All-in pricing at Direct checkout: fold the cleaning fee into the nightly rate (like Airbnb)

The ask: A per-property option for Direct checkout to fold the mandatory cleaning fee into the displayed nightly/accommodation figure, leaving taxes as the only itemized line before payment — while preserving today's full itemization (nightly rate, cleaning fee, discount, taxes) in the booking confirmation and receipt. Display-level only: no change to the discount base, payouts, reporting, or how fees sync to channels.

Why it matters

— the seam at checkout. More and more hosts market with all-in pricing, because that's where guest expectations and pricing rules have settled. But at Direct checkout, the price gets restated in a different shape — a nightly figure the guest hasn't seen before, plus a separate cleaning line. Watching session recordings of our own funnel, that handoff is where guests meet an unfamiliar breakdown at the moment of highest intent — and a restated price at checkout is one of the best-documented abandonment drivers in e-commerce. Every host who markets all-in inherits this seam, and Direct conversion is a number Hospitable and hosts share.

The market has already moved. Airbnb folded the cleaning fee into its displayed nightly figure across the booking flow in 2025 — while continuing to itemize it on the downloadable receipt. That dual pattern (all-in while shopping, itemized on the record) is exactly what this request asks for.

The machinery already exists. Direct's display layer already folds resort, management, and community fees into the nightly rate shown to guests (per the Listing Management fee docs: https://help.hospitable.com/en/articles/11596133-managing-fees-for-direct-airbnb-and-booking-com) — cleaning is the one mandatory fee excluded from that existing behavior. Hospitable also absorbs its own platform fee on Direct rather than surfacing it to guests. This request simply extends a fold Direct already performs to one more fee type — as a per-property toggle, the same choice Booking.com offers hosts natively today.

Regulation points the same way. The FTC's Junk Fees Rule (effective May 2025) requires short-term lodging to display the total including mandatory fees prominently before checkout, and California's SB 478 / AB 537 prohibit advertising STR prices that exclude mandatory fees, cleaning included. To be precise: these laws permit itemized breakdowns, so this isn't a compliance emergency — it's that all-in presentation is where display norms have legally settled, and a native option keeps every Direct host aligned by default.

Related demand on the board. "On the direct booking site guests should be able to see the total price before having to enter their info" (https://feedback.hospitable.com/p/on-the-direct-booking-site-guests-should-be-able-to) points at the same underlying problem — price surprise in the Direct funnel. A second request, "Show total price when selecting dates on calendar view" (https://feedback.hospitable.com/p/show-total-price-when-selecting-dates-on-calendar-view), described the guest-facing version of instant pricing, but was merged into an older, since-completed host-facing request about dashboard payout display (https://feedback.hospitable.com/p/show-payout-amount-on-the-calendar-view-rather-than-total) and closed with it — while instant totals on date selection still aren't part of the booking widget today. Those requests concern when the total appears; this one concerns the shape it takes. Together they describe a single guest expectation: the number you see is the number you pay, all the way through.

What it looks like. Full mockup below: today's checkout vs. the folded version, resolving to the identical total to the cent — only the presentation changes — plus the receipt view keeping the full breakdown.

Guardrails. The fold is display-only at checkout. The long-stay discount line stays visible (it's guest-favorable). Taxes remain itemized. Receipts keep full itemization for expense and reimbursement needs. Nothing changes in the discount base, payout math, or channel sync.

Why now. There's an active community conversation about modernizing the Direct front end (https://community.hospitable.com/hospitable-conversations-7/my-solution-to-hospitable-s-basic-direct-booking-site-templates-1888), and word from the team that a Direct upgrade is planned. If display is being reworked anyway, this is a small, self-contained inclusion with outsized effect on the checkout seam.