A recent roundtable sponsored by ISSA and hosted by Hotel Management examined how hotels are keeping their guests safe and healthy while driving the bottom line with new cleaning regimens. Moderated by Elaine Simon, senior managing editor at Hotel Management, the panel examined the value of proper cleaning within hospitality spaces and the need for proper training and support.
Patty Olinger, director of the Global Biorisk Advisory Council at ISSA, noted how the pandemic made travelers more aware of how their hotels were being cleaned and on the quality of indoor air inside the properties. As such, she said, the company has had to shift its focus from the resilience of helping to keep a hotel open and operating to the resilience of promoting health, wellness and well-being.
Camille Spilker, senior customer experience manager at Visit Baltimore, agreed, noting that the definition of “healthy” can be different depending on the property or even the destination—and even from guest to guest. “Maybe it's not cleaning [and] disinfecting. Maybe it's wellness—mindful wellness,” she said.
“Customers are very observant,” said Rod Hurt, regional director of operations at Twenty Four Seven Hotels. “They make a point of asking questions and keeping an eye on things and bringing concerns to the hotel staff.” For every guest that is concerned about not receiving stayover housekeeping service in their rooms, there's a customer that does not want housekeeping anywhere near their room until they check out, Hurt added.
A hotel’s reputation in the marketplace or within its competitive set also can be affected by how effectively a housekeeper does their job. For example, Olinger noted a recent visit to a luxury hotel in which a member of the staff left a cleaning towel in the guestroom. “They weren't keeping up on the training for their staff,” she said.
Training and Support
Hurt wondered how the industry will motivate housekeeping employees to “continue to do the hard work that they do each and every day for every guest,” noting a couple of ways that this could be accomplished. The first, he said, is training, whether online or over video. “There are a lot of great opportunities with some of the branded hotels … in terms of online or video training," he said. "I know there are a lot of vendors that sell cleaning materials and cleaning products to hotels that also can go through a training process.” The workers, he added, may prefer to learn best practices from a third party rather than their GM or a regional training leader.
Olinger said many vendors offer good training for their products. It is important for both supervisors and housekeepers to know how to use all available equipment, she added, and how to maintain it for future use.
Spilker praised ISSA’s Global Biorisk Advisory Council, overseen by Olinger, for helping the Visit Baltimore team figure out what they could do for the city’s tourism segment. “We were able to have that close partnership with information that was fact and not myth and media. … I was on the phone with somebody every other day talking about ‘how can we change the messaging to talk to restaurants or change the messaging to talk to convention centers,’ because that's different than a [small business.]”