Vacation Rental Housekeeping: Best Cleaning Practices for Airbnb Hosts

You’ve invested time, energy, and money into your vacation rental property. None of it matters if guests walk into a dirty vacation home. If housekeeping is compromised, guest satisfaction drops to zero.

New hosts and seasoned vacation rental owners alike need to maintain high cleaning standards to earn positive reviews and secure repeat bookings.

This article breaks down everything you need to know about vacation rental housekeeping and house cleaning, from creating a room-by-room cleaning checklist to hiring professional cleaning services and using proper tools to streamline turnovers.

What is Vacation Rental Housekeeping?

Vacation rental housekeeping is the process of preparing a property between guest stays to ensure it is clean, well-stocked, and fully guest-ready. More than just cleaning, it includes tasks like disinfecting surfaces, empting and sanitizing the trash can, and restocking essentials before the next guest's check-in.

The process also involves inspecting the property for damages or signs of wear and tear. From a guest’s perspective, effective housekeeping means walking into a spotless, fresh-smelling, well-maintained home. It directly impacts guest satisfaction, reviews, and repeat bookings.

Vacation rental housekeeping typically involves:

Turnover cleaning

Turnover cleaning is the intensive clean that happens between one guest checking out and the next guest checking in. It’s a race against the clock, requiring hosts and cleaners to clean bathrooms, kitchens, bedrooms, and living spaces within a limited time window. Cleaners should handle additional tasks beyond regular house cleaning, for example, they should disinfect all the surfaces.

Deep cleaning

Deep cleaning is the thorough cleaning done periodically, monthly or quarterly, to tackle areas that aren’t part of the standard turnover. Think carpet shampooing, oven cleaning, window washing, dusting behind furniture.

Mid-stay or extended stay cleaning

If you want a well-maintained home, consider including periodic cleaning when a guest has an extended or mid-term stay. It's important for hosts to schedule periodic cleaning during extended stays, since guests expect hotel-level service from vacation rentals.

Linen and laundry services

Washing and drying linens can be done by your cleaner, or you can use professional laundry services to maintain consistent quality and hygiene. It's a matter of coordinating with your cleaners or a laundry company.

Restocking essentials and cleaning supplies

Guests expect to find toilet paper, soap, coffee, and other essentials. Many hosts also stock guest-friendly items like welcome baskets, cleaning supplies, or extra trash bags to empower guests during their stay.

How Housekeeping Works on Airbnb and Vrbo

Airbnb and Vrbo do not offer or coordinate cleaning services for vacation rentals. However, as a host, your success on these platforms depends heavily on positive reviews, and cleanliness is often the first thing guests notice (or complain about).

That's why both platforms allow hosts to charge a separate cleaning fee in addition to the nightly rate. How you organize the cleaning to meet guest expectations is entirely up to you.

If you only have one or two properties, you can probably get by going the DIY route—assuming you’re up for doing the work yourself. But once you manage several properties, especially if they’re not just around the corner, DIY becomes unrealistic and time-consuming. That’s usually when hosts decide to bring in professional cleaners or a housekeeping service.

How Many Cleaners Do Hosts Need?

When working with professional cleaners to manage your vacation rental turnovers, it’s important to have a backup cleaner (or a team) in place. Even the most reliable cleaner can become unavailable at the last minute due to illness, emergencies, car trouble, overbooking, or simply running behind schedule.

How to Hire the Right Cleaning Team

When hiring a housekeeping service, start by focusing on your local area. Look into cleaning companies, individual cleaners, and vacation rental professionals who specialize in short-term rentals.

If you manage one or two properties, you might be fine working with a single cleaner or contractor. But for larger portfolios, you can partner with a full-service cleaning company. These companies typically manage a team, so if one cleaner is unavailable, they can easily find a replacement and keep the schedule on track.

Ask around in your network or check with local property managers for trusted recommendations. Word-of-mouth referrals are often the best way to find reliable vacation rental cleaners.

Whatever you choose, vacation rental cleaners should understand how vacation home cleaning services work, the cleaning process, time constraints, and the importance of following a schedule—and be reliable and responsive. This means they should be trusted people who will tell you in a timely manner what needs to be fixed and notice problems before they escalate. Otherwise, you could face much higher repair costs down the road.

Vacation Rental Cleaning Cost

Price is determined by factors such as location, property type, and additional amenities like a hot tub. In tourist hotspots in California, cleaning services tend to be more expensive than in some places in Arizona. Mashvisor calculated the following average figures for cleaning costs in the US:

• Private Room, Studio, or One-Bedroom Apartment: $40 – $80
• Two-Bedroom Apartment: $90 – $155
• Three-Bedroom House: $120 – $200

Vacation rental cleaning services typically charge either hourly rates or flat fees. In many cases, a flat fee is more common, as it sets clear expectations for both parties.

