Rooms Division Operations

•The upkeep and exchange of linen and uniforms

•The maintenance of external landscapes and gardens as well as internal flower arrangements

•The management of the laundry

•Communications through the control desk

Organizing the Housekeeping Department refers to the executive housekeeper’s responsibility to structure the department’s staff and to divide the work so that everyone gets a fair assignment and all the work can be finished on time. Two important principals of organizing are:

•Each employee has only one supervisor

•Supervisors should have the authority and information necessary to guide the efforts of employees under their direction.

Housekeeping personnel

Their main responsibilities are:

•Housekeepers: cleaning and maintenance of guest rooms

•Housemen: transport linen and other suppliers to housekeepers

•Public area attendants: clean public areas such as hallways, lobby, restrooms, recreational areas, and banquet reception areas

•Laundry room personnel: separate, wash, dry, fold and distribute linen

•Supervisors: inspect

The two most often cited reasons for a guest not returning to a hotel are a dirty guest room and slow check-in. A clean guest room is extremely important. But the cost of labor in preparing a guest room becomes one of the highest costs for a hotel. Preparation of a single guest room involves the activities of attendants and linen room, laundry, and inspection personnel. Room cleaning standards are the following, however, they are subject to change if the house count changes or if a large function is booked at the last minute.

•14–19 rooms per day per room attendant (20–30 minutes each)

•Pay by hour or room

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•The work is based on 7 hours a day

•Change sheets every 3 days for stayovers

Executive Housekeeper must:

•Manage people, equipment and supplies (hire and fire, training, purchase, maintain inventory)

•Preserve the physical plant (cleanliness, maintenance and upkeep)

•Control costs (payroll, linen, chemicals and supplies)

•Keep records (work schedules, HR paperwork, purchasing)

•Lost and Found

Assistant Housekeeper must:

•Schedule, train, and supervise personnel

•Prepare weekly schedules in accordance with occupancy

•Make regular inspections of all public areas and executive offices and forward a written reports to the executive housekeeper

•Check the supply inventory regularly

Inspector must:

•Train, organize, and evaluate the work of guest room attendants

•Control equipment and supplies

•Provide feedback to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the guest room attendants

2. Cleaning and Preparing Rooms for Guests

The procedure of cleaning and preparing rooms for guests consists of the following steps:

1.Visual

•Check the level of dust

•Identify any stains or damage

•Check heat and humidity level

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2.Remove

•Litter, old newspapers, dead flowers

•Used crockery, glassware, trays, ashtrays

•Additional furniture that is no longer required

3.Prepare

•Equipment necessary to clean the room

•Cleaning detergents

•Check any clean linen required for the room

4.Collect

•Clean ashtrays

•Fresh flowers/plants

•Give away products, notepaper, menu cards, newspapers

5.Action

•Walls

•Furniture

•Floor

6.Check

•Arrange furniture

•Position flowers, ashtrays, newspapers, linen

•Balance ventilation and heating

•Leave room ready for use

7.All cleaning equipment must be cleaned

Used linen is sent to linen room to be laundered

3. Housekeeping Reports

Each morning, the Housekeeping Department runs a series of reports. These reports are the same ones used by the front office: the arrivals report, which lists every guest due to arrive; the departures report, which lists each guest who is due to check out that day; the in-house report, which lists each room that was occupied and not due to check out; the exceptions or out of order report, which lists each room that is being withheld from sale.

These reports are used by housekeeping to assign the workload of each housekeeper. Rooms are assigned based on their current status code. The understanding is that rooms with departing guests

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take longer to clean than those rooms currently occupied. Rooms that are vacant and clean obviously do not need to be cleaned again.

The assignment of rooms to an individual housekeeper is called a section. A section of rooms usually consists of 16 to 18 guest rooms. This number is based on an expectation of cleaning two vacant/ready rooms per hour. Housekeeping is said to turn a room when it goes through the act of cleaning and preparing it for resale. It is important to assign sections with rooms as close together as possible. A section with rooms on many floors would diminish a housekeeper’s ability to turn rooms, because they would spend time traveling between rooms and thus not complete their section in a timely manner.

Most hotels have a linen supply room on each guest room floor. The houseperson maintains an inventory of housekeeping supplies, called a par, for each housekeeper in this supply room. A par is the amount of items needed to complete the cleaning of an assigned section. The housepersons are to restock the supply room with another half-par during the lunch break of the housekeepers. Once the housekeepers have completed their assigned section, the houseperson would again stock the supply room with another halfpar for the next morning.

