When it comes to vacation rentals, cleaning and maintenance are two key business areas you need to address. Ensuring that cleaning is done to professional standards and keeping every vacation rental in tip-top shape are some of the most important yet difficult tasks for a property owner or manager.
In a nutshell, a vacation rental that hasn’t been cleaned and/or maintained properly can literally ruin an otherwise great vacation experience. Not to mention that it can also tarnish your business reputation.
Whether you intend to do the work yourself, hire in-house staff, or outsource, we strongly advise you to structure each task so that you have a clear plan on how it needs to be carried out. To help, we’ve put together the following guide on how to manage your vacation rental housekeeping and maintenance operations for the best outcomes.
Develop Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)
If you have in-house cleaning and maintenance staff, developing a series of SOPs is the best way to go about ensuring consistent and efficient cleaning and maintenance processes. In order to establish clear SOPs, you need to create specific cleaning standards, which should outline all the details necessary, ranging from what products to use for cleaning each area to how to fold towels.
As well, it’s important to specify when cleaners should do deep cleaning and what they should do mid-stay. Similarly, you need to develop a maintenance plan, which indicates exactly when your staff should do certain tasks, such as cleaning power outlets, furnace filters, ceiling fans, etc.
In a nutshell, clear SOPs will translate into less stress and unpleasant surprises for you and your staff. Although establishing SOPs isn’t a simple task, they can save you a serious amount of time and money in the long run. In addition to SOPs, it’s advisable to develop vacation rental cleaning and maintenance checklists, which will help you ensure that nothing is overlooked. If you have only one vacation rental or just a few properties, you don’t really need SOPs. In that case, a comprehensive checklist should be sufficient in order to handle all the cleaning and maintenance tasks required. For those that manage several rentals, this process is highly advisable.
Perform Regular Inspections
To make sure that your SOPs are being followed and everything is working as it should, you need to schedule regular inspections. A thorough inspection will also document the condition of the property before renting it out to guests. This is especially important considering that rental properties usually sustain more wear and tear than owner-occupied properties.
Although performing regular inspections might feel like another burden, they can save you from many future headaches and expensive repairs. In short, vacation rental inspections can help you prevent emergency repairs that could cost you a fortune and make your guests unhappy. Even though an emergency may still happen, having a record of routine inspections could help you protect your vacation rental business from lawsuits. Additionally, regular inspections can provide the maximum level of safety for your guests and help them feel more comfortable staying at your property, which is an essential part of a top-notch guest experience.
Consider Outsourcing
Not only is cleaning and maintaining vacation rental properties between stays time consuming; it can also be very stressful, especially when you have back-to-back bookings. So, outsourcing vacation rental cleaning and maintenance to third-party service providers could be a helpful alternative that allows you to focus on your core business. Besides having plenty of experience in the field, which means that these professionals can clean and maintain your vacation rentals to a very high standard, they’ll also save you a lot of time that you can dedicate to more important aspects of your business. As well, outsourcing vacation rental cleaning and maintenance tasks to reputable professionals can give you peace of mind that comes with knowing that your vacation rentals are always kept in good condition.
Automate Vacation Rental Cleaning and Maintenance
Managing vacation rental cleaning and maintenance can be a time-consuming undertaking for a property owner or manager. Luckily, you can automate this task with the help of lodging management software. Integrated with a dynamic platform, our advanced software solution provides one centralized dashboard that can give you more control over task and staff scheduling, task assignment based on property and staff availability and location, cleaning and maintenance status of vacation rentals, customizable checklists that can help you ensure that all the tasks performed by your team or third-party service providers comply with your company’s standards, detailed reporting, guest messaging, and many other areas of your business.
In addition to stylish decor and great amenities, guests also cherish clean, well-maintained, and safe vacation rental properties. By keeping your vacation rentals in tip-top shape, you can leave a great impression on your guests, which could translate into excellent reviews that will attract more bookings. To find out how our software solution can help you manage your business from one place and ensure a better guest experience, feel free to schedule a demo today!