Vacation Rental Maintenance Best Practices

How can you ensure consistent cleaning standards? Vacation rental cleaning is most effective if you follow the system seasoned Airbnb hosts have already found works best:

Vacation rental cleaning checklist

Standardize the cleaning procedure for your cleaners or yourself. Clearly define tasks for the entire property. Creating a vacation rental cleaning checklist is simple. You can start with ready-made templates and customize them to fit your property’s layout and needs. A well-structured checklist sets clear cleaning standards that any professional can follow.

A detailed checklist removes guesswork and helps ensure each turnover meets your expectations. Nothing gets skipped. Also, standardize the cleaning products to be used to maintain quality.

Be specific about tasks for every area, from kitchen appliances to outdoor furniture. Provide clear instructions such as: disinfect door handles, refill hand soap, wipe mirrors without streaks, and empty the dishwasher.

Scheduling cleaning automatically

Use the right tools that simplify your work and assign tasks to your cleaning team automatically. The right software creates a predictable system for your vacation rental business.

When you connect your listings to a property-management platform like iGMS, cleaning tasks are assigned automatically based on your booking calendar. Calendars from Airbnb, Vrbo, and other platforms stay synced and appear in one place with a single unified dashboard.

You no longer need to remind your cleaners after every checkout; the system handles the notifications, so the guest experience is never compromised.

Taking photos

This is the final step many hosts include in their vacation rental cleaning process. Your cleaning crew takes photos each time they complete vacation home cleaning services.

After finishing, they can upload the photos online. This not only serves as proof of a job well done, but also documents that the property was in perfect condition before the next guest’s check-in.

If any issues arise with a guest, you’ll have before-and-after images to support a damage claim through the Airbnb Resolution Center.

Building a great relationship with housekeeping professionals

Airbnb hosts are divided into two groups when it comes to cleaning. One group is concerned about costs and prefers to hire young, inexperienced workers at lower hourly rates to cut down on business expenses.

The other group treats housekeeping professionals as partners and is willing to pay for consistent, high-quality results. This second group often includes investors and seasoned hosts who are ambitious and value long-term collaboration. If you're serious about growing your business, the latter approach is the way to go.

Tools for Housekeeping Management and Finding Cleaners

Let's take a look at a couple of cleaning apps that short-term rental hosts can use.

Turno

Compared to property management systems that centralize all rental operations, tools like Turno focus specifically on managing cleaning tasks and helping hosts find reliable cleaners.

Turno manages all aspects of cleaning and includes a marketplace where you can connect with qualified cleaners for your property. You can also integrate Turno with your PMS, if your PMS supports the integration, as iGMS does.

Turno provides access to tens of thousands of vetted, dependable cleaning professionals. Hosts can invite their own cleaners or find new ones, including backups when needed. The system allows hosts to set prices, assign tasks, and send payments directly to cleaners through the platform.

To ensure consistent, high-quality turnovers, hosts can use or customize cleaning checklists. Cleaners upload photos as proof of task completion, as an extra layer of quality assurance.

Cleanster

Cleanster offers a broader range of cleaning services with vetted professionals, including those who specialize in vacation rental management.

You can quickly connect with nearby, vetted professionals who are ready to jump in. Cleanster service providers undergo background checks, are thoroughly vetted, and are both bonded and insured.

Just like with Turno, you can create and customize detailed cleaning checklists that include photo requirements, notes, and issue reporting.

The app tracks cleaner location, arrival, start, and completion times using geolocation verification, which is convenient for hosts who would pay cleaners an hourly rate. An AI assistant also monitors cleaning progress and you can communicate with cleaners.

iGMS integrates directly with Cleanster to ensure both systems stay in sync, just like with Turno.

Takeaway

Vacation rental cleaning differs from cleaning your own home. To maintain a clean property that meets high standards, be sure to find professionals you can trust and standardize the entire process with clear expectations and measurable tasks.

If you need a tool to handle the heavy lifting, we recommend iGMS. This vacation rental management platform automatically assigns tasks to your cleaning team.

Beyond housekeeping scheduling, iGMS also handles guest communication, review automation, financial reporting, and managing multiple booking channels for the same property. This makes it perfect for hosts who want to list on multiple platforms like Airbnb, Vrbo, and Booking.com to attract more bookings.