When a guest steps into a hotel, their first impression goes beyond mere décor—cleanliness is key. A recent ResearchGate study* reveals a clear link between spotless spaces and guest satisfaction, with 5-star reviews frequently highlighting exceptional cleanliness as a major factor.
Maintaining that 5-star standard of cleanliness is no easy feat. It often relies on manual labor, which leaves room for human error. This not only risks compromising the guest experience but can also jeopardize the hotel’s hard-earned reputation. Stellar upkeep is also time and resource-intensive, making housekeeping one of the largest expenses impacting a hotel’s bottom line.
Housekeeping technology offers a solution to these challenges. It can automate and streamline tasks, processes, and equipment, transforming the entire experience for hotel staff, managers, and guests.
Here are 10 ways hotels can use housekeeping technology, including their benefits and the latest trends.
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The benefits of hotel housekeeping technology
Here are some of the ways that housekeeping technology can become a gamechanger for hotels:
Reduce manual labor and cut operational costs
More than 67% of hotels say they have a staff shortage. Hotel technology trends like Artificial intelligence (AI) can fill this gap by predicting maintenance needs and demand, helping hotels to hire temporary staff only when necessary. Innovative technology solutions such as robotic cleaners cover larger spaces, so limited staff can focus on rooms where precision is of the essence.
Improve team collaboration and cross-department communication
There’s often friction between the front desk and housekeeping departments. To combat this, hotels can use smart hotel technology that integrates with property management systems (PMS) to unite tasks and communicate between front- and back-of-house operations.
Optimize cleaning times and boost operational efficiency
Manual housekeeping task management, like the use of clipboards and paper checklists, is common across the hospitality industry. Yet hotel innovation solutions like digital apps can help organize staff while ensuring greater productivity and prioritization.
Streamline operations and save time
Integrating diverse software can be challenging because hotels rely on a host of technological solutions. The Internet of Things (IoT) allows hoteliers to connect smart devices and cloud-based tools, enabling housekeeping staff, revenue teams, maintenance, and the front desk to work in sync. These systems can automatically ping housekeeping when a guest uses digital check-out, saving time while enabling more early check-ins for guests.
Enhance the guest experience
Hotels struggle to see where they can add value to enhance the guest experience. To solve this, AI can analyze historical data to help hotels personalize the in-room experience (e.g. tailoring the size and type of pillows to the guest’s preferences). In-room messaging can help guests alert housekeeping instantly when they need extra supplies, ensuring fast service.
Increase control
It’s difficult to supervise staff spread across several floors and rooms. Housekeeping apps enable managers to see their staff’s location and room status in real time. This ensures improved supervision and more proactive troubleshooting.
Increase productivity
Cleaning quality is critical to the guest experience, yet high guest turnover makes achieving this difficult. Digital housekeeping tech can help staff stay on track of room tasks, so they never miss a step.
Reduce the hotel’s carbon footprint
Food, resource, and energy waste can add up. Specialized housekeeping tech can help analyze data, regulate utility use, and provide more efficient cleaning solutions to reduce a hotel’s carbon footprint, including digitizing messaging for paperless communications.
10 ways hotels use housekeeping software
Since cleaning quality can directly impact the guest experience, hotels can use the help of housekeeping technology in many areas.
Here are ten ways hotels can use technology in housekeeping to enhance the guest experience and boost operational efficiency:
1. Task management
Thanks to specialized housekeeping management systems, hotels can assign and track cleaning and maintenance tasks and avoid booking rooms under repairs. These tools can help hotels improve operational efficiency, productivity, and communications (and go paperless).
Hospitality tech companies like Beekeeper reduce hotel paperwork while boosting staff engagement because they can automate onboarding and training. Tools like Breezeway enable hotel managers to automate task scheduling to save time. Supervisors can also assign new tasks within the tool, automatically triggering text, email, or push notifications to instantly alert staff.
Even task collaboration and cross-department communication become easier with an all-in-one tool such as Like Magic. Cleaners can send a maintenance request for a broken AC unit with the Like Magic app. They can even snap and attach a photo to the request, so managers can access the damage and prioritize tasks more efficiently.
