Smoky Mountain cabin owners — gauging interest in turnover verification service

[Terry Shipman]

I've been doing safety inspections and operational audits professionally for 26 years. OSHA 30 certified, accident investigation certified, currently managing safety and accountability systems for a large distribution operation.

I'm exploring launching an independent turnover verification service for cabin owners in the Sevier County area. Not cleaning. Not property management. Just the quality control layer that sits between your cleaner walking out and your guest walking in.

Here's what I keep seeing in this forum and others — owners who live out of state, paying a PM 20%, paying a cleaner $150+ per turnover, and still getting blindsided by bad reviews because something got missed. Broken deck railing nobody reported. Dirty fridge. Hot tub not heating. Smoke detector with a dead battery. The cleaner didn't catch it because they're incentivized to finish fast, and the PM didn't catch it because they're managing 100+ cabins.

The concept is simple:

- I show up after the clean is done

- Run a standardized 75+ point checklist (cleanliness, safety, amenities, supplies, mechanical)

- Timestamped photos of everything

- Owner gets a pass/fail report with a guest-readiness score within an hour

- Any red flags get flagged immediately so they can be fixed before check-in

Pricing would be around $49 per turnover inspection for a standard cabin. Also considering a monthly subscription model ($99-149/mo) for owners who want regular property health checks even outside of turnovers.

Over time the data builds into something valuable — cleaner scorecards, recurring issue tracking, property condition trending, safety compliance baselines.

I'm looking for 3-5 cabin owners in the Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge/Sevierville area who'd be willing to let me do their first 3 inspections free so I can dial in the process and build some proof. No strings attached. You get free quality checks on your property and I get real-world feedback on whether this solves an actual problem.

If you own cabins in the Smokies and this sounds like something you'd use, I'd genuinely like to hear from you — even if it's just to tell me why it wouldn't work. The honest feedback is just as valuable.

Thanks for reading.

[Collin Hays]

I like the concept. Here are some challenges:

The window between checkout and check-in is very tight. Usually 6 hours.  For many properties, it takes most of this time to get the property ready for the next guest.  If a homeowner were to use your service, they would need to realistically find a window of at least one hour for you to do your deal. I don't know where that hour is. And if you found it, you'd have to be there on-time 100 percent of the time, and out lickety-split, or the whole model falls apart.

Another challenge is, when you find something that is out of repair, there is no time to fix it, because a guest is checking in. So the homeowner has knowledge of the defect, but no realistic way to fix it for the guest.  

What I might recommend is a MONTHLY inspection, and not scheduled during a same-day turn.  Your inspections would be for overall cabin fitness and safety.  

I own a PM, and we conduct cabin fitness audits continuously. I can send you a copy of my spreadsheet if it is of use to you.  My staff completes it on Google Sheets, so I have a real time report of potential issues, and we come up with a game plan to address them.

Good luck!