Airbnb's New House Rules and Chore Ban (20 Nov 2026): What Hosts Need to Know

Airbnb is changing how house rules work. For reservations booked on or after 20 November 2026, hosts can no longer ask guests to do real cleaning work at checkout, such as stripping beds, washing dishes or taking rubbish off the property. House rules themselves shrink to seven standard options, and everything else becomes a "request" that Airbnb can flag.

This guide covers what changes, why Airbnb says it's doing it, how hosts are reacting, and what to update in your listing before the deadline. Some early press reports gave 30 November as the start date; Airbnb's own policy page says 20 November.

Policies can change after publication. This guide reflects Airbnb's announcements as of 25 October 2026. Check Airbnb's help centre for the current wording before you edit your listing.

What exactly changes, and when

• 20 October 2026: Airbnb announced the change to hosts by email ("Important changes to house rules") and in its Resource Centre. The new house rules editor started rolling out around the same time.
• 20 November 2026: the Reasonable house rules and requests policy applies to reservations booked on or after this date. Existing bookings keep the rules that were on the listing when the guest booked.

Seven standard house rules

Binding house rules now come from a fixed list. You choose which ones apply:

1. Maximum overnight guests
2. Quiet hours
3. Events
4. Pets
5. Smoking (including vaping and e-cigarettes)
6. Commercial photography and filming
7. Lock up at checkout

Guests must follow house rules. Anything outside this list can only be added as a request, which guests are encouraged, but not required, to follow.

Checkout tasks: what you can and can't ask

Airbnb says hosts generally can't ask for tasks that take significant effort or time, or that a cleaner would normally do. Its own examples:

Other rules that tighten

The same policy also says:

• Rules must be visible before booking. All rules and requests have to be in the designated section of the listing when the guest books. You can't add new ones afterwards by message, by signs in the home or in person.
• No fines. Hosts can't impose fines or penalties on guests. If a building or local authority could fine you, you can mention that in the listing's local rules section.
• No hidden fees. Fees for anything advertised in the listing must be in the price shown at booking. Fees for optional add-ons can be described in requests.

Coverage by Skift and Rental Scale-Up also describes related limits on separate rental agreements and on collecting guest ID, with exceptions where local law requires it. That matters in Italy, Spain, Croatia and Slovenia, where hosts must register guests with the authorities; see our guide to guest registration and tourist tax. If you need ID details for a legal reason, say so in your requests and explain why.

How Airbnb enforces it

Text that breaks the policy is flagged in the listing editor. If you save it anyway, Airbnb may review it, ask you to change it or warn you, and you can appeal. Persistent violations can lead to a notice on your listing, lower visibility in search, or other action under Airbnb's terms.

Why Airbnb says it's doing this

Airbnb's spokesperson told The Telegraph that house rules "can be confusing, onerous and hard to manage", and that the new policy keeps requests reasonable "with no surprises". In its host announcement, Airbnb says the change makes rules easier for hosts to set and for guests to read and follow.

The background is a long-running guest complaint: paying a cleaning fee and then being handed a list of cleaning jobs. Airbnb already promised in 2022 to curb unreasonable checkout tasks, and the new policy turns that into enforceable rules.

How hosts are reacting

Reactions are split:

• Petition and pushback. According to The Telegraph, a host petition against the change reached almost 5,000 signatures in seven hours. Skift reported hosts objecting on Airbnb's community forum, mostly over the dishes ban, with two French hosts saying they may leave the platform.
• Hygiene worries. A host with a rural property in France wrote that her cleaner rarely arrives straight away, so food and rubbish left behind in hot weather becomes a sanitation problem.
• Higher cleaning fees. Several hosts said they'd have to raise cleaning fees to cover the extra work. Others suspect the change is about revenue, since Airbnb's fee is charged on the cleaning fee too.
• Support. Not every host is against it. One UK host with eight years on Airbnb told The Telegraph she has never asked guests to do chores and sees it as "part of being a good host".

What it means for your Airbnb listing

1. Rewrite your house rules into the seven options

Go through your current rules and sort each one:

• Fits a standard rule (guest numbers, quiet hours, events, pets, smoking, filming, locking up): set it with the standard option.
• Reasonable request (put dishes in the sink, gather towels, sort recycling, switch off the heating when you leave): move it to requests, worded as a polite ask.
• No longer allowed (strip beds, run the dishwasher, take bins out, fines for late checkout): remove it, and decide how you'll cover that work instead.

Keep requests short and specific. A long list of requests reads like the old chore list, and Airbnb can still flag it.

2. Simplify your checkout instructions

Your checkout message should now be a handful of lines: checkout time, where to leave the keys, lock up, and the few reasonable requests you've listed. If your message, house manual or a sign in the kitchen still asks for more, update it. Rules added outside the listing don't count, and a guest may report them.

3. Plan your turnovers without guest help

If you relied on guests stripping beds or taking rubbish out, plan for the cleaner to do it:

• Allow a little more time per turnover, or ask your cleaner for a new quote.
• Add an outdoor bin or a collection arrangement if rubbish sitting for a day is a problem.
• If your cleaner can't come the same day, consider keeping a free day between stays at busy times.

4. Should you raise your cleaning fee?

Maybe, but count both sides:

• The cost is real. If your cleaner now spends an extra 30–45 minutes per stay, that time has to be paid for somewhere.
• So is the price sensitivity. Guests already find cleaning fees steep. A 2022 NerdWallet analysis of 1,000 US Airbnb listings found cleaning fees made up about a quarter of the total on one-night stays (median fee $75), while Airbnb said they averaged under 10% of the total where charged.
• Airbnb takes a cut of it. Airbnb's host fee is charged on the cleaning fee as well as the nightly rate. Raise your cleaning fee by €20 and, at a 15.5% host fee, you keep about €16.90.

