How to Be a Good Guest at a Vacation Rental

Mi Casa Es Su Casa

Staying in someone else’s home, be it a vacation rental or the residence of family and friends, is a privilege, not a right.

Most people reading this article will be completely on board with treating another’s property as well as they would their own, but not everyone lives by the golden rule of doing unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Companies providing cleaning and turnover services for vacation rental properties have the inside scoop on how guests treat a short-term stay, relaying information to property managers after the guests have checked out and the cleaning has been done. These reports may be factored into a review left for the guest, whether positive or negative.

Follow along as professional cleaners share their best advice for being a good guest and leaving less mess!

Meet the Cleaners

BerryClean Home and Office Cleaning

Stanley Chen, founder of BerryClean Home and Office Cleaning, has served the San Francisco Bay Area since 2015. BerryClean specializes in cleaning Airbnbs, hotels, and short-medium term rentals.

Neoclean

Based in Atlanta, GA, Neoclean has been servicing vacation rentals for 4 years in the area. Founded by Brittany Fleming, the company specializes in cleaning vacation rentals tailored to professionals and small families, those staying for short-term visits, weekend getaways in the city, or business trips.

Waste Direct

Professional cleaner Evie Graham has been cleaning holiday rentals in London, UK, for 12 years. She is also the owner of Waste Direct, a waste management business and often deals with commercial and household mold issues.

Bear Brothers Cleaning

Bear Brothers Cleaning is a premier cleaning company serving Huntsville, Birmingham, Tuscaloosa, Montgomery, and much of central Alabama. Forrest Webber, owner of Bear Bros. Cleaning, started the company just over a year ago and is off to a beary good start cleaning Airbnb rentals, university apartments, rental homes and apartments, and luxury villas.

Thoughtful Turtle

Thoughtful Turtle – North America designs and delivers better laundry and linen management operations, servicing various industries that rely on clean laundry to succeed. Founder, Justin Smith, has managed cleaning and housekeeping in the past, but now focuses primarily on laundry and linen management for vacation rentals sleeping six or more guests.

How Guests Can Minimize Mess

While you are staying at a vacation home, you are, for lack of a better term, on vacation. Sometimes this can mean letting things slide.

As a good guest, though, there are courteous gestures you can do to make the vacation experience more enjoyable for yourself and less onerous to clean up for the staff servicing the rental after your departure.

Brittany Fleming from Neoclean shares some simple steps that are sure to earn guests more than a few brownie points from cleaners, suggesting that before you go home, you can:

• Load the washer and dishwasher before checkout to save time.
• Remove all food from the fridge and dispose of it properly.
• Be mindful of strong spices like turmeric and curry, which can stain surfaces and require extra cleaning.
• Throw your dirty towels in the washer and remove your bedding.

“Sometimes we are only given a few hours between check-out and check-in and having to wait on laundry to dry or replace damaged items may cause a delay in check-in, which is never what we want to happen. These small tasks go a long way for the cleaning crew and owner!” Brittany writes. 

Forrest Webber from Bear Brothers Cleaning takes garbage removal a step further, “To prevent odors and pests, guests should regularly dispose of trash. They can avoid stains on linens by using the provided amenities properly and cleaning up spills immediately.”

Stanley Chen from BerryClean provides a unique spin on how to help keep the kitchen clean, encouraging guests to go out to eat instead of making all of their meals in the house.

He acknowledges, “Kitchens are the most time-consuming and messiest areas to clean in the house, and appliances such as the oven, microwave, and fridge will definitely need to be cleaned thoroughly. You’re on vacation – eat out and enjoy yourself!”

Stanley also recommends staying organized, saying, “Keep your belongings organized. When you leave things haphazardly around the house, you will subconsciously let the mess accumulate. You will also inevitably forget certain items after checking out, which will complicate operations for everyone (we would most certainly want to arrange a way for you to get your belongings back).”

This is a small thing, but he says it helps a little to strip bedsheets and linens and take out the trash, relaying, “If you forget to do it, it’s not a big deal. These are things we would do anyways while we are turning around the unit and only take a few moments.”

Evie Graham from Waste Direct, knows a thing or two about guests rearranging furniture and the amount of time it takes to put things back into place.

