Having an excellent rating at Airbnb can be considered one of the key factors for getting steady bookings and generating more money. Although your visitors are fond of good interior design, handy facilities, and quick check-in, there is nothing that can make your visit unbearable as poor cleaning.
Because the search algorithm used by Airbnb gives priority to well-rated properties, small lapses in care could translate into reduced search ratings and income losses. It is wise to hire a local Airbnb cleaner or an expert cleaning company such as Clearwater Cleaning.
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- Overlooking “Invisible” High-Touch Areas
When you hurry up to clean your place from 10:00 AM until 3:00 PM check-in time, you tend to pay attention only to major places such as the floor, kitchen countertops, bathroom surfaces.
But there are also lots of tiny items that might have been contaminated with dirt, grease, and bacteria. Such objects are light switches, door knobs, cabinet knobs, remote controls, thermometer dial, lampshades.
If at any moment your guests turn on the light switch on their bed and feel sticky or find some spots on the remote control of TV, their view on your accommodation will be ruined at once. To not commit this mistake, you should make an extremely detailed list of those touchpoints to clean them each time when a new guest comes.
- Neglecting Odors and Poor Air Quality
Regardless of how well kept the rental may be, the first thing that will turn the tenant off about it is any offensive odor. Different odors tend to stick to soft surfaces like carpets, curtains, cushions, and fabric covers of furniture. These odors can range from pet dander, lingering food odors, wet towels, to smoking residue from previous renters.
Depending on strong artificial air fresheners will likely do harm because most people have allergies to artificial fragrances and would think that you are trying to hide something. So instead of that, work on getting rid of the odors completely.
High-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) vacuum cleaners, frequent washing of cushion covers, and air circulation during turnovers are recommended. Also, hiring a professional local Airbnb cleaner locally will help achieve this goal.
- Skimping on Linens and Proper Laundry Service
Sheet sets and bath towels are the most personal belongings with which guests have to deal during their stay. Tarnished, crumpled, or hairy linen will ensure a 1-star rating as far as cleaning goes in no time.
One of the biggest mistakes that hosts usually make is attempting to wash and dry all the linen in the house within 2-3 hours. This creates a rush in washing the sheets, drying towels when they’re still damp, or wrinkled sheets when they’re removed from the dryer.
In addition, hair is easy to attract to the washed sheets because of the static electricity. It is always important to examine the linens in bright light, use bright white sheets that can be whitened without difficulty, and have three complete sets of linens for each bed.
- Not Addressing Hair in the Bathing Area
Hair in the shower drain, tiles of the bathroom, and the bottom of the toilet is likely one of the most common complaints that guests tend to make on short-term rental websites. No matter how clean you keep your bathroom, leaving even one strand of hair in there suggests to the guests that the room wasn’t cleaned at all after the last guest.
Cleaning bathrooms before mopping should include sweeping or vacuuming of floors because when you mop, wet hairs adhere to any surface and spread through a mop.
Using microfiber cloths, lint rollers and finishing the job with sweeping using a bright light source such as a flashlight or a smartphone torch can help to see the missed hairs in the corners and behind baseboards before the next guest comes in.
- Failure to Clean the Interior of Kitchen Appliances
The guest expects the kitchen to be working perfectly and clean. Although cleaning the outside of the refrigerator, microwave, and oven will make the kitchen seem perfectly clean from the outside, the guest will open these appliances as soon as he arrives.
Finding food splatters in the microwave, crumbs or stains in the fridge or crumbs in the toaster is not going to make guests happy. So, as a rule, open all the kitchen appliances before cleaning them. You will need to wipe the insides of the microwave, inspect the freezer and remove the crumbs from the toaster and coffee maker.
- Skipping the Turnover Checklist in a Hurry
Doing the turnover on your own or employing an untrained cleaner can be a risky move because of inconsistency that results from trying to memorize the process within time constraints. One week you clean the patio furniture while the other you forget to remove pollen or cobwebs from it.
Inconsistency is the death of 5-star reviews. Local Airbnb cleaners follow the room-by-room checklist in order not to overlook any details. By creating the visual checklist with the help of photo references for beds, towels, amenities, you make sure that all the rooms will be consistently clean and tidy.
- Missing the Exterior and Entryway Areas
First impressions can be made even before your guests enter the property itself. No amount of clean interiors can counteract the negative image created due to unclean exterior appearance.
Some mistakes made in exterior areas include dust-covered front doors, cobwebs around porch lights, dirty doormats, leaves accumulated at the doorways, and full trash bins kept near the entrance.
Late-night arriving guests can easily notice that there are a bunch of bugs on the porch light or that there is a stench of garbage in the entryway. Make sure that sweep down of the front porch, cleaning of the entryway glass, and trash management are included in your property’s routine maintenance.
Conclusion
For an Airbnb listing to achieve a 5-star rating, it must focus on detail-oriented work and keep the highest possible cleanliness standards. Even though managing turnover may be extremely hard to do individually, avoiding such highly detailed mistakes as neglecting the presence of hair, dirt, and smell from the appliance is crucial.
