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Hotel maintenance and asset management is a comprehensive view of the hotel’s present and future states with an eye on maintaining the hotel and its assets to the desired level of quality and safety. We at PropertyHero.ai want to modernize hotel maintenance and asset management and after much research, we feel this comprehensive guide and manual would dramatically help in the way hotels manage these vital assets.
We created this manual & handbook with several uses in mind. Please use this manual to:
· Train all your hotel staff about the practices for hotel asset maintenance.
· Train your hotel maintenance personnel.
Click here to download the PDF version of the manual in English and Spanish.
· Guide hotel management and general managers in best practices.
· Print and have it at your hotel as a reference guidebook.
· Set up or organize your hotel maintenance practices.
· Set up or organize your hotel asset management practices.
· Recruit, interview, hire, and review hotel maintenance technicians.
We would like to promote best practices for hotel maintenance and asset management, thus this manual & handbook’s goals are to:
· Explain how to perform & manage hotel maintenance.
· Communicate best practices for hotel maintenance and asset management.
· Communicate the benefits of digital hotel maintenance systems.
· Communicate the benefits of digital hotel asset management systems.
From a guest’s perspective, hotel maintenance may be viewed as just repairs; however, for a hotel, its maintenance practices are a critical part of ongoing operations. In this guide and manual, we review the best practices, processes, and terminology for hotel maintenance. This will help ensure all maintenance practices are standardized and that both new and old hotel staff members are performing these activities in the best way possible.
Hotels have many assets, from a mattress and TVs to the most complicated hotel systems. These assets must be documented, accounted for, and maintained. Practices like inventorying, accounting, tagging, tracking, maintaining, and replacing hotel assets are discussed in this guide.
Understanding what areas are controlled by the hotel maintenance department is important when hotel staff wants to determine who is responsible for a given activity.
A first step in maintaining a hotel is to build a common understanding of core terminology across the hotel’s staff. Hotel safety is an issue that could result in the injury of a guest or staff. From the common wet floors to broken handrails to more serious electrical short circuits. Injuries to guests will result in liability and possible legal actions. Any maintenance issues related to safety are of the highest priority and must be immediately made safe, section 8.2 discusses this in more detail.
Hotel housekeeping will keep certain areas of the hotel (guest rooms, and common areas) clean. Hotel maintenance may be responsible for cleaning other areas. For example, properly removing grime from a pool deck will require pressure washing and will require hotel maintenance to get involved.
Repairs to any category of items or areas inside or outside the hotel are the responsibility of the hotel maintenance department. Repairs are something that needs attention and may be required to be repaired immediately or can be delayed for a couple of weeks.
Maintenance that is performed to maintain the smooth operation of the hotel’s assets is termed “routine and preventative maintenance.” This ranges from repainting lines in the parking lot to cleaning coils in air conditioners. These are tasks that are not immediately needed but will need to be done to keep the hotel looking proper and operating well. Routine and preventative maintenance tasks often need to be repeated many times over the life of the hotel, thus these tasks repeat in a given routine.
As the hotel is used by guests it develops wear and tear. Returning the different areas and assets in the hotel to a like-new condition is considered to be part of the hotel maintenance department's responsibilities. Examples include repainting scratched walls and replacing heavily worn carpets, to replacing worn lampshades.
Certain things can be upgraded and replaced by the hotel maintenance team; however, their abilities to perform these upgrades are limited by their time, physical strength, and tools on hand. Replacing appliances, changing wall colors by painting, and so on, maybe in their abilities and would be considered a limited upgrade. Outside of those basic upgrades, things like replacing large areas of carpets, repaving parking lots, installing new vanities in bathrooms, and other tasks would require specialty vendors (i.e. contractors).
Major upgrades to hotel facilities are outside of the scope of this manual but maybe part of the hotel maintenance department as it depends on how the hotel management structure is organized. Typical day-to-day hotel maintenance staff are not part of a major upgrade. However, after those upgrades are completed, the day-to-day maintenance staff must familiarize themselves with these additions and create preventative and routine maintenance plans.
Hotels have different areas and categories of maintenance. The hotel staff and maintenance personnel should learn the terminology associated with these so a common language is adopted across the hotel, and so that when a staff member fills out a paper or digital maintenance request work order the category of work is properly entered. Note that rooms or areas of the hotel are not a category. A category is a system, so for example, a broken table in the hotel’s restaurant would be considered in the category of “furnishings”, while a broken stove in the same restaurant would be considered “food preparation equipment”.
Electrical systems are lighting, sound, and electrical outlets in or outside the hotel.
Safety Systems are the electrical fire alarm systems, fire alarm switches, fire or smoke monitors, and life safety systems (for example wall-mounted defibrillators).
Security Systems include regular door and window locks, guest room door locks, video surveillance cameras, recording equipment, and monitors. Fire exit alarms and door alarms would also be considered part of security systems.
Fire Safety Equipment includes any system used to physically fight fires and would include fire extinguishers and fire hoses. Automatically closing fire doors and in-ceiling fire sprinklers are included in this category.
Plumbing Systems are broken up into fresh and wastewater. Fresh plumbing systems are the faucets in the sink and water heaters, and showers. Wastewater systems include drains, and the lower part of toilets, urinals, and septic systems.
HVAC Systems are broken up into heating, ventilation (like exhaust vents in bathrooms), air conditioners and thermostats, and refrigeration systems in the case of walk-in coolers. Air conditioners can be further broken up into central ACs that cool / heat many rooms, or unit ACs that only handle a small space and can be placed on walls or in windows.
Furnishings are broken up into furniture: (couches, chairs, desks, tables, nightstands, dressers, bed frames, ottomans), mattresses, movable lighting (lamps), and decorations (art or pictures on the walls).
Consumer Electronics are broken up into televisions, radios, microwaves, in-room refrigerators, security safes, irons, dryers, coffee makers, and small kitchen equipment.
Office Equipment Systems are used by the hotel’s staff and range from check-in computers or kiosks, monitors, filing cabinets, credit card readers, RFID or magnetic door card writers, laptops, and printers. If the hotel has a business office, the electronics in that room would also be considered office equipment.
Vertical Transport is a major functional system that includes elevators, escalators, and stairs.
Flooring is a major part of hotels and includes interior areas, outside areas, stairways, and outside walkways, and can range from carpet, tile, gravel paths, linoleum, rugs, and pavement.
Grounds and gardening are the green plants, lawns, and other grounds-based areas of the hotel. Sprinkler and plant watering systems would be included in this category.
Waste management systems are trashcans, dumpers, trash compactors, grease traps, and in-sink garbage disposals.
Building structures are the physical structures of the hotel and include structures under the flooring, windows, the walls, doors both manual and automatic, driveways, parking, columns, beams, and roof.
Infotainment systems are typically electronics in conference rooms and include projectors, audio-video equipment, large screen TVs, wall TVs, stereo controls, and more.
