The Cleaning & Turnover Operations Recipe
The operational backbone that fails first when you scale. A property with great photos and bad cleaning gets bad reviews; a property with mediocre photos and great cleaning gets great reviews. Cleaning is not the glamorous part of this business and it's not the part you can shortcut.
The Checklist
Work through these in order. Each item is one decision or one task.
Step 1
Source cleaners through three channels in parallel
Step 2
Pay above market, period
Step 3
Build a checklist that covers what guests notice, not what looks clean
Step 4
Calculate linen-par correctly: 3x the bed and bath inventory
Step 5
Centralize consumable restocking
Step 6
Build a quality control loop
Step 7
Have a backup cleaner or two pre-vetted
Tools & Stack
See guide content.
Operator's Notes
Cleaning cost economics: Typical turn cost runs $80–$250 depending on property size and market. Pass this through to guests as a cleaning fee — Airbnb and Vrbo support this natively. Most successful operators charge 10–20% above their actual cost as a buffer for deep cleans and supplies. This is not a profit center; it's an honest pass-through with a small margin for ongoing maintenance.; Linen and consumable budget: $50–$150/month per property for replacement linens, towels, and consumables beyond per-turn restocking. Build it into your P&L; hosts who don't budget for it are surprised every s
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Use this with
Apply this guide alongside any property recipe in Sections 1–5. The unsexy operational layer is what turns a one-off project into a real business.
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