Roles of Housekeeping Department
Grand Luxury is an international hotel chain that operates in Australia, New Zealand and Indonesia. It has been found from the sales report of the hotel located in Melbourne Australia that even after the increase in the sale of nights there has not been much improvement increase in the profit margins. After much research and investigation it was found that the cost incurred in operations of some of the departments have been high. Therefore, the management of Melbourne branch decided to take measures for cost cutting. The department that has been selected for cost cutting is housekeeping. The hotel has chosen outsourcing of services for reducing the costs incurred in operations and services of housekeeping department (Sa and Chai 2015).
Roles of housekeeping department
The housekeeping department is one of the integral parts of a hotel. It includes maximum number of operations. These operations small or large are both capital and labor intensive. All the activities are important and are directly related to the satisfaction of the customers. The most important role played by the housekeeping department in Grand luxury is to keep the hotel neat and clean. The housekeeping department provides services to the guests to make them comfortable by providing them home like ambience.
Customers get their value for money only if they get quality housekeeping services. The role of the department as a whole is to achieve more 100 percent efficiency in providing care and comfort to the guests so that the department functions smoothly. The department makes sure that they maintain a welcoming atmosphere and the staff members are courteous, trustworthy, and dependable. To make sure that the standards of cleanliness is maintained in all the areas. They provide linen in all the rooms, restaurants, conference halls, banquet hall, clubs and inventory. Their role is to provide clean clothes to all the staff members and ensure the maintenance of adequate inventory.
They cater the laundry requirements of hotel linen, uniform of the staffs and clothing of the guest. They play the role of providing and maintaining floral decorations. The housekeeping department of Grand Luxury hotel coordinates renovation and refurnishes the the property after consulting the management and interior designers. They provide training, control and supervision to all the staffs attached to the department. They make sure that safety regulations are made known to all the staff of the department (Wood 2017)
Tasks of Housekeeping department at Grand Luxury Hotel
- Cleaning rooms and guests areas
- Linen and Laundry services
- Arranging the rooms
- Decorations of the rooms and customer areas
- Functions of Housekeeping department (Yildiz 2015)
The functions of Grand Luxury hotel can be divided into three categories
Basic functions-
The basic functions of the housekeeping department are to keep the venue clean and maintain proper sanitation as it is an important part of customer service. The house keeping department with the help of vacuum cleaners clean the rugs, carpets in the rooms, hallways and dining area. They dust the furniture kept in the hallways, rooms and in the public areas. They collect trash and make sure that the trashcans are emptied, they change the bed sheets and it is their responsibility to refill soap and put the toiletries and toilet paper whenever the supplies are over. In the guest rooms, they provide room services by catering to the special needs and requests of the customers like bringing infant cribs. These functions are carried by cleaning staffs (Walker 2016).
Tasks of Housekeeping Department at Grand Luxury Hotel
Supervisory functions
The first line supervisors take care of organizing and coordination of the cleaning. It is the first line managers who determine which areas are required to be cleaned. They make the job schedule, assign tasks, and then monitor the tasks. Coordination of tasks with other hotel department is required for scheduling. The supervisors of the housekeeping department make sure that the equipments of the housekeeping department like the vacuum cleaners and floor polishers are maintained properly. Another important functions performed by the supervisors of the house keeping department is that they carry out the investigations in case there is any issue or complaint from the end of the customers (Nayak et al. 2016). They resolve issues and take care of the grievances of the customers.
Management Functions
There are a number of management functions that are performed by the housekeeping department these functions are higher level of supervisors or managers that depends on the size of the hotel or the operations. The managers of the housekeeping department supervise, procure, plan budgets and solve problems of their subordinates and the employees. They set the housekeeping standards and they take care of training of new recruits. Managers conduct in-service sessions and teach the company policies and the right application of the equipments. Their responsibility is to track the inventory of the supplies, maintain payroll record and maintenance of the department budget. They also prepare expense and occupancy reports. They take initiative to keep the morale of the employees high and make sure that the safety procedures are obeyed (Mensah and Dei Mensah 2013).
Role of the customers
Customers and their needs are the prime focus for the housekeeping department. The housekeeping department’ prime goal is to cater the needs of the customers and put their endeavors to make sure that the guests are happy with the services. The needs of the customers are the standards that are required to be kept in mind while providing services to the guests. Cleanliness and well-organized rooms are basic needs. It is the first criteria for judging the services provided by the customers. Profit making becomes a secondary aim for the department because when they focus on good quality of services profit can be achieved.
Generally, if a particular guest likes the room services of any hotel they will visit the same place again. Guests do not like to experiment with the hotels they choose (Paudyal and Acharya 2015). Clean rooms, organized beds, shiny furniture, soothing ambience and jovial room service staffs will definitely make the guests happy. On the contrary if the rooms were not clean and organized customers would not like to visit the hotel again. In order to make loyal guests and increase the number of guests the service quality is required to be maintained.