Hotel support facilities are backroom, utility areas, and other areas off-limits to guests that support the hotel’s operations. This can include anything from electrical breaker boxes, industrial washing machines, clothing dryers, water softeners, air compressors, and so on.
Specialty Facilities Systems are those amenities and equipment in areas like pools, guest lounges, decks, and game rooms.
Food preparation equipment is any piece of equipment used by hotel staff to prepare, transport, or serve food. Industrial stoves, ovens, ranges, broilers, kitchen exhaust vents, silver wear, utensils, pots, pans, glasses, plates, cups, warming plates, serving platters, and so on.
It is vital that all hotel staff understand the types of hotel maintenance, as they may be involved in or will be requesting one of the following types: 1) immediate hotel maintenance, 2) preventative hotel maintenance, and 3) identifying hotel maintenance needs. A broken faucet in a guest’s room is an immediate critical request as it impacts guest comfort; whereas, standard replacement of light bulbs in halls would be preventative hotel maintenance. Lastly, inspecting the hotel’s systems and areas will help identify maintenance needs, for example identifying a fire exit door that frequently sticks.
These are maintenance tasks that are time-sensitive and are broken or will need repair shortly. Time-sensitive hotel maintenance requests can be categorized as 1) Critical Requests as they impact immediate safety, guest comfort, or today’s revenues, 2) Priority Requests if they need to be done in a specific time frame, for example before a guest returns to their room, and 3) Normal Requests that can be done when the maintenance has a slot of time available. In terms of work planning, maintenance team members would first handle critical requests, then priority requests. If none of the former exist they would then process normal requests.
Things will always break or need maintenance in hotels but a best practice is to preemptively predict hotel maintenance needs so the staff can plan for routine and preventive maintenance. Wise preventative maintenance procedures and practices will reduce the chances of emergencies and critical maintenance calls. There is a section of this manual dedicated to preventative maintenance see the outline.
Both small and large properties age and have usage-related wear. Wear and aging can result in eventual breakdowns or dangerous situations. Physically reviewing all the areas of the hotel by using a check and review guide is a way to determine immediate maintenance needs and helps add tasks to the preventive hotel maintenance task list. There is a section of this manual dedicated to identifying maintenance needs.
Every hotel should have a written hotel maintenance process that is taught to all hotel staff and hotel maintenance personnel. Having a clear process that instructs personnel on the best way to handle maintenance issues is ideal and reduces stress and improves communications with guests as to how their maintenance requests will be fulfilled.
Hotel maintenance processes are broken up into 1)guest-initiated requests, 2) staff and vendor-initiated requests, and 3) maintenance needs identification.
The following is a best practice for handling guest maintenance requests and is broken down into the following steps:
1. Receiving the requests and details from the guest.
2. Identifying the request’s priority level.
3. Filling out a digital, paper-based, or email-based maintenance work order request.
4. Assigning the work order to a staff member or group.
5. Communicating with maintenance to get an estimated time of completion.
6. Circling back and communicating a completion timeline with the guest.
7. Finally, validating that request was completed and communicating with the guest.
The following is a best practice for handling staff and vendor maintenance requests and is broken down into the following steps:
1. Receiving the requests and details from the staff or vendors.
2. Identify the request’s priority level.
3. Filling out a digital, paper-based, email-based maintenance work order.
4. Assigning the work order to a staff member or group.
5. Communicate with maintenance to get an estimated time of completion.
6. Circling back and communicating timelines with staff and vendors.
The following is a best practice for identifying hotel maintenance needs and is broken down into the following steps:
1. Scheduling preventative maintenance walkthrough.
2. Performing the walkthrough and recording the results of the walkthrough on paper or in digital records.
3. Translate finding to immediate maintenance work orders.
4. Translate finding to preventative maintenance plan task list.
Correctly prioritizing maintenance requests is a vital part of the process of filling a maintenance request. All hotel staff should understand the following priorities of hotel maintenance. Front desk staff that often receive a request from guests should especially take note because incorrectly categorizing the priority of the request could impede the maintenance team members or lead to extended wait time in the cases of critical requests.
Immediate or critical hotel maintenance needs will impact the hotel operations and guests immediately by 1) impacting guest safety, 2) impacting guest comfort 3) impacting revenues for that day. Digital maintenance softwares like PropertyHero.ai allow staff to categorize maintenance requests with this priority so they are at the top of maintenance’s task list.
Guest safety is paramount and will be the highest priority, a broken railing on a second-floor balcony, an electrical short in an outlet, or a broken fire alarm are all in this category. The response to this situation is to: 1) make the area safe, 2) post the issue and or warn guests to stay out or not to use, 3) schedule timely repairs, and 4) warn hotel staff members. Documentation of these requests is critical, and digital maintenance systems like PropertyHero.ai lets you enter service notes and take pictures of the issue and signage to validate that you warned guests and validate that scheduled a high-priority maintenance work order.
A maintenance request that impacts guests’ comfort in a room or on the property is a high priority. Determining what impacts guest comfort is tricky and requires some follow-up questions. For example, a guest who reports a broken exhaust fan in a bathroom may respond “yes I need it fixed so my hair can dry” or “no it can wait just wanted to let you know”. The first answer affects guest comfort and the second does not. Always weigh the guest’s immediate comfort against the intrusion of having maintenance personnel enter and disturb a guest. It is a best practice to communicate with the guest to schedule a maintenance call in a way that disturbs the guest the least while solving the request, for example by having maintenance personnel visit when the guest is out of their room.
Current maintenance requests can render areas of the hotel and guest rooms unusable and thus impact revenues. For example, having a high-end guest suite out of commission due to a bad AC unit would immediately impact revenues in cases where the supply of these rooms is limited and demand is high. Knowledge of upcoming hotel events and high-demand dates would also help maintenance and front desk staff make these determinations.
Priority requests are time-bounded, that is if they are done later than a given time, they would then slip to the previous category of being a critical maintenance request. For example, the catering department staff noticed a broken office chair in a conference room that will not be occupied for the next 5 hours would be a priority request with a deadline of say 3 pm.
Priority requests must have a date and time deadline associated with them, if there is no exact deadline then they are normal maintenance requests.
These often are the most common, a broken lightbulb, or a malfunctioning guest room door lock in an unoccupied room are all normal maintenance requests. Normal maintenance requests are not immediate or priority needs for that day’s business, nor do they need to be time or date bounded.
