Table of Contents
The short answer
A turnover is the clean between one guest checking out and the next checking in. It is judged differently from an ordinary clean. The next guest has never seen the home, compares it with the listing photos, and notices a hair on a pillow before anything else. The work is a regular clean with three additions: the beds, a check for damage and things left behind, and a reset of everything a guest uses up.
Two things make it work. The first is order: whatever takes time by itself goes first, bathrooms and kitchen in the middle, beds and floors at the end. The second is the clock. The clean has to fit between check-out and check-in, so the size of the team is set by the gap as much as by the size of the home.
With IHR Dream Cleaning, a turnover after a short stay can be booked as a cleaning visit by the hour, and the hourly cleaning page explains how those bookings work. A two-hour visit by one cleaner is AED 65 with your products or AED 75 with ours. When a guest has stayed for weeks, or the home is going back to its owner, the job is closer to a move-out clean, which is a deep clean with a larger team. One thing to plan around: linen and laundry, restocking and holding keys are not services we publish. This guide treats them as yours to arrange and says what to ask when you book.
Three kinds of visit a holiday home needs
A holiday home runs on three different cleans. Most disappointments come from asking one of them to do the work of another.
| Visit | When | Booked as | Starts at |
|---|---|---|---|
| Turnover | Between every pair of guests | Hourly cleaning | AED 65 for two hours |
| Reset | After a long stay and between seasons | Deep or move-out clean | AED 180 |
| Fabric care | When a mattress or sofa is marked | Priced by the item | AED 100 smallest order |
What a turnover cannot do
A turnover keeps a clean home clean. It has no time for the grout, the hood filters, the tops of the wardrobes, the inside of the oven or the space behind the sofa. Those build up slowly across many stays, and then a guest notices all of them at once. Put a reset in the calendar before the busy season and after it, and after any stay long enough for someone to have cooked every day. For a reset the home is treated like a tenancy that has ended: empty of guests, every cupboard opened, a team for half a day.
Set the home up so a turnover can be fast
Most of the time lost in a turnover is lost to things that could have been decided once. These are worth settling before the first guest.
- Linen: at least two full sets for every bed and two sets of towels for every guest the home sleeps, so that a clean set is always in the home while the other is being washed. Plain white throughout means any sheet fits any bed of that size.
- Protectors: a washable protector on every mattress and pillow. They are the difference between washing a cover and treating a mattress.
- An owner's cupboard that locks: spare linen, consumables, light bulbs, and the vacuum, mop and products if you book cleaning without materials.
- A photo of each room as it should look: how the bed is dressed, where the cushions go, how many towels in each bathroom. Keep a copy in the owner's cupboard and send it with the booking.
- A written list of what is restocked and how much: toilet paper, soap, washing-up liquid, bin liners, and coffee and tea if you provide them.
- Fewer ornaments. Every object on a surface is lifted and dusted at every changeover.
- Doormats inside the entrance and at the balcony door. Sand that stays on a mat is not on the floor.
- A dated box for things guests leave behind.
The between-guests checklist, in working order
This is the order a careful turnover is run in. It starts with whatever takes longest to finish by itself and ends with the floors, so that nothing is done twice.
- Open up. Switch on the lights and the AC, open the curtains, and open the balcony door for a few minutes if the air outside is clear.
- Walk through before touching anything. Look for damage, breakages, missing items and things left behind, and photograph what you find.
- Strip every bed and collect every towel, bath mat and tea towel, used or not. Start the washing machine if laundry is done on site.
- Empty every bin and the fridge. Load the dishwasher with anything left out and start it.
- Dust from the top down in every room, and wipe switches, handles, remote controls and the entry panel.
- Bathrooms: put the cleaner on and leave it to work while you do something else, then scrub, rinse and dry every surface.
- Kitchen: counters, hob, sink, appliance fronts and handles, inside the microwave, the fridge shelves, then the cupboards guests use.
- Make the beds with clean linen and dress them to the photo.
- Restock every room against the list.
- Floors last. Vacuum everything, including under the beds and beneath the sofa cushions, then mop towards the door.
- Balcony or terrace: floor, furniture, rail, glass and the door track.
- A final look from the front door, the way a guest arrives.
Bedrooms
The bed is the first thing a guest looks at closely, and one stray hair undoes the rest of the work. Check the mattress and its protector every time the sheets come off.
