Owner says my cleaning markup is double dipping because guests already pay a cleaning fee

The cleaning fee is revenue on the reservation. It hits the payout, it usually gets taxed as part of the booking depending on the jurisdiction, and it isn't a segregated reimbursement account. So the money is contractually assignable, and yours says it's assigned to you. She still has a point worth taking seriously, which is that she can't see the arithmetic without reconstructing it herself, and a fee she has to reconstruct feels like a fee that was hidden.

The two structures that survive an annual statement review are both explicit. One, you charge the guest exactly what the cleaner charges you and bill your coordination as a flat per-turnover fee on the owner statement, so a $95 clean shows as $95 and your $40 shows as $40 on its own line. Two, you widen your management fee to cover coordination and pass cleaning through at cost. Same total dollars, and neither one produces a discovery moment. What she's actually objecting to is the discovery, and you can't fix that by rereading the clause to her.

One caution on repricing: $135 on a two-bedroom is inside normal range in most markets, but cleaning fees suppress bookings on one and two-night stays more than nightly rate does, because the guest sees the total. If you drop the guest fee to $95 and move $40 onto the owner statement, her net per stay is unchanged and short stays get more competitive. That's an argument you can make with numbers instead of with the contract.

Also check what your platform and local occupancy tax treatment does to cleaning fees, because that varies by state and city, and a repriced fee can shift the taxable base. Confirm the current treatment with your accountant rather than assuming it follows the nightly rate.

71 turnovers and she found it in one sitting, so it was never really invisible. My problem with the $40 spread is that it makes you want more turnovers. She's paying you to optimize revenue, and a one-night booking with a $40 coordination spread looks better to you than it does to her. That misalignment is the thing she'll actually feel, even if she can't name it.

Have you looked at what happens when the cleaner raises her rate? Under your structure you either eat the increase or raise the guest fee, and raising the guest fee mid-season is a conversation with the owner anyway. Pass-through plus a flat coordination fee moves that whole problem onto the owner statement where it belongs.

Is there a version where the cleaner invoices the owner directly and you just schedule? Then there's no spread to argue about and no cash flowing through you at all. I'd assume you lose some control over the cleaner if she isn't your vendor, but the transparency looks a lot cleaner on a statement.

To fill in what beacon is asking about, since it's a common fork: if the cleaner invoices the owner directly, you're a scheduler with no financial relationship to the vendor. That removes the markup question entirely. It also removes your ability to fire her mid-season, to hold back payment on a bad clean, and to keep her loyal to you across the four other properties you might staff with her. Co-hosts who run more than a handful of listings usually keep vendors in their own name for exactly that reason and pass the cost through at invoice.

Whichever way you go, the owner statement is the thing that decides whether this argument happens again. A statement that shows gross reservation revenue, cleaning fee collected, cleaning cost paid, your management fee, your per-turnover coordination fee and net to owner, per reservation, ends the category of dispute where someone discovers a number. Quarry's point about the incentive is the one I'd sit with longer. Any per-turnover income you earn pulls toward volume, and minimum-stay settings are where that shows up. If you keep a coordination fee, put your minimum-stay policy in writing with the owner so the pricing decisions have a stated rule behind them rather than looking like your preference.