Small hotels especially rely on walkie-talkies to communicate with maintenance directly, here they communicate the issue, and maintenance directly replies with time frames for completion, although it may be simple it has major downsides. The downside of this approach is maintenance typically does not track time spent on each task or materials used and their associated costs, hence there is no paper trail for accounting. Further, it does not record services on individual assets, so a problem refrigerator in the kitchen that repeatedly breaks down and should be replaced instead is fixed over and over. Also, it does not carry over normal maintenance requests, that is what cannot be completed that day often goes into limbo and is quickly forgotten, this creates cases where management said “to fix X” but the maintenance team forgot. Finally, management and accounting do not have a forward-looking maintenance schedule or forecasted maintenance costs. For its simplicity ad-hoc, communication-based maintenance practices are poor and result in lower quality maintenance results.
Small to medium hotels will have a paper-based, or email-based maintenance work order method. Here the requestor fills out a work order which typically is emailed to the director of maintenance. This has many downsides. Firstly, the director or maintenance supervisor must approve and route it to the appropriate maintenance personnel, then when the task is complete the personnel must call back their supervisors. This is a lot of back-and-forth paperwork to be filled out or emailed. When it comes to compiling maintenance expenses the director must go back through hundreds if not thousands of records, this alone could take several days. Secondly, emails and paper work-order may be lost or ignored, this makes checking the pending work orders and the productivity of each employee much more difficult. On the asset management side, warranties expirations dates are rarely tracked. Next, paper or email-based systems require the supervisors to create routine maintenance schedules and then push those out daily. This places a large amount of work to keep on top of the daily tasks as they become due, and if they are sick or out of the office then work on routine maintenance often stops. Finally, forecasting next quarter’s maintenance expenses is very hard to impossible because there is no work order for work not issued.
Digital-biased hotel maintenance systems overcome all of the downsides of ad-hoc, paper-based, and email-based systems. PropertyHero.ai hotel software provide traceability, productivity tracking, expense totaling, receipt and warranty capturing, and issuing work orders. This creates accountability for each maintenance employee, and notifies and reminds them over email and SMS of when tasks are due, so work is not missed. Work orders have all the details of the task and notify the creator of the work order when the task is created capturing their labor time and material expenses. Forward forecasting of next quarter’s maintenance expenses is also easy.
When creating a maintenance request work order it is important to fill out the work order correctly. Given hotel front desk staff, general managers, hotel supervisors, and maintenance team members can create work orders these individuals must read this section.
The first step in creating a work order is to write the summary title. For example, a guest reports to the front desk that their microwave door is broken in room 203 and will be back in their room at 1 pm for lunch. This would be summarized as “Room 203 broken microwave door”
The next step is to associate the request with a property, as hotel managers can be overseeing multiple properties. Digital hotel maintenance request systems like PropertyHero.ai allow you to select properties from a drop-down list. This helps record tasks and their associated costs and time with a given property.
The next step is to associate the request with an asset, as this will tie the service record to the assets and is especially vital for high-value assets like for example elevators. With the property selected PropertyHero.ai allows you to select from the list of inventoried assets in the hotel. Commonly inventoried assets are appliances, electronics, major furniture, and major equipment.
The next step is setting the priority level of the request, without this the maintenance department would have trouble prioritizing the request and may have to contact the requester or send it to the maintenance supervisor. By not setting the priority level the maintenance request will be delayed, for the quickest routing and fulfillment setting the priority level is vital.
Assigning a due date helps keep maintenance teams on top of tasks. Tasks associated with critical requests or priority requests will be assigned to be due the same day and will have a due time. Work orders that are normal priority can be assigned for a reasonable time frame, and work orders for preventative maintenance should be assigned in the time frame determined.
Work orders are further categorized as being normal or preventative maintenance as this further helps the maintenance teams prioritize their work schedules.
The next step is setting the category of maintenance work order, this section above has the list of categories and they are electrical systems, safety systems, security systems, fire safety equipment, plumbing systems, HVAC systems, furnishings, consumer electronics, office equipment systems, vertical transport, grounds and gardening, waste management systems, structures, infotainment systems, hotel support facilities, specialty facilities, and food preparation equipment.
Writing a detailed work order description is an important part of the work order as it explains the issue in enough detail to aid the maintenance team member in resolving the issue. A poorly written description would be “broken microwave door”, whereas a properly written description would be “Jane at front desk received a call from Guest John Doe in room 203 cell 321-543-1234 states microwave door closes but the microwave does not turn on, they will be back in their room at 2 pm.” Again, the format is 1) name of work order creator, guest name if given, phone number, room or exact location, detailed description of the issue, and a time frame for resolution.
As an option, work orders can have estimated time and cost to complete. Maintenance directors and supervisors may want to fill this in as digital maintenance software will help in forecasting maintenance expenses, and give the ability to compare estimated time & costs verse actual time & costs. These estimates give maintenance technicians a time frame and cost to aim for thus improving their productivity.
Assigning a maintenance work order differs based on the size of the hotel, the category of the work order, and the type of work order system in place (paper-based, email-based, or digital software). The benefit of the digital work order is it can be assigned by the creator of the work order, so if the front desk receives a plumbing request, they can then assign it to both the plumbing specialist and the maintenance supervisor, and if needed they can be quickly reassigned to other team members. Again, ad-hoc walkie-talk-based maintenance requests fail here because they do not have a work-order documentation trail in place. Email and the paper-based system also fail because it adds an extra step where the maintenance supervisors must then assign a specific maintenance team member.
A vital part of the maintenance process for guests, and staff members is to know when the work order will be completed. Digital work order systems like PropertyHero.ai allow the maintenance staff to put a time frame on the potential completion times and then it automatically alerts everyone on that work order communication chain. Email & paper-based work order systems require an extra step where the maintenance team member who picks up that work order replies over SMS, email, or phone with the work order originator with their completion timeline.
With the estimate of completion in hand, the front desk staff should again communicate to the guests letting them know when their maintenance work order will be processed. Digital work order systems like PropertyHero.ai will automatically inform a guest over SMS of when their work order will be processed if the guest’s phone number is entered into the work order. It is a best practice to have front desk staff always circle back to the guests to let them know the hotel is concerned about their comfort and safety.
Knowing the status of your maintenance request work order is important to guest satisfaction and the maintenance management team (directors and supervisors). When guests request maintenance they almost always would want to know when their maintenance requests are completed. For ad-hoc, paper-based, or email-based work orders the front desk staff must circle back to the guest to provide updates this is most often never done. Digital maintenance management systems like PropertyHero.ai automatically send SMS to guests when the work order was completed.
Preventive and routine maintenance can preemptively solve many maintenance problems. For example, AC units that have their filters and coils regularly cleaned are less likely to ice up resulting in immediate maintenance requests. All systems in the hotel can benefit from preventative and routine maintenance.
The following section on maintenance needs identification describes how to assess the hotel’s maintenance needs. All findings including damage, excessive wear, and required maintenance should be noted in the notes associated with each asset. Digital asset management systems like PropertyHero.ai record these details and link them to the asset and can even create a maintenance request related to a particular asset in seconds.
