Getting your holiday home ready for summer
A pre-season checklist for Kiama, Jamberoo and Gerringong holiday lets — before the October long weekend booking rush hits.
The Illawarra holiday season doesn't creep up gradually — it arrives all at once, usually around the October long weekend, and it doesn't properly let go until after Australia Day. If you own a holiday let in Kiama, Jamberoo, Gerringong or anywhere along this stretch of coast, September is the month that actually determines how smooth the next four months will be. Owners who wait until the week before their first big booking are always playing catch-up. The ones who use September properly spend December and January just running turnovers, not chasing problems.
This is the pass we run through with owners before every summer season — the jobs that are easy to justify skipping in isolation, but that stack up into a noticeably better guest experience, and noticeably fewer 9pm phone calls, once the bookings start overlapping.
It's also worth saying plainly why this particular month matters more than any other on the calendar for a holiday-let owner on this coast. A slow week in July gives you room to fix a problem quietly, reschedule a trade, or simply let a job wait without anyone noticing. A slow week doesn't really exist between late October and late January — every gap in the calendar either has a guest in it or is about to. Whatever isn't done by the time that first long-weekend booking lands tends to stay undone until the season eases off again in February, which is exactly how small, easy fixes turn into the kind of thing a guest mentions in a review months later.
Start with the outside, while you can still see what you're doing
Winter leaves a mark on coastal properties that's easy to stop noticing if you're not looking for it — which is exactly the problem, because guests arriving fresh notice it immediately. A full exterior wash-down deals with salt residue on external glass and metal, cobwebs that build up under eaves and around outdoor light fittings over the quieter months, and general grime on decking, steps and entry paths. If the property has a barbecue, it needs a proper degrease before the first booking, not a wipe-over between guests — the first guest of the season is usually the one who actually tries to use it. Outdoor furniture cushions are worth checking individually; a season sitting under a cover in coastal humidity is enough for mould to start in the seams, and that's a same-day-replacement problem if it's found on a Friday afternoon with a guest arriving at 3pm.
The deep-clean pass indoors that most owners skip
Between-guest cleans are, by design, fast and focused on what the next arrival will actually touch. A pre-season deep clean is the one that catches everything a quick turnover doesn't have time for: the inside of the oven and rangehood filters, behind and underneath the fridge, door seals and gaskets, window tracks (which hold onto a season's worth of salt-laden grit — see our note on salt air and coastal cleaning for why that matters more here than inland), skirting boards, and ceiling fan blades that collect dust invisibly until the fan is switched on for the first time in a heatwave and blows it across the room. None of this shows up in a five-star review by name, but a property that's had this pass done reads as effortlessly clean in every photo a guest posts — and one that hasn't reads as merely "cleaned," which is a different, lower standard in a guest's mind even if they can't articulate why.
Beds, linen and the presentation guests actually screenshot
Bed presentation is the single most photographed thing in a holiday listing, and it's the first thing a guest checks on arrival before they've even put their bags down. Before the season starts is the right time to check every mattress protector for wear, count linen sets against your actual back-to-back turnover schedule (not just your average booking gap — summer bookings compress), and replace anything past its best: towels gone grey at the edges, pillows that have lost their shape, or a doona that's due for a proper wash rather than just a change of cover. If you're running fortnightly or weekly turnovers through peak season, having one extra full set in reserve is what stops a late guest changeover from becoming a stressful dash to a laundromat.
The small maintenance jobs worth doing in September, not January
Flyscreens with a tear, a sticking sliding door, a dripping tap, a blind cord that's frayed, a loose deck baluster — every one of these is a five-minute fix in September and a same-day emergency call-out in the middle of a fully booked January, when every local tradesperson on the coast is either fully booked themselves or away on their own holiday. Walking the property with a simple checklist before the season starts, and handling anything on it through a property maintenance visit, is one of the cheapest insurance policies available to a holiday-let owner. It's also the difference between a guest mentioning "everything worked perfectly" in a review, and a guest mentioning the one thing that didn't.
Stock the basics before the calendar fills up
Running out of a consumable mid-season means either an emergency supply run or an apologetic message to a guest — neither is a great look, and both are avoidable with a pre-season stocktake. Dishwasher tablets, laundry powder, bin liners, hand soap and a spare toilet roll or two per bathroom should be checked against how many turnovers you expect before your next planned restock, with a buffer for a busier-than-expected fortnight. If the property has a pool or spa, this is also the point to get chemical levels and equipment checked properly, well before the first 40-degree day when everyone with a pool service on the coast is booked solid.
A quick listing refresh, while you're already looking closely
September is also the natural moment to check your listing itself against the property as it actually is right now, not as it was when the photos were taken. Furniture gets rearranged, a cushion cover fades, a piece of decor breaks and quietly disappears — small drift that happens gradually enough that an owner stops noticing it, but that a first-time guest comparing the listing to reality notices immediately. A short walk-through with the listing photos open on your phone, room by room, is enough to catch anything that's drifted. If it's been a year or more since the photos were taken, this is also worth doing before the season's peak review volume, since photo accuracy is one of the most common threads in a three- or four-star review, even when the clean itself was faultless.
Build slack into your turnaround before the bookings do it for you
Peak-season bookings on this coast very often mean same-day turnovers — a guest checking out at 10am and the next arriving by 3pm, sometimes with the calendar showing back-to-back stays for a full week straight. That's a manageable, routine job for a cleaning team that's set up for it, with calendar sync to your booking platform and a clear photo-reported checklist each visit — but it's a genuinely stressful scramble for an owner trying to coordinate it themselves between other commitments. If you're not already using a service built specifically around holiday-home turnovers, September — before the calendar fills — is the time to set that up, not the first week of the school holidays when you're already behind.
Whoever ends up handling turnovers through peak season, it's worth having a clear backup plan too — what happens if a cleaner is sick on the one day you have a same-day turnover, or a late checkout pushes right up against the next arrival. Owners who've already worked out that answer before it happens spend the moment calmly rearranging; owners who haven't spend it fielding an anxious message from an arriving guest while trying to solve the problem from scratch.
The short version:
- Exterior wash-down: glass, metal fittings, BBQ, outdoor furniture and cushions
- Deep-clean pass: oven, rangehood, fridge seals, window tracks, ceiling fans, skirting
- Linen audit: mattress protectors, towel and doona condition, a spare set for back-to-back turnovers
- Walk-through for small repairs: flyscreens, taps, hinges, blind cords, deck safety
- Consumables stocktake, plus pool/spa service booked ahead of demand
- Turnover plan locked in before the calendar is fully booked
We build all of this into how we run holiday-home turnovers on this coast, because a property that's genuinely ready for the season needs far less firefighting once it's underway. If you'd like a pre-season walk-through before your first summer booking, our holiday home cleaning page has the detail, or you can get in touch directly. If you don't live nearby and would like guest messages and check-in covered too, see our Airbnb management support.
Ready before the rush, not during it
Same-day turnovers, calendar sync and photo reporting — set up before your first summer booking lands.