- Mattress and pillow protectors checked for marks, and changed if marked.
- Mattress seams and the headboard looked over with a torch. Small dark spots or shed skins along a seam are a reason to stop and call pest control before the next guest arrives. Our guide to confirming bed bugs shows what to look for.
- Sheets pulled tight, pillows and duvet shaken out, no hairs on the linen.
- Under the bed vacuumed and checked for left items.
- Wardrobe and drawers empty and wiped, hangers counted.
- Bedside tables, lamps and switches wiped.
Bathrooms
A bathroom has to look as if nobody has used it. In Abu Dhabi's hard water that means drying as well as cleaning: a tap that is rinsed and left wet is spotted with scale again by the time the guest arrives.
- Toilet inside, the seat on both sides, the hinges, the base and the floor behind.
- Shower or bath: walls, screen and tray, with the drain cover lifted and cleared of hair.
- Shower head and taps descaled when the shine or the spray pattern has gone, then dried with a cloth.
- Basin, plug and overflow. Mirror free of streaks.
- Fresh towels and bath mat. Toilet paper and soap to the list.
- Bin emptied and relined, extractor fan running.
- Floor mopped last, including behind the door.
Kitchen
Short-stay guests cook less than residents, so the kitchen work is more checking than scrubbing. Everything a guest might have used has to be looked at.
- Fridge and freezer emptied of the last guest's food, shelves and door seals wiped.
- Dishwasher emptied. Crockery, glasses and cutlery checked by eye and put back in their places, and anything put away dirty washed again.
- Hob, counters and splashback wiped. Oven and microwave opened, and wiped out if they were used. A heavily soiled oven is a job for the reset, not the changeover.
- Kettle and coffee machine emptied and rinsed. A kettle scales quickly here and needs descaling regularly.
- Sink and tap cleaned and dried, the strainer emptied.
- Bin emptied, the bin itself wiped, a new liner in.
- Tea towels and sponges replaced, never left for the next guest.
Living and dining area
Sofas and tables collect crumbs and fingerprints in places a resident stops seeing.
- Sofa cushions lifted and vacuumed underneath. Throws and cushion covers checked for marks.
- Coffee table, dining table and chairs wiped, including the chair backs where hands go.
- Remote controls, switches, handles and the AC controller wiped.
- Glass doors and mirrors checked for fingerprints against the light.
- Curtains and blinds set the way the photo shows.
Balcony or terrace
Sand settles on a balcony within a day or two of a windy spell, and near the water a salt film builds on the glass and the rail. A guest who opens the door onto a gritty table assumes the rest was cleaned the same way.
- Floor swept or vacuumed, then mopped.
- Table and chairs wiped.
- Rail and reachable glass wiped.
- Door track vacuumed, so the door slides.
- Ashtray, if there is one, emptied and washed.
The last look from the front door
Close the door, open it again and walk in as a stranger would.
- Smell first. The home should smell of nothing.
- AC set to a comfortable temperature for arrival.
- Every light working. A dead bulb is noticed on the first evening.
- Windows and the balcony door closed and locked.
- Nothing left by the cleaner: no cloth on a tap, no bottle on a counter.
- A photo of each room, taken from the same spot each time. It is your record if a guest disputes the state of the home.
What the Abu Dhabi climate adds to the list
A checklist written for a cooler, wetter country misses four things that matter here.
Hard water
Scale forms wherever tap water is left to dry. In a home that is cleaned every few days it never gets the chance to harden, as long as taps, screens and the sink are dried and not only rinsed. Left for a few changeovers, it becomes a crust that needs a descaler and more time than a turnover has. Keep descalers away from marble and other natural stone, which acid etches.
Dust and sand
After a windy day there is a film on every sill and grit in the balcony track, even in a flat that was cleaned two days earlier and has stood empty since. If guests arrive after a dusty spell, allow time for a second pass on sills, the balcony and the floor near the doors, and keep the windows shut until the air clears.
Humidity and the AC
In the humid months a closed flat with the AC off turns stale quickly, and a damp towel left inside makes it worse. Take every wet item out at each changeover, leave the bathroom extractor to run, and leave the AC on at a moderate setting between guests. Wipe the AC vent covers when dust shows on them, because a guest lying in bed looks straight up at them.