With maintenance needs identified the maintenance calendar can be created. In a paper-based system, this can be a large task as a physical calendar needs to be created that lists all tasks which quickly can be overloaded with writing and eventually never updated. In email or Microsoft calendar-based systems maintenance calendar tasks can be created as reoccurring tasks, however, capturing costs and projecting forward future costs is not possible. Finally in digital maintenance calendars like PropertyHero.ai reoccurring tasks can be easily created and forward-based forecasting of maintenance costs for the quarter can be accurately estimated. For example, one would create a task to check the toilets & sinks on the 3 rd floor that would reoccur every 6 months.
Only digital maintenance-based software like Microsoft calendar or software like Propertyhero can easily create reoccurring maintenance tasks and issue work orders. To create a reoccurring maintenance task in Microsoft calendar, create the event then select the box that says create a reoccurring event. In PropertyHero.ai create a task then click the reoccurring box and type in the number of days between occurrences, so every 6 months would be 365/2 or 182 days.
Generating work orders are a core aspect of a properly set up maintenance process as they create an auditable paper trail for work performed. For paper-based systems, a work order is filled out on a standard template. The paper-based work orders are given directly to employees or placed in work perform inboxes. Once complete the work order is placed in a completed box, there the maintenance supervisor or director can review the work order and entered its costs and labor time into the master maintenance log. A similar process occurs for email-based work orders; however, the difference is work orders are entered into an excel based master maintenance log. Digital maintenance software like PropertyHero.ai always have the work order in the system, and thus one needs to assign it, when complete, the master maintenance and task log is automatically updated.
After a work order is created it must be given to a staff member a couple of days before it is due. Here the work order is entered into the master maintenance logbook and in the case of a paper-based or email system, it must be given to the appropriate employee. Hotels with many maintenance staff members must decide which employee to give the work order to based on their work schedule, abilities, and immediate availability in the case of priority or critical work orders. Then once assigned maintenance supervisors or directors must often remind these individuals of task due dates. This requires the supervisors or directors to look over the master maintenance logbook and see what work orders were not completed and email or call those responsible individuals to get an updated estimate. Digital work order systems like PropertyHero.ai automatically remind staff and management of incomplete work orders thus removing this hassle.
Setting a budget for preventative and routine maintenance is a critical task for maintenance directors, as insufficient budgets can dramatically limit the ability of the maintenance department. Justifying a budget to the GM may be tricky. The best way is to make a line-item expense list of all the costs of all upcoming preventative and routine maintenance tasks. This is very difficult in the paper, email, and Microsoft calendar-based systems as the master maintenance logbook must have pending work orders entered up to a year out. Often maintenance directors look at last year’s budget and provide a percentage increase, however, this may be hard to justify to a cost-sensitive GM. PropertyHero.ai digital software automatically can tally the estimated maintenance expenses for a future period and print each line item in a PDF thus giving a sorted list of maintenance items descending by cost. This makes negotiating future budgets much easier.
Below are recommended schedules for preventative and routine maintenance based on the system and subcategory. Newer hotels may need a bit less maintenance; however, any middle-aged hotel should have the following inspections, replacements, and services done on the following schedules as they help avoid breakdowns, reduced possible liabilities, and increase guests’ comfort.
Hotel franchise agreements often give an outline of required maintenance tasks and their frequencies; however, it is highly recommended that hotels supplement those requirements with their own preventive and routine maintenance schedules.
Lighting - Five to ten-year bulb replacement schedule, checks of ballasts on fluorescent fixtures.
Outlets - Five-year checks of power and outlet faceplates.
Fuse & Breakers - Quarterly checks for tripped fuses and shorts.
Switches - Five to ten-year checks for shorts.
Sound System - Three-year checks for volume, crackling, & broken speakers.
Fire Alarm Systems - Yearly maintenance by qualified contractors
Defibrillators - Bi-yearly check for the battery life.
Door & Room Locks - Yearly check of room locks, oiling, and replacement of batteries.
Surveillance & Security - Quarterly check of cameras, sector alarms, and recording works.
Fire extinguishers - Quarterly checks for fire extinguisher pressure.
Fire Hose Cabinets - Quarterly to ensure no broken glass or debris.
Sinks Faucets - Yearly checks for clear aerators and to avoid leaks.
Water Heaters - Yearly checks & flushed yearly.
Waste Water drains - Yearly checks for clogs.
Toilets - Six months checks of flappers and valves.
Urinals - Yearly checks of valves.
Filters - Every two months replace or cleaning of air filters.
Heating - Before the winter season check heating coils.
Ventilation - Two-to-four-year cleaning of ducks, intakes, and exhaust vents.
Central AC - Six months to one year clean coils and flush the runoff condensation drainage system. Every one or two-year review by an AC technician.
Window and Wall ACs - Six months to one year of cleaning of coils and flushing of runoff condensation drainage system. Every one or two-year review by an AC technician.
Kitchen Refrigerators - Yearly cleaning of coils, cleaning of water pans, replacement of water filters.
Walking in Refrigerators - Yearly service by a refrigeration technician.
Hard Furnishing - Yearly visual inspection of couches, chairs, tables, desks, nightstands, dressers, and bed frames. Rotating hard furnishing to lower occupancy floors.
Mattresses - Six-month flipping of double-sided mattresses.
Decorations and Art - Yearly visual inspections.
Televisions & Remotes - Yearly checks for damage and missing parts.
Radios, Microwaves, Coffee Makers, Irons, Hairdryers,
- Yearly checks for damages.
Mini Refrigerators - Yearly vacuuming of backside coils.
Computers, Printers, Keyboards, & Mice
- Yearly checks and replacements.
Laptops - Yearly laptop owners should be emailed to submit maintenance or replacement requests.
Elevators & Escalators - Yearly checks & maintenance by qualified elevator technicians.
Stairwells - Six-month checks for slippery areas, handrails, emergency light batteries, and freely opening doors.
Flooring, Carpet, Rugs, & Mats
- Quarterly cleaning carpets rugs, and mats in heavily-trafficked areas. Yearly visual inspection of all flooring for safety and potential trip hazards.
Ground & Gardens - Six-month checks for damaged walkways and dead foliage.
Lawn Checks - Broken lighting, broken watering systems, dead foliage.
Pets Control -Checking pest control traps every 3 months.
Compactors - Quartley checks and routine maintenance performed.
Trashcans & Dumpsters - Checked yearly.
Hotel structures - Ten-year qualified engineering inspector, or immediate inspection after a natural disaster.
Roof - Five-year inspection, or immediately after natural disasters.
Doors - Yearly inspection of manual and automatic doors, driveways, and parking gates.
Audio Visual equipment - Six-month inspections and replacement of batteries.
Back Office Areas - Two-year inspection.
Utility Areas - One-year inspection and routine cleaning.
Tool or Maintenance Area - One-year inspection, reorganization, and routine cleaning.
Electrical Cabinets - One-year inspection, warning cleaning may be very dangerous.