4. Turndown Service

Hotels that have been rated four star or higher are required to offer their guests turndown service. Turndown service is a process by which the guest room is made warm and inviting for the evening. Some hotels provide this service automatically; others will perform it only on request for standard configuration rooms and automatically for VIPs and those staying in enhanced or suite rooms. Turndown service is usually conducted between 6:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m. A turndown attendant should be able to complete 40 turndowns in those three hours.

Generally, turndown service includes:

•Closing of draperies

•Soft music

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•Corner folding of bedspread away from pillow (i.e., turn down the sheets)

•An amenity presentation. This amenity might include chocolates, or mints, fruit, or some other item. In addition to that, a welcome card from the general manager might be included.

•Soft corner lights are lit.

•A “room tidy” is conducted, which is no more than a quick cleaning of the room. The tidy might include removing visibly used linens, arranging pillows, emptying of ashtrays and wastebaskets.

•Some hotels place a breakfast door hanger next to the amenity presentation. This door hanger enables the guest to choose the items and time they want breakfast delivered the next morning. At night, the employees delivering express checkout folios to the floors will pick up the breakfast door hangers and take them to room service.

5.Supply and Inventory Management

Outside of the Food and Beverage Department, Housekeeping is usually the only other department in the hotel that has to maintain significant inventories and continuously order supplies. They are responsible for the physical makeup of the guest room, so linens, towels, bath supplies, and other items must be maintained.

The supply of linens and towels is determined a bit differently in that the reserve supply, or par, is much more difficult to calculate. An average hotel will keep 3.5 to 4 par of linens and towels on hand at any given time. Why? The allocation of this par is as follows:

•1 par of all items is in the rooms at any given time

•1 par of all items is being cleaned at any given time

•1 par of all items is stocked in the linen supply closet by the

house-person in any given day (1/2 in the a.m. and 1/2 in the p.m.)

•1/2 par of all items is kept in storage in case of breakage or loss

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Managing Inventories

Inventory is stocks of merchandise, operating supplies, other items held for future use in a hospitality operation.

The executive housekeeper is responsible for 2 major types of inventories.

Recycled inventories are items which are used over and over again after they were washed or cleaned. They include linen, uniforms, guest loan items (for example, dressing gowns or special pillows), some machines and equipment.

Non-recycled inventories are those items that are consumed or used up during the housekeeping operations.

Par levels

Par refers to the standard number of inventoried items that must be on hand to support daily routine housekeeping operations.

Par levels are determined differently for recycled and nonrecycled inventories. The number of recycled inventory items is related to the operation of other hotel functions. For example, the par level of linen depends on the hotel’s laundry cycle.

The number of non-recycled inventory items a property needs is related to the usage rates of different items during daily operations. For example, par levels of particular cleaning supplies depend on how fast they are consumed through routine cleaning tasks.

Linens

Linen is the most important recycled inventory item under the executive housekeeper’s responsibility. Next to personnel, linen costs are the highest expense in the Housekeeping Department. The executive housekeeper is responsible for developing and maintaining control procedures for the storage, issuing, use, and replacement of linen inventories.

There are 3 types of linen: bed, bath, and table.

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Bed linens include sheets, pillowcases, and mattress pads or covers.

Bath linens include bath towels, hand towels, specialty towels, washcloths, and fabric bath mats.

The Housekeeping Department may also be responsible for table linens for the hotel’s F&B outlets. Table linens include tablecloths and napkins.

When establishing a par number for linens, the executive housekeeper needs to consider 3 things: the laundry cycle, replacement linens, and emergency situations.

The laundry cycle is the most important factor in determining linen pars. Quality hotels change and launder linens daily. If housekeeping manages an efficient laundry operation, the laundry cycle indicates that housekeeping should maintain three par of linens: one par – linens laundered, stored, and ready for use today; a second par – yesterday’s linens which are being laundered today; and a third par – linens to be stripped from the rooms today and laundered tomorrow.

The second factor is the replacement of worn, damaged, lost, or stolen linens.

And the executive housekeeper must be prepared for any emergency situation. A power failure, blackout or equipment damage may shut down a laundry operation and interrupt the movement of linens through the laundry cycle. The housekeeping manager must provide the operation running smoothly during the emergency.

