specialist
Holiday let and changeover cleaning
Holiday let cleaning costs £45 to £120 a changeover for a two-bedroom property and £120 to £280 for a large one, or £18 to £27 an hour where it is charged by time. What you are really buying is a deadline: guests leave at ten and arrive at four, and everything in this trade is arranged around those six hours.
What this covers
What it costs. Holiday let cleaning costs £45 to £120 a changeover for a two-bedroom property, £120 to £280 for a large one, or £18 to £27 an hour where it is charged by time. Full cost breakdown.
What the job covers
- Changeover cleans between guests, to a fixed time window
- Bed linen and towels stripped, laundered and made up
- Restocking consumables and the welcome basket
- Reporting damage and anything missing after the last guest
- Deep cleans between seasons, and hot tub servicing on some properties
What is involved
A changeover is not a domestic clean done faster. It is a fixed list completed inside a fixed window, with laundry, restocking and a damage report attached, and running late means a guest arriving at a property that is not ready for them.
Laundry is what separates the operators. Washing linen at the property means a machine cycle inside the window, which only works for a small place; anything larger runs on swapped sets, where clean linen arrives and dirty linen leaves in the van. Swapped sets cost more per changeover and are the only thing that makes a same-day turnaround reliable.
The reporting matters as much as the cleaning, because the cleaner is the only person who sees the property between guests. A missing towel, a ring on a table or a broken blind is far easier to recover when it is logged that morning, and the good operators send photographs before they leave.
What the evidence says
Standards and published measurements, cited so they can be checked.
Limescale and grease need opposite products
Scale is calcium carbonate and it comes off with an acid. Grease is fat and it comes off with an alkali. No single product does both well, which is why a kitchen deep clean involves at least two bottles. A company that brings an acid for the shower and an alkali for the oven is working with the chemistry rather than against it.
Drinking Water Inspectorate. The statutory hardness classification for water supplied in England and Wales, in milligrams per litre of calcium carbonate, and what the dissolved calcium and magnesium behind it are.
Choosing someone for the job
Ask how they handle linen, and whether that means washing on site or swapping sets. It decides whether a same-day turnaround is realistic.
Ask what happens when a guest leaves late. Every property hits this, and a business that handles changeovers regularly will have a plan for it.
Ask what the damage report looks like. Photographs with a timestamp on the morning of the changeover are the evidence booking platforms usually ask for.
Common questions
Is it cheaper than a domestic cleaner?
Per hour it is usually dearer, because it is weekend work to a deadline with laundry attached. Per changeover it is predictable, which is what matters when you are pricing a booking.
Who pays for it?
Normally the guest, through the cleaning fee on the booking. Most owners set that fee to what the changeover actually costs rather than absorbing it.
Where holiday let cleaning is listed
Towns with a cleaner on this site who takes it on, and how many.