Airbnb Is Testing a Way to Book a Cleaner From Your Listing Settings, and Guest Registration Inside the App

If you read Rental Scale-Up regularly, you know two things: Rental Scale-Up founder Thibault Masson has been predicting a marketplace of services for Airbnb hosts since 2023, and from November 20, Airbnb’s new house rules change what hosts can ask of their guests. Two Airbnb pilots that have had little attention so far sit right where those two topics meet: one lets hosts find a cleaner through Turno in the US, and the other lets hosts register guests with the authorities through Chekin in Italy and Spain, both from inside Airbnb’s own app.

The link with the house rules is easy to see. The rules say that hosts can no longer require checkout chores such as washing the dishes or stripping the beds, and the Turno pilot helps hosts find a cleaner. The rules also say that hosts can no longer collect a guest’s ID or contact details unless a law requires it, and the Chekin pilot covers two countries where the law does require it. That doesn’t mean one led to the other, but they are clearly moving at the same pace.

So there are two ways to read this. One is that these are the first bricks of the host marketplace we have been writing about. The other is that Airbnb is simply moving forward on what its house rules imply, by giving hosts a practical answer on cleaning and on legal guest registration. I lean towards the second reading, with a nuance I explain below. Here is how the two pilots work, what they mean for property managers, why they fit Airbnb’s guest-first strategy, and how they differ from the marketplace Rental Scale-Up has been predicting.

The Two Airbnb Host Services Being Piloted

Turno: A Cleaner From Inside Your Listing Settings

Turno, formerly known as TurnoverBnB, is a US company that runs a marketplace where a host posts a cleaning job and local cleaners bid for it, along with software to schedule and pay them. According to Airbnb’s help page, eligible hosts now find a “Find a cleaner” option in the Host team section of their listing settings. Once they click through, Airbnb shares their contact and listing details with Turno, the bids start coming in, and the host books, pays and manages the cleaning on Turno.

To use it, you need to be the owner of an active entire-home listing in one of the “select US markets”, which Airbnb does not name. Co-hosts cannot book a cleaner for a listing they help manage, which matters for many of our readers, since a property manager working as a co-host on an owner’s listing is not eligible for now.

Under the promotion terms, last updated on October 8, 2026, hosts who are new to Turno, or who have not booked through it in the past eight months, get 35% off each of their first two cleanings, and the offer runs until April 30, 2027. The terms are clear that Turno is the provider: it sets up the booking, takes the payment and is responsible for the cleaners, and Airbnb states that it does not vet or background-check them itself. Airbnb has documented the pilot on its Help Center without a wider announcement so far, which is usual for a pilot, and hosts were the first to spot it.

Gil Chan, a host and the founder of CraftedStays, shared the 35% offer from his Airbnb dashboard on LinkedIn, and members of a large professional hosts’ Facebook group were discussing it by late October. Some hosts read it as Airbnb first making paid cleaners a necessity, then selling them the cleaners. That reaction is understandable, although the pilot’s timing, covered below, suggests the two were planned side by side rather than one in response to the other.

Chekin: Guest Registration in Italy and Spain

A short primer for our American readers: in Spain and Italy, the law requires hosts to collect the identity details of every guest and send them to the police, usually within 24 hours of arrival, through government portals called SES.Hospedajes in Spain and Portale Alloggiati in Italy. It is slow and repetitive work, and a number of companies sell software that automates it. Chekin, founded in 2018 and based in Seville, is one of them, and it says it serves more than 200,000 properties in over 45 countries.

Under Airbnb’s Pilot Registration Service terms, participating hosts can collect this information from guests and submit it to the authorities from the Airbnb app, with Chekin handling the transmission. The pilot runs from September to December 2026, it is free for hosts during that period, and Airbnb chooses who takes part. As with Turno, only the listing owner can opt in. Credit where it is due: Regi, a Spanish guest registration company, wrote about this pilot in late October.

