Hello, welcome back to another great episode. My name is Sarah Karakaian.

I'm Annette Grant, and together we are, Thanks for Visiting.

And this is the Hosting Hotline. If you wanna get your hosting questions answered here on the hosting hotline, go to hostinghotline.com, ask your question, and we answer it here in the podcast. You could also leave a comment on a YouTube video of ours, and we might answer your question here in the pod as well. And that is today's case. The username of this person is quite long and lots of letters and numbers, so we'll put that in the show notes for you to see. But here's the question. How long do you recommend we clean our own properties to our standards to ensure five star reviews before risking a possible bad review with a bad clean? We are, we have a new listing and we are new hosts. Okay. The, the, the thinking, how long do I do? How long do I stockpile five star reviews so that if I get a bad review from a bad clean, it'll be buried, is the wrong question to ask. I get it. I understand where we're coming from here, but we do have to do a mindset shift here of let's never risk our paying customer IE, our guest to experience that bad clean, which is why Annette and I have been championing for years, the importance of your guest and the cleaner and there being something in between there. Unless you have a very strong relationship with your cleaner and they have a very strong and detailed inspection process, you should never allow your paying customer to be the person to alert you to a bad clean. Okay, so the real answer, it's not about how long you should clean your own property. It's about the systems that you build so that you can work yourself out of that job and feel confident that you have backups and fail safes for subpar work.

And I just wanna offer too, that it's never just the cleaning like we a five star review can be so many different pieces and parts and interactions and experiences throughout the stay. So this really is just a overall mindset shift because what is a five star stay? If it, if it's a, let's say they're booking direct with you, that you might be asking for a review in a different way. I feel like this is very Airbnb focused.

Sure.

The way that the question came through, so again, it's like overall business thought of systems and processes.

Absolutely. And I do understand, I, I do like the angle of this question that the person is thinking is the cleaning is a giant part of your business and of getting that five star review, it's not the only aspect, but it is a large part.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Because, you know why? So many people are not good at it, even in the commercial setting. I mean, I can't tell you how many times I've gone to a hotel that is backed by a brand, a notable brand, and it's not consistent and it's not.

Mm-hmm.

And it's not clean. So I under, and I appreciate you knowing how important that Clean is, but it is truly, and when you start thinking like a business owner, it's about the systems that you build before handing it off. That's the, that's the thing that we have to work on. Mm-hmm. Not how many cleans we can stockpile.

Yep. And so when Sarah's saying, handing it off, like we do have to trust, but verify. I, I'm reading between the lines here of this question, and if you are doing all of your own cleanings yourself right now, I'm assuming that you are nearby the property.

Mm-hmm.

And we always love that. Like, I mean, it, it can be a blessing and a curse, you know, um, being too close to, to your property. Um, but. We do think that systems and processes that trust but verify repeatable is having that inspector for sure, which could be you initially after you're not cleaning anymore.

So this might, and if you're an experienced host and you already have an inspector in place and you have a cleaner in place. Press stop or pause just now, because going back to the basics and the foundations is always important. I'm actually gonna get the opportunity to hire a cleaner for the glamping site that Annette and I are building together. And I'm not going to just assume that I'm really good at this. I know what I'm doing. I've done this a hundred times before. No, this is a really important step in our business and I've gotta make sure that I do all the right steps to get us a quality cleaner the first time. But I know that in the past. I've done the steps that have worked for me and that person hasn't worked out, and so I've had to go back. But eventually you will find someone who can take the systems that you build and execute them nicely. Even when you do, I still wholeheartedly believe in another human being, a different human being going in and verifying that work and inspecting for safety and surprise and delight elements that will help you in this very, very, very competitive landscape we're finding ourselves in right now. So what I want you to do while you are cleaning yourself is to document the process. And so maybe you're not a stop every five minutes kind of person, document what you do, okay? So put your phone up in each room, and you could probably use AI to help you go through that video, or you could simply rewatch it yourself when you are done and document what you did in what order. That way you can start to build out a system that you can turn into a checklist for someone else to read. And we have to remember, Annette is probably sick of hearing me tell this story, but it's just so effective every time of, it can't just be, you know, one of the tasks be make the bed. It's gotta be a def- there has to be a definition of done with what making the bed looks like. So that's why, including a picture of what a bed looks like, like you'd, like it made and the steps it took you to get there.

