Laundry service costs

Answered!
Mary573
Level 2
Boulder, CO

Laundry service costs

Laundry is killing me!  

 

My cleaners are charging me over $50 per load of laundry.  My recent guests used a ton of linens.  

 

The cleaners did 4 loads.  You can do the math.  

 

Does anyone have a cleaver idea to help me decrease laundry costs?

1 Best Answer
Elaine701
Level 10
Balearic Islands, Spain

From afar, it seems pointless to advertise you cleaning business here, since it's absolutely useless to us, and most others on this forum, because they're nowhere near your 10 sq. Km patch on the planet. Out of 1000 views of your post, you'd be lucky to get >one< anywhere near you. 

 

So, regarding the topic, "cleaning fees" are "problematic", we just hide it in the price. 

 

Yes, laundry and cleaning is expensive. But I've found that people would rather pay a higher per night rate than pay extra for cleaning.

 

And when they "pay" for "cleaning", they tend to not bother tidying up on departure, leaving the place messy with lots of dirty dishes, don't bother with the rubbish, etc. But if it's included in the price, most will try to tidy up before departure. Some obsessively. 

 

Now, I realise that this probably wouldn't make sense unless you're  "whole house" listing. But we are, and these have been our observations. 

View Best Answer in original post

51 Replies 51
Helen3
Level 10
Bristol, United Kingdom

As I said to you in my earlier post "And before you say it - yes I know others also spam the forum but mods don't always catch them all....and it doesn't make it right"

 

And if you hadn't wanted to advertise your services you wouldn't have included your full contact details here.

 

This is a forum for hosts and guests not for companies that want to advertise services to us/carry out market research for their business. That's why the forum rules prohibit you from doing so. And your post was removed.

@Annie1306  Here is the official policy-available for you to read if you had bothered to look at the moderator's post which appears at the beginning of this forum. It has nothing to do with other poster's opinions nor is what you decide is allowed or not in any way relevant.

 

"Ensure you adhere to rules in Airbnb’s Content Policy such as not posting advertisements or revealing personal information like phone numbers for yourself or others. This is a public forum where content in public boards are accessible to anyone."

 

 

 

Karol22
Level 10
SF, CA

Laundry is definitely a challenge. So much so that we decided to stop assigning this duty to our cleaners and have decided to contact our local laundromat. Our cleaners will leave dirty linens in a designated spot where the laundromat staff will pick up once per week and drop off a couple days later. This will require you to have more sets of linens, at least enough to last you through an entire week of turnovers. But this was the best solution for us with the least amount of headache. Reach out to several laundromats nearby to see if they provide a pickup and dropoff service in your area and go with the ones that are most professional.

I own a linen laundry service just for STR's and I was a rental property manager for 22 years prior to owning the laundry service.   I don't wish to advertise here, just comment to the whole string of comments here.   Running your STR is a business.  There are always costs associated with a business.  The laundry is a huge hot topic and very unappreciated obviously.  My linen laundry service is barely staying alive because no one wants to pay the true cost of professional laundry.  It is extremely short sighted to have cleaners do your laundry at their houses on their own time and not want to pay them for it.  Even taking your linens to a laundromat is somewhat short sighted. I've seen cleaners at a laundromat over-stuffing loads, towels and sheets mixed in a load and no bleach or stain treatment used, right after the prior customer washed horse blankets in that machine.     If you worked for any corporation and they made you take work home and be responsible for the outcome, you would need to be compensated.  The very best residential machines cannot keep up with the demand for very long.  The cost of replacement machines and yet another maintenance call is guaranteed.   Attempting to buy your own laundry area is a huge investment and is far more expensive then a laundry service.  Trust me, the costs are exorbitant.   Guests want clean linens more than anything.  The entire bed experience is what they are paying for.  They will inspect it from the start. A picture will be circulated.  It will ruin a review if they see stains.  I will 100% guarantee you, using cleaners to get the laundry done will put you and them in that position.  Home machines and laundromat machines are not how your valuable linens should be cleaned.  Linens often get destroyed by guests.  The professionals can minimize that by using commercial products and machines and save your linens.  Worse than throwing out damaged linens, is to continue using them even though they are stained.  Lastly, all humans alive hate doing linen laundry.  Hauling heavy linens, handling them through the process, folding them nicely (have you ever tried to fold a fitted sheet), and hauling them to their final use is heavy, back breaking work and anyone who hasn't tried it, shouldn't complain about getting the laundry done.  Professionals do all the heavy work and make the result stunning. Just the straight cost of doing a load of laundry is $1.00/lb. If it is picked up and delivered it’s more.  The higher the volume the lower the cost to your business.  The cost gets buried in the cleaning fee either way (separate fee or buried in the total cost) which is not supposed to be a profit/loss center of the STR business, it’s a cost to the guest that goes to the cleaners/laundry/amenities.   Property Management companies get sued for doing that.  Post covid, guests want extremely clean rentals and are willing to pay.

I know this is an older post but Laundry Care has pick up and delivery laundry service for AirBnBs. You can go to their page at LaundryCare.biz/commercial and they will send you a quote or services and get you all set up!

Can0
Level 3
Chicago, IL

Why you give them so many linens to use? I have been hosting years now nobody ever requested additional set of linens besides the ones that were already on the bed.