The daily operation of the Housekeeping department is essential in any hotel’s performance.
In the hospitality industry, the rooms’ revenue represents 68% of the total hotel revenue, meaning that housekeeping is a key-factor and a main concern at the same time, as it’s often one of the highest expenses in the hotel operation.
A clean and bright room as well as the overall hotel overlook has a huge impact on the guest experience.
It’s important to reflect on the fact that the housekeeping responsibilities are not limited to cleaning, bedding and amenities replacement.
The complexity of this department goes beyond that, including staff planning and management, stock control, task allocation, rooms inspection, linen management, guest requests and communication with other departments like Front Desk and maintenance.
Guests are more demanding and want to be more in control of their experience at the hotel.
Therefore, you have to really look into your hotel performance: increase productivity, improve response times, strengthen the communication between departments, and track all tasks completed or pending.
Hoteliers’ mindset is changing rapidly in terms of technology perception.
More than ever, the technology in the hotel is a must rather than just a nice to have.
So, in order to perform all these responsibilities with efficiency, think seriously about implementing a Housekeeping Management System.
How to choose the best tool for your hotel:
1. PMS Interface
The HMS must integrate with your Property Management System (PMS ) with bidirectional communication to get the most out of the system. This interface will allow you to know the status of each room (clean, dirty, inspected or out of service), and the guest details (name, arrival and departure, breakfast details, number of guests, membership level, among others).
2. Desktop and Offline Mobile APP
The system should work in a perfect synchronization between the desktop and the mobile APP, meaning in real-time and allowing offline operation.
By offline operation, we mean allowing your team to work without any interruption in areas where there is no connection available.
Using hub mobile app, even if you have no internet connection, will continue recording each task performed and automatically synchronise once you are connected again.
3. Planning
One of the most important tasks of a housekeeping is the planning of the daily tasks and available room attendants.
A Housekeeping management tool enables the department to have an overview of all the department responsibilities. Depending on the workload and the hotel occupancy, the housekeeper manager can plan the week according to the hotel needs and demand.
4. Task allocation
Choose a system that enables you to either do it manually, automatically and both.
Regarding the automatic task allocation, the system should be able to prioritize by floor, attendants and rates for the best task distribution.
Once the task allocation is done, if you find some DND or the cleaning was refused by the guest, you can easily reassign tasks to your staff through the mobile APP.
5. System Configuration
Go with a provider where you can configure and adjust the system to your hotel operations.
For example, in defining the credits and the cleaning time goal for each room type you have (it requires more time to clean a departure room than a stay over or a triple than a twin.).
A flexible system is key in order for you to adapt quicker to the automation it can offer.
6. Mobile APP
Your housekeeping staff is always moving, so using a mobile app is key to their productivity.
However, without a powerful and user-friendly system, it will work the other way around.
Through the mobile APP the attendants have to easily check the rooms list prioritised, the number of guests, type of room, if a stay over or departure room and have to be able to quickly modify the room status, manage the linen, the minibar posting, report any technical issues and if needed any lost & found.
On the other hand, the Housekeeper manager needs have an overview of every space, its tasks, reassign tasks to different attendants, check which rooms are ready for inspection or need to be revised, report technical issues and the list keeps ongoing.
7. Productivity analysis
When implementing a housekeeping tool, the system will automatically gather all your staff daily performance, meaning less time spent in collecting data and building reports and more time to analyse and find areas for improvement.
Be sure the system provides you with information regarding the cleaning times, transition times, rates, target cost vs real cost and total rooms cleaned vs working days vs working hours by attendant.