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For public areas and back of house — lobby, corridors, elevators, meeting rooms, fitness room, pool deck, staff areas — GTA hotels typically pay from $2,500/month for a boutique property under 50 rooms, around $8,500/month for a mid-size hotel of 50 to 150 rooms, and $18,000/month and up for large hotels and resorts over 150 rooms.
Guest room housekeeping is priced separately, per room. Stayover cleans typically run $14–$22 per room and departure cleans $22–$32 per room, with suites and accessible rooms above that. The gap exists because a departure clean is a full strip and reset, and a stayover is a refresh.
Those two lines are what a complete hotel cleaning proposal looks like. A single monthly figure that claims to cover both is either excluding guest rooms or making an occupancy assumption you should ask to see.
| Property size | Typical monthly cost | What that usually covers |
|---|---|---|
| Boutique hotel under 50 rooms | From $2,500/mo | Lobby, corridors, elevators, washrooms, back of house — public areas only |
| Mid-size hotel 50–150 rooms | Around $8,500/mo | Adds meeting rooms, fitness area, breakfast room, multiple floors of corridor |
| Large hotel or resort over 150 rooms | $18,000/mo and up | Adds pool deck, ballroom, multiple F&B outlets, extensive back of house |
| Guest room — stayover | $14 – $22 per room | Refresh: linens as requested, washroom, bins, surfaces, replenish, vacuum |
| Guest room — departure | $22 – $32 per room | Full strip and reset: all linens, deep washroom, inspection standard, amenity restock |
| Suites & accessible rooms | Above departure rate | Larger footprint, additional fixtures, more linen, longer inspection |
The occupancy assumption is where quotes stop being comparable
Guest room cleaning is a per-room cost, so the monthly total moves with occupancy. Two contractors quoting the same per-room rate will produce very different annual figures if one modelled 62% occupancy and the other 78%. Ask every bidder to state the occupancy rate their monthly projection assumes, and re-run all of them at the same number. It is the single most useful thing you can do when comparing hotel cleaning proposals, and it takes five minutes.
What pushes the price up, and what brings it down
Raises the quote
- High departure ratio — a transient property turns more rooms than a long-stay one
- Food and beverage outlets, banquet space and a ballroom
- A pool, spa or fitness area, each with its own wet-area protocol
- Suites, accessible rooms and connecting rooms in the mix
- 24-hour lobby and front desk with no quiet cleaning window
- Inspection-to-standard requirements with a documented pass rate
Lowers the quote
- Longer average stay, so fewer departure cleans per room per month
- Hard-surface flooring in corridors instead of carpet
- In-house housekeeping retained, with the contractor taking public areas only
- Consistent, predictable occupancy that lets crews be scheduled efficiently
- A single building rather than a spread campus
- Multi-year agreement with an agreed annual uplift
Public areas versus guest rooms — why they are priced differently
These are genuinely different operations. Public areas are a fixed footprint cleaned on a schedule. Guest rooms are a variable volume cleaned on demand. Pricing them the same way is what produces the surprise on the third invoice.
| Area | What it needs | Why it costs what it does |
|---|---|---|
| Lobby & front entrance | Continuous through the day, not once at night — glass, floors, seating, luggage area | It is the room every guest forms an opinion in, and it is never empty enough to close. |
| Corridors & elevators | Nightly vacuum or mop, walls and touch points, lift interiors and tracks | High square footage, low complexity — usually the most efficient line in the contract. |
| Public washrooms | Multiple checks per day with a signed record, not a single nightly clean | Frequency drives the cost, not size. Also the most complained-about space in any hotel. |
| Fitness, pool & spa | Wet-area protocols, equipment touch points, changing rooms, humidity management | Moisture, bare skin and shared equipment together. Higher standard, specific products. |
| Meeting & banquet space | Set-up and turnaround between bookings, not a fixed nightly routine | Priced by event and turnaround, so it moves with the sales calendar rather than the room count. |
| Back of house | Staff areas, kitchens, laundry, service corridors, loading | Invisible to guests, visible to inspectors and to staff retention. |
| Guest rooms | Per room, per turnover, stayover or departure | The only line that scales with occupancy rather than with the building. |
Stayover versus departure — the two rates that matter
A stayover is a refresh of an occupied room. Make the bed, service the washroom, empty bins, wipe surfaces, replenish amenities, vacuum. The guest's belongings stay put and the room is not reset.
