Updated 30 October 2026.
Room cleaning is a large, recurring line in any hotel or motel budget, and it moves with every night of occupancy. Whether the team is your own or a contractor's, the price of cleaning services for hotels and motels is built from the same parts.
Those parts are the minutes each room takes, the wage rates for the hours worked, the supervision and public area cover around the rooms, and how closely the roster follows occupancy. This guide shows how an Australian per room price is put together, so you can test any quote against your own cost per occupied room.
How a per room price is built
A sound price is built room type by room type. One flat rate across the hotel hides where the hours go.
Minutes per room
Departures, with a full strip and remake, take longer than stayovers. Suites take longer than standard rooms.
Wage rates behind the minutes
Labour is the largest part of the price. In Australia that means award rates, higher weekend and public holiday rates, superannuation, leave, workers compensation and payroll tax.
The whole shift
Every shift includes the morning briefing, trolley set up, travel between floors and waiting on late check outs. A price that funds only the minutes inside the room will not cover it.
Supervision
Floor supervisors inspect rooms and release them to front office. Their hours belong on a fixed daily line, not buried in the room rate.
Housepersons and public areas
Linen runs, rubbish, guest requests, the lobby, lifts, corridors and public washrooms. These are priced as fixed daily lines or hourly rates.
Periodic work and turndown
Deep cleans by floor, carpet extraction and pre opening cleans sit on their own lines. Turndown is a nightly line, per room or by the evening hour.
Consumables and equipment, such as chemicals, trolleys, vacuums and uniforms, are either inside the rates or listed separately. A good quote says which.
What moves the cost from month to month
Departure mix
Weeks heavy with departures cost more than the same occupancy made up of stayovers.
Day of the week
Weekend and public holiday hours are paid at higher award rates, so a weekend heavy hotel carries a higher average cost per room.
Do not disturb
Rooms sold and rooms serviced are different numbers. Per room pricing charges only for the rooms actually serviced.
Linen par
The number of complete linen sets held for each bed. A short par slows the morning and pushes hours up.
The building
A linen chute, service lifts and a floor pantry on every guest floor all save houseperson hours.
Compare on cost per occupied room
Your finance team will measure any proposal against the hotel's housekeeping cost per occupied room: total housekeeping cost divided by rooms sold.
With rooms priced per room serviced, and supervision and public areas on fixed lines, that figure can be forecast from occupancy and departure mix before the month begins. To compare quotes fairly, divide each one by the same forecast of rooms sold. Then check that each includes the same supervision, public area and periodic work.
A price that looks too low carries risk
In its 2016 inquiry into housekeeping at 4 and 5 star hotels in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, the Fair Work Ombudsman found housekeepers paid a flat rate per room, penalty rates left unpaid and, in one case, workers engaged as independent contractors. It urged hotel groups to make sure their pricing schedules and tender documents meet award obligations at every level of the supply chain.
Three questions are worth putting to any contractor before you accept a rate.
Who employs them
Ask whether the room attendants are the contractor's own employees, or contractors and subcontractors.
How they are paid
Ask whether they are paid by the hour for every hour worked, or by the room.
How hours are recorded
Ask how hours are recorded, and whether you will see the roster against the rooms invoiced.
In house or outsourced
In house
The hotel keeps direct control, and carries recruitment, payroll, relief cover, training, equipment and workers compensation itself.
Outsourced
Those responsibilities move to the contractor, and the department becomes a per room price that follows occupancy.
The right choice depends on the size of the hotel, how far occupancy swings, and how much management time the rooms division wants back.
Price your housekeeping room by room
Cameron Facilities provides outsourced hotel housekeeping for hotels, apartment hotels and serviced apartments in Perth and across Western Australia, priced per room serviced with separate departure and stayover rates.
Send us your room count, occupancy pattern and brand standard. We will prepare a per room proposal and a sample roster.