How to Create a Vacation Rental Cleaning Contract (with Free Template!)

Without a clearly structured and comprehensive vacation rental cleaning contract, it’s easy for cleaning companies to misinterpret your expectations, which can lead to a range of issues. 

Day-to-day communication with individual housekeepers is inconsistent, confusion with scheduling arises, and you encounter problems with invoicing and payment processes. In a worst-case scenario, this lack of coordination may lead to a missed clean.

These issues could draw you into a dispute and lengthy dialogue about who’s at fault as you seek to resolve the matter. All of which is a huge distraction from your day-to-day.

With a clear and organized agreement, though, everyone’s expectations are clearly laid out, you have a go-to resource to understand who’s responsible for what, and your business is better protected.

In this article, you’ll see: 

• What exactly a vacation rental contract is
• Why you need one
• What to include in your cleaning contract
• What the legal scope of your contract is
• How to properly organize all that information in a legal document.

Also! We provide you with a free downloadable vacation rental cleaning contract template, which you’ll find below.

What is a vacation rental cleaning contract

A vacation rental cleaning contract is a legally binding agreement between a property manager or host and a cleaning company. It explains the responsibilities of each party and provides key business information, like service rates, invoicing and payment details, and related deadlines. 

It should cover areas like the condition of the property upon service completion—in the form of a Standard Property Appearance document—and when and how often cleans should happen. 

Also, your cleaning contract can include how to manage callbacks (when further cleaning is required to get the job done properly), information on safety requirements, methods of communication, and contract termination procedures.

Why you need a vacation rental cleaning contract

Having a vacation rental cleaning contract isn't just about protecting your business: It helps you ensure quality, standardize your processes, and create professional relationships. Here's why a vacation rental cleaning contract is so important to growing your short-term rental business.

To protect you and your business

A vacation rental contract protects your business by defining your service expectations and how to proceed if those expectations aren’t met. 

This isn’t just about the quality of a turnover—it can also relate to how often cleans should be performed (like mid-stay cleans) and by what time, which can help you manage long stays and last-minute bookings.

In addition to this legal agreement, you should also use vacation rental cleaning software. This allows you to deliver a fantastic guest experience and have a shared record of communications if a cleaner doesn’t meet your standards.

A platform like Breezeway, for example, is indispensable as you scale your business. That’s because, with tools like automatic scheduling and Airbnb cleaning checklists, cleaners can easily access your booking calendar and understand the service you need. 

Automated scheduling and cleaning checklists make it easy for housekeepers to see exactly what you need and when.

To ensure quality, consistency, and control

When it comes to quality service, consistency is absolutely essential to your business success. For example, to become an Airbnb Superhost, you need a minimum guest rating of 4.8—and, as Airbnb data shows, guests highlight cleanliness as “one of the top reasons for a negative review.” 

This puts enormous pressure on your operations—especially if you only have 24 hours or less to turn over a property before the next guest arrives. As a result, while your property care platform supports the work of individual housekeepers and aligns them with your needs, a cleaning services contract does the same for the cleaning company. 

You can use it to detail how the property should be left after each clean, by what time, and what circumstances would be grounds for contract termination.

To help standardize your processes 

As you scale your business, your need for efficiency intensifies. Without clearly defined standard operating procedures (SOPs) and processes, each new property you manage will add complexity to your job and potentially hours of work.

When this happens, it becomes increasingly difficult for you to stay on top of booking changes, you might struggle to manage guest messaging, and cracks in your operations, like missed cleans, could start to appear.

Hence your need for standardized processes, and automated task scheduling and cleaning checklists play a critical role in this. Though your cleaning contract can’t tell cleaners how to clean or what products to use, you can use it to establish your preferred processes and methods of communication.

That way, you can be confident your guests always receive the standard of service you promised them in your listings, no matter how many properties you manage.

To define your professional relationship

Your cleaning operations are one of the most important areas of your entire business—you’ll be judged on them by your guests, and, if you manage other owners’ properties, by them too.

Because of this, the success of your cleaning ops influences your online travel agency (OTA) ratings, how well your properties rank on those OTAs, your occupancy rates, and your ability to attract new homeowners to grow your portfolio.