2. Room prioritization
Not knowing which rooms are clean can make it difficult to capture last-minute bookings or upsell early check-ins. Room prioritization software can fix that.
For example, with helloshift, housekeeping managers can see the current cleaning schedule, assigned tasks, and room status in real time. They can then change the priority of room cleaning in a few clicks. This enables staff to receive real-time alerts to clean rooms with a higher priority, whether it’s for revenue optimization or to satisfy personal guest requests.
3. Digital checklists
Checklists are effective in helping staff remember the key steps to their cleaning and maintenance tasks, while ensuring rooms meet public health standards and a hotel’s specific requirements. But paper checklists aren’t eco-friendly or practical because staff can easily lose them or accidentally throw them away.
Digital checklists can help staff comply with housekeeping guidelines and reduce human memory lapses while increasing productivity.
Take Flexkeeping’s digital checklist solution as an example. Cleaning and maintenance staff can access Flexkeeping’s housekeeping software for hotels from their mobile phones, and use the digital to-do list to tick off items as they work.
Flexkeeping’s digital checklist can also act as the housekeeping staff’s personal assistant. It provides cleaning staff AI-powered voice controls to signal repair needs and communicate across departments. This AI personal assistant also empowers non-native speakers by automatically translating the voice commands into the hotel’s primary language, assigning the task to the right person, and prioritizing the request in just a few seconds.
4. Real-time room status updates
Often, housekeeping and maintenance staff don’t know whether a room is free, and the front desk is unaware if a room is clean or still under repairs. Having real-time insights into room availability can help hotels boost revenue, improve operations, and enhance the guest experience.
Hotel housekeeping technology can provide real-time updates so every member of hotel staff, from revenue and front desk to housekeeping, can know a room’s status.
Smart tech like Optii Housekeeping integrates with a hotel’s PMS to provide instant updates on rooms that the entire hotel staff can see. Managers can also get automatic insights to make better decisions. They can change room cleaning priority, follow up proactively on lengthy repairs, and share information so guests can access clean rooms quicker.
5. Housekeeping app for cleaning staff
A dedicated hotel housekeeping app for cleaning staff can unite various functionalities and systems under one roof. This can help optimize employee productivity—a real boon during staff shortages.
Many of these apps can integrate and sync with a hotel’s PMS. This means not only greater manager oversight but increased visibility for all departments. Everyone can see a room’s status along with the supplies and amenities present so they can act quickly.
For example, BookingCenter offers a housekeeping platform that integrates with its PMS, which can automatically trigger cleaning requests whether the guest checks out manually or digitally. Cleaning staff can update items as they work so managers can supervise tasks in real time for greater quality control. Additionally, managers can also re-prioritize room cleaning based on guest requests or revenue needs at the touch of a button, enhancing paperless communication and the guest experience.
6. Supplies and amenities management
While essential for avoiding shortages that could negatively affect the guest experience, manually keeping track of supplies is tedious for housekeeping departments. Not to mention that a paper trail is prone to human error or loss.
However, housekeeping systems like Flexkeeping can transform supply and amenity management into a digital experience for staff and managers alike.
For example, managers can stay up-to-date on supply and amenity inventory every time cleaning staff signals usage in the Flexkeeping software. This can range from linens, soaps, and shampoos to detergents. Real-time inventory management enables more streamlined housekeeping operations.
7. Automated supervision and quality control
Housekeeping technology can automate staff supervision so hotels can meet and exceed guest expectations of cleanliness while streamlining quality control.
For example, with sabeeapp, staff can request room reviews, which triggers a supervisor’s approval request. Managers can check if staff have completed their digital checklists adequately, mark rooms as clean, and send staff automatic alerts when a room doesn’t pass inspection.
Staff can also alert both the manager and maintenance about repair requests, attaching details and photos so they can have a historical record.
8. Guest notifications
Housekeeping technology can also help hotels communicate better with guests. For example, tech can integrate with messaging and check-in systems to notify guests when their rooms are clean.