A middle path many hosts use: keep the cleaning fee where it is, raise the nightly rate slightly, and set a minimum stay of two or three nights so one turnover is spread over more nights.

The fee context: Airbnb's 15.5% host-only fee

The chore ban comes on top of another change. Airbnb has been moving hosts from the old split fee (about 3% for the host plus a guest service fee) to a single host-only fee of around 15.5%, deducted from your payout. Software vendors such as Hostaway report that the rollout was due to complete by October 2026 for hosts in the EU, but dates have differed by region and setup, so check your own payout breakdown.

Put together, hosts are absorbing more cleaning work and paying a larger visible fee at the same time. That's why the cleaning-fee question matters: every euro you add to cover cleaning is also commissioned. Our guide to Airbnb and Booking.com fees works through a full example, and the commission calculator shows what the fee adds up to over a year.

Checklist before 20 November

1. Open your listing's house rules and set the standard rules that apply to you.
2. Move everything else into requests, or delete it if it's a cleaning task.
3. Remove any fines or penalties from your rules, house manual and messages.
4. Make sure every fee for an advertised feature is in the price, not in a request.
5. Rewrite your saved checkout message and any signs in the property.
6. If you collect ID for local registration, say so in your requests and explain the legal reason.
7. Talk to your cleaner about extra turnover time and price.
8. Decide on pricing: cleaning fee, nightly rate or minimum stay.
9. Check your recent payout breakdown to confirm which Airbnb fee applies to you.

Direct booking as a complement

Airbnb's changes don't stop you from having reasonable expectations. They just apply to bookings made on Airbnb. On your own booking page, the guest books with you, so you set the rules and the checkout requests, within the law.

The same principles that make Airbnb's new policy guest-friendly still make sense on your own page:

• Say it upfront. Put your house rules and checkout requests on the page, before the guest asks to book, not in a message after.
• Keep requests light. Put dishes in the dishwasher, take rubbish to the bin outside: fine. A two-hour cleaning list is not, whatever platform you're on.
• Show the full price. Show the total with cleaning and other fees before the guest commits, so nothing feels like a surprise.

Fines, deposits and deterrents

The no-fines rule gets less attention than the dishes, but it matters more to many hosts. A "€200 smoking fee" in the house rules was rarely about the €200. Its job was to put off the few guests who would smoke indoors or throw a party, so the host never had to collect it. Compensation after the damage, through Airbnb's claims process, doesn't prevent anything.

On your own page you can keep that deterrent, if you keep it fair:

• Tie each charge to a real cost. A deep clean after smoking or extra cleaning after a party has a price you can explain. A round "fine" doesn't. In the EU, consumer law treats a disproportionate penalty in a contract with a guest as an unfair term, so a charge you can't justify may not hold.
• Take it from a refundable damage deposit. Then the guest knows the most they can lose, and you don't have to chase payment after they leave.
• Show it before the request, and get it accepted. The charge should sit next to the rule it belongs to, and the guest should agree to both before you confirm.
• Keep the list short. Three or four charges for things that have actually happened to you read as fair. Ten read as hostile, and good guests book elsewhere.

The other half of keeping problem guests out is choosing who books. With request-to-book, you read every request before anything is confirmed, and you can say no.

On OpenSty, for example, each property page has a house rules section with your check-in and checkout times, quiet hours and standard rules, in the guest's language. You can list what a broken rule costs (capped, and taken from the damage deposit), and guests accept the rules, checkout requests and charges with their request. Guests see the full price for their dates, including the cleaning fee, tourist tax and any deposit, before they send a request. You read every request and confirm it yourself, can keep private notes on guests and flag the ones you won't host again, and there's no commission: plans start at €14 a month. Guests pay you directly, following your payment instructions or by card through your own Stripe account.

Direct booking isn't a replacement for Airbnb's reach. For most small hosts it works best alongside platforms: Airbnb to find new guests, your own page for returning guests and referrals. Our guide to getting direct bookings explains how to set that up, and direct booking mistakes covers what makes guests trust a page.

Common questions

When does Airbnb's new house rules policy start?

It applies to reservations booked on or after 20 November 2026. Bookings made before then keep the house rules that were on the listing when the guest booked.

What are Airbnb's seven house rules?

Maximum overnight guests, quiet hours, events, pets, smoking (including vaping), commercial photography and filming, and locking up at checkout.

Can I still ask guests to load the dishwasher?

Airbnb's examples allow asking guests to put used dishes in the sink, but not to wash and put them away. Loading a dishwasher sits close to that line, so keep it as a polite request and expect the editor to flag anything more.

Can I charge a fee if guests leave the place messy?

Not on Airbnb. You can't fine guests or charge them for skipping a checkout task there, and real damage is handled through Airbnb's damage claim process instead. On a direct booking you can agree a charge in advance, as long as it covers a real cost, such as extra cleaning, and the guest accepts it before booking.

Do the new rules apply to direct bookings?

No. Airbnb's policy covers bookings made on Airbnb. For direct bookings you set your own terms, subject to local law. Show them clearly before the guest books.

Will Airbnb remove my listing if I don't update my rules?

Not immediately. Airbnb says it will flag non-compliant text, ask you to fix it and warn you first. Persistent violations can lead to a notice on your listing or lower search visibility.