Changeover

Changeover is the term hotels use for what a short let calls a turnover: swapping one guest out and the next one in, with the room or flat reset to the same standard in between. On a short let the word gets used loosely, sometimes meaning the whole booking swap and sometimes just the clean itself.

Where the word comes from

Changeover is hotel language first, borrowed by short lets because the two jobs look alike from a distance: someone leaves, someone else arrives, and the space in between gets reset. The difference is scale and support. A hotel changeover happens with a housekeeping team on a fixed daily schedule. A short-let version is usually one cleaner, one visit, on a schedule set by a guest's own flight rather than a shift roster.

Why it is usually just called a turnover here

Most Malta short-let operators use turnover rather than changeover for the day to day job, because it is the more specific term once you are talking about one flat rather than a whole building. Changeover survives mostly in booking software and in conversation with hosts who came from managing a guesthouse or a small hotel before moving into short lets, where the hotel vocabulary sticks.

Why the distinction still matters

It matters more than it sounds when you are hiring, because the two words carry different assumptions about support. Someone used to a hotel changeover is used to being one of several people on shift, with a supervisor to flag problems to. A short-let turnover is usually a single person with no one else on site, working from a checklist rather than a team. Neither is better, but expecting hotel-style backup on a solo turnover is where the mismatch shows up.

Conclusion

If you hear changeover and turnover used interchangeably, that is normal, they describe the same job from two different industries. See the full price list and coverage areas for what one costs by bedroom count.