Side by Side

	Turno	Chekin
Service	Find and book a cleaner	Send guest registration data to the authorities
Where	Select US markets	Italy and Spain
When	Terms dated October 8, 2026, offer until April 30, 2027	September to December 2026
Who can use it	Owners of entire-home listings	Listing owners selected by Airbnb
Co-hosts	Not eligible	Not eligible
Cost to the host	Host pays Turno, 35% off the first two cleanings	Free during the pilot
Who provides the service	Turno and its cleaners	Chekin
Documented on	Airbnb Help Center	Airbnb Help Center

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What It Means for Property Managers

1. If you manage as a co-host, you are not eligible for now. Both pilots are for the listing owner. It is not clear whether that is a product choice or a technical limit, since Turno’s own Airbnb connection does not import co-hosted listings.
2. If you already use Turno, the discount is not for you. The 35% is for hosts who are new to Turno, or who have not booked through it in eight months, and it only applies when you arrive through the Airbnb entry point.
3. Asking for bids shares your details with Turno. When you click through, Airbnb passes on your contact and listing details so that cleaners can bid. That is how the service works, and it is worth knowing before you click.
4. In Spain and Italy, nothing forces a switch. The Chekin pilot is optional and runs until December. Hosts who join are asked not to use a separate Chekin account for the same listings, so if you already use Chekin or another registration tool, check how the two fit together.
5. Larger portfolios see little change for now. Your cleaning teams and check-in tools stay as they are. The more pressing task is to make sure your ID collection has a legal basis before November 20.
6. Owners with one or two homes get more help inside Airbnb. A cleaner and, in two countries, guest registration are now within reach in the app. Consequently, it looks like the bar is rising for local managers and co-hosts on what they offer on top, although the pilots are still small.
7. For software vendors, the existing connections stay. Airbnb keeps its direct connections with software partners, pricing tools included, and these pilots show one more way of working with a partner, from inside the host’s own tools.

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Why These Pilots Fit Airbnb’s Guest-First Push

For several years, one of Airbnb’s stated priorities has been to perfect its core service, and much of that work starts from what guests complain about. Cleaning and privacy are two of those topics, and each pilot sits next to one of them.

Cleaning: A Long-Standing Guest Complaint, and a Growing Cost for Hosts

Back in November 2022, Brian Chesky wrote to guests: “you feel like prices aren’t transparent and checkout tasks are a pain.” Airbnb’s own data, which we covered at the time, showed the average US cleaning fee going from $75 in the first half of 2019 to $100 in the first half of 2021. Total price display came first, and the house rules that apply from November 20 are the next step, since hosts can no longer require guests to wash the dishes, strip the beds or take the trash off-site.

That is good for guests, but the work does not disappear, and when guests stop doing it, someone has to be paid to do it. The Turno pilot looks like Airbnb testing a way to help hosts find that someone. It doesn’t appear to be a response to the new rules, since the pilot terms are dated October 8 and the rules were announced on October 20. From what I can see, the two were planned side by side.

Guest Data: Privacy by Default, With Help Where the Law Asks for More

The same policy stops hosts from collecting a guest’s ID, phone number or email unless a law requires it. As we explained in our piece on temporary phone numbers and the new contact rules, Airbnb presents this as protecting guests’ personal information, and Booking.com, Agoda and Expedia now mask phone numbers too.

Spain and Italy are the cases where the law does ask for more. The policy already has an exception for them, and the Chekin pilot goes one step further by making the legal route easier, inside the Airbnb app. In other words, privacy stays the default, and where registration is mandatory, Airbnb is testing a way to make compliance simpler for hosts and guests.

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Smaller Than a Marketplace, and Probably Easier to Roll Out

As I said at the start, this is not the marketplace Rental Scale-Up imagined, and that may be the point.

Airbnb Already Had Two Ways of Working With Other Companies

The first is connected software. Many tools, from property management systems to pricing tools, connect directly to Airbnb, and Turno has been an official Airbnb Software Partner since July 2023 (so is PriceLabs, which owns Rental Scale-Up). In that model, the host signs up with the software company and then links their Airbnb account.

The second is partner programs for guests. Travelers can store luggage with Bounce, hire a car through CarTrawler, get access to hotel amenities through ResortPass, order groceries, and earn rewards with Amex and Delta, and the fall update added laundry and baby gear. Airbnb’s Help Center calls these companies “travel partners”, and the Turno pilot is listed on that same page.

In other words, the host pilots look like that second model, pointed at hosts. There is a named partner, an entry point inside Airbnb at the moment the host needs it, sometimes a discount, and the partner provides the service.

Airbnb Had a Services Marketplace Before

Some of our readers will remember Host Assist. By 2016, Airbnb had a section of its website that listed partner companies for hosts, with key exchange services such as Keycafe and KeyNest, smart locks, and Properly for cleaning. Hosts could connect those apps to their Airbnb account. As we wrote in 2023, it was limited by geography and by the range of services, and it never really took off.

