Short-Let Damage Reports: What a Photo Inspection Should Cover After Every Guest
Written by Iva, founder of Iva Cleaning Services London. Damage in a short let is rarely dramatic. It is a…
One Airbnb is a hobby with a cleaner. Three is a scheduling problem. Ten or more is an operation, and the thing that breaks it is never the cleaning itself. It is the gap between check-out and check-in on a Saturday when two guests leave late, one cleaner is stuck on the Northern line, and the host finds out at 3.15pm that a flat is not ready because the guest standing outside it has messaged.
This guide is about running cleaning across a portfolio: how to schedule it, what cut-off times to set, what a supervisor does, what the reporting should look like, and what a missed check-in actually costs. It is written from how we run short let management in London for operators with multiple units, and it applies whether you use an in-house team or a contractor.
Start with the number, because it justifies everything else. A guest who arrives to a flat that is not ready costs you, at minimum, the refund or discount you give them to keep the booking, typically a night’s rate or a percentage. Add the cost of putting them in a café for two hours, the review (a late check-in is the single most common cause of a one-star review on a listing that otherwise runs at five), the effect of that review on the listing’s search position for the following weeks, and the hour of your own time on the phone. On a £150-a-night flat the direct cost is £100 to £300 and the indirect cost is larger. Two of those a month across a portfolio of ten is a cleaning budget’s worth of losses.
The second cost is the one you do not see: cleans done in a rush because the schedule was tight, which show up as a slow slide in review scores for cleanliness. Everything below is designed to make the schedule hold.
A changeover needs a window. For a one-bedroom flat with linen change, a thorough clean takes two to two and a half hours; a two-bedroom takes three; add half an hour for a sofa bed and for any flat that had a long stay. Check-out at 10am and check-in at 3pm gives five hours, which is enough for one clean and some slack. Check-out at 11am and check-in at 2pm gives three, which is enough for one clean and no slack.
The decisions that follow:
The honest answer depends on the size of the units, how far apart they are, and whether the crew is carrying linen. A pair of cleaners working flats within walking distance of each other, with linen delivered to each property, can turn around a one-bedroom in about two hours and move on. Spread the same flats across three boroughs and the travel between them eats a clean per day. The planning rules that follow are what matter: group units by area, give each crew a route rather than a list, and hold one crew’s worth of capacity back on peak days for the late check-out and the guest who leaves the flat in a state.
For the specific capacity we commit to for a portfolio, and the response time for a same-day problem, we agree those in writing at the start of a contract rather than quoting a number that depends on where your units are. Ask for them; an operator that will not put a number on it is guessing.
Above about six units, someone has to own the day who is not cleaning. That person:
A clean that is not documented did not happen, as far as a guest complaint is concerned. Every changeover should end with a completed checklist on a phone, the same list for every unit, with photographs of the made beds, the bathroom, the kitchen and anything unusual, timestamped and filed against the booking. Two reasons: the operator can see every unit is ready before the guest arrives, and when a guest claims the flat was dirty on arrival, the photograph from 1.40pm answers it.
The photo set also doubles as the damage inspection. What to photograph after every guest, and how that feeds a claim, is covered in short-let damage reports: what a photo inspection should cover. The checklist itself, item by item, is our Airbnb cleaning checklist.
Linen is where portfolio operations usually get stuck. Home laundering does not scale past two or three units; the washing machine becomes the bottleneck and the cleaners spend their day moving loads. Hired linen delivered to each unit on a fixed cycle, with the dirty sets collected at the changeover, removes the problem and keeps the standard identical across every flat. Consumables (toilet roll, soap, coffee, bin bags) are restocked from a central store on a par-level basis, so no unit runs out and no cleaner is buying toilet roll at a corner shop on the clock.
Saturday is the peak for the whole city, and a portfolio that cannot turn flats on a Saturday afternoon cannot take weekend bookings. The capacity question above is really a Saturday question: how many of your units can realistically turn over between 10am and 3pm with the crews you have. If the answer is fewer than the number of Saturday check-ins you are taking, something gives, and it is usually a guest. The working day of a crew on a full Saturday, with the sequencing and the linen runs, is described in a day in the life of an Airbnb cleaning crew in London.
Whoever does your cleaning, agree in writing: the standard checklist, the cut-off for same-day requests, the response time for a problem reported by a guest, how damage and maintenance are reported and by when, the photo evidence per clean, the linen cycle, what happens on bank holidays (our rate is one and a half times standard), and the cancellation terms (24 hours’ notice with us; a cleaner who cannot get in within 30 minutes of the scheduled time is charged in full, because that slot was held for you). The point of writing it down is that when something goes wrong at 3pm on a Saturday, nobody is working out whose problem it is.
Running ten or more units and losing Saturdays to it? Get a free quote for a portfolio, with your unit list and locations, and we come back within one working hour.
