How to Find an Airbnb Cleaning Service

Tom
10:00 am

Finding the right Airbnb cleaning service for your short-term rental is vital to receiving positive guest reviews and becoming an Airbnb superhost.

In this post, we’ll discuss why you need to hire an Airbnb cleaning service, how to find the right service to match your property, and what questions to ask your Airbnb cleaners. Then we will go over how to automate communication with your cleaners to save time and never have a missed cleaning.

Host Tools provides an automated, unified calendar for short-term rental hosts, allowing you to seamlessly list on all major channels. Start your free trial today!

Why Do I Need an Airbnb Cleaning Service?

Airbnb rentals have quickly replaced hotel stays – but guest expectations of hotel-quality cleanliness remain the same. Cleanliness is so important that Airbnb will penalize accounts that consistently receive low cleanliness reviews.

To reach superhost status, you need to provide a high-quality experience that leaves guests raving about your property’s cleanliness in their guest reviews. Luckily, there is a simple, affordable, and automated way to keep your Airbnb sparkling: hiring an Airbnb cleaning crew.

What Services Should a Cleaning Crew Provide?

Basic requirements of an Airbnb cleaning crew

Hosts often do not have the time or energy to be in charge of both managing the property and cleaning it. Automating an Airbnb cleaning service ensures maximum results with minimum effort on the host’s end.

Airbnb cleaning services should offer these essentials between all guest stays:

Making all of the beds
Cleaning and putting away any dishes
A thorough wash of the toilets, showers, and bathtubs
Emptying all trash and recycling cans
Sweeping, mopping, and vacuuming
Wiping down counters and high-touch services such as door handles and light switches

Important additional services to consider

The above services are the minimum a cleaning crew should provide. However, as an Airbnb host, you want your property to go above and beyond. When selecting a cleaning crew, look for services that offer these additional services either within their flat rate or as add-on packages:

Deep cleans: generally once a month a cleaning crew does a thorough clean of the entire property that includes those “hard to reach” places
Washing linens: providing a laundry service will ensure there is always a fresh pair of sheets for each bed.
Help with property damage: if the crew notices damage to the property, they will communicate it to the host, take photos, and potentially create a temporary solution. We suggest your cleaning crew taking photos of the space between every guest.
Report inventory: hosts often provide the cleaning materials, and can lose track of what is remaining. A cleaning crew can agree to report back to the host when the inventory is low.

How Do I Find an Airbnb Cleaning Service?

Both TurnoverBnB and TIDY are great software tools to help you find and manage cleaners. Both seamlessly integrate with Host Tools. You can learn more about the specifics of integrating your Host Tools account with TurnoverBnB here and TIDY here.

If you only have one, or a couple of cleaners that are available on consistent days of the week, you will probably only need to use Host Tools’ built-in cleaner management features.

Another option is a personal maid. A personal maid offers a more customizable experience, as you’ll be training one person to know the ins and outs of your property.

However, you are dependant on one person which can be problematic when they are sick or take a vacation. Working with a property management service is great for high-quality and dependable scheduling.

Whichever route you decide to take, below are additional industry-trusted sites for finding the right Airbnb cleaning service for your property.

What Questions Should I Ask When Hiring an Airbnb Cleaning Service?

To secure a strong partnership, it’s important to communicate needs with a potential cleaning service to manage expectations from both parties. When interviewing a cleaning crew service, be sure to ask these questions:

What are the scheduling requirements and notice time for the cleaning crew?

It’s important to work with a service that is organized and has a strong scheduling system in place. Having a cleaning crew not show up between guests, especially when you utilize self-check-in, will be disastrous. Be sure to automate communication with your cleaning crew, and know how to reach them in case of emergency.

Does the cleaning crew have experience working with short-term rentals?

The short-term rental industry is chaotic, and last-minute bookings are frequent. It’s important to know if the cleaning crew is used to this environment and if they are able to adapt to last-minute guest bookings.

What is the turnaround time?

A general rule of thumb is that a three-bedroom house should take 90 minutes for a cleaning crew to do a standard clean between guest bookings.

Who will provide the cleaning supplies?

Generally, hosts will purchase cleaning supplies in bulk, and store them in a locked cleaning closet for the cleaning crew.

Are employees screened?

You’re giving the crew access to your personal property as well as your guests. It’s important to know that a crew’s employees have been vetted and are trustworthy.

Will you pay a flat fee or by the hour?

Working with a company that charges a flat fee is easier to budget as a host. We suggest working with a flat fee and adding on additional services such as deep cleans and linen washes. The industry standard is that a one-bedroom house, excluding linen washing costs, should not exceed $150 per visit.

How to Automate Your Airbnb Cleaning Service

HostTools makes managing your Airbnb cleaning service easy. Using our messaging rules tool, you can notify your cleaner (via text or email) every time you get a new booking, and send automated reminds the day of a scheduled cleaning.

If you manage multiple properties, it’s handy to make a turnover calendar when using the same cleaning crew between listings. A turnover calendar is a link to a calendar you can share with your cleaners or other service people. The calendar can be viewed by anyone with the link, it does not require a sign-in.

A turnover calendar has two views, the calendar view, and the list view. The calendar view shows at a glance which listings have check-outs on what days. The list view has more detailed information. It shows the length of stay, number of guests, and name of the next guest. It also shows when the next check-in is. This is helpful if your cleaners write a message to the next guest or provide a different number of towels based on how many guests. Many cleaners also want to know if it’s a same-day turnover, meaning they have less time to clean, or if there is a gap between bookings and it’s a good day to do some deep cleaning.

You can also see the details of a particular cleaning on the calendar view if you click on the cleaning. Once you click on the turnover a pop-up will appear with all the details from the list view.

Remember: you may integrate your TIDY or TurnoverBnB account with Host Tools. You can learn more about those services, as well as how to get them set up here.

Whether you manage one property or ten, hiring and automating an Airbnb cleaning service is vital to the success of your property. You need a sparkling property to maintain a superhost rating! Hiring a cleaning service will take care of making the beds, taking the trash out, a monthly deep clean, and more. Be sure to ask questions when interviewing crews and manage expectations to ensure your property and cleaning crew are a perfect fit. We know you’ll find a great cleaning service from the listed trusted sites – and will be welcoming those 5-star cleanliness reviews immediately!

Host Tools provides an automated, unified calendar for short-term rental hosts, allowing you to seamlessly list on all major channels. Start your free trial today!