Airbnb’s new rules stop hosts from requiring guests to do checkout chores. We look at what that means in Costa Rica, where short-term rental listings have more than doubled since 2019 and most hosts still aren’t properly registered.
Last week, Airbnb announced new rules on what hosts can and can’t ask guests to do before they leave. For reservations booked on or after November 20, hosts can no longer require guests to strip beds, wash and put away dishes, start laundry, or take trash off the property. There are some exceptions, but overall, hosts who impose unreasonable rules risk having their listings demoted.
Unsurprisingly, hosts did not take it well. There’s a petition calling to reverse the policy, talk of pulling listings in protest, and plenty of anger online. One host on Reddit compared Airbnb to “an abusive partner.” Many predicted that guests would end up paying for the change through higher cleaning fees.
Guests had their own take. Many congratulated Airbnb on the move and called out hosts who add cleaning fees to their rates while still telling them to clean before they leave. When someone argued that cleaning up is what any house guest does, most replies pointed out that friends don’t charge a cleaning fee. “You’re in the hospitality business, not the paying-off-my-mortgage-without-consequences-or-inconvenience business,” said one commenter. “I am a customer not a house guest. I have paid a cleaning fee on top of my booking fee,” said another.
@DTinSD @Technovangelist @Airbnb https://t.co/GDm9X9qFOh
— Geoff Sokol (@SokolGeoff) October 24, 2026
What it Means in Costa Rica
The new rules apply to every Airbnb listing, including those in Costa Rica, where the platform has become incredibly controversial in recent years. Costa Rica has more Airbnbs than most other places in the world, let alone the rest of Central America. According to Costa Rica’s Center for Tourism Studies (CET), the country had nearly 49,000 active short-term rental listings in June 2026. Incredibly, that works out to more rentals per resident than Barcelona or New York.
That could make higher cleaning fees or rates in light of these new rules harder to pull off. The CET found that short-term rentals in the country now offer about 112,700 bedrooms, roughly double the number of registered hotel and cabina rooms. Listings more than doubled between 2019 and 2026, while tourist arrivals fell from 3.14 million to 2.94 million. Put it this way, the short-term rental market is saturated in Costa Rica, and with so many listings competing for fewer visitors, guests have plenty of alternatives if an Airbnb host puts prices and cleaning fees up.
Once the cleaning fee and other charges are added, a rental often costs no difference to a hotel in the end. And if the rental turns out to be unlicensed, the hotel is the better choice.
Choose a Hotel Over an Unlicensed Rental
Aside from extortionate cleaning fees, another reason to choose a hotel is because most rentals in Costa Rica are unlicensed. Since 2020, the law has required short-term rental hosts to register with the ICT and Hacienda (the tourist board and finance ministry, respectively) requires them to register as taxpayers and charge 13% value-added tax (IVA), the same tax hotels charge. Very few do. The most recent figure from Hacienda was about 6,800 registered hosts in early 2025, against nearly 49,000 listings today, and the last count the ICT published, in 2023, was just 578. The exact dates don’t align here, but the fact that few hosts register their properties is crystal clear.
Registered hosts are required to issue an electronic invoice, so ask for one before you book. If the host can’t provide one, they’re not licensed, and unlicensed vacation homes are changing the face of beach and tourist communities in Costa Rica for the worse.
In places like Santa Teresa, Puerto Viejo, Tamarindo, and Monteverde, rents have doubled or tripled since the pandemic, and many of the people who work in those towns can no longer afford to live there. That has fed a resentment toward foreigners that Costa Rica has rarely seen.
Wrapping Up
Airbnb’s long overdue new rules settle the argument over dishes and bed sheets in the guests’ favor. They do nothing, however, about whether a rental is licensed, pays its taxes, or is pricing locals out of their own town. Until Costa Rica enforces its own rules regarding Airbnb and other unlicensed vacation rentals, the simplest way for a visitor to not contribute to the issue is to book somewhere that follows them.