BookingCenter offers this functionality within their app. Managers can set up automated messaging to inform guests when rooms are clean during their stay. And, if properties offer self-check-in, hotels can send automatic messages notifying guests when their room is ready, bypassing the usual check-in times.
9. Lost and found management
Housekeeping tech can make lost and found easier by tracking items digitally.
For example, clock PMS+ offers lost and found management within their housekeeping app. Staff can log found items in the app, which stores this information in its centralized system. The front desk receives the notification of the found item so staff can see if it matches any reported lost items. If they have a match, they can contact the guest and arrange for delivery.
This tracking and management can help improve the guest experience, even after check-out.
10. Reporting and forecasting
Hotels can ensure they stay on top of their supply and laundry needs with smart housekeeping tools that can automate reporting and forecasting.
Tech that integrates with property management systems, like housekeeping apps, can collect data across a hotel’s housekeeping operations, from cleaning tasks to supplies used.
AI-enabled tech then processes this data to share detailed reports via dashboards where managers can see real-time metrics, like room status and staff productivity, as well as trends, such as common repairs. Some apps even provide customized reporting that supervisors can use to manage inventory and staff schedules.
When integrated with a PMS and big data analysis, housekeeping technology can even forecast staffing and inventory needs based on expected demand. This ensures hotels have the right amount of supplies when they need it most and can avoid surpluses in low-demand periods.
For example, Operto provides specialized laundry and linen reporting and forecasting, enabling hotels and property management companies to anticipate needs and automate requests for in-house and outsourced laundry services.
Other housekeeping technology trends
Robot housekeepers
Robots can help fill in when there’s a staff shortage. For example, night-time or emergency housekeeping requests can happen when staff is off duty. But housekeeping robots can deliver more toiletries or an extra blanket during the night, and robotic vacuums can tidy up unexpected spills in any area of a hotel.
High-tech housekeeping carts
Though housekeeping carts are essential for hotel cleanliness, their size and weight make them impractical and inefficient for staff to use daily.
Tech is redefining housekeeping carts. Some look like suitcases that staff can pull, while others are electric, like tiny golf carts. Even though more compact, these innovative carts still carry the necessary items staff need to ensure clean rooms.
Ultraviolet disinfection
Ultraviolet short-wave lights are a known germ killer. UV-C in particular, can eliminate viruses, bacteria, and more.
Hotels can use UV disinfection in essential spaces, like hotel rooms and bathrooms where turnover is high. This can help reduce the need and cost of liquid detergents while providing a more eco-friendly alternative.
Air purifiers
Air-born viruses like COVID-19 have made air purification integral to hotel cleanliness. Hotels are using air purifying tech, like HEPA filters, to remove pollutants effectively from individual rooms and large meeting, conference, and event rooms.
Voice control
Guests can contact housekeeping directly from their smart rooms.
Voice-controlled devices can connect guests and staff in a direct yet non-invasive way. Through in-room devices and apps, guests send voice messages or speak directly with housekeeping. In some cases, housekeeping can fix issues remotely, like enabling a deactivated AC unit.
FAQ
What is housekeeping technology?
Housekeeping tech includes smart tools and AI-powered tech that facilitates housekeeping management, from the staff to supervisory levels. It can optimize cross-department communication to reduce front and back-of-house friction. And, housekeeping tech can improve operational efficiency so guests can enjoy clean, functioning, and well-stocked rooms.
What are the latest tech trends in hotel housekeeping?
Current housekeeping tech trends include digital checklists, which improve the cleaning staff’s efficiency and productivity. Housekeeping apps help managers supervise cleaning staff and know room status in real time. And many tech solutions can integrate with a hotel’s PMS, offering a 360-degree view of room status, maintenance requests, and supply inventory management.
How is AI used in housekeeping?
Housekeeping AI can help analyze data to provide supply and laundry insights via tailored reporting. It can also forecast demand to predict when to order more supplies and hire additional staff. And AI-driven voice controls can improve communication across departments and between housekeeping and guests.
Are you a hospitality tech startup looking to build your brand’s reputation through strategic PR? Drop us a line.