She advises you to leave furnishings as they are, “Just put the sofa cushions back how you found them. Seriously. Guests love building pillow forts or whatever, but I’ve wasted so much time reconstructing sofas. Last month, I spent ages figuring out which cushion went where because the guests had completely rearranged everything for some movie night.”

Justin Smith from Thoughtful Turtle has a unique perspective to offer vacation rental guests when it comes to cleanliness. He reveals that laundry was a ‘primary pain point we kept running into’ from clients, hence his decision to pivot the company to focusing on laundry and linen management. Justin’s top tips for making the job of cleaners easier are:

• Shoes off in the house
• Strip beds or leave them unmade
• Don’t move pillows and blankets between rooms
• Start the dishwasher

Worst Messes in Short-Term Rentals

Some mess is inevitable, but many messes are avoidable.

House guests can cost cleaners and property managers hours of productivity and hundreds if not thousands of dollars, should something need to be deepcleaned or replaced.

From broken to barely recognizable, do your best to avoid costly messes by heeding these cautionary tales.

Extra Cleaners Required

Brittany recalls, “One of the most challenging cleanups we encountered involved a rental where guests left rotting food in the fridge, spilled spices like turmeric that stained countertops, left food debris in the sink, and caused significant stains on bedding and furniture. To make matters worse, a bed frame was broken. We had to bring in two additional cleaners, adding six extra hours of work, to ensure the property was ready for the next guest.”

What happened next? Brittany relates, “The property owner charged the guests $500 in damages and cleaning fees, which covered the cost of replacements and additional labor. This situation highlights the importance of guests being mindful of their impact on the property. I have never seen an owner file a claim through their insurance for damages, they generally just charge the renter for it.”

$3000+ in Property Damages

Stanley’s story is similar in that costs were a significant factor. He urges, “Be very careful with blinds. We once had a customer who had to replace the entire set of blinds because the handle that you twist to adjust the blinds was broken. The estimate we saw from the owner was over $3,000, which was the entire deposit for the property.”

He notes, “Blinds are incredibly easy to damage and labor intensive to replace and/or install. So take care when using and adjusting blinds, treat them as if they were your own!”

Broken Oven Door

Evie remembers, “The worst damage I ever dealt with came from a stag party in a Shoreditch flat. They somehow managed to break the oven door clean off its hinges. I have no idea how that happens accidentally. The owner only got half the replacement cost from the security deposit, so I spent my entire afternoon waiting for emergency maintenance instead of completing my other bookings. Still get teased about my ‘oven door day,’ by my colleagues.”

Cooking Stains

Harkening back to comments about spices that stain, Forrest and his team ran into quite a mess at a rental home caused by stains made from cooking.

He confirms, “We attempted several times to remedy them (the stains), but they remained. Despite our best efforts, the customer (property manager) was still unsatisfied with the results. To remedy the situation, we gave her a $100 refund, even though we never make any guarantees about getting any stains out. It’s just an unfortunate situation.”

Whether it’s grease, turmeric or something in between, some stains simply won’t be scrubbed out of porous surfaces, especially certain varieties of softer stones.

Forrest relates, “If the property owner has issues with the cooking stains, I assume it will cost the renter from their damage deposit, considering it won’t likely exceed their deposit.”

The Ants Go Marching in the House

Justin remembers a creepy crawly mess reminiscent of a bad film.

He writes, “Guests ate and left food in a bedroom during the day. This attracted quite a few ants. The guests decided to take apart and move multiple beds while also putting down a lot of ant traps. Upon leaving the house, the guests left a lot of food in the garbage, both in the kitchen and in the larger trash can outside. There were so many ants outside in the driveway that it looked like the ground was moving.”

I’m sure you can imagine it. Instead of Alfred Hitchcock’s menacing birds, this vacation home was overtaken by ants!

“Inside the kitchen, there were a similar number of ants and there were dead ants all over the bedrooms. Two of the bed frames were damaged from being taken apart and moved. Cleaning up to deal with the ants took some extra time but would not have been catastrophic on its own. The damaged bed frames needed to quickly be replaced, and this meant the same-day check-in had to be accommodated.”

