Holiday cottage clear up etiquette

[Justkeepswiimming]

I'm the last night in a holiday cottage. I've swept up and will put the dishwasher on, and will have a final wipe round tomorrow morning, sort sheets and towels into a pile, but that's the most I'll do. Is that reasonable?

I have holidayed in self catering cottages since I was small and I always remember a huge clean up effort before leaving the evening before/morning we left. Part of me resents doing too much these days. For a start I'd like to think the place is being thoroughly cleaned, so what's the point in me doing too much as it will be gone over again.

Also I feel like the checkout time moved earlier and check in moved later over Covid due to cleaning, and has never gone back. How much can you really do as well as getting up and out, before 10? And finally, even 5-10 years ago, self catering used to be the bargain holiday. That isn't the case and more, and frankly at the prices you pay, people shouldn't be expected to do too much in the way of deep cleaning. How much does everyone else do?

@hellsBells246 - and yes, it’s wouldn’t be worth it for us if it was a separate property. Ours is attached to our own house so things like mortgage I haven’t included, and heating/ maintainance is only a % of our full.

There’s also things which are for the entire summer not just your week, ie I have just bought today balcony plants for apartment area, it’s 10m long so that’s €160 of plants.

@hellsBells246 it was only once I started running my own holiday let that I realised the amount of invisible costs involved. It all adds up - whether it is buying new linens, annual redecoration, insurance, repairs, gardening, replacing furniture etc.

I do have a cleaner who helps me, but I still go to the property at each changeover. I pay my cleaner for 3 hours, and I do about the same as it is so important to me that each guest feels that the house is spotless.

Add in to that some guests who take advantage of electric and heating. I haven't had personal experience, but I'm in a host group where guests use in excess of £100 per night in electricity.

Empty the dishwasher. Please. As someone who used to cleanholiday let's it wound me up no end having to empty the dishwasher. The states people left the properties in was beyond disgusting and often the dishwasher just ripped me over the edge. No longer do cleans as people were just too vile

What's wrong with being expected to empty the dishwasher?
We would have breakfast then switch it on as we leave. I'm sure you would complain if the dishes weren't well handled washed.

We’d also have breakfast then put the dishwasher in. I’m not hanging around for the dishwasher to finish its cycle.

Just after Covid restrictions were lifted we stayed somewhere where we were told to clean the whole house before leaving. I got up at 6 am and cleaned for four hours. They demanded £300 because there was a finger mark in the kitchen and we’d forgotten to empty the ash in the wood burner . I was gutted I had bothered doing anything at all. They claimed their cleaners had to do six extra hours of cleaning . Some people are just beyond con artists.

Dishwasher on is fine by me.

Nope. Not going happen. Speaking as a holiday let owner who also cleans it.

It's unreasonable to expect people to plan their last morning around the unknown lengths of a dishwasher cycle. If you have to be out by 9 and have unloaded the dishwasher you would need to be breakfasting at 6 am to be sure it was completed which is ridiculous.

If you are paying a cleaning fee then expecting a cleaner to take all of 2 minutes to unload a dishwasher is not unreasonable.

Exactly, even the places I’ve stayed with a list of cleaning tasks before check out just say to put the dishwasher on before leaving. Definitely unreasonable to expect guests to empty it too!

I think the post COVID period is something of an outlier and I wouldn’t base my opinions of holiday cottage cleaning demands forever on that.

Remember that in 2020, people were still very scared and unsure about how COVID was transmitted. The ban on travel in the UK was lifted in July and a lot of holiday cottage owners were afraid of what it meant for them. I’m not at all surprised that during that period, guests staying in self catering were asked to clean over and above what they would normally be expected to do.

It genuinely surprises me that the question of how you leave holiday cottages constantly needs to be asked. Surely any decent human being would make sure it’s left in a state they would leave their own home in? i.e. not scrubbed within an inch of its life but not actively dirty?

Thanks, @NigellaAwesome ! Interesting.

Do you enjoy being a holiday home owner? Do you make a profit? How many weeks is your house let per year?

@Caspianberg - 12 weeks max for the year! Wow.

What do you do with it the rest of the time? It would be much more practical to have a property you could rent for longer each year.

Re. electricity and heating, I set the thermostats at a comfortable temperature and leave instructions on adjusting it and the radiators. Guests regularly crank the heating up to 28+. On one occasion, the guest called me to come round for something and she had the heating up to 35 and all the doors and windows open in November.

Is there a charge for cleaning? If so, the minimum allowed to maintain my self respect.

@hellsBells246 - well yes but it’s my house, I live here too, I can’t just move location. We work self employed in another sector also, so the rental is a bonus ontop. It would never account for main income. It’s basically a prime summer location, so need to be hot for lake swimming, and mainly summer holiday. We get about 4 weeks winter booking for skiing, but we aren’t in actual resort so it’s less ( and we charge far less in winter, so even less profit as lower night rate plus high heating costs)

Omg what wankers!!

