The things guests actually notice
Where cleanliness reviews are really won and lost — and it is not the floor.
Guests rarely complain about the obvious. The floor is vacuumed, the bed is made, the bins are empty — that is the baseline, and nobody writes a review about a baseline.
What they notice, in roughly this order:
Smell. Before anything is seen, a place is smelled. Damp cloths left in the sink, a bin rinsed but not dried, a fridge that was closed on something. Air the place while cleaning it, always.
The bathroom, at eye level and below it. Hair anywhere is fatal to a review. The base of the toilet, the shower door track, the plughole. A mirror with dried splash marks reads as "nobody checked".
Anything that touches the mouth. Glasses with water marks, the inside of the kettle, a cutlery drawer with crumbs in the corners.
The soft things. Cushions and throws are the difference between a clean room and a made-up room. Guests photograph rooms that look composed.
The forgotten places. Air vents, the tops of door frames, skirting behind furniture, light switches, remote controls. Nobody looks — until one guest does, and photographs it.
How to make this repeatable
Do not rely on remembering. Put the specific things about your place into the room checklist, and photograph what "done" looks like so a cleaner can see where the six cushions go rather than guess. A photograph settles in one second what a paragraph never quite does.