Tips for How to Find & Book a Cleaning Service for a Short-Term Rental
Finding a good, dependable cleaning service for your short-term rental can be a daunting task, but thankfully there are SO MANY OPTIONS to choose from! For instance, you could decide to work with an individual cleaner or a small local family business, or you could hire a large and established cleaning company with several outposts nation-wide.
Local, Individual or Family Business Cleaners
Individual and family business cleaners are great! Once you’re able to establish a relationship with them, they will likely pay the closest attention to your home. You may be able to call or text them directly at a moment’s notice, and since the same local person or people will be going to your property again and again, they will be able to notice changes or damages more intuitively, and they can often be trained to rearrange furniture that has been moved by guests or other specific requests to leave your place looking exactly as you like it. The downside of these types of vendors, is that they may not be familiar with the type of cleaning that is required or expected for short-term rental properties, so they may require training or go through a learning curve in order to understand how cleaning for short-term rentals is different than a regular household clean.
Some of these particular needs include making sure to photograph any evidence of damages before starting to clean, annotating any missing items from the inventory, doing all the laundry for the beds and towels every time, always cleaning out the fridge and wiping down the appliances, working within a small window of time between guests, not having a standard routine of always going on a particular day of the week, and even being flexible to accommodate any last-minute changes such as a booking cancelation or a last-minute late check-out. Another disadvantage with working with this kind of vendor, is that there may be a language barrier, and they may not have access to smartphone integrations that could sync up with your Airbnb calendar so they can automatically know when to come for a clean. Finding these kinds of vendors can also be challenging. These relationships often develop by word of mouth, and if you’re an investor who lives in a different city or state, finding and developing that kind of relationship may prove to be more difficult than anticipated.
Established Cleaning Companies with Specialized Vacation Rental Cleaning Offerings
Specialized cleaners will have more experience and understanding about the nuances with short-term rental cleaning, such as making sure to document any damages or missing items after each stay, quickly and efficiently doing the laundry, turning the beds, cleaning out the fridge and appliances, and even in some cases making fancy swans out of your towels or neatly folding the end of the toilet paper or paper towels into a fancy hotel-like origami. These bigger companies tend to have an organized booking system and hundreds of employed cleaners to come at any moment, and in some cases, they use a software that integrates automatically with your booking calendar so they know exactly when they need to come in to clean. The downside, is that often times these bigger cleaning companies won’t be able to guarantee that you will get the same person to come clean your home every time, so they may not be able to take inventory for you or rearrange furniture that guests may have moved out of place or other house-specific requests. They may also be more distant in their oversight, causing a little less care in the details. You may also not be able to have direct communication via texts or phone calls with the cleaners.
So basically, there are several benefits and disadvantages to both going with a smaller local operator or a larger established cleaning company. But regardless, you still have to figure out how much to charge your guests as their Cleaning Fee.
Download and customize this Cleaner's Checklist so you can help better manage and direct your cleaning team for your Short-Term Rental business. This package includes a two-page layout of the checklist as well as a one-page layout. You can also open the digital design file on Canva so you can customize the list to fit your specific needs.
How to estimate a Cleaning Fee
You should base your Cleaning Fee on the size of your rental property, and on the pricing for cleaning services in your area. Smart short-term rental investors will research what other similar properties in their area are charging as their cleaning fee, and price theirs either the same as that or just slightly lower. You can consider rolling in part of your cleaning fee into your nightly rate to at least superficially help remove some “sticker shock” for prospective guests who are considering completing a booking; or you can consider it a direct pass-through fee that you will pay directly to your cleaners.
Where to Find Local Cleaners
Here are some websites that you can check out to help you find cleaners in your area:
Handy: The Most Reliable Way to Book a House Cleaning: Here's how it works -- just go to our website or app and tell us your zipcode and how big your house, apartment, or flat is. Handy will then connect you with a top-rated home cleaning professional to help take the stress out of your life.
Angie's List: Compare quotes from top-rated House Cleaning & Maid Services in your zipcode
Task Rabbit: Browse and book a trusted Tasker best suited to handle your Airbnb cleaning needs. Communicate directly with your Tasker to discuss things like how to get in, cleaning supply preferences, where to find the laundry machines, and more. Book one-time or recurring cleanings –– on your schedule.
Dazzling Cleaning: The easiest way to find and book your perfect cleaner.
HellaMaid: Book an Airbnb cleaning service that includes hospitality items like restocking soap, folding towels, fancy touch ups, and more!
TurnoverBnB: The smart way to schedule, pay, and find vacation rental cleaners for your Vrbo, Booking.com, and Airbnb listings
MerryMaids: When we enter your rental property, we get to work immediately assessing the space and tackling all the high-traffic areas and hard-to-reach places. We’ll eliminate dirt, dust, grime, fingerprints and more so you can keep your Airbnb home continuously clean and booked!
Doin: Since 2015, Doinn selects the best professional cleaning and linen companies in each city for you to have instant access to them, with just one click, thanks to our technology.
Turnify: Hiring and managing cleaners is tough work. Turnify will provide staff, training, and daily management, all powered by our app.
TIDY: Our software helps property managers: Find and book the perfect pro for them. Describe what they want done. Customize how they want it done. Get accurate pricing. Make services more reliable. Track and manage the services.
Local Maids Quotes: Find Local Cleaning Pros In Just Two Easy Steps! Also see ratings, reviews, job pictures and more!
Housekeeper: The #1 way to hire a professional housekeeper
Molly Maid: For more than 30 years, Molly Maid has established itself as the trusted name in contract-free professional housekeeping.
USA Clean Master: (888-396-5195) You want your house cleaned - we clean it! Our work is quick, efficient and of a very high quality like you will find nowhere else. Don't wait! Call us today for more details.
Maids: For a cleaning that meets your highest standards, you need a dedicated team of trained specialists.
PLEASE NOTE: By no means is this an extensive list of all the options out there. I strongly encourage you to do your own online search for cleaners in your area to see what comes up. Otherwise, you can always try searching on Yelp or Craigslist for providers in your area.
What about managing the cleaners and automatically notifying them of cleanings?
If you need extra help to manage the cleaners you find, or if you want to notify them automatically of their next clean once a guest makes a new booking; you can consider using a software program that integrates with Airbnb like Properly or Breezeway, or another professional property management software like Guesty. However, these tools can be a little costly and complex to set up, so they tend to mostly be used by professional property managers who have multiple short term rentals to manage. Click here to see a quick video about how Properly works, to give you more context.
