Get Your Property Staffed for Spring!
After three years of mitigating the setbacks of travel bans, shutdowns, and ever-changing health policies, hotels, and resorts are once again thriving. International and domestic travel numbers are steadily rising, and vacationers are flocking back to commercial properties at an unprecedented rate. Business is booming but that doesn’t mean everything is back to normal. The hospitality industry is in the midst of an ongoing labor crisis brought on by the rippling aftershocks of the Covid-19 pandemic, leaving hotels and resorts understaffed during the busy seasons, and leading to big costs for guest providers.
What to Expect with Guest Expectations
The biggest blow to a hotel or resort is a negative guest experience. While guests might have given a pass during Covid and its immediate aftermath, that’s not the case anymore. They expect quick service, hospitable care, and most importantly: clean rooms! This is further indicated by the fact that many hotels, resorts, and short-term rental properties have re-implemented quality scores and guest surveys, which means putting your best foot forward has become not only necessary for occupancy rates, but also for the overall reputation, branding, and long-term viability for hotel cleaning companies.
Staffing Setbacks
Rising Occupancy Rates
Another impact on the industry is rising occupancy rates. While hotels and resorts are gaining back traction from the Covid-19 pandemic, they are still not completely recovered. Properties can try to keep occupancy rates low for as long as they possibly can to mitigate low staffing levels, but this is still a short-term solution and will end up costing the properties in revenue. Ultimately, it would benefit properties more to bring in third-party vendors for those difficult-to-manage departments like housekeeping and laundry services. Hotels can maximize their profits and save time and resources on recruiting and training, with only minor costs to their bottom line.
Overtime
A lesser-known, but still incredibly impactful cost to hotels and resorts in spring is overtime. With staffing levels low, this may seem like a quick and easy fix. But people are only capable of so much. Having to stretch your in-house team, making them work positions they were never intended to fill can lead to a workforce that becomes burnt out, ineffective, exhausted, and frustrated. Having the right levels of staff can not only improve quality, but it can create a more positive working environment.
Outsourcing Staffing Solutions
Outsourcing as a solution to high turnover and seasonal demand has been steadily gaining popularity for many reasons. Outsourcing your housekeeping department can lead to greater efficiency, higher guest satisfaction, increased oversight, and a more flexible and adaptable team. Outsourcing also means you don’t need to go through the hassle of recruitment, training, or dealing with absenteeism. If you still aren’t convinced, take a further look at the benefits of partnering with a third-party housekeeping service company.
The Benefits
Costs: The main benefit to outsourcing your hotel and resort housekeeping is the minimal effect it will have on your budget. Think about it, would you rather pay your understaffed in-house team time and a half, only to get less than exemplary results? No. By outsourcing your housekeeping team, you save money and time, without compromising the quality of your property’s cleanliness.
Convenient: The great thing about full-service solutions is that they recruit, train, and manage their own team on your property, all while blending seamlessly into your operations. This type of partnership creates a culture of accountability and free’s up your site managers to focus on the overall guest experience.
Expertise: Most third-party housekeeping service companies have been in the hospitality industry for decades. They often have their own experts, proprietary processes, tracking technology, and reporting capabilities that become available to you when they join your team.
What to Expect
When you hire a third-party vendor, you need to think long and hard about why they would be right for your property. What benefits can they bring to your team? What are their certifications? Who have they worked with in the past? Do their services go beyond cleaning, if you are interested in bringing them in for other areas? These are all questions you need to consider. Check out these great tips for vetting your housekeeping vendors.
When Looking For a Vendor…
- Make sure the company you choose offers the scope of housekeeping services you need.
- Besides looking at the rate for the services they provide, evaluate the value this company adds to your operation – more time to focus on your core business, staffing security, etc.
- Make sure the company provides its own cleaning supplies and equipment. If not, make sure those costs align with your budget.
- Make sure their services are available for you at the time you need them. If you are hiring to support your busy season in spring, and your vendor can’t start until summer, then the cost may not be worth it.
- Make sure your vendor has the insurance and specialty certifications for the services you require.
- Make sure your vendor has an accessible point of contact and a direct chain of command for your property in case issues arise and that you have visibility to results and goal tracking.
- Make sure to review their Quality Assurance specifications, regular inspection schedules, as well as standard operating procedures, and evaluate if they align with your goals and values.
- Make sure your vendor has up-to-date safety practices, training, and procedures in place.
- Make sure your vendor offers ongoing training opportunities for their housekeepers.
- If your property requires green cleaning or environmentally friendly practices, make sure your vendor can provide those services upon request.
Why Choose MasterCorp?
Our reputation speaks for itself. We are a hospitality service provider with more than 4 decades of experience, and experts at the helm of every team ready to provide you with the best quality cleaning services available. We operate across the U.S., with a number of trusted brands as our long-standing clients. Finally, we are big enough to matter but small enough to care. We have not only the resources to get the job done, but we also make ourselves available to you 24/7 to manage all of your requests, concerns, and questions.
Ready to outsource your housekeeping services?