How do you deal with unreliable cleaning services?

How do you currently handle your AirBnb turnover cleaning? What works well? What doesn’t? If you could change the service what would you do?

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We do all the day-to-day cleaning ourselves, including the turnovers. We have the whole house professionally cleaned from top to bottom once every three weeks.

What works well for us? Three Dyson Animal stick vacuums (that way, we can’t run out of charge). Special lint-free cleaning cloths. An all-surface (except glass) cleaner for furniture, counters, fixtures, etc. A glass cleaner that doesn’t streak. And a steam mop. Those are the basics.

For turnovers, we have three sets of everything for each bedroom and six sets for each bathroom.

Between the two of us, we can turn over both rooms and dust/vac the whole house in less than 90 minutes.

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I am there at every turn over, 3 sets of everything, 4 properties. My team is only available to me as I cannot give set hours. I give as much advance notice for the dates, but always subject to change. I check everything and give feedback to my team about great reviews and issues found. A skilled, committed team is a wonderful asset and the business would be so much harder with out them

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When I become unreliable it’s time for me to quit doing Airbnb.

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What @KKC said!! I do all the listing cleaning. When I can’t, we’ll close the doors.

We have a regular cleaner do the main house every other week; but she can’t schedule the random-ness of Air guest arrivals into the rest of her agenda

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Unlike some of the other in-home hosts, I farm out most of the cleaning. A cleaner can manage the flips more quickly (=more rented nights) than I can with a full-time job.

What works well:

  • My cleaner is super reliable. She has 2 days a week she can always fit me in, so I fill my calendar around that, or plan to clean myself.
  • We worked together several times so she knows how I like some details.
  • We made a 60-something point “inspection” checklist that we complete for each guest after cleaning.
  • I do all the laundry and have a bin of clean linens for each bedroom and bathroom ready for her to do the flip.
  • We keep a backup for almost everything, so if a glass is broken or something is stained, I have extras.

What doesn’t: Nothing really. I feel lucky to have her help!

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Fortunate to have family members helping with this venture. If I didn’t have them, I would have to pay a lot more for the services. As it is, they refuse to accept payment for mowing because they use our mower on their land and consider mowing our yard with it, too, to be fair compensation for the wear and tear on the machine. Their land is over 10x the size of ours. I have tried to argue with this logic, to no avail.

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If a host has found reliable cleaners then he or she has found gold :slight_smile:

I agree with others above in that the only way for me to get the apartments ready to the standard I want is to do it myself. Luckily I work from home and can juggle work deadlines with turnovers. Lucky me, I know.

And because we get bookings well in advance that makes it easier to schedule too. It’s not unusual for my diary to have schedules in it a good twelve months in advance. (The other huge advantage is that I’ve no need to go to the gym or anything like that - turning over three apartments a couple of times each a week is excellent exercise :slight_smile: )

You need to be really well prepared and have plenty of supplies. You need to keep to a strict schedule and be super-organised. Perhaps (other hosts can help me out here) if you’re using an outside service you’re better leaving a day between bookings? That would make sense but it would mean leaving a lot of money on the table over time.

Good luck with finding a cleaning service that can have the standards and the flexibility needed. I’d really find it hard to rely on a third party.

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We block a night before and after for setup and clean. That is a non-negotiable part of our arrangement with our family and makes me most comfortable, as well.

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That is a great system and makes life a lot easier for both the host and the people who are doing the cleaning.

I envy you because unfortunately we can’t afford to do that. Because most of our guests stay for 2, 3 or 4 days, that would mean one or two empty days per week. Because we have two apartments, that’s a huge loss over the course of a year.

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I wish they had the option to just block day after automatically. Then once I see when the guest checks out, and if I can get the room turned over right away then I can open it back up for that day. But block before and after obviously doesn’t work with my model of one nighters.

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My model is completely different but it’s the same with me. Because I aim for maximum occupancy booked well in advance, I see any ‘spare’ days as being an opportunity for having a bloke round to service the AC or the handyman chap to fix minor things or for me to do a super-duper special clean or paint or whatever badly needs doing.

Even so, I’d ignore my plans and take a one nighter if one happened along, especially in the non-tourist season.

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And I trained my husband! He’s spry and energetic and eager to learn. It took awhile (and a lot of patience) because he really didn’t have any cleaning skills but now he heads down there without me, blasts some NPR :woman_shrugging: and does a stellar cleaning job. And he is super-reliable as well. He doesn’t go to work until 3:30 so it’s really worked out for us but I’m not sure how I’d get it all done otherwise. I can do the office stuff (contacting guests etc) while he cleans and then I do an “inspection” and fill the snacks. If we have 2 to turn-over, we divide and conquer. A lot of our friends have suggested we “get help” but I can’t even figure out how that would work. I don’t think anyone else will let me train them like my husband let me train him ,)

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We are a weekend market so it doesn’t make any difference to us. What does make a difference is people who only want to book 2 days. I don’t have enough business to set a 3 day minimum all the time, but I do on holiday weekends.

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Can’t you click for that and then when you are ready go in and click the available button on that day?

Yes I can click on any day and make it available. But if I use the automatic before and after block I will have way too many days blocked all over my calendar because of my one night bookings.

I meant auto block day after, not block before and after.