Maintaining a Hotel: A behind the scenes story

Here at Roadhouse 52 Inn & Suites, we pride ourselves on how clean we are able to keep our hotel, and how well we are able to maintain it. Now, that doesn’t mean things don’t need to be shut down for repairs, but we do our best to make sure that anything broken is repaired quickly.

I sat down with our maintenance staff and talked to him about what it takes to maintain this hotel. So, let me take you behind the curtain and show you what it takes and what a typical day can look like. 

A Typical Day

“There is no typical day.” This was the response of our maintenance guy when asked what a typical day looks like. The most typical part of every day is doing a room check. This involves checking rooms after guests have checked out and checking rooms that guests are going to be checking into. “I check to make sure there are no damages and that everything works so that the guest can have an enjoyable and relaxing stay.” Other than that, on a typical day he looks after helping maintain the hot tub to make sure that the water is safe for everyone to be in. These two things are the only “typical” parts of his day while maintaining the hotel. 

The Struggles

The biggest struggle of working maintenance in a hotel is making sure that your work doesn’t interfere with guests. You want to be as much behind the scenes as possible. “The goal is to always have guests seeing the place looking nice, without seeing anyone doing the work.” This can look like doing certain tasks at specific times during the day so that guests are not being woken up, or kept up, by any loud noises. “This is especially tricky with the hot tub. You don’t want to be doing adjustments to the chlorine or pH levels while guests are in the tub and freak them out.’ 

The Rewards

Can’t have struggles and no rewards. I asked him what he found rewarding or enjoyable about his job. “If I can pull off a job that is quite complicated, without inconveniencing a guest, I can look back and know I did my job well.” We often get comments on how great the hotel looks and even had one guest comment on the fact that they never see anything broken. I take that as a sign that he does his job quite well. 

Wrap Up

There is so much work that goes into maintaining the hotel. Whether that is changing light bulbs, fixing damages in rooms, or cutting the grass. People who work maintenance in any capacity have a lot of different challenges to deal with and when you are working in a hotel, you have to be on top of these things a lot more. We are thankful for our maintenance guy and if you see him walking around next time you’re here, thank him. He is usually behind the scenes, but he doesn’t let his job description hinder how he interacts with guests and is willing to help if one is in need. Thank you to all the maintenance workers out there. You’re amazing and we are very thankful for you.