If you rent your Cape Cod property for family vacations, there’s nothing more important than having dependable, top notch cleaners doing their thing every turnover day. Professional vacation rental turnover cleaning is a marvel of skill and efficiency that never ceases to amaze.
But it’s not nearly enough.
Because there’s a pretty big gap between what cleaners can and will do on a turnover day, and what needs to be done to truly and thoroughly prepare a vacation home between departing and arriving rental guests.
Closing that gap can mean the difference between an outstanding guest experience and one that does not encourage booking again next year.
Just a few examples:
- Fish skin stuck on the grill. It’s not what your arriving guest wants to find when he opens that grill lid for the first time. But most cleaning services do not clean grills. And if they do, it’s just a quick scraping of the cooking grates. But what about all that grease and debris gathered in the bottom of the grill? You know, the kind of accumulation that by mid-summer can cause a nasty grill fire. And who checked to see if there’s enough propane on hand?
- Kitchen not just clean, but well organized, with unnecessary clutter eliminated. Are the skillets neatly nested, all in one easily accessible cabinet? Are pans and their covers anywhere in the same vicinity? How many random plastic storage containers and plastic Red Sox cups does one kitchen need? These things can get out of control over the course of a rental season. The cleaning people won’t deal with it, but somebody needs to.
- Safety first. Ask your insurance agent about having working smoke and carbon monoxide detectors. Who’s responsible for testing them every once in a while? And when’s the last time anyone checked to see if your fire extinguisher is properly charged? Or whether your dryer vent is clogged with sand and debris, causing poor dryer performance, overheating and possibly, a fire. Can’t expect the cleaning service to deal with these items.
- TV and wifi. Probably one of the very first things your arriving guest will want to do is log on using your wifi network and password. Sure would be good if they connected flawlessly. Who checked to see if that’s going to happen? And what if the last guest group had kids watching a movie using your DVD player? New guests arrive, click on the TV to catch the Sox game and get “No Signal” because nobody reset the “Source” to the correct HDMI setting for watching broadcast TV.
Will your cleaners check to be sure the lawn has been mowed on schedule and that weeds aren’t taking over your gardens? Will they make sure the trash and recycling containers have enough space left to get the arriving guests to the next pick-up day?
Some owners handle most or all of these turnover day checks themselves, or hire a property manager to do so. Or they work with us at Pretty Picky Properties, because we will dispatch a trained Pretty Picky “Detailer” to their property each turnover day to execute our Pretty Picky Property Prep Punch List, filling the gap between cleaning and complete property preparation.
