After deploying the Optii Keeper solution in October 2009, the Holiday Inn Brisbane is reporting productivity improvements beyond expectations: While realising improvements in the quality of the room cleaning and reducing the turnaround of clean rooms, the hotel has observed an 8.9% productivity improvement on the payroll.
Raymond Faulkner, General Manager of the hotel, not only reports numerous operational benefits, but also outlines that the additional performance metrics available through Optii Keeper now enable a better understanding of the labour content associated with training, briefing and other items.

“Optii Keeper has been an excellent choice for Holiday Inn Brisbane and I fully endorse its contribution to improving guest experience, productivity and employee performance.” says Raymond.

This is the conclusion of a study into Optii Keeper by Bond University, Australia.

Working with Australian Optii Keeper clients, the study focused on productivity and efficiency, as well as how well the solution is accepted by all types of personnel from room attendants to department heads. Optii Keeper was observed to make the housekeeping operation more structured and organised, making it more efficient and effective in the process.

While room attendants reported that their overall workload has increased, they also agree that they like working with Optii and that their workday has become easier in the process.

As part of a productivity-focused initiative across all industries, the Singapore Government provides substantial funding assistance to local hotels for an acquisition of Optii Keeper and its associated hardware.

Identified as a key contributor to productivity improvement in housekeeping, Optii Keeper was presented to over 60 industry representatives in the Singapore Tourism Board auditorium in early March.

If you have not been present at the presentation, it’s not too late – contact Optii or the STB today for more information.

April 2010 saw the opening of the first new international hotel in Adelaide, Australia in over 20 years – the 308-room Crowne Plaza Adelaide.

Greeted with great enthusiasm by Gaynor Hughes and her team, the Optii trainers watched room attendants master their PDAs with a breeze and saw management’s eyes light up at the insights provided by Optii. Not only do the room attendants use the handhelds as a training tool while they are all still learning, but Optii’s reporting analysis provides the department’s leaders with immediate feedback on where to concentrate their efforts.

“I love it how the longest part of doing the allocations is waiting for the computer to turn on!”, says the Executive Housekeeper. We do too. Have a coffee on us, Gaynor!

Judy Stanley and her team are Optii heroes. After 3 days of training at the hotel, Judy (pictured on right with some of her team) led the housekeeping team to a smooth go-live with Optii Keeper!

Room Attendants at Holiday Inn Brisbane with Optii

The team consists of a wide spectrum of ages and nationalities and all of them have taken to Optii Keeper like ducks to water and have not once looked back at the old task sheets.

This busy 191-room hotel turns over a large percentage of its rooms every day, making the dynamic management provided by Optii a welcome feature that not only ensures a smooth day for all involved but also streamlines the operation on the go.

Now, Judy is looking forward to gaining the insights into the operation that Optii enables her to obtain and put them to good use!

Go Judy!! We’re with you all the way!

In mid-September, Ross Lightfoot, Optii VP Sales, has been invited by the International College of Hotel Management in Adelaide to present a lecture to students keen to find out about the future of housekeeping management.

All students learn about housekeeping as part of the school’s curriculum and the Optii Keeper solution was met with great enthusiasm – none of them have seen anything like it, yet they were overwhelmed with how much sense it makes for any housekeeping operation.

Optii was also happy to be able to welcome some of Adelaide’s hotel industry leaders in the audience!

ICHM Adelaide Optii Housekeeping technology lecture

I know this sounds harsh, but if we go by the definition of insanity as ‘Repeating the same thing over again and expecting a different result’, it may ring true to even the most sceptical readers.

Yet, if you speak to a truly experienced executive housekeeper from the ‘old guard’, one that has been around for longer than 15 years, you’ll find that not much has changed in housekeeping. While technology has infiltrated all other aspects of a hotel’s operations, housekeeping appears to be the crocodile of the hotel world, the one that just seems to have been bypassed by evolution.

If you work in (or with) housekeeping, you’re probably familiar with the daily routine: A supervisor arrives early in the morning and spends the better part of 2 hours to allocate the daily cleaning jobs between room attendants and balance the workload in the PMS. After that, it’s down to highlighting and scribbling on the individual task sheets. Room attendants then arrive and start cleaning the rooms in a sequence that is mostly up to the individual (and not always the one that a manager prefers to get clean rooms back early). After that, the speed of communicating changes and updates occurs at a speed directly proportional to the supervisor’s fitness levels and elevator availability. Now – this is only a very high-level overview and I probably do not need to elaborate further because you, as a hotel professional, know exactly what I mean.

But: Do not forget that this operation, which at the end of the day looks after the core product of the hotel, works in an environment of transient and often unskilled labour, hence loose ends are rarely picked up and corrected by alert staff. Efficiency and its impact upon costs, quality and guest satisfaction are firmly in the hands of individual middle managers that have not been equipped with tools deserving of the monumental task they have to perform each day.

So, going back to my opening statement: Is housekeeping a the edge of insanity? For generations, hotels have finetuned their procedures with new managers arriving, improving things minutely at a surface level. The underlying issues though have never been addressed with any depth. Oops – I nearly forgot to mention that walkie-talkies and pagers were introduced roughly 15 years ago. Oops again – some PMS systems were successful in translating our traditional, ineffective approaches onto a computer system and 3rd party vendors added modules that tangentially improve the situation. None of those addressed underlying processes to make a noticable difference though, so therefore yes – housekeeping departments worldwide are still doing the same thing in a different way and ARE expecting it to make a difference. That’s insane.

Now that I have somewhat set the scene, and I will elaborate further on this over the next weeks, let me refer you to www.optiisolutions.com. A new approach for the 21st century is on its way!