Thank You to Our Housekeepers

When you go to a hotel the people you interact with the most are the front desk agents. If there is a restaurant in the hotel, you’ll interact with the serving staff. Maybe you get to shake hands with the owner, or talk with a manager. 

>However, there are people behind the scenes that you may not interact with. Today, I want to highlight our housekeepers and thank them for all they do. 

Don't Take for Granted

It’s so easy to think that because it’s a hotel, it doesn’t matter what state you leave your room in. After all, you leave and come back and it’s all tidied again. Before the pandemic this was the case. We have heard that many hotels have now opted for not doing daily stays, and that does include our hotel. During the pandemic there was not a lot of travel going on, so our housekeeping staff trained up the front desk agents as housekeeping was not needed as much anymore. As one of the staff who had to look after cleaning rooms at that time, and not being someone who loves to clean, it didn’t take long before I wished it would get busy so housekeeping could come back. There is so much involved in cleaning a room, and these people do such an incredible job at it day in and out. None of us who worked through the pandemic will ever take the housekeeping staff for granted, and do our best to make their job easier.

Struggles

You might think, how many struggles does a housekeeper have? You would be surprised. Tell me, have you ever asked for an early check in? Early check-in requests put extra pressure on the housekeeping staff, especially when that room was booked the night before and the guest stays as late as they are able to. Unless you know just how long it takes to clean a room, you don’t think about how much pressure it puts on the staff. Because all our front desk agents are trained, they know that if housekeeping has a lot of work to do, the answer to those requests is no. So, next time you ask for an early check-in and get told no, remember that there is a team of housekeepers working hard to make sure that your room will be spotless for when you do check in. Added pressure could lead to mistakes, which we try to avoid at all costs.

Another struggle is when we get lots of last minute bookings. Don’t get me wrong, we love getting extra bookings throughout the day, but don’t be surprised if we say no early check-in. If it wasn’t on the list to get cleaned today, that means we are now asking our housekeepers to work longer to get those extra rooms clean. When it is busy, we schedule as many housekeepers as possible, but it’s still a lot of work. 

Be Kind

There are all kinds of people who come into the hotel and leave the rooms in different states. There are some who leave the room so tidy that we question if there was anyone in the room. Others leave it used, but you can see they put in an effort to try and tidy up after themselves. Then there are those who leave the room in such a state that you are left completely flabbergasted at how it was possible after one night to make it look so bad. As you can imagine, each of these rooms will take a different length of time to clean. So, the next time you leave a hotel room, think about the staff that are going to have to clean up after you.

Thank You

To all our amazing housekeeping staff, and housekeepers everywhere, thank you for all the hard work you put in every day. We appreciate you and all that you do. I apologise on behalf of everyone who has taken you for granted. You are amazing and you need to know that. To the housekeepers of Roadhouse 52 Inn & Suites, thank you for all the laughs, the joy you bring, and the hard work you put in day after day. This hotel does not run properly without you, as we discovered with the pandemic, and you deserve to be appreciated. The rest of us, the next time you’re at a hotel and you see the housekeeping staff hard at work, tell them thank you. They deserve it.