Having a fixed cleaning fee and a per-night charge actually reflects the property owner's costs. They have to pay someone to clean, do laundry, re-stock the
crackers and cheap wine. Of course this can be taken too far, but I actually prefer this cost structure because I get a price break if I have a long stay vs an average flat fee per night.
Source: I know several Airbnb owners, and the people who clean their properties.
I think the point is less about the existence of the cleaning fee and the fact that the site doesn't include the fee in the mapping UI. It makes it very difficult to compare properties when there are large fee differences that you cannot see until clicking through.
I usually search with specific dates for a stay, so it's weird that they don't summarize the listings by total cost instead of the nightly rate leaving out the fixed costs. That'd fix the problem, right? (Of course they could divide that total cost by the night count if they can't let go of normalizing to nightly rate. The point is to not incentivize accounting shenanigans.)
Overall I've been happy with airbnb as a traveler, but if they don't step up their game it's going to be like having been happy with the early web, or Amazon reviews in the early days when it was easy to ignore a few fakes. That general problem of evolving predators is hard, but this particular change seems easy.
Source: I know several Airbnb owners, and the people who clean their properties.