Hence, it can be said not the supervisors or the management set the standards. The expectations of the customers set the standards for the company. Grand luxury hotel considers the need and expectations of the customers and make those needs their operational standard. Since Grand luxury hotel is an international hotel, there is tremendous pressure to provide quality standards as per the requirements of the international guests (Roberts and Shea 2017).
Role of Customers
Initiatives taken by Grand Luxury Hotel for creating positive Impact
In Grand Luxury hotel, the housekeeping manager checks that the rooms are presentable to the guests. They make sure that the sheets, curtains, blankets and the other necessary linen are cleaned. The supervisors of the housekeeping department instruct, train and mentor the subordinates and the new hires to provide to be attentive to the needs of the customers. The hotel has few staffs that are experts in languages like, French, German and Russian so that the international guests do not face problem in communicating. Interior decorations, flowers and lightings are changed time to time. Hotel provides a soothing ambience.
The staffs of the Grand Luxury hotel are trained to behave politely to the customers, to be patient and attentive as it puts a good impression on the guests. They provide good quality of toiletries and clean towels to the guests to make sure their hygiene and health is not compromised. Room service is provided to the guests within 30 minutes of time it has been requested. Special requests of the guests are always entertained (Andrews 2013). They make changes in the interior of the room if the guests requests for it. Bathrooms are always kept clean and the hotel carries out the pest control timely.
Viability of outsourcing in the housekeeping department
The operations of the housekeeping department are both labor intensive and capital intensive. If the activities that are labor intensive requires funds for paying the wages and salaries of the employee. The operations of housekeeping department incur a lot of cost. As per the sales report the number of loyal customers have increase by 10 percent that has not contributed to increase in profit. The reason is in order to increase sales the hotel has to increase the cost as well therefore there was not much profit. The hotel has decided that it will opt for outsourcing. As per the recent trend, most of the hotels are providing outsourced housekeeping services (Espino-Rodríguez and Lai 2014).
Benefits of outsourcing in housekeeping department
- The development cycle of activities are shortened
- Technologically operations are improved
- It provides access to latest technologies
- The training costs are reduced
- The organizational risks are reduced
- It creates barriers for new entrants
- It allows organization access to skills and talent
- It helps the business to focus on the core activities
- It produces cost savings
- Outsourcing helps in reduction of capital expenses
- Fixed costs can be transferred to variable cost
- The business can shift their focus to internal business improvement
- The strategic positioning of the business is improved
- The hotel can get rid of problem functions
- It ensures legal compliance (Hassanain et al. 2015)
Limitations of outsourcing housekeeping services
Grand luxury hotel management will have to focus a lot on training of the new employees who might not have experience to do the jobs. A constant communication will be required so that the third party employees do not find it difficult to carry out the mission and goals of the hotel. Management would also be difficult coordination with other department would become difficult. The hotel would be taking a risk by outsourcing the housekeeping services because the performance delivered would not be as expected (Pesonen 2015). Outsourcing can often become a major issue for conflict so there are chances that conflict might arise.
Recommendations
Few issues might be faced by the hotel if they outsource housekeeping services. The management of the hotel requires training the outsourced employees. Proper communication needs to be maintained to avoid mismanagement and conflicts. The outsourced company is required to be made aware of the mission and goals of the hotel.
References
Andrews, S., 2013. Hotel Housekeeping: A Training Manual. Tata McGraw-Hill Education.
Espino-Rodríguez, T.F. and Lai, P.C., 2014. Activity outsourcing and competitive strategy in the hotel industry. The moderator role of asset specificity. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 42, pp.9-19.
Hassanain, M.A., Assaf, S., Al-Hammad, A.M. and Al-Nehmi, A., 2015. A multi-criteria decision making model for outsourcing maintenance services. Facilities, 33(3/4), pp.229-244.
Mensah, I. and Dei Mensah, R., 2013. Management of tourism and hospitality services. Xlibris Corporation.
Nayak, N.P., Pai, A., Prabhu, N. and Khurana, A., 2016. Manager’s Perspective on Hotel Outsourcing Services.
Paudyal, M. and Acharya, S., 2015. The benefits of Outsourcing facility services when selecting right service provider for a hotel: Case Kämp Group Oy.
Pesonen, J., 2015. Internal Housekeeping Versus Outsourced Housekeeping.
Roberts, C. and Shea, L.J., 2017. A Theory of Lodging: Exploring Hotel Guest Behavior. Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research, 41(4), pp.389-392.
Sa, M.L.L. and Chai, Y.K., 2015. Knowledge Creation Process: Evidence from the Accommodation Industry. The International Journal of Business & Management, 3(3), p.303.
Walker, J.R., 2016. Introduction to hospitality. Pearson Higher Ed.
Wood, R.C. ed., 2017. Hotel Accommodation Management. Routledge.
Yildiz, Ö., 2015. Internal Communication Function and Hotel Productivity–A Comparative Study. American International Journal of Contemporary Research, 5(3), pp.45-54.
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