Your Airbnb rating lives and dies by cleanliness. It's consistently the #1 factor guests mention in reviews —positive or negative. For hosts managing back-to-back bookings, having a reliable cleaner who can turn a property around quickly isn't a luxury: it's essential to the business.
A proper short-let turnover clean covers everything a guest will notice: fresh linen, spotless bathrooms, clean kitchen (inside appliances too), vacuumed floors, and dusted surfaces. The speed matters as much as the quality — cleans often need to happen in a 2–4 hour window between checkout and check-in.
Most hosts start by using a friend or local recommendation — which works fine until the cleaner isn't available on a Saturday morning with guests arriving at 3pm. Ad-hoc arrangements don't scale, and unreliable cleaning directly damages your Superhost status.
Between every guest stay, without exception. Beyond that, a monthly or quarterly deep clean of areas guests don't see keeps standards consistently high.