Alerting our cleaner about new bookings

[Steven1147]

I live a long way from my Airbnb-listed property and have employed a housekeeping service to help with cleaning and maintenance tasks.  I want to alert the housekeeper about new bookings so they can clean the apartment in a timely manner.  Making them a Co-host is inappropriate - too much detail, some of which is confidential (payments, guest names, etc).  Is there a way to alert housekeeping?

I have only one listing and so Airbnb's 'Team' facilities can't be used as you need to have '6 or more listings'.

I guess he above issue must be pretty common and I hope someone can help.  Thanks in anticipation, Steven

[Sam4347]

@Ann72 That is really great advice! I feel like TurnoverBnB is the simplest route even considering the fee becasue of how easy communicating and scheduling with cleaners becomes.

@Steven1147  For someone who is old and forgetfull at times, the automated payments can be extremly useful and notfiying cleaners about new bookings is simple too! 

hope everything goes smoothly for you. 

[John978]

Actually you can send them a link to the ical and they can use their iphone or android calendar or there are apps available that they can put on their phone and add the iCal link you provide them.  It has a little more information that the public site, like where they booked and also if you block a day between guests that shows up where it doesn't on the public site. 

[Jeri79]

I have my airbnb calendar linked to my google calendar, I don't see who is coming from my google calendar, only that the space is booked.  You could set up an email address, embed the link to airbnb calendar and then give her access to that email address.  Just a thought...

[Ann72]

We've tried that, @Jeri79, and it doesn't work for us because the calendar is public and doesn't have the info we need.

[Scott]

@Ann72 thanks for tagging me in this conversation.  Notifying a cleaner when a reservation is made is indeed something we'd like to help automate and simplify. 

Note that hosts using Professional hosting tools can use the Tasks feature to automatically create cleaning tasks with every new booking: https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/2852/how-can-i-automate-the-creation-of-tasks 

We don't yet support automatic assignment, but are working on that.  In the meantime, you can manually assign which team member you want to complete the task.  (Note also that teammates with only "Tasks" permission can't see the price of the reservation.)

We'll come back to this thread with more specifics, but please know this is on our radar -- thank you for bringing it up @Steven1147  🙏

[Marg11]

We have just added a cleaning fee and are now trying to find a cleaner who can cope with the irregular work involving guests who stay between 2 and 21 days in our flat. We will continue to do the linen washing as the machine is in our house and we don't use a dryer but are planning to supply equipment and materials to ensure the work is done according to Airbnb standards. are there any hidden problems we need to know about?

[Melanie-And-David0]

@Scott Is AirBnb working on a way to automatically make the task due date the next check-in? That would be incredibly useful.

[Scott]

Tell us more @Melanie-And-David0  -- how do you envision this working?

[Melanie-And-David0]

@Scott Right now, in the template under "The task needs to be completed at...", it would be great if there were more options. For example, the next check-in would make the most sense for a cleaning task (i.e. the cleaner has from the time the last guest checks out until the time the next guest checks in to clean). If that's too complicated, even a 24 hour or 48 hour option might be helpful.

Also, as far as I can tell, the assignee does not receive notification when I assign them to a task, so that might be a helpful addition as well.

[Ruslan54]

Hi @Scott, Im a software engineer and a host. In addition to the above system improvement I see another important automated alert needed for hosts. Use case: Guest need to be reminded the day garbage carts need to be moved out so they can be picked up next morning. I have cleaners doing this but only if the checkout day happens to be on the day before the garbage is collected, and many guests forget to move out the garbage carts. As a result garbage is accumulated and smells and is not seen good for neighbors and next guest.

[Steven1147]

Great idea.  I was just viewing a reminder in my calendar about the bins and your solution would really help

[James2743]

I’m also looking at this at the moment. It’d be great if Airbnb had something to help, but i’m Looking at signing up to a channel manager to help. 

[Ayo328]

Hi James, 

what’s a channel manager?

[Scott]

@Ruslan54 @Steven1147 @James2743 Thanks for this additional feedback -- very helpful and agreed.