So, your relationship with any cleaning contractor is extremely important—and an overlooked trash bag, a late or missed clean, or a dispute over service standards or payments can end up being very costly—potentially resulting in a refund, affecting your ratings, and causing issues with the homeowner.

A thorough and professional cleaning services agreement mitigates those risks, specifies what you need from that relationship, and sets the tone for a successful partnership. So let’s take a look at what to include in one.

What your vacation rental cleaning contract should include

Here’s a rundown of the key areas of your cleaning contract—but please take into consideration that this is not a definitive list. Though we have years of experience in the field, you should still seek specialized legal advice before creating your agreement.

The business details of both parties

The first thing to include in your contract is the full name of both parties, the physical addresses of each business, and their respective contact details.

Contract purpose, property addresses, and contract duration

Next, provide an overview of the purpose of the contract, which explains why you’re hiring the cleaning company’s services.

Alongside the high-level services description, you need to state the addresses of the properties that the cleaning company will attend to. If you manage a large number of vacation rental properties, this could be provided in an annex document.

Finally, state the length of the contract, which should also include the start date.

The cleaning service provider’s responsibilities

Here you should define what you’re hiring the cleaning company to do, for example:

• Turnovers, mid-stay cleans, last-minute cleans, regular deep cleans, basic maintenance tasks, and linen washing
• The prices you’ve agreed upon for the jobs listed above 
• Callbacks in the case of an unsatisfactory clean (this could be done at no additional charge if piece rate, or billed separately if hourly)
• Property inspections and the reporting of damaged or missing property contents
• Stock counts and stock inventory replenishment

Now you can detail what the cleaners are expected to accomplish with each core task. Consider including a checklist as an annex document, which should be aligned with the cleaning checklist you create in your Airbnb cleaning software.

Note: Your contract can’t specify the cleaning process or detail the precise times of day it takes place, and it’s not practical to break down cleaning tasks on a property-by-property basis. But, with a comprehensive overview of each housekeeping job, you can agree on your expectations and protect your interests.

Standard Property Appearance document

You can also include an additional annex document that shares images and descriptions of what your property should look like after each clean. This Standard Property Appearance document provides the cleaning business with a practical reference point.

The vacation rental business’s responsibilities, supplies, and payment

In this section of your professional cleaning contract, you should detail:

• Your methods of communication and related software tools
• How you’ll provide property access
• The required notice when booking new cleaning services
• Any safety provisions
  
  

The scheduling process 

Here you can explain your preferred scheduling process and the software you use to automate cleaning tasks.

With Breezeway, cleaners can access a user-friendly app that’s connected to your property management system or listing sites. This gives you a hands-off solution to managing cleaning schedules, eliminating human error and missed cleans. 

Also, the platform keeps your vacation rental cleaners in the loop with any changes—you’ll never suffer from two cleaners arriving by mistake to clean the same property, and you’ll be able to take on last-minute reservations without any hassle.

Any last-minute changes are automatically updated by Breezeway

Invoicing process, fees, and payment

Here, detail service fees and charges, such as:

• The type of cleaning fees (hourly or piece rate)
• Cleaning fees
• Additional charges (for example, in the case of emergency callouts)
• The invoicing process with deadlines
• Methods and frequency of payment with deadlines
  
  

Disputes and contract termination

Lastly, both parties can be further protected by including a section in the agreement that defines the process for ending a contract early. This should include how much notice is required and how this should be communicated.

Vacation rental cleaning contract template

As explained earlier, Breezeway is an industry-leading property care platform, and we have been experts in vacation rental property care for years. Nevertheless, if you wish to use this template, please seek professional legal advice first.

Download Free Template

Delivering high-quality property care every time

In outlining your expectations, standards, needs, and preferences, a vacation rental contract provides clarity on one of the most crucial areas of your short-term rental business. 

As a result, your cleaning services agreement can play an essential role in ensuring a consistently amazing guest experience. But positive collaboration with your cleaning company isn’t enough. 

When scaling your business, you’ll need a comprehensive property care platform so you can automate task scheduling, manage communications and property access, and deliver quality to every guest with customized digital cleaning checklists.

By bringing all these solutions together in one place, you can do away with the stresses of a missed clean or poor job and make sure your properties are always worthy of a 5-star review.