The costs of cleaning self catering holiday home for Covid-19

We're discussing with our rental agency (Sykes) what the impact of additional cleaning costs will be when we turnaround our small one bedroom holiday cottage between guest stays. Providing a safe place will inevitably increase the rental charged to guests, when Covid is no longer a concern we can consider removing the extra charges. On the basis of current estimates it is an additional £65 per turnaround.

We've carefully considered the Sykes recommendations for cleaning, ignoring those which are contradicted by the World Health Organisation, to ensure effective but safe procedures for our cleaners. We have decided against the use of fogging devices which leave a residual fine layer of biocide chemicals throughout the premises after application by mist/spray/fog.

To prevent infection passing between sets of guests, and our cleaning staff, we need to undertake extensive and thorough cleaning both inside and outside our cottage. We need to disinfect surfaces that may have become infected. We also need to provide additional disposable protective equipment (PPE) for our cleaning staff.

We already have extensive cleaning procedures in place for our cottage as part of normal rental. These existing procedures have to be completed within a four hour gap between the departure of one set of guests and the arrival of new guests. To complete the additional work for Covid-19 precautions we'll need to extend the turnaround gap by two hours to a six hour period to allow for the additional work. To keep capital costs under control, during the indeterminate period of Covid-19 risk, we have chosen to rent the necessary equipment, for steam cleaning and ultraviolet light sterilisation, on a daily rental rate. The costs of the additional treatment and labour, extra to existing cleaning, is estimated at £43.17 per turnaround.

The cost of additional disposable items, arising from Covid cleaning and safe disposal is estimated at £14.96 for each turnround.

We also need to purchase additional stocks of bedding, linen, towels,  pillows, cushions etc to enable potentially infected materials to be left for a week in sealed bags, allowing any virus to degrade. Our cost estimate for this additional stock is £407.  Spread across the expected lifetime of these goods, that is around £6.98 per week or turnaround.

I've a detailed spreadsheet of all of the cost items. I won't publish here, but it is available for those who might want more information.

Life is not a bed of roses - the economics providing a rental Holiday Cottage

We chose to put part of our retirement savings into property investment. Comparing with the other investments we took out at the same time via our financial advisor, we'd be looking at a 54% gain on the capital investment. Our holiday cottage, whilst providing some protection against financial market risks, has not yet broken even after seven years.

Here's the typical average weekly costs that we face in operating the cottage:

Attending site travel cost	£12.80
Internet & phone	£4.90
Electricity & gas	£14.77
Water & sewer	£3.65
Insurance	£5.08
Trade waste	£3.81
Supplies	£1.70
Milk n biscuits (greeting)	£2.00
TV licence	£2.96
Laundry	£1.60
Ironing & cleaning	£10.13
Repairs & Maintenance	£25.27
Admin/accountant	£5.54
VAT on agency fee	£4.83
	£99.04	week
	£14.15	day

These figures are taken directly from our accounting system, and are auditable for tax purposes. If the guests fail to put out the rubbish for collection, we have to put in an extra trip to the cottage the following week, at a cost of £6.00, to put out the bags/bin make sure the rubbish, for the previous week, is collected.

There are other cost/loss of income amounts to be considered, that we don't currently charge to the cottage project:

Notional Interest on Capital	£91.35
Business Rates	£18.46
Man hours/Minimum wage	£34.88
Furniture/White goods replacement	£11.54
	£156.23	week
	£22.32	day

The notional interest is the income we'd have received if we just invested the capital amount in the financial markets.  Business Rates are what we'd have to pay for the Holiday Cottage on assessment by the local authority. Fortunately we have a Government Exemption on Business Rates, but that could easily cease.  Man Hours is the amount of time we spend each week dealing with the cottage, if nothing goes wrong and we have perfect guests. Currently we do not charge for those man hours. Furniture and white goods have to be replaced frequently, but at the moment we treat those as an asset rather than an operational cost.

Over the same period, the average amount  we received is:

Average take rental fees received	£120.63	Week
	£17.23	Day

So ignoring the "other costs" we take about £3/day as "profits" in exchange for a lot of worry.  If we properly factored in the "other costs" as if we were a normal business it is evident that we subsidise our guests to the tune of £19/day.