Airbnb cleaner or management company: who runs your London changeovers

A London host has five realistic ways to get a flat turned round between guests: clean it yourself, hire a self-employed cleaner, book a cleaning company for changeovers only, add an Airbnb co-host, or hand the listing to a management company. The biggest difference between them is how much of the hosting you keep. Pricing, guest messages, the calendar and the reviews either stay with you or move to someone else.

Five ways to run a changeover

Airbnb cleaner or management company: what each one takes off your plate

With the first three, you stay the host: you set the price, answer the guests and own the reviews. The last two can take all of that over. Airbnb describes co-hosts as able to take on anything from cleaning and turnover to welcoming and caring for guests, so a co-host can be a cleaner with a login or something close to a manager. A management company's scope is whatever its contract says, so read it against the questions further down.

What a co-host can and can't do on Airbnb

Three permission levels

Airbnb gives each co-host one of three levels. Full access covers messaging guests, the calendar, the listing itself including pricing, and reservations, including accepting and declining trip requests and cancellations. Calendar and messaging access lets someone message guests and view the calendar without editing it. Calendar access is view only.

That bottom level is useful for a cleaner. Someone who can see checkout and check-in dates on the listing doesn't have to wait for a WhatsApp each week, and they can't move a price or answer a guest. At any level, Airbnb says the listing owner is responsible for their co-hosts, even ones a full-access co-host added. Airbnb's Co-Host Network is also available in the United Kingdom, listing services from guest messaging and pricing through to cleaning.

How a co-host gets paid

Only the listing owner can set up co-host payouts. The options are the cleaning fee, the cleaning fee plus a percentage, a percentage per booking, or a fixed amount per booking, and the co-host has to confirm the proposal before it starts. Airbnb's page says hosts and co-hosts located outside the US and EU can share payouts with only one co-host per listing. It doesn't name the UK, but the UK is outside the EU, so if you and your helpers live here, expect to pay only one of a cleaner or a manager through Airbnb on each listing.

Off Airbnb, a management company sets its own terms. Airbnb's advice to hosts and co-hosts applies just as well to a contract: be clear about who does what, how much of the reservation income goes to them, and how expenses are reimbursed.

Self-employed cleaner vs cleaning company

Employment status isn't a label you choose

Government guidance says a person is probably self-employed if they're self-employed for tax purposes and most of a list of signs apply: they give quotes, they aren't directly supervised, they send invoices, they pay their own tax and National Insurance, and they don't get holiday or sick pay. Employment law doesn't cover self-employed people in most cases.

Gov.uk gives no single test, and it also says HMRC may treat someone as self-employed for tax even if their status in employment law is different. Courts and tribunals make the final decisions. The guidance warns that individuals and their employers may have to pay unpaid tax and penalties if status is wrong. HMRC's Check employment status for tax tool, which hirers can use, gives HMRC's view for tax only; to use it you'll need to know who decides when, where and how the work is done. Employment rights are a separate question, and gov.uk points you to Acas for advice on them.

A missed changeover costs the host

That applies whoever does the cleaning, which is why cover is the first question on the list below.

Questions to ask before the first changeover

Hosting from a distance

If you live a couple of hours from the flat, the questions about cover and reporting carry more weight, because you can't drive over to fix a missed clean before a 3pm arrival. Keep enough linen sets at the property for back-to-back stays, write down where every supply lives, and give your cleaner calendar access on Airbnb so check-in dates aren't relayed by hand. A management company or full-access co-host is the option if you want someone else answering the guest at midnight as well.

Where Crystal Clear Cleans fits

Crystal Clear Cleans offers the cleaning-only option. The Airbnb and short let cleaning service covers the changeover itself; guest messaging, check-in and key handover stay with you or your co-host. Its cleaners are trained, experienced, DBS checked and insured. Operating hours are 6am to 10pm, seven days a week, and the work covers Uxbridge, Hayes, Ealing, Hounslow and the rest of the London Boroughs of Hillingdon, Ealing and Hounslow.

If you'd rather hand over pricing and guests too, a co-host or management company is built for that, and the questions above still apply. If you want to keep those and only pass on the clean, send the property details and your usual checkout and check-in times through the contact page for a quote.