Eighty-five minutes, and why the published averages say three hours.
How long a short-let turnover takes depends far more on what you count than on how fast anyone cleans.
A two-bed short-let flat in Manchester is turned over to a standard of 85 minutes, by one cleaner. Look up how long a two-bed Airbnb turnover takes and the published figures run to about three hours. The two numbers aren’t really disagreeing. They’re measuring different things.
The flats are run by Short Lets Manchester, which is part of the same group as BedsReady. It’s not an independent customer, which is why the method is set out below rather than just the number.
What the published figures say
| Source | Property | Stated time |
|---|---|---|
| Breezeway, vendor averages | 1 / 2 / 3 bed | 179 / 185 / 215 min |
| CleanBnB, one cleaner | studio / 2 bed | 2–2.5 h / 3.5–4.5 h |
| Uplisting | smaller units | 1–3 h |
Across them, that’s 60 to 270 minutes for broadly the same job. None of these sources says which tasks are included or what period the figures cover. That’s not a criticism of any one of them. Almost nobody publishes the scope, so treat every number in that table, including ours, as context rather than a benchmark.
What the 85 minutes covers, and what it doesn’t
The 85 minutes is the clean itself: one cleaner, inside the flat, from starting the clean to finishing it. It doesn’t include travel between flats.
It’s also a standard, not a measured average. It’s the time the job is rostered and priced to. The app is being set up to time the clean on every job, against that standard. When there’s a clean quarter of timings, this page will publish the spread, including if it shows 85 is optimistic.
Even on the narrowest reading, 85 minutes is under half of Breezeway’s two-bed average (46%). Two things are likely to explain most of that gap:
- Scope. A published “turnover time” often runs from leaving the last flat to locking up this one, and may include linen runs, restocking and photos. A clean-only figure will always look fast next to that.
- Elapsed time versus labour time. Two cleaners for 85 minutes is 85 minutes for the flat but 170 minutes of paid labour. A figure that doesn’t say which it is can’t be compared with anything.
Why it’s worth knowing your own number
Four solo turnovers at 85 minutes, with 15 minutes between flats, is 400 minutes, or 6.7 hours. That fits a 7.5-hour shift with room for one overrun. A fifth doesn’t fit: that would be 8.3 hours. The whole rota rests on that one number being right.
At the 2026 wage floors with 12% on-costs, 85 minutes of one cleaner costs £20.17 in the UK and €22.45 in Ireland, in wages alone. The housekeeping cost calculator runs the same sum on your own rates.
What to do with this
Time ten of your own turnovers, cleaning only, and write down the flat size each time.
If your number is near the published three hours, find out what’s inside it before deciding anyone is slow. If it’s near ours, check you’re comparing the same scope.