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Cleanliness matters. Last year, an American Hotel and Lodging Association (AHLA) survey ranked cleaning as the second most important factor likely to influence guests' choice of stay. Given rogue stains and grimey surfaces are a one-way ticket to a negative review, how can coliving and serviced apartment operators ensure that every unit is spick and span?
A property management system streamlines the housekeeping process, so that operators stay on top of cleaning rotas across multiple properties. From improving efficiency to providing remote quality control, a PMS brushes away the housekeeping burden and generates positive reviews.
Scheduling tasks
All operators dream of high occupancy and minimal gaps between bookings. But short turn-arounds in busy periods put undue stress on housekeeping. Especially if you have multiple units across multiple sites.
A property management system alleviates that stress. Synchronise housekeeping with your booking calendar, and the system will automatically generate cleaning tasks for check-in and check-out. Operators can set automated preferences according to stay length and apartment type - such as weekly cleans for month-long stays or daily towel changes for multi-bedroom apartments - and add ‘stop-sells’ to prevent guests from booking a particular unit for a set period (i.e. 24 hours after previous booking), making time for a full clean.
In addition, property managers can manually assign tasks to housekeepers using checklists, creating personalised to-do lists for housekeeping staff, arranging new activities per location and prioritising urgent jobs. Housekeeping staff simply view their daily rota by logging into the mobile app.
Live updates
Plan for disruption, but don’t let it disrupt your plans. Be it last-minute bookings or an urgent cleaning task, housekeeping tasks and priorities change throughout the day.
A property management system facilitates live two-way updates between management and housekeeping staff. Using the mobile app and push notifications, managers can add customer requests to cleaning checklists, notify cleaners of cancellations or ask the nearest available cleaner to address an urgent incident. Housekeepers provide updates and inform managers of expected delays, which avoids inefficient back and forth.
What’s more, with remote keyless check-in, housekeeping staff can access properties without physical keys using an on-app access code. This enables managers to assign them with last-minute tasks in different units and properties.
Real-time reports
Hospitality data is not limited to occupancy figures or revenue numbers. With a coliving and serviced apartment property management system, operators access meaningful housekeeping data.
In each unit, data captures cleaning time, unit size and location, so managers can work out the length of each task to plan future schedules. Housekeepers can use the mobile app to take and upload photos, proving cleanliness or highlighting any property damage. From quality control and complaint insurance, to regulatory compliance and performance-tracking, managers can use the property management system data to oversee all housekeeping issues and trends across their portfolio.
Great guest experience = positive reviews
When it comes to guest experience, housekeeping used to be a slippery slope: bad housekeeping generated negative reviews, but good housekeeping rarely generated positive reviews. This all changes when you integrate housekeeping automation with a property management system. Guests control their cleaning preferences. They can request more frequent laundry services and request housekeepers come to their apartment at specified times.
At res:harmonics, our housekeeping app connects all members of the guest-management-housekeeping triangle. Specifically designed for coliving and serviced apartment operators, housekeeping automation saves management time and money, boosts cleaning performance and works to deliver incredible guest experience. Now that’s worthy of a positive review.
Download the Ultimate Guide to Serviced Apartment Property Management Software 2023 to learn how property management software supports serviced apartment operators.
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