Hearing from your front desk that rooms aren’t ready for check-in? Getting word from your housekeeping team that linens are in short supply? Capping occupancy because the team can’t keep up? Or worse, reading an influx of negative reviews on TripAdvisor?
These are just a few indicators that it may be time to open the hood. In this blog, we’ll explore four signs your housekeeping team needs help.
1. Your hotel is capping occupancy, rolling dirty rooms to the next day, or unable to inspect every room.
It’s no secret that the hospitality industry continues to experience massive labor shortages. The question staring at us is how do we navigate these trying times and, forgive the cliche, do more with less.
In our blog, 5 ways technology can help with labor optimization, we discuss the importance of improving housekeeping efficiency and reducing turnaround times. This is key to releasing pressure on the team and can be done effectively with smart hotel automation technology like Optii Housekeeping, that can automate processes, prioritize room cleans based on predictive clean times and guest arrival times, and free staff to focus on critical tasks. That way, the hotel can increase productivity to get back to peak occupancy, ensure all rooms are cleaned on the same day, and inspected too.
This same technology can also provide visibility via reporting into areas of opportunity. For example, Optii’s cleaning report can identify room attendants who are ready to become self-inspectors and Optii can provide safeties to ensure standards are consistently met.
2. Your hotel rooms aren’t ready for your guests upon arrival, eeeeek!
Guests want to go up to their room when they arrive, regardless of your hotel’s stated check-in time. It’s well known that when rooms are not ready upon arrival, it has a negative impact on the guest’s stay. So, how do you make sure that your room attendants are cleaning the right rooms at the right time?
One way is to leverage hotel operations predictive technology like Optii Housekeeping which connects to the PMS and leverages guest and reservation information to predict not only variations in clean times but also map the most efficient route for your room attendant based on highest efficiency or fastest turnaround. In a recent blog, The 3 most important metrics to measure housekeeping efficiency, we cited room attendant cleaning time as a critical input. Since no two cleans are the same, having a tool that predicts clean times based on who was in the room, length of stay, day of arrival, room type, rate code, and more (!), can help plan the day and prioritize the order of cleans.
We also highlight the importance of managing time from Vacant Clean to Vacant Inspected. This is often a key area where hotel teams can significantly reduce that turnaround time so that more rooms are ready for guests upon arrival.
3. Your hotel is holding off on reinstating stayover cleans but your guests expect it…
To perform stayover cleans or not to perform stayover cleans, that is the question! The move toward eliminating stayover cleans was driven by the unknown surrounding Covid-19 and the desire to keep hotel teams and guests as safe as possible. Now that we know more about the virus and how it spreads, guest expectations are returning to prepandemic levels. So, amidst staffing challenges, how can hotels successfully bring back stayover cleans?
We would recommend answering a couple of questions. First, what should a stayover clean look like? It may look different than it did before, partially because of staffing levels and possibly due to evolving guest needs. Secondly, what is your average length of stay and what cleaning cadence makes most sense for your guests?
Optii Housekeeping offers the ability to implement flexible cleaning frequencies. This could be daily, intervals, or upon request. You could even specify the number of days before a guest receives a stayover clean and the frequency of service thereafter. VIPs on property? No problem, create different cadences for different types of guests. All of this is then factored into Optii when your Executive Housekeeper breaks out the house in the morning and the board automatically (or magically!) created for your room attendants.
4. Your hotel is struggling to retain housekeeping staff.
The pandemic certainly shined light on the tireless work of hotel housekeeping teams. Hospitality lost a lot of good team members and bringing them back has been challenging. We firmly believe that investing in technology is an effective was to empower teams to do their job better and increase job satisfaction at the same time. We explore this topic further in our blog, 3 ways to help tackle labor shortages and team retention in hospitality.
We all know that hotel housekeeping teams are have a monumental task ahead of them, every day, that becomes increasingly complex as labor and resources continue to be scare. So, keep an our out for this very important team and consider hotel automation solutions that can help lighten some of the load.
If you or your team are curious to learn more about Optii, and why we are absolutely best-in-class in housekeeping optimization, please reach out or request a demo.