Pools & Locker Rooms - Weekly inspections, eye for slip prevention.
Guest lounges - Weekly inspections.
Decks - Weekly inspection with furniture inspections.
Game rooms - Weekly inspection with furniture inspections.
Food Preparation - Weekly inspections for cleanliness and to prevent fires.
Maintenance needs identification is a vital part of hotel maintenance as it helps prevent and solve current and future maintenance needs. Outside of natural disasters and fires which are covered by insurance, large maintenance expenses like major breakdowns or structural damage do occur. However, these can be predicted if the maintenance needs identification process is performed properly. The maintenance director and supervisors not being aware their hotel’s roof needs replacing or basements beams need reinforcing is not an excuse and can dramatically impact hotel revenues. Proactiveness is the sign of a well-run maintenance department. Thus, all maintenance departments should have maintenance needs identification process in place to prevent these unforeseen expenses.
Qualified staff should perform the walkthroughs/inspections and should be selected based on their attention to detail and knowledge of the different systems. Lower-level maintenance personnel may not be suited for performing these walkthroughs, consider senior maintenance and maintenance supervisors for this job.
During the maintenance needs identification walkthrough general findings should be recorded on paper and then transferred into a pending work order list or entered directly into a digital maintenance software. PropertyHero.ai 's digital software allows maintenance staff to take pictures of findings and enter service notes into the related assets records. So, a central AC with a leak can have a photo of the leak uploaded to the cloud and service notes entered detailing the issue. This allows the maintenance manager, with a single click, to issue a maintenance request complete with these details so the AC service provider knows the issue before his site visit ensuring he can bring the appropriate parts.
Capturing costs and labor times associated with maintenance is a highly valuable activity, which if done correctly will help in estimating future maintenance expense budgets and creating maintenance cost forecasts.
Costs for labor and materials should be captured for each work order and task. Doing this would be the responsibility of the person completing the work order. So, if an AC repair requires a $20 new filter and $80 compressor, these costs should be added and $100 for materials should be entered. The cost of labor spent should be the hourly rate of the personnel multiplied by the time spent so if John Doe gets $30 per hour and spends 45 minutes then it would be 0.75 x $30 = $22.50 in labor cost. Thus, the total expense for the work order would be $100 in materials plus $22.50 totaling $122.50. Paper & email-based work orders can have fields to capture this data. Digital software like PropertyHero.ai will capture these costs and calculate labor costs automatically, as well as, capture pictures of receipts so expenses can be verified.
Capturing the time spent on each work order is important as it helps in estimating similar work orders and thus helps in forecasting. When performing work orders personnel should be trained to record their times.
With the time for past work orders captured, maintenance supervisors and directors can estimate future work which is vital for forecasting maintenance schedules and budgets. For example, the maintenance supervisors can look up past work orders on replacing AC filters on a single floor of the hotel. From his research, he found it took John Doe 4 hours last month, and Dave Gibson 5 hours the previous year. By averaging 4 & 5 hours it takes 4.5 hours on average for this task.
If previous work orders captured cost and time, they can be used as a guide to estimate similar future work orders. However, if these were not captured some math may need to be done. Continuing the previous example, a floor has 30 rooms each with one AC and if filters cost $4.50 apiece, then the material cost of replacing AC filters would be 30 multiplied by $4.50 totaling $135.00. If we estimated 4.5 hours of labor at $25 per hour we expect labor to be $112.50. Thus, the total cost for labor and materials would be $112.50 + $135.00 totaling $247.50.
If the maintenance calendar for a period is fully created then estimating the maintenance expenses would be the act of estimating the labor and materials for every preventive maintenance work order in that period, plus the average cost of immediate maintenance expenses.
Estimating the time and cost of preventive maintenance work orders is very difficult if the task is done via a paper-based or email-based system, thus many maintenance departments do not perform that calculation and instead prefer to give a rough number based on prior history. This approach is poor and will often result in underestimating preventive maintenance costs. PropertyHero.ai ’s digital software will easily tally the cost and time of preventative maintenance work orders for a period if the maintenance work orders were entered or are reoccurring in the system. Say for example the total preventive maintenance cost for a 200-room hotel called “The Grand Budapest Hotel” is $15,000 in materials with $25,000 in labor for one quarter.
Both papers based and email-based maintenance systems offer the ability to go back and compile guest or staff requested maintenance costs for a given period, it may be tedious but it is possible. Digital systems like PropertyHero.ai can, in seconds, compile previous maintenance costs for a period and even sort those costs from largest to smallest. Based on the previous example “The Grand Budapest Hotel” had in the first quarter immediate maintenance expenses averaging $13,000 in materials and labor costs related to those immediate maintenance requests averaging $17,000.
In the example of “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” we have preventative & immediate maintenance materials expenses of $15K and $13 totaling $28K. The total preventative & immediate labor expenses would be $25K and $17K totaling $42K. Thus, materials plus labor the total maintenance budget would be $70K for the first quarter.
The maintenance department often has tool kits for each maintenance personnel and specialty maintenance tools for specific jobs like AC repair. We feel protecting expensive tools is an important part of tool security and thus would like to explain this topic in further detail.
Paper or excel based inventory tools are often used to log who had a specialty tool and when they returned it, the problem with paper-based systems is the log must be physically in a centralized location and accessed by trusted maintenance supervisors and directors. Well-intentioned paper-based inventory logs often fall out of use as time goes on.
Digital inventory systems like PropertyHero.ai can track tools with on tool QR codes, and log who it was loaned out to and when it was returned, guarantying trackability. Further, if the tool is damaged or needs repair service notes can be logged and service costs can be tracked the same as any other hotel asset.
There are many types of hotel service providers i.e. contracts that the hotel maintenance department may use to assist in repairs and preventative maintenance. This can range from simple painting to complicated elevator repair. Using these service providers efficiently is an important part of maintenance
Service provider contact information can be kept on business cards, on paper, in excel, or a digital system like PropertyHero.ai . Most hotels have a stack of business cards in the maintenance office of their preferred vendors, the downside here is if a business card is lost it will take a while to locate that provider's contact details. More advanced hotels keep providers' details in an excel or word document. This is a better method of managing contacts but needs to be accessed from the computer the files are located on. The most ideal software is with PropertyHero.ai where the contacts are stored in the cloud, can be rated, shared with other users on the system, and selected for maintenance requests. If selected for a maintenance request the service provider will get an SMS and email with the details of the maintenance requests so they know to respond quickly. This takes the act of calling the provider unnecessary and instead lets them contact the maintenance director to schedule a service call or create a quote. Further, it reminds them of the service request of the appointment before and on the due date.
