By the Unity Stays directors, Marcus Chong & Gadir Al-Khatib · Last updated 12 August 2026
In short: Clean a short let fully after every booking without exception — a complete changeover with linen change, restocking and inspection — plus a weekly service clean on stays of two weeks or more and a deep clean quarterly or twice yearly. Budget per changeover, not per week: with three-night average stays, a well-booked month means around ten changeovers.
Every changeover, every time
A full clean between every booking is not negotiable. It is the single most common subject of bad reviews, and a cleanliness complaint damages a listing more than almost anything else because it goes to the one thing a guest cannot check before arriving.
A changeover is not a tidy. It is a full clean, a complete linen and towel change, restocking consumables, and an inspection for damage or anything left behind — which is also how you find problems before the next guest does.
Under our agreements the exit clean after every booking is a contractual requirement, not an option.
Why it is charged per stay, not per week
This is the arithmetic most owners get wrong, and it is usually the largest error in an income model.
Cleaning is a per-changeover cost. If your average stay is three nights, a well-booked month is around ten changeovers, not four. Count it weekly and your cleaning line is out by more than a factor of two — which on most properties is larger than the entire management fee.
It also explains why longer stays are worth more than the nightly rate suggests. A four-week booking costs one changeover; four separate week-long bookings cost four. The income calculator asks for your average stay length for exactly this reason.
Mid-stay cleans on longer bookings
Serviced accommodation is not a hotel and there is no daily housekeeping — that is part of why the nightly rate compares as it does against one.
The normal arrangement is a full clean between stays plus a service clean during longer bookings. On our properties, stays of two weeks or more include a professional weekly service clean, and that is written into the agreement rather than offered as a favour.
For very long stays it is worth being explicit about what the mid-stay clean includes and whether linen is changed, because guest expectations vary widely and the disagreement always happens at the end.
The deeper work that is easy to defer
Beyond the changeover, a short let needs periodic work that no single guest triggers and that is therefore easy to keep postponing.
- Deep clean — quarterly or twice yearly, booked into a quiet period rather than squeezed between stays
- Mattress protectors and pillows — replaced on a schedule, not when someone complains
- Limescale, extractors, oven and behind appliances — the things a changeover clean does not reach
- Linen rotation — commercial linen wears out, and grey towels are a review waiting to happen
- Consumables and small breakages — replaced continuously, because a missing pan lid gets mentioned
Who arranges it, and how it reaches your statement
We arrange and supervise the cleaning and pay the cleaner, then recharge the cost. It is not inside the management fee, and we would rather say that here than have it appear as a surprise deduction.
Linen is supplied through a linen provider and charged at cost for the same reason. Both appear as itemised lines on the monthly statement.
If you already have a cleaner you trust, that is usually workable — what matters is reliability at short notice and someone checking the work, which is the part that breaks when a changeover is arranged informally.