Trust But Verify: Best Practices for Ensuring Top-Quality Cleaning

When Cleaning Isn’t Just Cleaning

For vacation rentals, “cleaning” means far more than just changing sheets or scrubbing toilets. In this industry, “cleaning” encompasses all the things that show guests you care about the details and are attuned to their needs.

This means effective staging: are the beds made with hospital corners? Is the toilet paper folded into your signature display? Are the cushions arranged with care and precision? When all the visible elements of the property are presented flawlessly, guests will be confident that you’ve taken care of all the less conspicuous details as well.

On the flipside, if the property is not cleaned to your standards, or if the staging doesn’t match the listing photos, it will erode a guest’s trust in you and your brand. Disappointed guests will likely leave poor reviews and they most certainly won’t be keen to rebook with you in the future.

It is essential that customers’ expectations match the reality of the product — and that reality must be of impeccable quality. Which means it’s essential you build a rock-solid partnership with your cleaning team.

Inspect Every Property After Every Cleaning?

Many property managers mitigate the risk of an unprepared property by having every property inspected after every cleaning. However, in a world of shrinking margins for property managers, physical inspections are unrealistic, inefficient and costly for most property managers.

The most successful property managers aren’t the ones footing the bills for regular physical inspections. Successful vacation rental managers take steps to prevent inferior cleanings from happening in the first place, and they take a far more modern, efficient, and cost-effective approach to quality control.

How to Establish Trust and Verify Quality

Here’s how you can establish trust with your frontline cleaning team and seamlessly verify their work:

Establish clear operating standards — Trust is built through knowing that you are aligned with your team about the level of standards and quality for your guests. One PM said that during a water shortage, her provider independently picked up bottled water for the guests. That’s when this property manager knew her vision and values were shared with her team.
Foster a sense of shared ownership of the guest experience — The best property managers see their cleaners as partners, not just employees. Encourage your cleaning team to take ownership of the service quality and the impact it has on guests. Invested cleaners will pay attention to details and make the extra effort to ensure a 5-star guest experience.
Monitor guest reviews — When you first begin working with a new service provider, track your guest reviews and cleaning ratings to see how guests indirectly rate your provider’s performance. Reviews make for a great last line of defense.
Share those reviews — Make a habit of sharing positive reviews with service providers. It reinforces a job well done and builds that shared sense of ownership. Pay attention to how cleaners react to the reviews. If they are delighted by the feedback, it’s a good sign that your service provider feels a connection to the work and to your guests.
Feedback on feedback — Monitor how service providers respond to constructive criticism. Have you ever given helpful feedback only to be met with excuses, indifference or dismissal? This could indicate that the provider doesn’t have the internal motivation to excel and perform the job to your standards.
Use Verification Photos — Rather than sending out an inspector to assess cleaning quality, use verification photos to confirm the property is staged precisely to your standards. Photos help you ensure quality in near real-time, without the cost or hassle of physical inspections.

Looking for tools to put these ideas into practice? Explore Properly’s solutions:

Real-Time Inspection — lets you verify property condition remotely after every turnover
Properly for property managers — streamline operations across your entire portfolio
flexible plans — start free and scale as your portfolio grows