	Host Assist (from 2016)	The 2026 pilots
Shape	A directory of partner apps	One named partner per need
Where the host finds it	A separate page	Inside the listing settings and the host app
Coverage	Wherever each partner happened to operate	Shown only where the partner is available
Incentive to try	None that we know of	35% off with Turno, free with Chekin
Duration	Open-ended	Time-limited pilots
Why a host would use it	General convenience	A specific task: a turnover clean, a legal registration

This is why the new approach could be easier to roll out. Airbnb does not need to recruit and maintain dozens of partners, it can open one market at a time where the partner has enough supply, and it can measure a single service before adding the next. It is a less ambitious start than an app store, and a more pragmatic one, although the job posting discussed below suggests that Airbnb’s plans for host services go further than two pilots.

Which brings us back to the two readings from the start. From what I can see, these pilots are best understood as Airbnb moving forward alongside its house rules, with a practical answer on cleaning and on legal guest registration, and not as the launch of a marketplace. The nuance is in how they are built: a partner’s service inside the host’s own tools is something Airbnb could repeat for other host needs, and that is where the two readings may meet over time.

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Familiar Partners, and a Team That Is Hiring

Neither company is new to Airbnb. Turno has had its software partnership since 2023, and Chekin goes back further: in 2020, Airbnb announced a collaboration agreement with the Seville startup and pointed its Spanish hosts to it through a responsible-hosting website. In both cases, the host used to go to the partner, and what is new is that the partner now comes to the host, inside Airbnb.

Cleaning is not a new topic for Airbnb either. In 2014, it tested a service called Airbnb Cleaning in San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles, with two cleaning startups doing the work at prices from $55. During the pandemic, its Enhanced Cleaning program came with a “Supplies and Services” page where hosts in some countries could book local cleaning companies, and since 2024 co-hosts on the Co-Host Network can offer cleaning. None of these was built into the listing itself, with a named partner and an introductory discount, the way the Turno pilot is.

There is also a hiring signal. When Thibault looked at Airbnb’s 236 open jobs in May, he found no obvious hiring for host services. Airbnb is now recruiting a Staff Software Engineer for its Hosting Services team in London, a senior role meant to lay the technical foundations for host services. The posting says the team plans to speed up work on new products and third-party integrations, and that the aim is to “introduce entirely new business lines”.

The posting does not mention cleaning, guest registration, Turno or Chekin, it names no product and it carries no date, so it is too early to say that the two pilots belong to this team. What I can say is that it fits. Host Assist listed tools that partners had connected themselves, while this role is about Airbnb building integrations on its own side, and the wording suggests that host services are meant to become a business over time, and not only a convenience.

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What We Wrote Before, and Where We Were Off

Full disclosure, then: we first wrote about a host services marketplace in March 2023, made it our main bet for 2024 and expected it again in 2025. We were right that Airbnb would connect hosts with paid outside services, starting with cleaning and growing out of its co-hosting product, and we were off on the timing and on the shape, since we pictured an app store with many vendors. What we did not anticipate is the form it would take. Airbnb already works with outside software through direct connections, including PriceLabs for pricing and Turno itself for cleaning schedules, and those connections stay in place. The pilots add something different on top, which is a partner’s service offered to the host from inside Airbnb.

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What We Still Don’t Know

• Which US markets are in the Turno pilot.
• Who funds the 35% discount, and whether Airbnb earns anything on Turno bookings.
• Whether other services will join cleaning in the Host team section.
• Whether the Chekin pilot continues after December 2026.

Both pilots are documented on Airbnb’s Help Center, and I have not seen a wider announcement from Airbnb, Turno or Chekin, which is normal at the pilot stage. We will update this article as we learn more. In the meantime, if you own listings in the US, have a look at the Host team section of your listing editor, and if you host in Spain or Italy, look out for an invitation to the registration pilot, and tell us what you see.

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FAQs

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Keep reading on Rental Scale-Up:

• Airbnb’s new house rules policy: what hosts can and can’t ask guests to do from November 20
• We tested Airbnb’s new house rules checker. Here’s what it flags, and what it means for managers
• Exploring the vision: Airbnb’s comprehensive host services marketplace on the horizon (2023)
• Airbnb Q3 2026: cancellations, pricing and paid visibility

Disclosure: Rental Scale-Up is owned by PriceLabs, an Airbnb software partner.