Do You Know What Your Housekeeper Did Last Summer?
It’s absolutely worth it to know. Hotel housekeeping analytics can optimize your entire property, cutting costs, saving time, and increasing hotel guest satisfaction. It does all of this by tracking the most informative department in property operations, hotel housekeeping.
The front office relies on housekeeping for regular updates on the status of rooms. Maintenance counts on housekeepers to be first to spot repairs and notify them. And the whole reason guests stay is because of their immaculate rooms, cleaned by housekeepers. It’s no coincidence that 78% of hotel guests say cleanliness is the most important factor affecting their choice of where to stay, according to P&G Professional.
Hotel Housekeeping Analytics and its Advantages
Housekeepers can deliver insight into almost every facet of daily hotel operations, provided it’s viewed in the right way.
Hospitality management is prioritizing hotel housekeeping analytics more and more as it becomes clear the benefits it can bring. As a hotel operations management software, we are thrilled to see technology becoming an integral part of the hospitality industry. We want to continue this trend by showing hotels and properties of all sizes how to bring their analytics to the next level by taking advantage of their full potential. The key is changing from seeing a single variable to a clear 360-degree view of property operations and how to optimize them.
Multi-variable Analytics Through Hotel Housekeeping
Property operations analytics is an untapped wealth of information. Used correctly, it can save you time, money, and grey hair. This is especially true when paired with housekeeping. Hotel housekeeping is one of the most interconnected departments that interacts with the highest number of variables. These variables can help to identify challenges and areas that require more attention.
- Task Management analytics: Empirical evidence can reflect if training methods are effective and comprehensive.
- Departmental analytics: It can reveal unnecessary hidden costs in hotel amenities and inventory. Small items can add up quickly. In-room cosmetics and linens can be a big financial drain if not monitored.
- Hotel Lost & Found stats: 54% of guests leave items behind. Using analytics, properties can identify what the most commonly forgotten item is; for example, cell phones. With a solution as simple as training reception to remind guests to check if they have their phones with them, you can impact overall guest satisfaction and earn some significant praise in reviews.
- Hotel Guest Satisfaction reports: Happy customers are returning customers. It’s important to know how satisfied your guests are with their experience and if that positive feedback is improving. If it’s not, you can quickly filter and view the reasons guests are unhappy.
Since hotel housekeeping is the department primarily providing this data, they indirectly report all the necessary information. The effects of their data can completely optimize a property and bring positive changes to all departments. This directly results in lower costs, better quality, and, most importantly, higher levels of guest satisfaction.
App for Housekeeping Paints the Big Picture
The effects of using an app for housekeeping for hotel operations cannot be understated. It provides a clear and objective view of ways the housekeepers operate and how the property can cut down on costs and improve. However, like any tool, using it effectively is just as important as having it.
Collect and analyze your data, don’t measure it. Contrary to popular belief, the reason for collecting analytics shouldn’t be to have rooms cleaned in record time. Nor should it be to create a stopwatch in the back of housekeepers’ minds. If only the time it takes to clean a room is measured, it gives a one-dimensional view of the situation, which only provides a limited way to improve it. Measuring only one task determines one person’s productivity. Instead, break down cleaning a room and view it as the many smaller tasks that go into it.
Every task is a direct result of a guest’s action, which sets off a ripple effect through the entire property. For example, an ashtray is left on the balcony because a guest went outside to smoke. If the ashtray is frequently overlooked by housekeeping, it can clearly be seen by the analytics as a recurring mistake and incorporated in subsequent housekeeper training sessions to address it. Understanding the catalyst behind tasks helps to identify ways to directly address it at the source. This information never would have been available had only a room’s cleaning time been measured.
Seeing beyond the numbers can revolutionize your approach toward daily operations in housekeeping. The results can help housekeepers do their tasks more efficiently, effectively, and accurately. Here are key indicators to pay attention to in housekeeping analytics.
- The number and type of maintenance issues that are reported by housekeeping can present ways to optimize their time. While reporting maintenance issues are important, if the same issue is reported multiple times it could indicate that the root cause should be resolved. For example, if an old air conditioner is reported as requiring maintenance every other week, it can demonstrate a clear need to replace an outdated model. This streamlines housekeepers’ daily operations by removing a minor recurring task which, over time, can result in a lot of saved time.
- The number and type of cleaning mistakes, such as dust found on a painting, can tell you if the same mistake is repeated often which might indicate housekeepers require additional training.
- Quality issues that correlate to different demographics, such as a family with a young child or a couple. Both cases might book the same type of room which needs to be cleaned in more or less/an estimated 25 minutes, yet it is the room with a child that will realistically take more time to clean. By recognizing this difference, it can help to set different standards if there is an influx of guests with young children. Housekeepers aren’t making mistakes or failing to meet the standard cleaning time, these rooms simply require additional attention due to the guests who are staying in them.
- Additional tasks that are assigned to a room, such as “Extra Bed” or “Baby Cot”, should also be included in analytics. These added tasks can directly result in a longer cleaning time or certain cleaning mistakes in said room. This should be flagged as special circumstances and therefore be subject to a different cleaning time standard to account for such tasks.
The final puzzle piece to seeing hotel housekeeping analytics clearly comes from determining a referential standard. Use your own personal time cleaning a room as Housekeeping Manager as a control to contrast the other times that analytics show.
Getting Housekeepers on Board
The first step to gathering effective data is getting staff excited about hotel software solutions. Many workers might feel that this is another way to be micromanaged and monitored. If they feel that using an app for housekeeping allows their bosses to wring as much profitability out of them as they can, they won’t be open to it. This can result in them not using it consistently or correctly, which won’t provide accurate analytics. As we mentioned previously, useful and accurate analytics depends primarily on your housekeepers and them being invested in the results.
In this case, mindset is everything. It’s what differentiates the nightmare of falling off a building to actively paying for a rollercoaster. People have to want it. Housekeepers should understand the importance of their department and of their work, and clearly see how introducing an app for housekeeping can help them. They should be excited for a tool that will make their job easier, not more demanding.
Modern Tools for the Modern Manager
With your housekeepers behind you, analytics are now successfully feeding you information about your property operations management and your housekeepers. It is now up to you to continue this success. Bring modern management strategies to make the most of this data.
- Introduce brief morning meetings to discuss frequent mistakes identified through analytics and how they can be corrected as a team.
- Recognize housekeepers who have been identified by analytics as consistently bringing a high standard of quality and efficiency to their tasks. Reward them with money or small prizes. However, be mindful of not penalizing housekeepers who take a longer time to complete their tasks or make occasional mistakes. This is a teaching opportunity where housekeepers can be encouraged to do better, not shamed.
- Demonstrate with analytics how vital housekeeping is to hotel guest satisfaction. Show the correlation between improved quality of housekeeping and fewer guest complaints. Everyone wants to see the value in their work.
- Consider higher salaries for housekeepers.
Housekeepers aren’t the only ones who will benefit from these changes. According to Bonusly’s 2019 Employee Engagement and Modern Workplace Report, happy and actively engaged workers are 75% less likely to look for another job. This is incredibly important in hospitality, an industry with the lowest staff retention rate. The more reasons for your staff to stay, the better.
Hotel housekeeping analytics can be an absolute game changer for your property, provided you know and follow the rules. Use it to optimize your property operations but also appreciate and recognize the people spending more time in your rooms than anyone else, your housekeepers.
We can show you in detail how hotel housekeeping analytics can boost your property operations.