Weeks without a booking
In a home that stands empty, the water in the floor-drain traps can dry out and let a drain smell into the bathrooms. Running the taps and the shower for a minute refills them. Settled dust needs a light clean before the next arrival even though nobody has stayed, so book a short visit ahead of the first guest after a quiet spell.
Fitting the clean into the gap between guests
The gap between your check-out time and your check-in time is the working window. Take half an hour off each end for a late leaver and an early arrival, and what remains is what the clean has to fit into.
Our published hours guide for a regular clean is the fair starting point, because a turnover after a short stay is a regular clean plus the beds and the restocking. That reading is ours, not a published rule for holiday homes, and the first two changeovers will show whether your home needs more.
| Home | Regular-clean guide | Your products | Our materials |
|---|---|---|---|
| Studio | 1 cleaner, 2 hours | AED 65 | AED 75 |
| One bedroom | 1 cleaner, 3 hours | AED 90 | AED 105 |
| Two bedrooms | 1 cleaner, 4 hours | AED 120 | AED 140 |
| Three bedrooms | 1 cleaner, 5 hours | AED 145 | AED 170 |
| Villa, four or five bedrooms | 2 cleaners, 4 hours each | AED 240 | AED 280 |
Buying time with a second cleaner
The price is per cleaner, so two cleaners finish in about half the time for a similar total. One cleaner for four hours in a two-bedroom apartment is AED 120. Two cleaners for two hours each cover the same four cleaner-hours and cost AED 130, because a shorter visit costs slightly more per hour. When the gap is three hours and the home needs four cleaner-hours, the second cleaner is how the job is finished before check-in. Up to 4 cleaners can be booked on one visit.
The booking rules that matter to hosts
These come from our published terms, and each one changes how a host should plan.
- Visits can be booked up to 30 days ahead. Book the clean when the reservation is confirmed, not in the week before.
- A same-day booking needs about 2 hours' notice and a free slot. We work every day from 8 AM – 8 PM, and the work has to finish by closing time.
- The price is the same on Fridays, weekends and public holidays, which is when many guests change over.
- A booking can be moved or cancelled free of charge up to 6 hours before it starts. After that the charge is AED 30. If a guest extends or cancels, move the clean straight away.
- If the team arrives and cannot get in, the charge is AED 60. Make sure the key box, the concierge or the property manager is arranged before the day.
- If a guest has left the home in a state that needs longer, the team leader asks you first. Extra time is added in 30-minute steps and only with your approval.
- If the work is finished early, the team stays for the booked time and uses it on whatever you ask for: the balcony glass, the inside of the fridge, the wardrobe tops.
What to budget for each changeover
The regular-plan discounts on the price list apply to visits booked on a fixed rhythm: weekly, every two weeks or monthly. Changeovers follow your reservations, so budget each one at the one-off price in the table. Our materials add AED 5 per cleaner-hour. Without materials, everything has to be at the property and working: vacuum, mop, bucket, cloths and products. A home where guests may have used up or broken the supplies is safer booked with materials.
Same-day changeovers on Yas Island
Yas Island has a large share of holiday homes and short-let apartments, and a clean between guests on the same day is a question we are asked there often. The answer is yes when a slot is free between check-out and check-in. In peak season book as early as you can, and give the guest times so that the team is sized to finish inside the window. Access notes for the island's gated communities and apartment buildings are on our Yas Island page.
Linen, keys and restocking: what to arrange yourself
These are where changeover arrangements most often go wrong, and none of them is a published IHR service. Arrange them separately and tell us what you have arranged.
Linen and laundry
We do not publish a linen or laundry service, so do not plan a changeover around one. Keep the clean sets at the property, or have them delivered by the laundry you use before the clean starts. Washing and drying a full set on site usually takes longer than the changeover window, which is why the second set matters. If you want the beds stripped and made up with linen you supply, say so when you book and give the number of beds, so that the task and the time can be confirmed before the day.
Keys and access
Holiday lets are often opened with a key box or by a property manager. Tell us who hands over the keys, the check-out time and the check-in time, and we plan the visit into that window. In a tower, register the team as visitors in advance and ask whether the building wants the service lift used. What buildings ask for is covered in our guide to cleaner access in Abu Dhabi towers.
