Poor housekeeping is likelier to turn off hotel guests than uncomfortable beds, lousy service, or itchy bathrobes. If you own a B&B, a small hotel, or a sizeable five-star resort, your guests will be disappointed if they find dirt, dust, or hair in their rooms. This can lead to complaints and negative reviews. Most people read online reviews when booking a hotel today, which can severely threaten your business.
A hotelier’s top priority should be to develop an effective housekeeping plan. This guide will show you how to properly clean your bathrooms and rooms and share tips on impressing your customers. This guide will cover the following:
What are the responsibilities of housekeeping at a hotel?
Housekeeping is an invisible service. Guests only notice when you fail to meet the standard of cleanliness that your guests expect. Your hotel rooms could host hundreds of guests every year. But no guest wants to feel like their room has been used. So it is your housekeeping team’s job to ensure that all rooms are clean and sanitized from top to bottom.
The housekeeping staff is responsible for cleaning the guest room and turning down beds. They also replace any dirty towels and replenish any other amenities. When a guest arrives, a space must be thoroughly cleaned and the bedding changed.
Some of your housekeepers will also be responsible for cleaning the front-of-house areas of your hotel. Different teams usually do this with varying patterns of shift.
A floor manager or supervisor is usually responsible for managing the housekeeping team. Each floor has a different floor manager. The floor manager is responsible for organizing shifts, inspecting and checking the work of housekeeping attendants, and reordering supplies. They also report any faults and problems in guest rooms to their respective person. The linen room assistants and laundry porters help ensure that fresh bed sheets and towels are always available. The overall housekeeping manager oversees all of this, working with the hotel management to ensure everything runs smoothly.
Create a housekeeping plan
You’ll need a housekeeping strategy to keep your guest rooms as clean as possible. This means calculating how many cleaners you’ll need per shift and creating a checklist they can follow.
Knowing how many employees you will need to staff your hotel at various occupancy levels is essential. A housekeeping attendant can clean a hotel room in about 45 minutes, but it could take less if a simple turndown is required. If a housekeeping attendant works eight hours and takes a 30-minute break, they can clean ten bedrooms in a shift.
Divide the number of rooms occupied by 10 to determine how many employees you need. This is not the number of cleaners you will need as they can’t all work without breaks, and there are holidays and sick leaves.
How to clean a hotel room step-by-step
Your staff will be more likely to remember or notice everything if they know the exact steps to follow as soon as they enter the room. Giving your team a checklist of cleaning tasks can be helpful.
You can create your checklists using our two step-by-step guides on cleaning the hotel bathroom and bedroom. If you have a variety of room types, make sure to create different indexes. For example, the honeymoon suite will have additional requirements than your basic economy hotel room.
Your housekeepers can ensure that your guests will be happy with their rooms by completing the following steps before each guest arrives:
Open the windows or balcony doors before you start cleaning. It will bring in fresh air and stop the smells of cleaning products from remaining. While cleaning, the housekeeper should leave the main entrance door open. This will allow for better ventilation.
Stripe the bed. Remove the bed linen from the bed and place them in the laundry basket in the Housekeeping Cart. The housekeeper can provide a turndown service if the guest has stayed in the same room for more than one day. Some hotels offer guests a card to place on their bed or doorknob to request a complete linen change.
Remove trash: Empty bins and remove all rubbish from the area. Replace the liners in your containers.
Remove used mugs: Replace any used cups or crockery with clean ones, and replenish any hot drink service (if there is one) with new supplies. All items removed from the minibar should be recorded and replaced under the hotel’s policy.
Dusting: Dust every surface, working from the top down to the floor. Dust any areas that are hard to reach or easy to overlook, such as light fixtures, headboards, the tops of cupboards and wardrobes, or under the bed. A telescopically extendable duster is a great tool for hotels with high ceilings.
Vacuum upholstery and furniture: Upholstered furniture should be vacuumed with a brush attachment. It will help keep them clean and free from allergens. You can vacuum curtains with an extension to remove dust.
Deep Cleaning
You may need deep-cleaning equipment to keep your room as clean as possible. At least every three months, you should do the following:
Steam carpet cleaner can be used to deep clean carpets.
Use a Steam Cleaner with specialized attachments to deep clean upholstered furniture, curtains, and other fabrics.
Use a floor cleaner to make hard floors or tiles look as new as possible.
Vacuum and wash the mattress, including any protectors or covers. Rotate the bed every six months or as directed on the label if it is the type that requires this.
It would be best if you washed your pillow protectors once a month. Wash your pillows at least every six months. To ensure that pillows are comfortable, they should be replaced every two years.
You will need extra time to complete these tasks. Planning these tasks for quiet periods when your rooms aren’t fully booked would be best.