A while ago, I was staying at a beautiful resort. The suite was spacious and well-appointed with many of the comforts of home, and then some. It boasted a large beautiful bedroom, grand bathroom with Jacuzzi, living room and a kitchen with an island. Shortly after checking in, I soon discovered several unfortunate issues.
- There was a loose bathroom faucet; the entire faucet moved when operated
- Another faucet was very tight and extremely difficult to rotate left or right
- Under the kitchen sink, a cupboard door was loose and held onto its frame precariously.
These maintenance problems are not the types which suddenly appear. Rather, they slowly degrade over time to eventually manifest themselves to what I observed.
I was perplexed. The accommodation had been meticulously cleaned before I arrived. How was it possible for these conspicuous problems to be present? My guess is that there was no system in place for the housekeeping staff to report issues to management, who would in turn dispatch maintenance.
A possible approach is to implement a maintenance checklist/form for the housekeeping staff. This form would be divided into sections representing each room and the housekeeping staff would check-off items, identifying anything in need of repair or adjustment. We could also add a general “other comments” box as a catch-all. The completed list would be given to management or directly to maintenance, for all issues identified to be resolved promptly.
Systems are wonderful. Once in place, they quietly work for you. In the example above, systems are like plugs for a leaky bucket.