How Many Days Should You Allow for Airbnb Turnovers?

Deciding how many days you want to use for turnovers is a significant part of calculating how much you can earn in a given year.  After all, the fewer days your rental is off the market being cleaned, the more days it can be earning income for you.  We wanted to offer you some tips as you decide how much time to allow for Airbnb turnovers.

What’s In a Turnover?

There are three main factors that drive turnover length:

• Linens – if you have enough sets to simply lay out a new set or if you have to do laundry
• Cleaning and trash – how much time will it take you to get your listing to the hotel-level quality of cleanliness the majority of Airbnb guests expect
• Incoming guest arrival window – is the guest arriving in the morning/afternoon/evening?  When is the outgoing guest leaving?

What’s implied behind all of this, of course, is that everything goes to plan.  While planning for linens is simple enough, sometimes guests leave a big enough mess that cleaning takes longer than usual.  Or perhaps their travel plans change and they won’t be arriving at the time agreed to but some hours later.  You have to account for these changes in your turnover planning.

How to Speed Up a Turnover?

One hack we’ve found in cleaning thousands of listings is to ask an outgoing guest to do a little bit of homework, like:

• Removing trash bags and placing them in bins outside the vacation rental
• Moving furniture or tables back to their original positions
• Washing any dishes in the sink
• Leaving used towels in a particular location

We’ve found that most guests are understanding about being “good guests” and are willing to do these little things, which makes the turnover go that much more smoothly.  It also, in a way, reminds guests that you aren’t the only one up for a review at the end of the stay: they are as well.

Why Turnover Quickly?

Part of why guests tend to use us is our ability to get the cleaning done in a reliable time window, every time.  A lot of our clients are then able to do same-day turnovers as a result.  It’s also important to turnover quickly because you want to start a claims process with Airbnb and the guest should any damage have occurred with the outgoing guest.  Any damages have to be reported within 14 days of a guest’s checkout or before an incoming guest checks in, whichever happens first.  

Quick (but quality) turnovers ensure that your vacation rental is earning as much income as possible for you, but also ensuring that guests get more time to stay and enjoy your place.  How many days should you allow for Airbnb turnovers?  As few as possible, and if your accommodation and circumstances allow for it, same-day turnovers are ideal.

How long, on average, are your turnovers?  What are your tips to speed them along?  Reply to this email and let us know!

This article originally appeared in our regular newsletter for vacation rental hosts, The Guest Book.