One of the top reasons that people might get a negative review with their short term rental comes to cleanliness.

This week, we’re going to talk about housekeeping challenges and what you can do to make sure that you don’t have them.

Welcome to Short Term Rental Riches.

We’ll discuss investing in real estate, but with a specific focus on short term rentals, quick, actionable items to acquire, manage and scale your portfolio.

I’m your host, Tim Hubbard.

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Welcome back to the show.

I’m glad you’re here again.

We’re talking again about housekeeping.

This is the third part of our three part series, and the first part we talked about linen management.

That was episode 242.

There’s a lot that goes into our laundry.

The bigger our property, the more laundry we have.

So we talked about how many linens you might need, towels, pool towels, all those things, and when they might get damaged and what to do if they do get damaged.

And then we talked about how to find and hire a housekeeper.

That was episode 243.

That’s obviously a crucial piece to the puzzle, right?

But unfortunately, though, the housekeepers or the housekeeping companies we find aren’t always a good fit.

And so this week, we’re talking about what to do if you run into some trouble.

The first piece of trouble that you might run into is just negative feedback from your guests when it comes to cleanliness.

So what do we do in these circumstances?

Well, it all really goes into setting those expectations up front.

So before you hired your housekeeper, before you hired the housekeeping company, did you do a walkthrough with them at your property?

And did you discuss the way that you wanted the property cleaned and maybe little things that they need to keep an eye out for?

Well, if you didn’t, that’s the first step.

It’s just setting the right expectations, right?

What I’m going to talk about today, it’s not necessarily rocket science, right?

I mean, when it comes to knowing whether our housekeepers are doing a good job, it’s pretty clear, but it’s not always that easy to relay the message over to them.

So we’ve got some tips for you on that today as well.

So it all starts with setting the right expectations.

We use an application specifically for managing our housekeeping turnovers.

And if you’re new to the show, my team and I have managed probably 40,000 guests now in nearly 20 cities.

So we’ve learned a lot about housekeeping and ensuring quality.

So we use an application called Breezeway.

We’ve talked about that before, but it’s specifically for housekeeping and maintenance.

And it allows us to create a checklist for each one of our properties where our housekeepers can know exactly what they need to do in those properties.

We can take a picture of the way we want our towels folded.

We can take a picture or leave a special note on things that might get forgotten, like changing the coffee grounds or changing the filter in our coffee machine, for example.

So I think that’s really the first piece is just having those expectations and having a list for your housekeeper to go through.

There’s a reason why pilots still use checklists, right?

There’s a lot of things they have to do.

We want to make sure we don’t miss a step.

Same goes with our properties.

And of course, the bigger the property, the more things that we need to double check.

Now, you don’t have to go out and pay for an application like Breezeway.

There are others like Turno or Properly.

Those are two other companies.

Their software is paid, but you could just create a Google form, right?

For free, and you can do it in a matter of minutes.

Whatever you decide to do, though, whether it’s a paid option or you go with the free option, make sure that you have a checklist.

It’s really, really helpful.

And if you have a really long checklist when you start, you don’t have to keep it that way, right?

So make sure you have a checklist.

We don’t want those dust bunnies showing up underneath the bed.

We want to make sure all of those boxes are checked, right?

So that’s the first piece.

The second piece is just being transparent.

So we’re transparent with all of our housekeepers, with all of the reviews that we get.

And so if we get a negative review when it comes to housekeeping, you better believe that we’re sending it to our housekeeper.

And now it’s not to say like, hey, look, you did a really bad job here.

We know that sometimes guests have different expectations.

Sometimes guests are much pickier than others.

But either way, we want to make sure we’re transparent with reviews, including the good ones, right?

So we don’t want to just send the bad reviews over to our housekeepers.

We want to share all the good side of the story as well.

So that’s the second piece.

Be transparent with all the reviews.

And you can really let your guests speak on behalf of your housekeeper.

Now, of course, we don’t want negative feedback showing up in our reviews time and time again.

So we really got to set a limit for that.

And I’m going to get to that in just one second.

Before we do that, the next big issue that comes up with housekeeping is reliability.

So if our housekeepers are not showing up or they miss a clean, that is a big, big fail, right?

We know if a guest shows up to a property, they’re excited for their vacation, they want to kick off their shoes and lay down on the couch and the couch is dirty or the rug is dirty or in the worst case scenario, your housekeeper never actually showed up.

That is a massive fail and we want to make sure that doesn’t happen.

So again, this goes back to when we’re hiring our housekeeper, verifying that they have reliable transportation.

We know that generally speaking, housekeeping wages aren’t the highest wages, right?

They’re not the highest source of income and car payments, car problems, those can be expensive.

And so we’ve definitely had people or housekeepers and housekeeping companies that we’ve worked with where one of their employees or one of the housekeepers had car trouble and they couldn’t show up, right?

Of course, we need to make sure we have backups for this.

We’ll get to that in just one second.

But reliability is a big thing, not just with the car, but ensuring that they’re going to be there when you need them.

And so we need our housekeepers to be there for us on the weekends.

We need them to be there for us on the holidays.

These are days when a lot of people enjoy that time off, but we can’t do that in the short term rental world, right?

We’re catering to people celebrating their vacations.

They often do that in a short term rental.

So again, comes back to expectations.

We have to be really clear on this that, hey, we need you on these days and these holidays.

And if you are not available for some reason, well, we need lots of notice.

We have all of these terms in our housekeeping agreement that all of the housekeepers with my personal portfolio sign, and we’d be happy to provide a copy for that.

In fact, you can grab it in the show notes for free, copy it, change it however you want.

It sets some good expectations.

