02 Nov 2021
Hotel cleanliness has long been at the top of the list for hotel guest satisfaction. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, hotels were regularly conducting room cleanliness checks. Commonly, a supervisor or manager would check a sampling of rooms – 10 percent is a typical sample size – to ensure they were properly cleaned. A housekeeping supervisor or general manager might conduct the inspection using a pen and paper system with a checklist or focus on a list of items that are often overlooked. After conducting the inspection, management might fill out the form, usually placing it in a binder or storing it in a stack of papers.
While some hotels have established good tracking processes or transitioned to digital records of the room inspections, the average hotel still has difficulty ensuring compliance with room check policies. Hotel or housekeeping management either skip the inspection altogether or fill out the forms without actually conducting the inspection. When these important verification steps are skipped, hotels will only know of issues with room readiness and cleanliness if guests complain directly. Only a small percentage of customer-facing issues actually result in complaints to the hotel. A majority of room readiness mistakes go unknown to management, while still tainting the guest experience and resulting in little to no staff accountability.
The sheer volume of paper or records that typical room check inspection processes generate is another challenge – think stacks of paper forms, shelves full of binders, but most of all, no method to clearly communicate the results to management or ownership.
How can technology simplify and improve the verification of daily cleaning in guest rooms? One approach is FreshCheck, a new technology that enables hotel management to ensure high levels of cleanliness. FreshCheck Inspection Verification uses connected devices in guest rooms and an easy-to-use mobile app to reliably verify room cleanliness and readiness.
The FreshCheck system is simple, easy, and requires no integration with other infrastructure. The small device (1.5-inch x 1.5-inch x 1-inch deep) is installed in each hotel room in a discreet location. The device electronically marks a specific location, so the inspector must be within close proximity to the device to check in at that location.
The room inspector checks a room and then uses the FreshCheck mobile app to record the inspection. The inspector’s mobile device must be in the room and within 10 feet of that room’s device to check in. That room will then be verified as inspected, and the inspector can move on to the next room.
Hotel management can view cleaning verifications and run detailed daily reports on inspected rooms. Those with multiple properties can receive a rollup report of all inspections conducted, enabling management to compare results across their portfolio and eliminate the need to mail stacks of paper or, if digital, sift through unreliable and lengthy records. The app provides a simple way to accurately verify the daily cleaning of each room, improve cleanliness, and improve guest satisfaction.