The best practice is to capture receipts of service and any documentation from the service providers, including their service records. Too often receipts for work performed are lost, and details of who performed work on assets are misplaced. Digital software like PropertyHero.ai allow service providers to scan an asset QR code and enter their costs, name, and service details on their smartphones ensuring those vital details are captured. Most service providers guarantee their work and are bonded, and in the event of a breakdown, you want to have proof they performed the work so if damages occur you can hold them liable.
Hotel asset management is taking care of assets immediately after purchase and is broken down into inventorying, tagging, tracking, maintaining, replacing, identifying lost or stolen assets, donating assets, and accounting for expenses related to assets.
Many hotels roughly know how many mattresses and TVs they have but they do not go into the detail of knowing the model and serial number, age, purchase price, and warranty details for each asset. A detailed inventory has many benefits, it helps track where that asset is, when and how it was damaged or broken if service was performed on it, its age, and associated warranties. These expensive assets should be inventoried as they make up a considerable value of the hotel's fixed assets.
Paper-based inventory lists are often lost or ignored as time goes on and they become out of date. Excel-based inventory lists are better but they do not provide alerts on replacement dates, or track service performed on those particular assets, and also can go out of date. Digital asset management software like PropertyHero.ai store hotel assets by id and even associates them with a scannable QR code tag.
Tagging a hotel asset is placing a serialized tag number on the asset so that hotel staff can read off the tag numbers. Tagging assets also serves to discourage would-be thieves, especially if the tag says stolen items will be noted and reported to the police. Tagging generally is a vinyl printed tag, and in the case of PropertyHero.ai includes a digital QR code that allows staff and service providers to access details, and perform actions with that item using their smartphone. Every high-value fixed asset in a hotel should be tagged, in the guest rooms, this includes the AC, mattress, TV, safes, radio, minifridge, desk, desk chair, and couch. In the case of fabric furniture velcro tags or magic, markers can be used to put tags for id numbers on the asset.
The ability to track the location of assets in a hotel is especially important. For example, moveable items like conference tables, projectors, laptops, podiums, and so on, can be moved around a property. Knowing quickly where assets are located helps in saving valuable staff time. Some hotels try to track asset locations on paper or excel based ledgers but these often are not updated or inaccessible at the time an item is needed. Properthero.ai digital software is smartphone accessible and can look up items in a second. Further, when an item is moved, the QR code asset tag can be scanned, and the new room is selected, only taking seconds. This allows any staff members' to update movable asset locations.
All hotel assets need some form of maintenance. Many hotels for example maintain their guest AC units, but very few hotels can tell you the exact person, date, costs, and actions taken to maintain for example a specific AC unit in room 201. Having maintenance records that are related to each serialized asset proves that each asset was maintained. This is invaluable as it is another check that proves maintenance was providing routine and preventive maintenance for key assets, thus reducing the chances of unexpected breakdowns. Records for maintenance of hotel assets should include, who performed the maintenance, the date of maintenance, costs for maintenance, and details about what was performed.
Replacing assets in a hotel may be decided by management to modernize the hotel, or be required by some sort of hotel franchise agreement. Hotel franchise agreements generally stipulate what assets need to be replaced and their replacement frequency. For example, mattresses need to be replaced every 10 years. Knowing the age of asset type, purchase costs, and the number of assets helps in estimating the exact replacement costs. For example, in a hotel with 60 rooms, knowing there are 20 king and 30 queen mattresses older than nine years would allow the hotel to accurately estimate the mattress purchase order quantity for replacement assets. Digital asset management systems like PropertyHero.ai automatically can tally the cost of a category like mattresses and displays the assets' age, thus giving forecasting on the size and date of large replacement expenses.
It may happen, that housekeeping checks a conference room and finds a desk chair missing. Now, it is unlikely that the chair was stolen, but most likely misplaced. Without a centralized record for tracking the location, the hotel relies on calling associated hotel staff to see who remembers where that chair could be. This all takes time and can delay getting a room ready. Digital asset management systems that allow staff to quickly update the assets’ locations and avoid misplaced assets.
Occasionally, guests or staff can make poor choices, and assets are stolen. When an asset is noticed as stolen hotels often rely on reporting to management. Few hotels conduct yearly inventorying of assets to see their state and location, especially those assets in storage. For example, an inventory may turn up that 3 TVs in storage and 4 power drills were lost during the year, and that the drills were all checked out to maintenance staff member John Doe. This would allow hotel management to take corrective actions. PropertyHero.ai ’s digital software allows one to quickly create a report detailing those lost assets, their costs, model and serial numbers, and last location, who last touched them, and put them in a format that can be submitted to the insurance company or police.
When assets reach end-of-life or are replaced with an upgrade asset, they may still be disposed of, or if they are operational they can be donated to charities. Tracking these disposals and donations is very useful for the accounting department as they can save money on end-of-year taxes. Further formally taking an asset out of inventory and placing it in disposal or donations helps avoid incorrectly thinking an asset was misplaced or stolen.
Every asset has associated preventative and immediate maintenance expenses. From cleaning coils in a mini-refrigerator to unplanned repairs to an air conditioner. Accounting for the last quarter and year's asset-related expenses helps dramatically in the budgeting of the hotel’s operations. Digital asset management software like PropertyHero.ai allows for quick tallying of past maintenance expenses by asset class and category. Forecasting asset-related expenses can also be performed through a system like PropertyHero.ai , see the section on Forecasting Total Expense for Future Work Orders.
Improving the electrical efficiency of systems in the hotel has several benefits from cost savings, to brand praise, to increased longevity of systems. Although this may sound easy like changing light bulbs, achieving improved electrical efficiency requires significant steps in both hotel operations and asset management.
In the effort to improve electrical efficiency one must view any changes by the overall impact they will have on the total electrical usage of the hotel. The largest impact is from the HVAC systems, next is from the water heaters, then the lighting systems, and lastly guest appliances.
The largest saving for electrical efficiency can be achieved by effectively limiting guest occupancy to certain floors during periods of low guest bookings. This would allow the hotel management to adjust the AC / Heating temperatures on unoccupied floors to a more efficient setting and turn off non-vital lighting. For example, a four-story business hotel located in Houston Texas may have low periods on Saturdays and Sundays, effectively closing the top two floors and adjusting thermostats upward, and turning off all lighting would reduce the hotel’s electrical consumption to 60% of normal. If the normal consumption of electricity per day in the summer is $100, that would result in a bill of $60 per day. Before this adjustment, a monthly bill in the summer would be $3,000 (30 days). After this adjustment, the electrical consumption would be Monday to Friday $100, Saturday & Sunday $60 total for one week to be $620, and over four weeks to $2,480. Comparing the whole summer, we have unadjusted $9,000 verse an adjusted $7,440, resulting in a $1,560 saving or 18% electrical savings.
