rules mid-stay.

Most hosts have been treating the whole checkout list as rules. Under the new structure, one line of it (lock up, return keys) is a rule, and the rest were only ever requests, now limited to the light versions. Writing your guest manual as if the full list were enforceable is the habit to break first.

Audit the four places chores hide

Before rewriting anything, find every copy of your checkout instructions. Most listings have at least three, and they rarely match.

Pull the text from all four and lay it side by side. The listing section is now the source of truth, and the other three should mirror it exactly. If your guidebook asks for something the listing does not, the guidebook is wrong.

The line-by-line rewrite

Here is the standard chore list most hosts run, sorted into what to delete, what to keep as a request, and what becomes a house rule.

The result is a checkout section of three or four lines. That is not a loss. Airbnb’s own guidance to hosts says most guests want to avoid unexpected chores and that cleaner-type tasks can hurt reviews. A four-line checkout list is the version that was always getting you the better rating.

What your guest manual does now

With the chore list gone, the guest manual has three jobs.

1. Mirror the listing exactly. Copy your House rules and requests section into the manual word for word, under a heading like “Checkout, the short version.” Do not paraphrase and do not expand. If a guest compares the two and finds a difference, you have created exactly the surprise the policy is designed to remove.

2. Make every request effortless. A request a guest can complete in 30 seconds without thinking gets done. A request that requires them to find the hamper, figure out which bin is recycling, or locate the thermostat gets skipped, and now there is nothing you can do about that except leave a review. So the manual should answer the where and how for each line:

• Where the dishwasher is and that it is fine to leave it unrun
• Where the towel hamper is (one spot, not “the laundry area”)
• A photo of the indoor bins with labels, and what goes in each
• Which thermostat controls the AC and what “off” looks like on it
• Where the lockbox is and the exact steps to return the key

This is also where a digital guidebook pulls ahead of the binder. The photo of the bins, the thermostat screen and the lockbox can be on the guest’s phone the night before checkout, which is when they are actually planning their departure. We covered the broader case in printed welcome book vs digital guidebook; the checkout section is the sharpest example of it.

3. Explain the why, briefly, where there is one. Airbnb grants exceptions based on local context. The policy names two: asking guests to put trash in an animal-proof container in bear country, and asking guests to limit shower time under drought restrictions. Septic systems, well water and HOA bin rules are the same category even if Airbnb has not named them. If you keep a request like this, state the local reason in the listing text itself (“Bears are active in this area; all trash must go in the locked bear bin by the driveway”) and repeat it in the manual with a photo. A reason the guest can see is more likely to be followed and more likely to survive the editor’s check, which appears to read text rather than context.

The chores you lost: three things not to do, one thing to do

The host reaction has been loud. A Change.org petition against the policy passed 10,000 signatures within the first week, some hosts are planning a calendar blackout on November 20, and the Airbnb community forum and host subreddits are full of plans to strip the kitchen, add a “dishes fee” or raise prices. Felicity Stevens, who leads Airbnb’s Sydney host club, told the ABC she disagrees with the ban while acknowledging that some hosts went too far. The counterpoint on r/airbnb_hosts, one of the most upvoted posts since the announcement, is that the change means nothing to the average host because most never asked guests for significant effort in the first place.

Whichever camp you are in, three of the popular responses are policy violations, and one is just good operations.

Don’t add a dishes fee. Fines and penalties are banned outright, and any fee for an advertised part of the listing has to be in the price shown at booking. A “fee if left dirty” is both.

Don’t pull the kitchen. Hosts cannot restrict access to anything the listing advertises. If the listing says full kitchen, the pots stay.

Don’t move the chore list into messages or the manual. That is the exact mechanism the policy closes, and it is what the “includes cleaning requests” alert is for.

Do re-scope the clean and re-check the fee. Your cleaner now strips beds, washes whatever is in the sink and takes the trash out on every turnover. Time that for two or three turnovers, work out the added minutes at your cleaner’s rate, and adjust the cleaning fee once if the number justifies it. Airbnb does not set cleaning fees, and raising one is not a violation. Raising it as a protest, on the other hand, shows up in the fee comparison guests see on the listing. Make the number match the work.

One operational note from the host forums that is worth taking seriously: dishes left in the sink for 24 hours before a cleaner arrives is a pest problem in some climates. The fix is turnover timing, not a chore. If your cleaner cannot get in the same day, that is the thing to solve.

Existing bookings and the two-regime window

Anything booked before November 20 keeps the rules that were on your listing when the guest booked, even for stays well into 2027. Strictly, you could run two checkout lists for a few months. In practice, a guest who booked in October and a guest who booked in December may overlap in the same week, and your cleaner and your guidebook do not know which is which. The simpler path is to adopt the new list for everyone now, and let the pre-November guests be pleasantly surprised.

What to watch

• November 5: Airbnb reports Q3 earnings after market close. Watch whether management addresses host supply or the backlash directly.
• November 20: the policy takes effect for new bookings and editor flags become enforceable. The first “includes cleaning requests” alerts on live listings should surface shortly after.
• Your own editor: the new House rules and requests section has been live since October 20. Saving your listing now runs the check, which is the fastest way to find out what Airbnb thinks of your current wording.

The checklist

1. Open the Listing editor and read your House rules and requests section as a guest would.
2. Set the seven standard rules, including Lock up at checkout with the key-return location.
3. Delete every cleaner-type task. Keep the light versions: dishes in sink, towels gathered, trash sorted indoors, utilities off.
4. Delete every fine, penalty and “fee if” line.
5. If you keep a wildlife, water or ordinance exception, write the local reason into the request text.
6. Save, and fix anything the editor underlines.
7. Copy the final section into your guidebook verbatim, then add the where and how for each line, with photos.
8. Rewrite your scheduled checkout message to point to the guidebook rather than restate a list.
9. Remove or replace any sign or card in the home that still shows the old list.
10. Time your cleaner’s added work over the next few turnovers and adjust the cleaning fee once, if needed.