Consumables and restocking
Soap, toilet paper, bin liners, coffee and the rest are bought and stored by the host. Keep them in the owner's cupboard with the written list, so that whoever does the changeover can put out the right amounts. If you want that done during the clean, put it in the booking notes and make sure the cupboard can be opened.
Damage and things left behind
Decide in advance who looks for damage and who reports it. A cleaner will notice a broken glass or a stained sofa, but the record that a booking platform or a guest dispute needs is yours to keep: dated photos before each stay and after it. Agree where found items go and who contacts the guest.
The licence
Holiday homes in Abu Dhabi are regulated by the Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi. Its Circular No. 8 of 2025 says that every unit must hold a valid licence as a condition for being listed on online platforms for holiday-home advertising and booking, and that the licence number is entered on the listing. The guides for owners and operators are on the department's holiday homes page, as published in October 2026. Check the current requirements there before you take a first booking.
Resets, mattresses and the jobs between seasons
Three jobs sit outside the changeover and need their own days in the calendar.
The reset clean
A reset is a deep clean with the home empty of guests: hood and hob degreased, bathrooms descaled, grout, skirting boards, door frames, AC vent covers and window tracks. The insides of cupboards and appliances are not automatic, so say when you book which ones you want done and the scope is confirmed first. It is booked with at least 2 cleaners for 3 hours each, which is AED 180 with your products or AED 210 with ours. Block a day for it. A deep clean squeezed into a three-hour changeover is neither one thing nor the other.
Mattresses and sofas
A mattress in a holiday home is slept on by far more people than one in a family home. Protectors take most of the wear, and the mattress itself still needs cleaning from time to time and whenever a stain gets through. Mattress cleaning is priced per mattress: AED 79 for a single, AED 99 for a double or queen and AED 119 for a king. A sofa is AED 30 a seat. The smallest order of priced items on one visit is AED 100, and items booked with a deep clean are 10% off.
A cleaned mattress needs a few hours in an air-conditioned room to dry, so this is not a job for changeover day. Book it for a morning when the bed is not needed that night, or for the day blocked for the reset. Cleaning removes dust, sweat marks and odour. It does not remove bed bugs, which need pest control.
After a long stay
A guest who has stayed a month or more has lived in the home: cooked daily, filled the wardrobes, used the oven. The clean that follows is a move-out clean in everything but name. Allow the deep-clean team and hours for it, not a changeover slot, and block the night after if you can.
Common questions
Can the home be cleaned on the day one guest leaves and the next arrives?
Yes, when a slot is free between check-out and check-in. Book early, give both times, and size the team to the gap. How late a same-day visit can be booked is explained in how same-day cleaning works.
Is this what people mean by an 'Airbnb cleaning service'?
Yes. Hosts search for it under the name of the platform they list on, but the job is the same whichever site takes the booking: a clean between guests, done to the standard of the listing and inside the changeover window.
Does the team bring linen or wash it?
No linen or laundry service is published, so supply your own clean sets and arrange the washing separately. Ask when you book about making the beds with your linen, so that it is confirmed and timed.
I do not live in Abu Dhabi. Can the clean happen without me?
Yes, as long as someone or something lets the team in. Tell us whether that is a key box, the concierge or a property manager, and name a contact who can answer a question on the day. Ask when you book for whatever confirmation you want at the end of the visit.
What if a guest leaves the home in a bad state?
The team leader tells you what they have found and how much longer it needs, and nothing is added without your approval. If the next guest's arrival fixes the finish time, give the order of priority: bathrooms, beds, kitchen, then floors, with the balcony and the cupboards last. Photograph the state of the home before the work starts, and book a reset for the next free day.
What if something is missed?
Tell us within 24 hours of the visit and the missed point in the booked areas is re-cleaned free of charge. With a guest arriving the same afternoon, the practical safeguard is the final check before the team leaves, or a look by your manager, because a re-clean after check-in means disturbing the guest.
Booking a changeover or a reset
Book as soon as a reservation is confirmed. Give the check-out and check-in times, the number of bedrooms and beds, who hands over the keys, and whether you want our materials. Add the room photos and the restocking list if you have them.
For a changeover between short stays, choose the hours from the table above. After a long stay or for a seasonal reset, choose the deep clean described on the move-out cleaning page. The price is shown before you confirm, and payment is by card online once we confirm your booking. We work every day from 8 AM – 8 PM. Book a visit online.
