The 5 key challenges of housekeeping
The quality of
housekeeping may not be the first thing that a guest thinks of when choosing a
hotels to stay in, but is probably the most significant determinant of the
overall impression they carry with themselves, once they have checked out. The
best of restaurants, bars and the top amenities in the business will come to
naught on account of sloppy, bad, or indifferent room service. More than the
front office staff, it is the room service people who provide the much needed
human touch. Efficient and courteous housekeeping make a hotel stay as close to
being at home as it is possible for a hotel to be. You get this right, and you
will have the guest not only grateful, but coming again to stay at your hotel.
Housekeeping needs to be
efficient yet courteous and punctual yet friendly. Seems like an easy enough
thing to do, but every so often there are slip ups. Given below are five
essential challenges that housekeeping has to contend with and the ways to deal
with those:
- Entering a room: Housekeeping staff are a harried lot with schedules to adhere to and tasks to complete. So it is not uncommon to have cleaning staff knock and peremptorily enter and go about their business. This is just not on. You have to firstly remember that you may be in a hurry, but the guest is not.
You have to pause after knocking and enter only after the guest
has given you permission to do so. If the guest does not respond at the first
knock wait for a few seconds before you knock again. It would be a good idea to
introduce yourself as well. These little precautions can save the hotel a world
of grief in the shape of disgruntled guests and save the latter from a
potentially embarrassing situation.
- Security of personal effects: Nothing can be more harrowing for a guest to than to lose a personal effect or valuable in the room that one is staying. Needless to say this would be catastrophic for the hotel’s reputation. So a fool proof security system has to be put in place and the use of an in-room safe for valuable items should be actively encouraged. Great care should be taken in ensuring that the staff should never get involved in filching guests’ belongings and effects.
For this both the selection and training of the housekeeping staff
has to be of the highest possible order. There should be a standard procedure
always in place to trace and track down guests who have checked out, in case
any effects have been accidentally left behind.
- Linen and Towels: Linen and towels kept in the rooms have to be clean and fresh and changed and replaced regularly. Not only is this basic courtesy, it is also a matter of hygiene that impacts the health of the guests. As a matter of fact there are medical standard prescribed for cleaning and washing beddings that hotels have to abide by.
Of course nothing can be as distressing and indeed offensive for a
guest than unclean linen and towels. This lets them form an opinion and rightly
so about the kind of overall standards maintained by the hotel.
- Replenishing toiletries and towels: Any guest who is staying at a hotel has paid good money to be able to do so, and it is incumbent upon the hotel to make their stay as comfortable as possible. Now if things like re-stocking toiletries and towels are not taken care of and the guest needs to call and remind the staff, there is not only gross dereliction of duty, but the gust has been short-changed as well. Of course the guest would be grossly offended, and not only would they not visit the hotel again, but would also severely bad-mouth it.
- Tweaking the controls: Housekeeping staff quite often reset the controls in a room to their own preferences. Things like the temperature setting, the music playing in the room, or the number of lights that are on are quite often changed by the housekeeping staff, which may just not be the way the guest had left them. Besides it may also not conform to what the hotel may have prescribed as ideal settings.
This kind of gauche and uncouth behavior on the part of
housekeeping though unexpected is surprisingly common, human nature being what
it is. Such aberrant behavior needs to be stamped out, if the hotel aspires to
have a sterling reputation in the business.