Mm-hmm.

Because otherwise one person's definition of a bed being made could be very different from someone else's, and that's where you can find friction between you and your cleaner. And it's not your cleaner, I would say 80% of the time it's your training.

Absolutely. I'd say 90% of the time.

Okay.

I'm gonna take extreme ownership there. Um, as their, as the leader and the trainer for sure. Robots aren't here quite yet.

Annette just showed me, you guys, are we gonna go here? 'Cause we're gonna, people are gonna be like, what?

Yeah.

You haven't heard yet.

I know. I've been looking at the neo robot N-E-O and it's a home like assistant robot that'll be coming out in 2026.

And it, here's what blows my mind. There's a lot of things we could talk about when it comes to a robot cleaner. Okay. And I'm not gonna broach that subject just yet. It's a good, it's an important conversation. It is a complicated conversation and I wanna recognize that. But here's the interesting thing. So this robot that will be for purchase, what is it, a net $20,000 to purchase then 500 bucks a month?

Um, well you can buy it outright for 20,000 or a $500 a month subscription.

Oh, it's either or? It's not both.

It's not both. And I don't understand the 20,000 'cause if there's someone a humanoid running it, that's what I don't understand.

So they will tell a, operationally, a human will tell operationally, be behind the robot actually doing the clean so that the AI can get smarter and smarter. And we all know AI, it, it, it gets smarter and better very quickly, but it's just interesting how we will pay for this company's robot to get smarter and smarter. And I guess if you. By the robot, you will benefit from that improvement. But I think that's just interesting.

It's gonna get there. These are for early, early adopters, of course.

We'll put the link to Neo in the show notes if you wanna just check it out. Take a gander. Yeah, it it's got some, it's got a ways to go, but it is.

It's coming.

It is coming. It's coming.

But again, we want you to build repeatable systems that. Ensure excellence every single time. Whether it's you, whether it's your partner, whether it's your kid, whether it's a, a family member, whether it's a commercial cleaner that you find online. You do have to document, you do need to train, and you need to make sure that you have some sort of trust but verify in place.

And when you do that training, it isn't one clean and then they're on the off the races, right? It's not, it's not two cleans. They're off the races. In the corporate setting, it's often 30, 60, 90 days and maybe that 30 days they follow.

Mm-hmm.

Another cleaner like their trainer IE you at this point, and then maybe from that 30 to 60, they do it themselves with it being audited each time and having constructive feedback on a conversation about it. All I'm saying here is that we, it doesn't have to be that extensive of a training program, but I can guarantee you. That you are setting the cleaner, free, quote, unquote, too quickly. Or you're not having enough conversations with this cleaner. I think it kind of blows people's minds to know that, that your cleaner or the company that you work with could meet you on Zoom to have conversations about their work.

Mm-hmm.

At the end of the day. And if they're not willing to do that, then they may not be the professional for you.

Yeah. We've had some hosts, um, just to offer this up. We love the inspector role, but we have some folks that maybe financially that is not sure possible location wise. It's not possible. And you guys, the video. Dates, date and time, and a just a little live action video from their phone of a walkthrough of the space being clean. Uh, that's, that's worked well for some hosts. That way people know like, oh, there's a second set of eyes. It might be my cell phone. But, um, they are, you know, having that second set of eyes there, um, on the property. So, I gotta make sure you're trusting, but verifying. But I also just, everyone out there, I love that this host is actually doing their own work though, because that in itself is a very eye-opening experience, which will help you, um, understand the hard work that goes into it.

And this is an age old challenge. So if you've done something, if you've got a training hack with the cleaner, if you have a relationship that's worked because of some secret sauce that you have put into that relationship. You don't have an inspector 'cause you can't afford it. So you've done this instead, like Annette just mentioned, the person who has the cleaner recorded video, the, they review it before the cleaner leaves. So the second set of eyes so that our customer is not the one reporting back the subpar work. If you figured something out, email us, let us share it. That's what this is all about, is us helping each other and really building that trust for the short-term rental industry so that guests trust staying with hosts. Right? You wanna make sure that we're building that trust. With that, I am Sarah Karakaian.

I'm Annette Grant, and together we are Thanks for Visiting.

Talk to you