Quarterly Pest Control for a Burleigh Heads Airbnb

A boutique Airbnb on a quarterly arrangement

This customer runs boutique style Airbnb properties, and this one is a house in Burleigh Heads. It is on quarterly general pest control, and we clean the couch here regularly too.

Quarterly is the arrangement this customer has for this house. It is a home let to guests for short stays, and the schedule suits the way it is used: people come and go, nobody is there full time, and the visit happens whether or not anything has been reported.

The left of the photo is the verandah, with the sprayer set down and the palms right up against the house. That is what this post is mostly about.

Why a short stay house suits a set schedule

In a house where a family lives, the people inside see things first. A cockroach in the kitchen at night, a line of ants along the bench. They notice early and they call.

A short stay house has no one in that role. Guests are there for a few nights and are not looking for signs. When one of them does see something, it has already become a problem, and it has happened during their stay.

A schedule takes that out of guests' hands. Every visit comes with a report, so the owner has a running record of what was treated and what was found, visit after visit. There is more on running a holiday let in our post on short-term rental carpet and pest hygiene.

Palm fronds against the house are a bridge

On this visit, trees, branches and palm fronds were touching the side of the house. That is an easy bridge for pests.

Ants, cockroaches and spiders travel along whatever is continuous. A frond resting on a wall or a verandah rail joins the garden straight onto the house, above the ground where the perimeter treatment sits. Anything that crosses on the frond skips the perimeter entirely.

So the advice was to trim them back, and it went into our report the same way it always does. On a property run as a short stay, the people looking after it are not always the people staying in it. Putting the advice in writing means everyone involved works from the same instruction.

Palms keep putting out new fronds, so this is a job that comes round again rather than a one off. A quarterly visit is a natural point to check it.

The couch: a regular clean, and the protector still holding

The right of the photo is the couch, part way through. You can see the clean line where the wand has been.

We clean these couches regularly. On a short stay property they get dirty, which is no surprise with a steady run of guests. They come up well on the marks and stains, and the fabric protector applied at a previous clean is still holding up well.

That is what protection is for. It does not make fabric stain proof. It gives a spill a better chance of sitting on the surface long enough to be dealt with, which matters on a couch used by people who are not the owner.

Two practical points for a short stay. Fabric type is checked in front of the couch before anything is treated. And a lounge does not dry like carpet: in most cases, stay off it until the following day, and we give a dry time estimate for your specific couch when we inspect it. Book it where there is a night free before the next guests. The couch cleaning page has the detail.

Scope, warranty and cost

A standard general pest treatment covers cockroaches, ants and spiders, and it comes with a report. Australian cockroaches carry a 6 month warranty and ants carry 3 months. Webbing spiders carry a warranty. Other spiders do not, because they keep crawling back in from outside.

Rodents, fleas, silverfish, wasps, midges, mosquitoes and vinegar flies are all things we treat, booked on top as add ons. Termites are a different trade and we refer those out.

Cost follows the size of the property and what is being done on the visit. The minimum call-out fee is $145 plus GST, and you get an estimate rather than a quote. There is more about carpet cleaning and pest control in Burleigh Heads on our suburb page.

Frequently asked questions