Making life easier for the hotel cleaner

HOTEL CLEANERS have a tough brief. They need to be able to clean and service every guest room and suite during daylight hours – and without inconveniencing the occupants.

This process needs to be extremely thorough, since any stray hair or missed item of debris will be viewed with horror by the guest. Cleaners also need to be able to work quickly to ensure that all rooms are serviced according to schedule. And they are tasked with cleaning all public areas of the hotel as well including the reception area, restaurants, gym, bars and washrooms.

This challenge has become greater still in recent times because the hospitality industry is continuing to struggle to find staff. According to the Office of National Statistics there were around 121,000 vacancies in the sector between July and September 2024. And the fact that the average staff turnover rate in hospitality is 52 per cent puts it ahead of every other sector in terms of employee churn.

Stories of hoteliers facing increasing difficulties when staffing their properties have proliferated in the press in recent months. Just before Christmas, for example, hotel owners in England and Wales reported being obliged to clean the guest rooms themselves – or mothball entire floors of their properties – because they were unable to find the housekeeping staff to take on the job for them.

The crisis has also been felt in the US where housekeepers threatened strike action in the autumn of 2024. Hotel cleaners complained that after having been laid off for several months during the pandemic, they eventually returned to an industry that was suffering from chronic staff shortages and facing new travel trends.

One of these was the option for hotel guests to decline daily room cleaning. This offered several advantages:  for example, it appeased anxious guests concerned about contracting COVID and who were keen to limit the amount of time that staff members spent in their rooms. Less frequent cleaning was also billed by hoteliers as an environmentally-friendly option since it reduced laundry loads along with the use of chemical cleaning agents. And of course, it was a cost-saving measure, too, sinceit meant fewer labour hours were spent servicing each room.

But cleaners in the US argued that they were still being given the same amount of time to remove two or three days’ debris and dirt from each room. Unionisedhousekeepers claimed that this made their workloads unmanageable and they became engaged in a fight to ensure that automatic daily room cleaning was restored at major hotel chains.

Hotel cleaners' roles

Hotel cleaners are typically allocated around 30 minutes to prepare a room for a new guest and just 15 minutes to service an occupied room. Many are expected to clean anything up to 15 rooms in every eight-hour shift - and this figure can rise to 30 in some hotels. And each room must be left spotless because any stray hair or dead fly is likely to be spotted, photographed and uploaded on to social media where it will create horror and outrage.

When cleaning the guest rooms, cleaners could also encounter anything from a vomit-spattered floor to a filthy bathroom. And besides being unpleasant and potentially unsettling, the job is also hazardous with injury rates among hotel cleaners standing at around 50 per cent above that of other hotel workers. This is hardly surprising when one considers that the job involves stretching, bending, lifting mattresses and moving furniture to vacuum floors.

Many staff members are also expected to cover a great deal of ground, particularly when cleaning a large resort or complex. They might have to walk between the pool, guest rooms, spa, restaurants, bars, fitness suite and general-use washrooms, cleaning each space as they go. So what can be done to ease the hotel cleaner’s workload? 

Automation is one answer. A growing number of hotels are now bringing in robots to carry out tasks such as floor cleaning and delivering toiletries to guest rooms. These can be pre-programmed to carry out their specific functions and can work throughout the night where appropriate.

Developing technology

When cleaning machines first entered the market in the 1990s they were hailed as a ground-breaking innovation - one that was poised to save countless hours of labouras well as improving the physical health of cleaners.

However, many early models had a tendency to crash into walls, stop short of objects and leave large areas of the floor uncleaned. 

But the technology developed quickly and 30 years later there is now a wide range of highly efficient autonomous vacuums, scrubbing machines and mopping systems on the market. Today’s robots will work to a mapped path and will automatically adjust their parameters to enable them to work on different surfaces. They can operate together as a fleet, communicating with one another to ensure that every area of a floor is covered and that no path is unnecessarily cleaned twice. And they will capture data as they work so that supervisors can analyse their performance. This allows them to improve the management of routines, locations and mapping.

Technology can also help cleaners to keep track of their work and provide easy access to vital information. When forced to work under strict time pressures it is all too easy for cleaners to overlook some tasks. However, software tools for hotel housekeeping departments will provide an overview of room status, check-in and check-out times and the tasks that need to be carried out.

The cleaner can then tick off each job as it is completed and the manager can tell at a glance if anything has been missed. For example, Essity’s Tork Vision Cleaning includes a digital cleaning plan function and incorporates pictograms and descriptions of each task.

Besides technology, high-capacity trolleys will also act as an aid for the cleaner - particularly if these are ergonomically designed to be lightweight and highly manoeuvrable. A larger trolley will also avoid the need for repeated trips to the stockroom for extra supplies of soap, paper and toiletries.

Where trolleys are not viable – in narrow corridors, between guest lodges or in constricted areas, for example  – it might be necessary to physically carry boxes of products to guest rooms and washrooms. Here an ergonomically-designed packaging system can make life easier. For example, Tork Easy Handling packs of paper products have comfortable handles to allow staff to carry two packs at a time.

En suite bathrooms

Keeping the en suite bathroom clean is a major part of the hotel cleaner’s job because these rooms often see the heaviest use. And the design of the en suite can make a major difference to the cleaning burden. 

Dirt will inevitably collect in the grout lines of tiled floors and walls, so the use of larger tiles or a continuous, smooth surface will help to speed up cleaning.

Soap bars create a sticky mess on the sinks while also producing rubbish in the form of paper or foil packaging. And half-used bars of soap tend to be wasted after the guest has checked out, adding to the cleaner’s waste burden.

The use of a non-drip dispenser for liquid soap allows the cleaner to slot a new cartridge into place when the soap inside has been used up. This makes life easier for the cleaner while also eliminating the issues of waste and mess, which is a sustainability advantage. Tork Shower Cream works well in hotel rooms because it is a shower gel and shampoo combined.  

Hotel washrooms

When it comes to cleaning larger washrooms for the general use of hotel guests, automatic taps are a good option because they attract fewer fingerprints than manual versions and are therefore quicker and easier to clean. And all washroom dispensers should be easy to open, either with a universal key or via a push-button.

A digital system using sensors works well in the general washrooms of a larger hotel since this will allow cleaners to tell at a glance when a particular soap or paper dispenser is running low or when a cubicle is experiencing high traffic. Data on their mobile phone will provide these alerts and allow them to target a specific washroom or cubicle, saving time on more random, generalised checks. Tork Vision Cleaning is an example of a system that provides this function. This type of technology is particularly useful in large, sprawling properties and resorts where operatives would have to walk long distances between washrooms to monitor dispenser levels.

Hotel cleaners work tirelessly behind the scenes to sanitise our public spaces and improve our guest experience. And the fact that the recruitment crisis continues to bite it is making their lives more difficult than ever.

However, hotel managers can help by equipping them with technological solutions, automated systems and ergonomic equipment. And this in turn will lead to improved cleaning results and better staff retention rates.

Jeremy Bennett is HORECA sales manager and Tork Paper Circle project manager for Essity​.

For more information, visit www.tork.co.uk

Tel: 01582 677570