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 what the last guest took with them
- 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 the penalty for running late is a guest standing outside with a suitcase and a review being written in their head.
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 has to be logged that morning to be chargeable at all, and the good operators send photographs before they leave.
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 the answer tells you whether you are dealing with a business or a person with a bucket.
Ask what the damage report looks like. Photographs with a timestamp on the morning of the changeover are what a booking platform will actually accept.
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.