What’s the most important thing to get right when hosting a property on a booking platform like Airbnb?No, it’s not getting your pricing right (but that helps).Amazing photos are great for attracting bookings, but they don’t mean much once the guest arrives.And it’s not greeting guests with a welcome hamper, as lovely as that sounds.It’s cleaning.

For this reason, we’ve made sure our cleans go above and beyond what you’d normally expect from a home clean:

• Rental, collection and dry cleaning of fresh-pressed linen for every guest stay.
• Our cleaners are trained to carry out hospitality-level cleans, providing unerring attention to detail and those hotel-style finishing touches that delight guests.
• We guarantee a fixed price on our cleaning fee, so no host is charged more than they were expecting to pay (even if a clean takes longer than planned, or a cleaner spends extra time popping out to restock toilet roll).

On top of this, since Houst began in 2015 we’ve made huge improvements to our cleaning operations:

• We were the first host management company to ask guests to rate cleans when they check in, providing us with valuable information on a property and cleaner level to help us improve quickly.
• We’ve built a housekeeping app to make it faster and easier for our cleaners to respond to clean requests and report on completed cleans.
• We’ve devoted a 12-person developer team to improving the host dashboard and housekeeping app to give hosts more control over their cleans. Hosts can now view timings for upcoming cleans, review previous cleans and leave specific instructions for cleaners – all from their Houst host dashboard.

And it’s working! Currently,75% of our cleans in hosts’ properties are rated 5-stars (and we’re expecting to make that 80% in the not-too-distant future).But there’s always more we can do...

We have a responsibility to make sure cleaners on the Houst platform are paid fairly, and also to recognise and reward great work and notable commitment. As part of this, we've recently reviewed how much cleaners are earning to make sure they are getting a real living wage. It’s not just the right thing to do – it benefits everyone: guests, hosts, and Houst.So here are 2 new initiatives we’re launching to help inspire and motivate cleaners better than ever before:

• Rewards for the best cleaners – Allowing our best cleaners to earn up to 20% more.
• Cleaner training & communication –  We've recently introduced a professionally-made training video showing how to provide a 5-star clean, every time. Also, we've started sending newsletter emails to our cleaners for improved communication and two-way engagement between each cleaner and Houst. 

We believe in a future for our business that works for everyone: hosts, cleaners, guests and all our employees.If you’d like to help us get there,take a look at our jobs page to see our current vacancies.If you’d like to find out more about becoming an Houst host, you can get started right away by using the price calculator at the bottom of this page to see how much your home could earn you with Houst.