How Apartment Cleanliness Standards Can Increase Profit
It is obvious that cleanliness is a critically important factor when choosing a place to stay. Whether it is a small hostel, an apartment, a hotel, a café or a restaurant, high cleanliness standards directly affect guests’ impressions and, accordingly, the success of your business.
The main reason for cancelling a booking or asking to change a room is precisely poor cleaning quality. It can also lead to a drop in LTV (profit from repeat customer orders). How well cleaning quality is monitored determines not only the comfort of tenants but also the reputation of your property.
In this article we will focus on the importance of cleaning in apartments, flats and small cafés. In large restaurants and hotels the process is often better organised, so we pay the main attention to small properties.
Cleanliness and reputation: how it affects ratings
For those renting apartments and houses through platforms such as Airbnb and Booking.com, price and rating are the main criteria when choosing a place to stay. Accordingly, the higher your apartment’s rating, the greater the chances of a successful booking. Guests often check reviews, and cleanliness is one of the main factors they pay attention to.
Statistics:
- 70% of guests decline to book if the comments mention poor cleanliness.
- 80% of travellers check cleanliness ratings on platforms such as Airbnb and Booking.com before booking.
- In Kyiv on Airbnb, highly rated apartments (above 4.5 out of 5) receive on average 20% more booking requests than similar properties with a lower rating.
A clean space is a must have. Simply for a clean space you most likely will not get 5 stars, but it is a basic necessity, and without it you can easily get 1. And that, in turn, will automatically lower the rating and reduce the number of future bookings. And that is of huge importance for the stable income of your business.
Cleaning quality control
To avoid cleanliness-related problems, you need to create a cleaning and inspection plan after every check-in. It does not matter whether you have a contract with a cleaning company, a cleaning service or an individual cleaner, or do the cleaning yourself: there must be clear methods and areas for checking cleaning quality.
The basis can be the experience of a professional cleaning company in Kyiv and the use of its checklist. In fact, you can order cleaning services from a company and either use them on a regular basis or observe the process and gain experience. You can draw up the critical areas to check yourself, use the experience of cleaning professionals, or use those given later in this article.
Moreover, the mentioned housing rental platforms even offer their own schemes for thorough apartment cleaning and quality control methods.
Step | Quality standard |
1. Checking surface cleanliness | No dust, dirt or stains on visible surfaces. |
2. Checking bed linen | Bed linen without stains, freshly laundered, towels replaced. |
3. Cleaning the kitchen | No stains, greasy residue or unpleasant smell on surfaces. |
4. Bathroom | Shiny surfaces, no limescale deposits, clean towels. |
5. Checking furniture and appliances | Furniture without dust, appliances without significant signs of use, working devices. |
6. Checking smells | Fresh air, without unpleasant or musty odours. |
7. Organisation of the space | Everything neatly arranged, no unnecessary items, well organised. |
8. No marks | No marks on surfaces after cleaning, everything clean. |
Checkpoints for inspection:
- No water marks on glass: Water marks on windows, mirrors and other glass surfaces are a very obvious signal, especially if they are stains on a drinking glass
- Cobwebs: A common problem that is often (for some reason) overlooked during cleaning. Checking for cobwebs in corners, on the ceiling and around furniture must be mandatory!
- Under the bed and furniture: Checking every corner and spot is important – and although this area is out of sight, it cannot be ignored!
- Doors, handles and switches: These are the parts of the interior that guests touch the most. They should be free of fingerprints and stains.
Services of cleaning companies
Cleaning services can become a beneficial and effective solution for all customers if communication is organised properly.
Basic daily cleaning, or cleaning before check-in or after check-out, which takes a few hours, will not be much more expensive than the services of service staff.
Deep cleaning carried out, for example, once a month will in any case be done better by professionals. And given that you need to periodically have at least the mattresses dry-cleaned, you will in any case be bringing in a cleaning company. This is a good opportunity to get a discount as a regular customer on all services and to save significantly on servicing tourists.
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