You could be looking to outsource cleaning tasks to help guarantee the highest cleanliness standards, to help reduce costs during low season, or to free up more of your time as you focus on other areas of your business.
But finding a cleaning crew that’s familiar with the challenges of short-term rentals and coordinating their work around a fast-changing schedule of bookings is time-consuming and stressful. Also, it can bring about errors that impact revenue and the guest experience.
To outsource your vacation rental cleaning without experiencing any of these issues, you need high-performing operations, a fast and accurate scheduling process, and a simple and effective way to communicate what you need.
In this article, you’ll see how to do all the above:
By implementing these strategies and tips, you’ll be able to outsource your cleaning with confidence, consistently deliver the service guests expect, and grow your business without the operational headaches that often come with managing third-party teams.
Automate scheduling and quality control |
It’s important to understand how outsourcing cleaning tasks can impact your operations and guest satisfaction, so here's a look at the benefits:
Whether you're hiring internally or outsourcing your cleaning, you need to balance efficiency with maintaining high standards, which you can do with an STR ops management platform.
As we discuss below, this automates tasks like creating cleaning schedules, messaging housekeepers, and running cleaning inspections, which helps you avoid mistakes like missed cleans, and allows you to focus on growing your business instead of managing day-to-day operations.
From selecting the right service providers to establishing clear communication channels, here's a comprehensive guide to efficiently outsourcing your short-term rental (STR) cleaning.
The best way to choose your cleaners is to base your decision-making on referrals from other vacation rental property managers you trust.
Recommendations from private property owners can be useful, too, but there’s a big difference between cleaning a house and cleaning a vacation rental—as your cleaner needs to not only clean thoroughly but also adhere to the specific standards and quick turnaround times that are essential to your business.
So, as well as seeking out referrals from professional contacts, research cleaning services with experience in the vacation rental industry, as they'll be familiar with the expectations and nuances of preparing properties for new guests.
To do this, you can look at reviews and ratings on online platforms, such as:
When hiring a professional cleaning service provider for your vacation rental, it's important to ask the right questions to ensure they meet your standards and operational needs. Here are five questions that can help provide you with important insights:
Once you find a cleaner or cleaning company you trust, you need to manage that relationship carefully so a) they’re happy to continue working with you and b) they demand as little management time from you as possible. We look at how to do this using cleaning management software, below.
To see more insights on how to develop a cleaning team you can rely on, see our article on finding and managing Airbnb cleaners, where we share insights from Suzanne Hacker, vacation rental business coach and CEO and Founder of Welcoming Wow.
You may feel you don’t need an STR cleaning contract if you’re only managing a small number of vacation rentals, but as your business grows, you’ll need to:
Given the complexities of legal agreements and the potential for misunderstandings, it's best to seek professional legal advice when drafting your contract. A legal expert familiar with the vacation rental industry can help tailor your contract to cover all bases, including liability issues, service level agreements, and compliance with local regulations.
This provides protection to your business, but also strengthens the relationship with your cleaning service providers by clearly defining roles and expectations, minimizing the risk of disputes, and ensuring a consistent operation across your growing portfolio.
Download Breezeway’s free vacation rental cleaning contract template. |
Cleaning checklists help you consistently deliver a welcoming environment that meets, or even exceeds, guest expectations. Plus, you can use checklists to simplify and streamline your management processes, so you save time and reduce your workload.
A well-structured cleaning checklist helps you standardize housekeeping across your portfolio—even with outsourced cleaners you haven’t worked with before—making it scalable and efficient. This ensures every property meets the same high-quality standards, regardless of its location or size.
And, with the right tools, a checklist streamlines communication between you and your cleaning teams, reducing misunderstandings, and ensuring no task is overlooked. On top of this, you can use your cleaning checklists to support other related tasks, like task tracking and property inspections.
For example, with Breezeway’s digital cleaning checklists and cleaner’s mobile app, you can:
Learn more: "...for us, it was a need to have inspections because of the high number of same-day reservations (61%). I had to build out systems to protect ourselves, our property, and our cleaners, and the easiest way to do that was with virtual inspections," -David, professional real estate investor. Result: 4.99/5 rating on Airbnb and 8 hours saved weekly. |
Vacation rental bookings can be very fluid, with late reservation changes, special requests, and last-minute bookings. So, coordinating with an outsourced cleaning team can quickly become a complex task—in the worst-case scenario, a weakness in your scheduling or communication processes can lead to a missed clean or two cleaners being dispatched to the same unit.
Automated scheduling tackles this by dynamically adjusting to booking changes, guaranteeing that cleaning assignments are accurately updated and communicated in real time. This not only streamlines operations but also minimizes the risk of errors, helping you achieve a seamless turnover for every guest stay.
Here’s how it works with Breezeway:
By automating your cleaning schedules, you save hours on manual tasks, eliminate human error, and make your business more responsive to guest needs—which can help you create more opportunities to generate revenue.
As well as automating task coordination, you can use Breezeway to track inventory and manage supplies, create recurring tasks at monthly intervals, and manage property access with smart locks—all key areas of ops management that can become more complicated when you outsource your cleaning.
By using a mobile app that’s integrated with your vacation rental operations management tool, your outsourced cleaners can:
But you still need a way to manage ad-hoc tasks that can occur as the result of special guest requests, maintenance matters like broken lamps or faulty appliances, and callbacks because the guest has noticed an issue with the cleaning—and your operations management software can help with this, too.
Breezeway’s solution is to let you create and assign work orders within your guest chat view, where you manage all your guest messaging. This saves you from having to switch platforms or search out contact details—then you can keep your guest informed as you communicate with your maintenance or cleaning teams to get the problem resolved as soon as possible.
Likewise, it needs to be simple for housekeepers to report any issues they notice while carrying out turnovers and other tasks. With Breezeway, they can do it all in the mobile app—so, even if they’re an outsourced cleaner that’s new to your processes, they can easily add a note and photo to explain the problem.
Learn more: "My employees love Breezeway. It's easy to use and reduces unnecessary back and forth. Things don't slip through the cracks," -Jacqueline Wilson, President and CEO. Result: 60% reduction in property-related inquiries and $1000s saved annually. |
Outsourcing your vacation rental cleaning doesn't have to be fraught with operational challenges—you can:
These strategies not only help you consistently deliver the highest standards of cleanliness despite working with an outsourced team, but also reduce your day-to-day workload of manual tasks, so you can spend more time on growing your business.
Automate scheduling and quality control |