@judgementfail, I feel like I know these parents! If you’ve ever worked in an independent cafe in East London these are the parents that leave their table like a complete bombsite with food all over the table/ floor, spilled drinks, soggy wet wipes & sticky pouch residue everywhere. They also blame staff if their kids try & leave the cafe or get in the way of staff carrying hot coffee. Bastards.
I hope you were able to leave them a shitty review back?

Honestly the amount people are charging for holiday lets these days I'm certainly not doing a deep clean!

You sound fine op

@hellsBells246, yes, I enjoy it. I retired from an extremely stressful job on ill-health grounds and this is so different. I'm my own boss, and I genuinely enjoy helping people to have fantastic holidays. You hear of awful stories, like the pp, but I have been lucky so far. Some people leave the place spotlessly clean, others can be pretty messy. The worst I had was a friend who I feel really took advantage and didn't care for the place at all.

I let mainly over school holidays - summer is booked out, will usually have guests at Easter and usually some long weekends in May and June. It is available the rest of the year but my set up is primarily geared towards families so we don't get that many bookings outside of holidays.

I spend quite a lot of time at the house by myself in between doing maintenance and I enjoy the solitude.

About 65% of the income is spent on expenses, and that doesn't include any mortgage or finance costs. If I had those costs the margins would be so small I'm not sure it would be worth it for me.

In terms of the op, we ask people to take the rubbish out, place wet towels in the bath and put on the dishwasher. It's a bonus if they strip beds but not necessary.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2024/apr/07/britains-staycation-boom-may-be-over-as-bookings-dry-up

This story doesn't surprise me - post Covid we are less likely to book holiday lets in the UK and early check out times/late check ins plus cleaning requirements are a factor. Early in the thread, someone posted that they have a lot of holiday lets to get round in a day so hope guests do a lot of the cleaning to allow them time and that's so characteristic of the UK right now. It feels like all services are stripped to the bone, no one hires enough staff, everyone is overstretched and so we feel like we have to do everything ourselves - in extreme cases that's people pulling their own teeth because of the dentistry crisis, at the other end of the spectrum we have cleaners so rushed and stressed that they want guests to hang around to unload the dishwasher which just isn't going to happen when you have to get the family out by 10am. I want to leave a holiday relaxed and refreshed, not stressed out from getting up early to mop floors and clean bathrooms when I've already paid a cleaning fee. I pay a cleaner at home because I hate housework so outsource it - I'm never going to do it on holiday!

Unfortunately you do need that time to do a full clean of everything. Mine is a one bed, check out at 11 and it really does take 4 hours to clean and do the garden. You also have to allow a little extra time for maintenance issues. If people have used the cooker it needs to be cleaned, the fridge needs cleaning, windows cleaned, skirting boards. Everything has to be pristine

I've never seen a holiday cottage ask people to do a full clean personally, and I look at them all the time, I think this is a fallacy . I don't ask people to do anything at all but most people have enough self respect to not leave dirty dishes in the sink for example. It's common courtesy not to leave a mess behind you surely.

The issue with the boom being over is oversupply not cleaning. In my tiny village there are 17 new holiday cottages since 2022. 56 new shepherds huts within a 5 mile radius. There simply aren't enough customers.

I have a large holiday let and just ask that the dishwasher is set off on a specific programme so I can empty it once I’ve finished cleaning the hot tub. If the beds have been stripped that’s a bonus, and I can quickly get everything sorted and into bags before the cleaners arrive.

I have to say most guests leave the place immaculately. I’m (happily) shocked at how much some must do, despite my saying in the welcome book they absolutely don’t need to. I think some of it comes down to the fact I’m very much hands on, the house is very well equipped and the guests are always delighted by it. I also tend to get multi-generational families booking, and perhaps the matriarch keeps them in in line.

@NigellaAwesome - I'm glad you enjoy it, and you sound like a great host!i

I own a holiday let. I don’t want to scrub your poo stains off the toilets. So be decent and remove traces of your bodily functions. Put all your rubbish in bin/recycling. Take your half eaten bits of food away! No we don’t want your half tub of margarine full of crumbs! Do your own dishes. Turn arounds have to be quick and it slows them down when we have to wash and dry and put away dishes.

Striping the beds is appreciated.

I cleaned kitchen, emptied all bins. Stripped beds, put rubbish out, tidied whole place, ran dishwasher & the host left me a shitty review saying the place was unclean. This was on VRBO and they've refused to take it down.

I messaged the owner to ask what the problem was and they said the cleaner said it took longer to clean than normal.

I've never had s bad review in my life. Always excellent reports. I'm still pissed off with these arseholes, after I paid them a LOT of money! 🤬😤