According to Justin, the homeowner had to pay for new bed frames, compensate the next guest, and ultimately for pest control to eliminate the new ant problem.

The guest that caused the issues was ultimately charged and did pay.

Planning For a Mess

As mentioned before, some messes are inevitable. In many cases, these messes can be anticipated and planned for in advance if you are forthcoming about your circumstances. 

Whether you have a very furry dog, a sick child, or something else is going on, it’s best to give some notice to the property manager.

Brittany cautions, “Please, if you are recovering from a procedure and may leave a mess, let the owner know so that the cleaning crew is prepared with the right equipment.”

What Cleaners Report to Property Managers

After you lock up and leave the property, a new world of documented process and procedure begins.

Dutifully crossing Ts and dotting Is, most cleaning crews are responsible not only for making sure the home is cleaned for the next guests but also reporting on the state of the house and its contents.

These reports, good or bad, may inform a host or property manager’s review of your stay.

Neoclean’s process is as follows. Brittany writes:

After each guest checks-out, cleaners conduct a thorough inspection based on the homeowner’s checklist. Key areas we focus on include:

• Damage to furniture, electronics, or bedding, which can impact future bookings.
• Unpleasant odors, such as smoke or strong cooking smells, that may require deep cleaning.
• Any missing towels, kitchenware, or bedding.

We report these observations to the owner, and based on that, they will determine if they will charge for damages and the type of review to leave.

Stanley’s BerryClean cleaners have a similar protocol. “The top reported things that we see are broken and damaged items, which can be very costly to fix,” he says.

“For this reason, we would highly encourage you to do a quick walkthrough or check of your rental the moment you check in, and take photos and videos of everything. This way, if damage is found and you are not at fault, you will be covered,” Stanley exhorts.

That tip could be worth hundreds if not thousands of dollars alone.

If something is broken in the home already upon entering it, document the broken item so the homeowner can speak to whoever was there last to learn more about what happened. Just as there can be guests behaving badly staying in a short-term rental or hotel room, not-so-wonderful hosts also exist. 

Stanley concludes, “Also make sure to read the check in and check out rules, many times the owner or property manager will ask us to check for evidence of breaking these rules, such as pet hair, smoking, excessive partying, etc.”

Evie often reports on messes left from food.

She shares, “The thing that always makes me report to property managers is food left in weird places. Found prawns stuffed behind radiators more than once. Who does that? A client in Notting Hill had ants throughout the entire building because someone shoved pizza crusts under the bed. The smell on a hot day was something else.”

Final thoughts from Evie?

“Trust me, your cleaner notices everything!”​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Forrest’s team sets their eyes on creating a beautiful environment for guests, which helps provide the homeowner or property manager with good reviews. He says, “We always aim for properties left in good condition, which reflect positively on guests.

He advises guests to ‘always observe policies, proper use of amenities, and compliance with occupancy limits.’

Lastly, Forrest says, “Being professional with positive behaviors often leads to favorable reviews, while neglect or damage can result in negative feedback and potential charges.”

Justin notes, “My business has shifted more to focus on laundry and linens. A number of property owners do like to provide higher end bed linens and multiple sets of towels for guests. Linens and towels end up getting damaged quite a bit and towels do go missing.”

Consider what Justin said about the wear and tear with linens and towels, and that towels tend to go missing. Linens and towels are itemized and the cleaners know exactly how many of each item there are, what color they should be and what room they belong to. Don’t take towels!

The Heart of Hospitality

We started this article with the phrase, “Mi casa es su casa,” which translates to, “My home is your home.” This phrase is generally used when the owner of a home invites a guest to stay at their house.

This phrase comes straight from a heart of hospitality and wanting the very best for the people entering one’s home or property that they manage.

Cleaners are an integral part of helping to create a welcoming, warm environment for guests to stay. They did an excellent job preparing the home for you, and from the tips above, there’s a lot of little things guests can do to honor the homeowner, property manager, and cleaning staff by treating the home and those who care for it with respect.

At the end of the day, this isn’t so much about getting a glowing feedback rating or review, although that is a worthy goal and helpful for future stays, but to love your neighbor as yourself.