And again, the holidays and the weekends are just one of those.

So how do we solve this issue or challenge of reliability?

Well, it really does fall on us on the host to make sure that we have someone there to clean the property.

And so we need to confirm with our housekeeper or confirm with our housekeeping team that they, in fact, have it on their schedule, and we’ve double, triple checked.

We don’t want to wait till the last minute, the last second, because it might be too late, right?

So this is one of the things we love about using an application, like Breezeway or Turno or properly, is because it notifies the housekeepers for us.

You can have it send them a text message.

We can have it send them email reminders.

But if they’re not responding, we need to make sure that we’re there to double check, hey, we haven’t heard from you.

We’ve got to check out on Thursday.

We just want to triple check that you’re going to be there and you got on your schedule.

Again, whatever process you’re using, if you’re using an application, if you’re using your own form, if you’re using a property management software that can notify your housekeeping team, make sure that you’ve got a fail safe step there to where they weren’t looking at their notifications or whatever happens that you’ve confirmed and you know that someone’s going to be there.

So I’d say those are really the two biggest challenges, right?

One is just in a nutshell cleanliness.

Stuff is getting missed.

We’re getting potentially negative guest feedback.

Or the second piece there, the reliability is just not there.

Maybe they didn’t show up.

And the second piece comes down to reliability, knowing that they’re going to be there for us.

So after working with a housekeeper for a while, this becomes an amazing relationship, right?

And one that we can trust.

And a lot of these strict sort of formalities, I guess, become a little less strict, right?

But we know our housekeepers and the housekeeping companies that we’re working with have personal lives of their own, right?

They have emergencies.

They might get sick.

They might have a family member that got hurt or passed away, unfortunately, and they need time to deal with it.

So we have to remember that, that they have personal lives of their own, and things are going to happen.

And so make sure that we always have some of our short-term rentals.

We have to have a backup, and that’s really our fail safe for all of this, right?

We have to have a backup.

Now, sometimes your housekeeper might have their own backup that they can schedule if they’re not available.

Again, you want to confirm with their backup that they’re there, right?

But if they don’t, you want to make sure that you have another backup that you can call at last minute notice.

And I would even go as far as to having a third backup.

Maybe it’s a housekeeping company that has lots of people on staff and that you’re probably going to pay more for.

But at least you have someone there to show up to make sure that you don’t have a guest checking in on a property that’s dirty or perhaps they can’t check in on time because you guys are there late trying to scramble to get things clean.

So backup, backup, backup.

So yes, we need backup.

We’ve got to make sure we’re transparent with reviews.

We’ve got to make sure the housekeeper we’re working with is reliable.

But how do we know when it’s just enough is enough and we’ve got to find someone else?

Well, our team, what we do is again, we’re transparent with those reviews.

If we get any sort of negative feedback in those reviews, we set a limit to it.

So you might say, hey, if we get two reviews out of the next 10 that mention anything about negative cleanliness, well, then we’re going to have to find someone else.

It’s hard to say again how much our reviews affect our overall revenue, but we know that they do a lot, right?

And so you want to make sure that you set that expectation with your housekeeper and just say, you know, we hope it never comes to this, but this is how we’re going to deal with it if it does.

In the next five, 10 or whatever reservations you want to put on it, set your tolerance for what’s too much with that housekeeper.

So that’s first piece.

We want to have a tolerance for the reviews and the ratings coming back.

And the second piece is when it comes to reliability.

So again, you want to set some sort of tolerance here.

Maybe yours is, hey, if they didn’t show up and they didn’t notify you in time, that’s it, you’re gonna find someone else.

Hopefully, you had a backup and that didn’t leave you in a really bad situation.

But I would say if you have someone that hasn’t showed up maybe once or twice or they’re giving you really late feedback and it’s leaving you in a bind, well, that’s one we got to take really seriously, right?

And the reality is, is that if this is happening more than once, it’s going to keep happening, right?

We can’t let history predict the future.

But from all the guests we’ve managed and all the housekeepers we’ve worked with, I know it’s hard to have to go out there and find someone else sometimes.

But if these problems keep popping up, well, then it’s time to move on.

And believe me, you’re going to be much happier working with that new housekeeper for a long, long time, weight lifted off your shoulders.

So we could talk about housekeeping a lot more than this, right?

I really just want to get the point across is that you need to set some sort of tolerance with your housekeepers or the company you’re working with so that this doesn’t become something you’re dealing with for a long, long period of time or worse, affecting our guest experience, right?

So we’ve talked about it a lot in the past.

Remember, you can go to our website, strriches.com.

There you will find all of our past episodes.

242, we talked about linen management.

243, we talked about the places where you can go to find housekeepers and how to set those right expectations.

We’ve got another episode just on laundry options.

That’s 185.

And so we’ve talked about all these things before.

I hope you’re finding it helpful.

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If you haven’t left a review, please head over to iTunes or head over to Spotify.

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And until next time, I hope you have a fabulous week.

If you’ve been listening to the podcast for a while, then you know that I’ve been managing my properties virtually for years and years.

My team and I have managed thousands of guests.

We’ve learned a ton and I’m really happy with the progress and the growth we’ve made.

In fact, we’re now big enough to help manage your properties as well.

Our team has a ton of experience from the inner city apartment to the large lakeside retreat.

We’ve worked with all types of properties across the nation.

We’ll help to take the management workload off your plate while earning top revenue and excellent guest reviews, all while charging an industry low fee.

If you’d like to find out if your property fits with our program, just head to strriches.com.

There you’ll see a property management button.

Again, that’s strriches.com.

Just click on the property management button and we look forward to chatting with you soon.