GREENPRO

The Housekeeping department in a hotel ensures the cleanliness, maintenance, and aesthetic appeal of all rooms and public areas. The housekeeping department not only turnarounds (prepares and cleans guestrooms) in a timely manner it also cleans and maintains everything in the hotel so that the property is as fresh and attractive similar to the day when it opened its doors for the business.

The effort that the housekeeping makes in giving a guest a desirable room has a direct bearing on the guest’s experience in a hotel. Thre are more employees working in the housekeeping department when compared to any other hotel department.

Being responsible for the turnaround of the rooms in a timely manner, housekeeping’s primary communications are with the front desk/reception team. Each room status is updated on a regular basis from the housekeeping to the front desk and vice versa. With new technologies available a room status update can be done via the hotel software, telephone systems, housekeeping mobile applications etc.

Housekeeping also coordinates closely with the maintenance or engineering department, as the housekeeping staff identifies different types of maintenance issues while cleaning the rooms and reports to the maintenance team for rectification or replacement. Example snags or issue with the TV, AC, Heating unit, Plumbing, Lighting, Electrical faults, Furniture, Toilet, Vanity, Tub, Towels racks, Ventilation issues etc.

The role of housekeeping can change depending upon the type or category of the hotel, for example only in a luxury or full-service hotel evening or turndown services are offered by the housekeeping department. The housekeeping department is one of the major ‘Support Centre‘ in the hotel as it doesn’t generate any major revenue for the hotel.

Housekeeping is considered as a ‘back of the house’ department even though they have some direct contact with the guests; like for example while cleaning rooms, picking up laundry, providing evening or turndown services etc.

Source: Set Up My Hotel