Occupancy sensors on thermostats or centralized secondary control of thermostats are a great way to adjust temperatures of unoccupied rooms to more efficient levels. High-efficiency HVAC systems could cost more to install but may pay back in saving over the first two to three years. Work with your HVAC supplier to run the calculation on cost savings in your particular case. Window AC units are a large source of energy consumption, having housekeeping reset the thermostat to recommended temperatures as part of their checklist would greatly help. Lastly, routine maintenance by cleaning the coils of dust window AC units greatly helps save electricity.
High-efficiency boilers or large flow tankless water heaters are an excellent way to reduce power consumption. Finally, setting the hot water temperature to a reasonable level for guest comfort would save a little bit on power consumption.
High-efficiency lighting, i.e., LED lighting in all areas of the hotel can save some power over CFL, compact fluorescent lights, and incandescent. It is worth the extra money to buy long-lasting branded LED lights to replace those that are always on, like hallway lights, as they will need to be replaced less often.
The control of guest areas is largely up to the guests and their desired comfort levels, in other areas the hotel, conference rooms, dining rooms, and so on the hotel has more control. Influencing the guests to save electricity and go green can be accomplished in many ways. For example, having the front desk staff say that “we are a green hotel and appreciate any efforts you do to save electricity and water” does not cost the hotel anything. Having signage in the guest rooms about tips to save electricity and go green further reinforces this message.
Recruiting for the hotel maintenance department is similar to recruiting for other positions in the hotel, start by creating a job description. The following section only focuses on hiring hotel maintenance technicians and does not describe the skills or knowledge needed for supervisors or directors of maintenance as those roles vary greatly from property to property.
Indeed.com is an excellent location to find job descriptions for maintenance directors, supervisors, and engineers. Search for the title and review relevant job descriptions, then copy one that is close enough, and then modify the description to fit its needs. After creating the job description post it to a job board like indeed or a specialized job posting board for hotel maintenance professionals.
When interviewing a maintenance professional, you will assess their experience, education, training, personality traits, skills, credentials, and references.
Experiences
Experiences relevant to maintenance and engineering are highly relevant because hotels are essentially buildings thus any experience in building or system maintenance are highly relevant. Note, that years of experience do not necessarily make a great maintenance professional.
Education and Training
Education and training relevant to engineering, building systems, electronics, and construction are all relevant. Maintenance professionals occasionally have engineering degrees as they help dramatically in understanding the systems and how they may be optimized. Most maintenance professionals have trade school education these are great as well because they provided hands-on training for their different maintenance tasks. Both education and training must be verified before hiring by contacting the institutions directly.
Certifications
Certifications are often obtained by maintenance professionals and help prove in a verifiable way they have undergone a rigorous examination by a third party. Again, stated certifications must be verified before hiring.
Personality Traits
Hotel maintenance staff must have the following four personality traits, conscientiousness to their tasks, friendliness, organizational abilities, and ability to learn. Because someone has the required education or years of experience does not mean they will fit into a hospitality situation. Conscientiousness is the ability to perform their assigned duties to their full abilities in the timelines requested, friendliness is important because of their interaction with guests, organizational abilities are important maintaining systems can become very complicated with hundreds of parts and tools, and being organized increase the total reliability of systems. Finally, the ability to learn is important as their skill sets must expand over time.
System Specific Knowledge
You can break up skillsets into installation, repair, routine maintenance, and removal of any of the systems listed in section 14. Keep in mind that having skillsets to maintain all systems is not required as maintenance personnel can specialize in different systems, and can be assigned based on the system category that requires maintenance.
Reference Checks
Often reference checks are performed last, but we highly recommend they are done early in the process, as their previous employers and references will better be able to speak to their personality traits of consciousness to their tasks, friendliness, and ability to learn.
Detractors
Unfortunately, detractors exist for maintenance professionals, and they are
around lack of consciousness (i.e., doing the bare minimum), cunning or
undermining behaviors, and thievery. Again, reference checks with their
prior employers will help determine these, as the face-to-face interview
will not. Do not consider things like awkwardness, eloquence,
English abilities, and appearance in the interview as factors related to
the hiring decision. Although they may be important to the success of a
front desk employee, they are not relevant to a maintenance team member's
overall success.
Formal and consistently applied interviews are best. Do not come up with interview questions on-the-fly or pose ad-hoc follow-up questions, strictly follow the interview format. Remember you are not hiring a maintenance employee for their ability to eloquently speak, but for their hand-eye coordination, knowledge of systems, and attentiveness to details. Try very hard to formally score the interview without bias. Sample interview questions that you can print are listed below. Remember, you can request further details but do not change the questions from interview to interview as you want to be consistent across prospective employees.
Education & training
1. What is your formal education, please highlight any education relevant to hotel maintenance?
Rated 1 to 10 = Score & Notes ____
2. What is your formal training relevant to hotel maintenance?
Rated 1 to 10 = Score & Notes ____
3. What certifications do you have relevant to hotel maintenance?
Rated 1 to 10 = Score & Notes ____
System Specific Knowledge
4. Please rate your abilities to perform installation, and maintenance of the following systems? Please keep in mind that we do not require you to be an expert in all these systems as we believe in having specialization across the maintenance team. Please be honest in your answers, if hired, our maintenance supervisors will compare these answers against their assessment of your knowledge and skill level for each system.
The possible answers to each question are as follows:
1) None – Having 0% Knowledge 2) Little - Having 10%-30% knowledge
3) Moderate - Having 40%-60% knowledge 4) High - Having 60%-80% knowledge
5) Full - Having 80%-100% knowledge
5. Electrical 1) None, 2) Little, 3) Moderate, 4) High, 5) Full
6. Safety System 1) None, 2) Little, 3) Moderate, 4) High, 5) Full
7. Security System 1) None, 2) Little, 3) Moderate, 4) High, 5) Full
8. Fire Safety Equipment 1) None, 2) Little, 3) Moderate, 4) High, 5) Full
9. Plumbing System Fresh 1) None, 2) Little, 3) Moderate, 4) High, 5) Full
10. Plumbing Systems Waste 1) None, 2) Little, 3) Moderate, 4) High, 5) Full
11. HVAC Centralized System 1) None, 2) Little, 3) Moderate, 4) High, 5) Full
12. AC window and Wall Units 1) None, 2) Little, 3) Moderate, 4) High, 5) Full
13. Furnishing 1) None, 2) Little, 3) Moderate, 4) High, 5) Full
14. Consumer Electronics 1) None, 2) Little, 3) Moderate, 4) High, 5) Full
15. Office Equipment 1) None, 2) Little, 3) Moderate, 4) High, 5) Full
16. Elevators, Escalators 1) None, 2) Little, 3) Moderate, 4) High, 5) Full
17. Flooring 1) None, 2) Little, 3) Moderate, 4) High, 5) Full
18. Gardening 1) None, 2) Little, 3) Moderate, 4) High, 5) Full
19. Waste Management Systems 1) None, 2) Little, 3) Moderate, 4) High, 5) Full
20. Structures 1) None, 2) Little, 3) Moderate, 4) High, 5) Full
21. Infotainment System 1) None, 2) Little, 3) Moderate, 4) High, 5) Full
22. Hotel Support Facilities 1) None, 2) Little, 3) Moderate, 4) High, 5) Full
23. Specialty Facilities, like Pools 1) None, 2) Little, 3) Moderate, 4) High, 5) Full
24. Food Preparation Equipment 1) None, 2) Little, 3) Moderate, 4) High, 5) Full
Experience
25. Please provide a summary of a related work experience where you performed a system installation? Please highlight the steps or knowledge you obtained and how you ensured the installation was done correctly.