Determining when to change linens

Hotel management decides how often to change linens for guests. Some hotels change sheets in every occupied room every day. Others place a card on the bed of the guest. The card explains that a lot of detergent used every day affect the environment, so it is up to the guest to decide if he or she wants the linens to be changed

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every day. Other hotels change linens only every second or third day of a stay without informing the guests.

Uniforms

Many hotel departments have uniformed staff members. Usually the Housekeeping Department stores, issues, and controls uniforms used throughout the property. This can be a very complex responsibility – especially in large hotels with many uniforms of varying types, quantities, and sizes. To establish par levels for all types of uniforms, the executive housekeeper needs to know how many uniformed personnel work in each department, what specific uniforms they require, and how often uniforms need cleaning. Sizing problems can be handled by having uniforms tailored when they are first issued to new employees. A minimum of 3 par of uniforms would be required. One par is worn by employees, another is turned in to be cleaned, and a third is issued in exchange. Moreover, the executive housekeeper may want to maintain higher uniform pars for FO employees because they are constantly in the public eye. Similarly, chefs and other kitchen personnel may need 2 daily changes of uniforms since cleanliness is important for hotel staff dealing directly with food.

Guest loan items

The types of guest loan items maintained at the hotel generally depend on the hotel’s level of service and the typical needs of its clients. The executive housekeeper needs to develop procedures for maintaining accurate inventory records of guest loan items, responding to guest requests, tracking items on loan, and ensuring that borrowed items are returned. For each item, the inventory record should reflect the item’s name, manufacturer, supplier or vendor, date of purchase, purchase cost, warranty information, and storage location. The record should also note the par number for each item. This master inventory record of guest items should be kept up-to- date as worn or broken items are taken out of service and new items are put into use.

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Machines and equipment

The executive housekeeper is responsible for seeing that members of the department have the proper tools to carry out their assigned tasks. A variety of machines and equipment is used by the housekeeping staff on a daily basis. Room attendant carts, different types of vacuum cleaners, carpet shampoo equipment, pile lifters, rotary floor scrubbers, electric brooms are essential to keep the hotel clean. In addition, laundry equipment, sewing machines, and a variety of trash-handling equipment may be maintained and controlled through the housekeeping department.

Cleaning supplies

Basic cleaning suppliers include all-purpose cleaners, desinfectants, germicides, bowl cleaners, window cleaners, metal polishes, furniture polishes, and scrubbing pads.

Small equipment needed on a daily basis includes applicators, brooms, dust mops, wet mops, mop wringers, spray bottles, rubber gloves, protective eye covering, and cleaning cloths and rags.

Cleaning suppliers are consumed or used up in the course of routine housekeeping operations. Controlling inventories of all cleaning suppliers and ensuring their effective use is an important responsibility of the executive housekeeper. A par number for a cleaning supply item is actually a range between two figures: a minimum inventory and a maximum inventory quantity.

The minimum quantity refers to the fewest number of purchase units that should be in stock at any given time.

The lead-time quantity refers to the number of purchase units that are used up between the time that a supply order is placed and the time that the order is actually received.

The maximum quantity refers to the greatest number of purchase units that should be in stock at any given time.

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Guest supplies

Hotel provides a variety of guestroom supplies and amenities for the guests’ needs and convenience. Guest supplies typically include bath soaps, toilet seat bands, toilet tissue, hangers, glasses, plastic trays, ice buckets, matches, ashtrays, wastebaskets. Some hotels may provide all guestrooms with lotions, shampoos, conditioners, bathfoam, shower caps, sewing kits, shoeshine cloths, disposable slippers, sanitary bags and laundry bags. Pens, stationery, and a variety of printed items, such as “do not disturb” signs, fire instructions, guest comment forms, and hotel or area marketing material, may also be regularly distributed.

Each hotel has its own room setup requirements for guest supplies. Like cleaning supplies, minimum and maximum inventory levels are used to establish and control the stock of amenities in the hotel.

6. Housekeeping and Maintenance

In many properties, housekeeping and maintenance personnel report to the same department manager. It makes a great deal of sense because these functional areas have similar goals and methods and must have a close working relationship. In most midsize and large lodging operations, however, housekeeping personnel report to the rooms division manager, while engineering and maintenance constitute a separate division. In this case in order to ensure the smooth operation of both departments, housekeeping and engineering managers need to devote attention to improving the relationship between their departments.

The following items are essential to a positive guest experience that is why housekeeping staff must check them while cleaning the rooms:

•Heating/Air Conditioning. The temperature in the room must be comfortable, usually it is plus 26 degrees Celsius

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