Keeping Your Vacation Rental Space Clean for Holiday Travelers

There’s always a spike in travel during the holiday season. Even in 2020 — during a pandemic — a survey by travelhorizons found that 45% of Americans were planning a holiday trip.

17% of those travelers scheduled a stay at vacation rental space.

Almost all American travelers (96%) in a survey by SiteMinder said they give a lot of weight to customer reviews when they’re researching places to stay in, and 91% of young adult travelers trust those reviews as much as personal recommendations. One thing people complain about often in these reviews is a space’s lack of cleanliness.

Those reviews can destroy your business, but I’m here to give you some time tips that’ll keep your guests happy and your business thriving.

Plan, Plan, Plan!

When you’re cleaning a vacation rental space, you don’t have time to fritter away. To prepare your vacation rental space for the next guests, your turnover time should be quick. It's important that you’re not doing tasks at random.

Create a checklist, with the more time-intensive tasks closer to the top of your list and the shorter tasks at the bottom. When doing longer tasks that have gaps of time where you’re not doing anything, like doing laundry, get another task on your checklist done.

Set reasonable amounts of time for yourself to complete individual tasks. This reminds you that you’re on a fixed schedule. You’ll feel some pressure to complete the tasks in a timely manner. Also, you will see what tasks are giving you the most problems, and work on those.

Realize Not Everything Is Urgent

Your guests trust you to keep the space they’ll rent from you clean and comfortable, and if they feel that trust is broken, you may lose them (and others) as customers. To keep that trust, you may want to give every room a deep cleaning.

You can put away your power scrubber and floor steamer; you don’t need to deep clean after every guest.

You will have to deep clean your rental space more often than you normally would, because lots of people will use it. A good deep cleaning during the time no one uses your space (with, and I cannot stress this enough, thorough cleaning between guests) is enough to keep it sanitized.

Clean From The Top To The Bottom

When you’re cleaning an area, work from the top of the room and go downwards — that is to say, dust the blades of the fan before you clean the bedding or the coffee table. The dust from the fan blades will settle on the lower things in your room, so you’ll just end up going in circles if you clean from the bottom to the top of an area. That wastes your time, and time isn’t something you’ll have in spades.

Before you clean your rental space, vacuum the floors. You don’t have to let anything soak. Your goal will be to get up the stray hairs that are on the floor at that moment, so you don’t push them further into the floor when you walk on it. The last task for cleaning your entire rental space should be mopping the floors. You need to give the floors time to dry, or else you’ll leave footprints for your next guest to find.

Concentrate On The Rooms That Will Eat Up The Most Time

I mean, clean every room; there’s no way around that. Certain rooms in your rental space will take more time to complete than others. Those are usually the bedrooms and bathrooms. Here are a few tips to help you complete your tasks in these rooms faster.

Keep your cleaning supplies near you when you’re cleaning the bathroom. Use a Cleaning Caddy or bucket, or a utility belt so your cleaning supplies are right there when you need them. Time is of the essence, especially here, so you have to save yourself some time wherever you can.

You’ll spend a lot of your time in the bedroom with the bedding, but when guests come, they will at some point put their luggage on the bed. That can make your bedding look worn and stained. To avoid that (and the spread of germs), invest in a luggage rack. They can look through their suitcases on the rack, and not on your bed.

Putting fitted sheets on a bed can be tricky and time-consuming. Mark the inner corner of your bedding with something permanent so you can find the correct corner quickly. You should be able to see it without squinting; reapply when the time comes. Put your bedding on when it’s still the tiniest bit damp. The bedding will be more pliable (so you won’t have to fuss with it to get it on), and it won’t look wrinkled on the bed.

Check After Your Guests

Your guests may or may not tidy up after themselves before the end of their stay at your vacation rental space. They will undoubtedly leave something behind, whether it’s particles from their bodies, or kung pao chicken from a restaurant. Check that those things aren’t there for your next guests.

Make sure the toiletries in the bathrooms don’t look dirty. Replace soap bars and make sure liquid soap bottles are clean and filled. Keep extra toilet paper in the bathroom in case your guests run out. If your guests left stains, get them up as soon as possible. Wipe any fingerprints from the metal — e.g., the faucets and shower heads — in your space. Wipe stray hairs from surfaces in every room (and check again to ensure that they are gone)!

Ensure that nothing is in the fridge to smell up your rental space. Empty and clean trash/recycling receptacles. Check your appliances after your guests leave so there won’t be problems in the future. Remove anything your previous guests left behind from closets or drawers (if it’s anything of value, save it; your guests may ask about it later).

Look For Good Help

Cleaning your entire vacation rental space is no simple task. It will often feel like you only have a few hours to do a job that would take you a few days. You shouldn’t expect to do it by yourself.

Contact a cleaning service, and vet them before you give them responsibility for your rental space. If they don’t do a thorough job, you will get the complaints, not the cleaning crew.

We at Andy’s Quality Cleaning would love to assist you with cleaning your rental space. We will give it the quality care it deserves. Your only concern should be making your guests feel safe and welcome in your space. Fill out the form on our website to get started with us today!