If you have ever taken an Airbnb vacation and been asked to wash plates or strip beds, those days are over for reservations booked on or after Nov. 20, 2026.
Announced on Oct. 20, Airbnb is making sweeping changes to its house rules.
Once effective, hosts will be barred from requiring guests to perform cleaner-level checkout chores, such as stripping beds, washing dishes, or taking trash off the property — tasks that require significant effort or time or would ordinarily be performed by a cleaner.
This woman was told by her Airbnb host to strip the beds, run the dishwasher, and leave the place spotless.
— More Perfect Union (@MorePerfectUS) August 14, 2023
And that’s after paying a $250 cleaning fee. pic.twitter.com/WwVd6gsMZo
The company described the change as a redesign intended to make rules easier to discover and set.
The change came amid long years of complaints from guests who use to pay a cleaning fee and were still hit with a list of substantial checkout work.
Guests have described being told to strip beds, wash dishes, start laundry and haul trash to a curb or off-site dumpster.
Those practice has led to complaints, negative reviews and viral posts. The new rule sets an explicit boundary around that kind of work for future bookings.
There are limits to the redesign, it does not in total remove all tidying expectations.
Hosts may still ask guests to put used dishes in the sink, gather used towels, and sort trash and recycling into designated indoor bins, while guests must still leave the property without excessive or deep cleaning.
“House rules help guests understand what hosts expect, but we’ve heard from our community that they can be confusing, onerous and hard to manage,” an Airbnb spokesperson told PEOPLE in a statement reported by the outlet.
“So we’ve redesigned them to make them easier to discover and clearer to set, alongside a new policy that keeps requests reasonable, with no surprises,” he added
Under the redesign, hosts must disclose permitted rules and requests in a designated section of the listing before a guest books.
Airbnb has said hosts must not be tricky by adding new requirements after booking through messages, signs inside the home, house manuals or in-person instructions.
According to the company, if a listing does not comply, it would first give the host a chance to fix it with a warning.
But if a violation persists, Airbnb says it may add a notice to the listing so guests see the issue, and further reduce its placement in search, or take further action under its Terms of Service, last updated Feb. 5, 2026.
In the company’s own words, it will consider the type of listing and local conditions and may grant exceptions, such as requiring trash to be placed in an animal-proof container in bear country or limiting shower time during drought-related restrictions.
Additionally, its house rules now fall into seven standard categories covering the maximum number of overnight guests, quiet hours, events, pets, smoking and vaping, commercial photography and filming, and locking up at checkout.
Hosts can add other instructions as requests, but those must comply with Airbnb’s new reasonableness policy.
