Start with the time, not the rate
A straightforward double room with en-suite takes between 35 and 55 minutes to turn properly: strip, make, bathroom, floors, surfaces, restock the tray, check the room as a guest would see it. The spread is not about speed. It is about what the last guest did.
The useful number is not the best case. It is the one you can staff reliably on a Saturday in August when four rooms go out and four come in. For planning, take 45 minutes a room and add 20 minutes for communal areas and the stairs.
A six-room property therefore needs about four and a half hours on a full changeover day. Not three, which is what most rotas assume.
The costs that appear on an invoice
| Item | Six-room changeover |
|---|---|
| Labour at £24 an hour, 4.5 hours | £108 |
| Linen: six sets laundered, hired or in-house | £24–42 |
| Consumables: amenities, tray stock, cleaning products | £9–15 |
| Running total | £141–165 |
That is the figure most owners have in their head, and it is the easy part.
The costs that never appear anywhere
Your own time. If you are the one covering the gap, your hour still has a value, and the work is not the expensive part — the loss is what you were not doing instead. Owners who do their own changeovers almost never price the enquiry they missed because they were upstairs with a hoover.
Recruitment and turnover. Housekeeping in a seasonal coastal town turns over fast. Advertising, trialling and training a replacement is rarely under £400 of your time, and you do it more than once a season.
Employment overhead. An employed housekeeper costs more than the hourly rate: employer's National Insurance, holiday pay accruing at 12.07% of hours worked, pension contributions, and cover for the weeks they are off. On a part-time seasonal post this adds roughly a fifth to the headline rate before anyone has been sick.
The no-show. This is the one that breaks the model. A single failed changeover in peak season costs you the room night, the refund or the move, and sometimes the review. One bad Saturday wipes out several weeks of the saving you made by keeping the work in-house.
In-house against outsourced, honestly
In-house wins on marginal cost when the work is steady, the person is reliable and you have enough rooms to keep them busy. If you run eight rooms at high occupancy from April to October, employing someone is usually cheaper per changeover than buying it in.
Outsourcing wins on three things that are harder to price: you pay for hours worked and nothing else, there is no cover problem when someone is ill, and the risk of the failed Saturday moves off your desk. For properties under eight rooms, or anywhere with a sharp seasonal curve, the arithmetic usually lands on buying it in.
Most of the owners we work for do both: a regular person they trust, and a standing arrangement for the weeks that person cannot cover. That is what the Priority Cover retainer exists for.
What to check before you compare quotes
- Is linen included, hired or yours? The difference is £4–7 a room
- Does the price assume your products or theirs?
- Is there a minimum charge, and what happens on a three-room day?
- Who pays when a guest leaves the room in an unusual state?
- Is there a call-out premium at weekends — which is when changeovers happen?
A quote without those five answers is not a quote. Ours are written with them, which is why the changeover page states the rate and the minimum rather than inviting you to enquire.
Related
What this connects to
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Tell us the rooms and the changeover days. You will have a fixed hourly quote the same day.