AAAHHHHH! Yes it can and does happen. Wether or not it is a cleaning schedule snafu or last minute reservation not relayed to the cleaning crew, sometimes a cleaning gets missed. You get the dreaded call from a tenant that has just arrived at your vacation home and the place has not been cleaned! Are you kidding me! This can be one of the most stressful calls you receive if you own or manage vacation rentals. This is a rare occurrence, however, it can and will happen to you at least once.

The call goes something like this - “Hi - This is so and so calling and we are staying at your condo. We just arrived and it looks like people are staying here or the cleaning crew did not come in? Are we in the right place?” This call can really push the old blood pressure to a new level! I have found the best way to handle this situation is to get your newly arrived guests to go out. As in go grocery shopping, out to dinner, anywhere but the dirty unit! What you need right now is time!

Time to get your cleaners over for a rush emergency cleaning or to go clean the unit yourself. Yep, I have had to do the late night, drop everything to go clean a unit! Knowing that we have started off on the wrong foot is a horrible feeling and we need to rectify the situation as quick and painlessly as possible. This is the perfect time to offer up a great tip for owners and managers - Always have spare linens, cleaning supplies and re-stocking items on site or readily accessible. You can save a ton of time and effort by having extra sheets for each bed, extra towels, a mop and bucket, vacuum and extra paper products. At this point the name of the game is TIME! You need to get your vacationers settled back into this unit soon.

So while they are out to dinner or shopping you need to get this place clean. The biggest time killer is waiting for laundry to process. We keep extra king and queen sheets sets on site. This can easily save 2 hours. It can turn a 4 hour job into an 90 minute job. Just take all the dirty linens with you and launder them off site and return them when your guests leave. The extra money spent on sheets and towels is well worth it. The last thing you want now is your visitors returning with all their groceries or belongings to find you waiting for the laundry to dry!

Of course we make it known that this is not our acceptable standard and we are more than happy to take care of the dinner bill or offer some type of compensation for the trouble. If needed we will take a gift certificate to a nice restaurant by the next day or make maid service available more often. As I have mentioned in previous blog entries it is crucial to get off to a good start with your visitors! Do not be surprised if the guests that arrive at a unit that has not been cleaned will be calling again. It is our experience, that if the vacation rental is not just about perfect on arrival then people feel that they now have leverage to complain - “It wasn’t clean when we got here and now this doesn’t work either……” Just trying to emphasize how important it is to have everything ready for your guests or things tend to snowball! If you remember one tip from this blog - remember extra sheets and towels on standby are a must!

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