How do you coordinate with your cleaner? Let cleaning plan itself when guests check out

· Hostopus · 5 min read

Your guest checks out at 11:00 and the next one arrives at 15:00. That leaves four hours, and your cleaner needs to know they are coming that day. With one home, a WhatsApp message does the job. Then a booking changes dates, another gets cancelled, a second home joins. One message slips through and the next guest opens the door to an unprepared home. On Airbnb, guests rate their stay with an overall rating plus six categories, and one of those categories is cleanliness. In Airbnb's own words, better reviews and ratings can lead to more bookings and higher earnings.

How do you plan cleaning by hand?

A manual routine can work, and most hosts start this way. These are the steps of a routine that holds up:

  • Send the checkout date for every booking. When a new reservation comes in, message the checkout date to your cleaner right away.
  • Give a clear time window. Your cleaner needs two times: the guest's checkout time and the next guest's check-in time. The work has to fit between them.
  • Flag same-day turnovers separately. When checkout and check-in fall on the same day, there is no room for delay.
  • Pass on changes the same day. If a guest changes dates or cancels, tell your cleaner straight away. Otherwise they go to an empty home or miss the day they are needed.
  • Ask for confirmation when the job is done. Get a "done" message and note down who cleaned on which day.

If you want a buffer between bookings on Airbnb, there is a preparation time setting. The options are none, 1 night before and after each reservation, or 2 nights before and after each reservation. Every buffer night is a night you cannot sell. If you allow same-day turnovers, cleaning has to fit between checkout and check-in.

Keeping records is a legal requirement in Turkey

The Regulation on Short-Term Tourist Rental of Residences (Konutların Turizm Amaçlı Kiralanması Faaliyetlerinin Düzenlenmesine İlişkin Yönetmelik), published in the Official Gazette on 28 December 2023, places this obligation on the permit holder (Art. 10/1-b): at a minimum, at every change of guest, have the home cleaned and maintained regularly, carry out regular pest control and keep records of it. When cleaning details are scattered across WhatsApp chats, it becomes hard to show later who cleaned at which guest change. We cover the permit itself in this article.

Why it gets harder as you grow

With one home on one platform, you can keep the steps above in your head. Add a second home, a second platform or a second cleaner and the work multiplies:

  • Bookings are spread across Airbnb, Booking.com and direct guests. You track each one in a different place.
  • If a date change or cancellation never reaches the cleaner, the plan is built around the wrong day.
  • Which cleanings were done gets lost in the chat history.
  • Miss one same-day turnover and the next guest walks into an unprepared home.

How cleaning is planned in Hostopus

In Hostopus you set up cleaning once. From then on, every booking brings its own cleaning task.

  • Add your cleaner to the team. In the property's Team section you invite your cleaner by entering their email address. When they sign in to Hostopus with that address they see the invitation; once they accept, they join the property as an assistant.
  • Turn on the automation. On the property's Automations card you assign your cleaner to the Cleaning row. Then you choose which bookings it applies to: only new reservations, upcoming reservations that have not checked out yet, or all reservations.
  • The task appears on its own. The moment a new booking arrives, a cleaning task is created for the checkout day and assigned to your cleaner. Its time window comes from your property settings: it starts at the guest's checkout time and ends at the next guest's check-in time.

It does not matter where the booking comes from. The same task is created for bookings from connected channels such as Airbnb and Booking.com and for bookings you enter yourself. The task does not depend on a cleaning fee either; it is created for bookings without one too.

What happens when dates change or a booking is cancelled?

  • If the dates change, the task moves to the new checkout day and your cleaner gets a Task Date Changed notification.
  • If the booking is cancelled, the cleaning task is removed and your cleaner gets a Task Cancelled notification. No wasted trip to an empty home.
  • If you change the time by hand, for example moving cleaning to 10:00 because the guest leaves early, that time is kept through later booking updates.
  • When the cleaner finishes, they mark the task as completed. You get a notification that they completed the cleaning task, and the task stays in the list with who completed it and when.

People who already receive booking notifications (you and full-access assistants, for example) do not get a separate task notification, so nobody hears the same news twice. A cleaner who does not receive booking notifications gets a New Task notification when a task is assigned. Everyone with open tasks also gets a summary every morning at 07:00 Turkey time covering that day's and overdue tasks.

If you pay the cleaning fee to your cleaner, you can set that up as a payment type (Cleaning Fee Only) in the Team section too. For every booking with a cleaning fee, that payment is recorded in your accounting automatically. Because the task and the payment are set up separately, the person who cleans and the person who gets paid can be different.

In short

Coordinating with your cleaner is a small job that repeats with every booking. By hand, you pass on the checkout day, the time window, every change and every cancellation one by one. In Hostopus you assign your cleaner once; the task opens with each booking, moves when dates change, disappears on cancellation and lets you know when the work is done. You can try Hostopus free for 60 days.

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