A departure is a full reset. All linens stripped and replaced, washroom deep cleaned, every surface wiped, amenities restocked to standard, the room inspected as if for a first arrival. It takes materially longer, which is why the rate is roughly a third higher.
This is why the departure ratio matters more than the room count. A 120-room airport hotel running mostly one-night stays turns nearly every room every day. A 120-room extended-stay property might turn a quarter of them. Same building, very different monthly bill, and no per-room rate on its own will tell you that.
What contracting out actually changes
Hotels usually outsource for one of three reasons, and they are worth separating because they lead to different contracts.
Coverage. Filling shifts on weekends, holidays and through the summer peak without carrying the headcount year-round. This suits a hybrid model — in-house core team, contracted overflow.
Cost certainty. Moving from a payroll line that includes recruitment, training, statutory costs, coverage for absence and turnover, to a per-room rate that includes all of it. The per-room rate usually looks higher than an hourly wage and is often lower fully loaded — but only if you cost your own overhead honestly.
The whole function. Full outsourcing of housekeeping and public areas. This is the version where the quality standard, the inspection process and the escalation route have to be written down in detail, because you are no longer managing the people doing the work.
What belongs in a hotel cleaning proposal
Both pricing models, stated separately. A monthly figure for public areas and back of house, and a per-room rate for stayover, departure, suite and accessible rooms.
The occupancy assumption behind any projected monthly total, so you can normalise every bid to the same number.
The inspection standard. Who inspects, how many rooms, against what checklist, and what happens on a fail. Without this, "clean" is an opinion.
Linen handling. Whether linen is in scope, who counts it, and who is liable for loss — this is the most common source of dispute in hotel cleaning contracts.
Coverage guarantees. What happens when someone calls in sick on a Saturday of a full house. The answer to that question is most of what you are actually buying.
Insurance, WSIB and screening. Housekeepers hold keys to occupied guest rooms. Certificates and background screening are not paperwork here, they are the product.
These ranges reflect typical GTA market pricing for accommodation properties in 2026 and are a guide for budgeting, not a quotation. Public-area pricing depends on square footage, amenity mix and access hours; guest-room pricing depends on room type, standard and departure ratio. Any projected monthly total should state the occupancy rate it assumes.
Frequently Asked Questions
Public areas and back of house typically run from $2,500/month for a boutique hotel under 50 rooms, around $8,500/month for a mid-size hotel of 50–150 rooms, and $18,000/month and up for large hotels and resorts over 150 rooms. Guest room housekeeping is priced separately, per room: roughly $14–$22 per stayover clean and $22–$32 per departure clean, with suites and accessible rooms above that. A complete proposal contains both lines.
Because guest room volume varies with occupancy while the building does not. Public areas are a fixed footprint cleaned to a schedule, so a monthly rate fits. Guest rooms are a variable number of turnovers, so a per-room rate is the only way to price them fairly to both sides. It also means any projected monthly total is built on an occupancy assumption, which you should always ask to see.
A stayover services an occupied room — bed, washroom, bins, surfaces, replenishment, vacuum — with the guest's belongings in place. A departure is a full strip and reset: all linens replaced, washroom deep cleaned, everything wiped, amenities restocked to standard and the room inspected as if for a first arrival. The departure takes materially longer, which is why it typically costs about a third more.
Normalise the occupancy assumption. Two contractors quoting identical per-room rates will show very different monthly totals if one modelled 62% occupancy and the other 78%. Ask every bidder to state the occupancy their projection assumes, then re-run all bids at the same figure. After that, compare the inspection standard, the linen liability terms and the coverage guarantee for sick calls — those three decide whether the price holds up in practice.
Many Ontario hotels run a hybrid: an in-house core team for consistency, with contracted crews covering weekends, holidays and peak season. That avoids carrying peak headcount year-round while keeping standards owned internally. Full outsourcing works when the quality standard, inspection process and escalation route are written down in detail, because you are no longer managing the people doing the work. Compare the per-room rate against your fully loaded internal cost — recruitment, training, statutory costs, absence cover and turnover — not against an hourly wage.
Both, and they can be contracted separately. Some properties keep housekeeping in-house and bring us in for lobby, corridors, meeting space, fitness areas and back of house. Others contract the whole function. Either way the proposal states the two pricing models separately so you can see exactly what each part costs.
Want a proposal with both lines priced separately?
We quote public areas monthly and guest rooms per room, state the occupancy assumption in writing, and never present one blended figure that hides which is which.
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