Learn how cleaning fees and other fee and tax settings sync from Hostaway to Booking.com through the Booking.com Listing Content Sync, and how to troubleshoot a fee that does not appear on a reservation.
What is this?
When managing your Booking.com listings through Hostaway, you may encounter situations where cleaning fees or other charges are not applied to reservations as expected. This issue arises due to limitations in the synchronization process between Hostaway and Booking.com. Below, we outline the cause and steps to resolve this issue effectively.
How Fee and Tax Settings Sync Between Hostaway and Booking.com
With the Booking.com Listing Content Sync (live since 2026), Hostaway can push fee and tax settings — including the cleaning fee, the extra person fee, and the Booking.com-specific taxes — to your existing Booking.com listings whenever you update them in Hostaway.
The sync is partial and one-way (Hostaway → Booking.com):
- Only the fields you actively change in Hostaway are sent; unchanged fields are left as they are.
- Hostaway is the source of truth, so a synced field will overwrite changes made in the Booking.com Extranet on the next export.
- Fields managed only in the Booking.com Extranet remain untouched unless you update them in Hostaway.
The following options are still managed in the Booking.com Extranet: rate plans and promotions, booking window/advanced reservation settings, extra guest pricing (per-person surcharges) and some fee presentation logic.
Where to Set the Cleaning Fee
The cleaning fee is now set in Hostaway and synchronised to Booking.com. To configure it, open the listing in Hostaway (Listings → Price & fees), set the cleaning fee, and save and export the listing. Hostaway pushes the value to Booking.com through the Booking.com Listing Content Sync.
The Booking.com Extranet steps below should be used only as a fallback — for the fields that are still managed by Booking.com (such as extra guest pricing and fee presentation) or when a sync fails:
- Log in to your Booking.com extranet.
- Navigate to the "Property" tab and select either "Policies" or "VAT/Tax" (the section name may vary depending on your account setup).
- Scroll to "Additional Fees & Charges" or locate the "Cleaning Fee" field.
- Enter or update your cleaning fee, ensuring it is marked as a mandatory fee.
- Save your changes.
Note:
- These changes will only apply to new reservations. Existing bookings will not be updated retroactively.
- For reservations already made without the cleaning fee, you may need to adjust your financial records or communicate directly with the guest to add the fee manually.
Responsibility of Managing Fees and Settings
Cleaning fees, extra person fees, and Booking.com-specific taxes can now be managed from Hostaway and are pushed to Booking.com when updated. The user is still responsible for reviewing that the values shown on Booking.com match the intended setup, and for the settings that remain managed only in the Booking.com Extranet (rate plans and promotions, booking window/advanced reservation settings, extra guest pricing / per-person surcharges, and some fee presentation logic).
Troubleshooting Specific Issues
To troubleshoot a cleaning fee that is not showing on a Booking.com reservation:
- Verify that the cleaning fee is correctly configured in Hostaway (Listings → Price & fees).
- Save and export / re-sync the listing.
- Check the Sync History in the Channel Connections tab to review the Booking.com API response and whether the sync succeeded or failed.
- Confirm that the property is not in pre-onboarding status (some fields do not sync until the property is open on Booking.com).
- Keep in mind property-level vs room-level fields (a change at property level affects all rooms of that property).
- If the fee is still missing, check whether it is a field that Booking.com manages separately (for example, extra guest pricing) and configure it in the Extranet.
- If everything is correct and the fee is still not applied, contact Booking.com support.
Key Takeaways
- Cleaning fees, extra person fees, and Booking.com-specific taxes are synchronised from Hostaway to existing Booking.com listings (partial sync).
- Only the fields you actively change are sent; everything else is left untouched.
- The sync is one-way (Hostaway → Booking.com), and Hostaway is the source of truth.
- Fee changes apply to new reservations; existing reservations are not updated retroactively.
- Some settings (rate plans/promotions, booking window, extra guest pricing) are still managed in the Booking.com Extranet.
Related article: Booking.com: Listing Content Sync