Evaluating Property Management Systems? – Make Sure You Have a Housekeeping Representative in Team

Despite being one of the bigger departments in a resort or hotel, housekeeping is often taken for granted and sometimes even completely neglected during evaluation of a property management system. Since its smooth operation can potentially have a great impact on the customer satisfaction levels, it is important that housekeeping department is provided with all the tools required for its efficient functioning. Doing so will not only enhance guest service levels, but may also result in better deployment and efficiency of human resources and hence cost reduction.

One of the primary requirements of the housekeeping department from a PMS (property management system) is regular accessibility to status reports and easy to read screens, so that they’re able update themselves about the guest room status at any given point of time and thereafter carry out any updation in the property management system as well, if required.

If there’s a phone system interface available, Housekeepers can easily update the status of the room in PMS (property management system) by just entering a code into the telephone in guest room. This will set the status of room as clean in the property management system. Thereafter, the supervisor can key in a code to mark the guest room as inspected in the property management system, after carrying out the necessary inspections. This will make the room available to the Front desk staff for checking in guests at the hotel.

Housekeeping department also has the responsibility of effective tracking and management of out of order rooms that require repair work, renovation or upgrades to make them inhabitable for guests. It is the housekeeping department that should regularly track and report any maintenance related issues and keep a history of such jobs, in order to be able to spot trends or for referring back in future.

Housekeeping should also have the ability to regularly track maintenance work in areas like public washrooms, conference rooms, lobbies, health club etc. to keep them up to the acceptable standards for the guests. Having high service standards for a hospitality business also encompasses the ability of its housekeeping staff to efficiently track and maintain the hotel.

An effective property management system should ideally make all these tasks easier for the housekeeping staff. It should assist them effectively in tracking and maintenance of the whole facility, especially the guest rooms.

Following are some important points with regard to the housekeeping department that you must keep in mind while evaluating a property management system for you hotel:

–          Include someone from the housekeeping staff as a member of the team responsible for evaluation of property management system.

–          Make sure that the reports and screens in the system are easy to decipher and provide correct and updated room status information.

–          Ensure that the phone system in your hotel is compatible with the PMS (property management system) for easy updation of room status via the telephones in the guest rooms.

–          Confirm that guest rooms can be tracked regularly for maintenance and the corresponding reporting facility is also available.

–          Confirm that maintenance tracking and reporting of other common areas like lobbies, washrooms, conference rooms etc. is also available.