Rated 1 to 10 = Score & Notes ____
Look for actions like reading the installation guide, preparing the area, obtaining proper installation tools, creating an installation or setup checklist, checking all install parts were present, performing initial testing, and documenting the installation.
26. Please provide a summary of a related work experience where you performed preventative maintenance? Please highlight the steps or knowledge you obtained and how you ensured the preventative maintenance was done correctly.
Rated 1 to 10 = Score & Notes ____
Look for actions like reading the maintenance guides or tables from the manufacturer, performing maintenance on the required schedule, looking online for typical maintenance timeline, customized maintenance timeline, performing: oiling, cleaning, vacuuming, recharging, inspection, system diagnostics, system checks, documented maintenance.
27. Please provide a summary of a related work experience where you performed an immediate repair? Please highlight the steps or knowledge you obtained and how you ensured the immediate repair was done correctly and safely.
Rated 1 to 10 = Score & Notes ____
Looking for actions like performing root cause analysis, performing visual inspections, checking all or core functions, reading diagnostic procedures, performing diagnostics, checking components, checking systems with a tool, and using diagnostic test equipment. Reviewing manual, reviewing diagrams, reviewing troubleshooting guide. Unplugging or making the assets safe. Identifying broken, damaged, or wear on components or parts, ordering or obtaining replacement parts. Replacing or upgrading broken parts or components. Reassembling the system. Testing the system, and performing post-repair diagnostics.
28. We believe that your personality is important to hotel maintenance, please tell me about a time your conscientiousness, mindfulness, and attention to completing your duties were important to your job success?
Rated 1 to 10 = Score & Notes ____
Look for actions or tools like creating checklists, timelines, schedules, reviewing team goals, responsibilities, and success criteria.
29. Please tell me about how your friendliness with coworkers, clients, or guests played an important part in your job success and why it is important?
Rated 1 to 10 = Score & Notes ____
Looking for actions like greeting, checking guest or customer comfort, keeping areas clean, being respectful of noise, getting permission to enter, smiling, being friendly, and updating guests on actions.
30. Please tell me about how your organizational abilities played an important part in your success and why it is important?
Rated 1 to 10 = Score & Notes ____
Look for actions like organizing tools, organizing repair kits, keeping parts separated, checking for parts and tools before visits, reading manuals, and using checklists.
31. Please tell me about a time your ability to learn played an important part in your success, and what you do to continue learning your trade?
Rated 1 to 10 = Score & Notes ____
Look for actions like reading manuals, reading troubleshooting guides, watching YouTube videos, reading online forms, searching google for troubleshooting, attending training, continuing certifications, shadowing co-workers, and buying and reading books.
32. Please provide two to three coworkers or former managers at previous positions that can be a reference for your abilities. Provide the company name, email, and phone number, so we may contact them.
Rated 1 to 10 = Score & Notes ____
Background checks are vital to ensure the candidate is accurate and has a reasonable history. This may include doing drug screening, criminal checks, and reference checks.
The best predictor of future work performance is current work performance. That is why reference checks with employers and trial/contract hiring periods are so important. Although this may be a good approach for lower-level maintenance professionals, higher-level supervisors or directors may not be open to trial / contract-based hiring. If a potential hire agrees to a trial/contract hiring period, then set out clear measures by which they will be judged and a timeline for the trial period. For example, a maintenance team member on trial/contract bases will be measured based on maintenance work orders completed in the estimated time frame (conscientiousness), quality of work (attention to detail), and skillsets on the different systems over 2 months, new skillsets learned, friendliness, and general value-added. It is acceptable to hire a couple of several trial/contract maintenance professionals, then narrow down to the ones you want to keep, although this is an added expense it will produce a high-quality maintenance department team in the long run.
Training is a very important and often overlooked area of the hotel maintenance department. If the interview is conducted properly, you will have a list of their skills by functional systems area. This gives the manager the ability to put maintenance staff on low-priority maintenance requests on systems they have little or no knowledge of, thus allowing them to learn. Methods of training hotel maintenance staff include reading this manual, making them read equipment manuals, diagnosis or troubleshooting guides, performing research on google, and watching online repair videos. The manager may want to have staff perform job shadowing for systems they are not familiar with. Finally, the company may want to sponsor the maintenance staff to attend paid training, or attend online maintenance training programs on company time.
Hotel maintenance supervisors and directors will be tasked with reviewing the performance of maintenance staff. Reviews will be broken down into the scoring of the following areas: timeliness, conscientiousness, friendliness, organizational abilities, and new systems or skills learned. Add notes to any exceptional or detracting activities into the relevant sections quarterly or 6-month reviews are bests, and documenting the written reviews is important.
With performance reviews in hand hotel maintenance directors and supervisors can recommend promotions, demotions, pay increases, and laying off given employees. Documentation is key, as hotel general managers would like to see several quarters of performance reviews before making these decisions. Recognizing star performers is important as that helps in retention, and reduces turnover. Demoting maintenance team members is difficult but if accompanied by clear quarterly review feedback it can allow the employee to take corrective action. Finally, laying off employees should be a last resort and performed in cases of breaking company policy or a quarter or more of poor performance.
PropertyHero.ai software offer digital methods to manage hotel maintenance and asset management and avoid the downsides of ad-hoc, paper-based, and impromptu maintenance. The benefits of digital management of these processes are numerous and result in: increased guest satisfaction, increased revenues, avoiding missed or delayed maintenance calls, increased responsiveness, reduced maintenance calls, proper accounting of maintenance costs, forward predictions of maintenance and asset costs, streamlining the asset and maintenance processes, and easier quarterly meetings. With all these benefits and minimal costs by implementing the best practice and tools outlined in this guide, the argument for digital management of hotel maintenance and assets is very strong. The first step in this journey is reviewing this guide and manual to see where gaps in your hotel maintenance and asset management processes exist.
All rights are reserved by PropertyHero.ai. This manual is free for internal use of hotel owners, hotel operators, hotel groups, and hotel consultants. Do not sell, or offer for sale this copyrighted manual. Software providers and competitors to PropertyHero.ai are not permitted to display, copy, offer, sell, or distribute this manual. If you have questions pertaining to this manual please contact PropertyHero.ai.
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