Keeping your hotel or hospitality premises clean is a lengthy but significant task. It ensures that you provide a healthy work environment for your staff and can boost customer satisfaction during a stay or visit. Letting cleaning standards fall can be costly for your business, potentially leading to poor customer reviews which can damage your brand reputation or, even more devastatingly, closures or licence issues. Therefore, maintaining cleaning and hygiene standards is of the utmost importance. Whether you rely on a housekeeping team, agency cleaners or take all the responsibility yourself – how can you maintain cleaning standards over time?
Perform spot checks
If you’re relying on your own housekeeping team or agency cleaners for your business then be sure to perform regular spot checks. This will ensure that staff are committing the same level of care and attention to each room or area of your premises. You may not be able to check everywhere, so spot checks will help to raise the accountability of cleaners and raise or maintain the expected standards. If you have feedback on certain areas, make it constructive rather than negative because this will help to boost standards rather than create a more unhealthy work environment.
Provide the necessary cleaning and safety equipment
You can’t expect cleaning staff to perform well and consistently if they don’t have the necessary equipment to do so. Ensure that you provide adequate PPE such as hand protection and work clothing so they aren’t afraid to get stuck into cleaning tasks. Make sure your team has the appropriate tools and equipment to clean effectively too – these are fairly inexpensive and should last for a while if they are used properly.
Set clear and consistent expectations
Communicating clear and consistent expectations will go a long way to maintaining the high levels of cleanliness that you require. It will also help to integrate new members of the team if you are hiring or replacing staff. Consistent cleaning procedures and schedules will ensure that every customer has a similar experience which may boost overall satisfaction in the long term and attract more repeat sales.
Act on customer feedback
Customers can be very valuable when identifying areas of improvement in your hospitality business. Cleanliness is no exception because customers see these environments for the first time and notice poor standards that staff may simply not recognise. Hence why many customer feedback surveys ask about cleanliness as well as the overall experience. If a customer raises a concern about cleaning or hygiene, be sure to investigate it and see what improvements can be made as soon as possible.