Hospitality Management Guest talk

Date: 4 March 2011 (week 7)
Time: 0930-1030
Venue: LT-11
Guest lecturer: Mr Paul Wong (Executive housekeeper @ The HabourView Place)

Introduction to various hospitality organizations
Before working in hotel, Paul worked in hospital (QE) for long years. The core services of hospital are not only medical and nursing but also supporting function of service.
In hotel, average length of guest stay is 1.98-2 days. Less flexibility is the challenge to the hotel business. it is because the cleaning is difficult and more complaints will be received from long stayed guests.

What is Housekeeping Department?
Besides F&B department, Housekeeping department is the 2^nd large headcount department. There are 5 main areas of housekeeping:
1.    Rooms division
2.    Public area cleaning
3.    Uniform & linen
4.    In-house laundry
5.    Flourish

Profit and Loss
In the hotel, each department need to responsible for the profit & loss. Housekeeping department is a huge cost center as it involves millions of payroll. The cleaning chemical and salary of workers weight heavily in the department. Therefore, department should find more source to earn more profit.
Rooms division: cost center (as revenue counts to sales & marketing)
Public area: cost center (as revenue counts to F&B)
Laundry: major revenue center (provide charged clothing laundry service to guest)
 To reduce the financial expense of the department and be more flexible, it will use more casual worker.

Stock Management and Inventory Control
There are 2 threats to the inventory of hotel – breakage & pilferage. As a result, department need to be very careful about the inventory level of:
Amenities (shampoo, comb…)Operating equipment (cup, hanger & bathrobe…)
To ensure the efficient operation, par stock must = 5 pars (able to be use in hotel 3 times)

People Management
Managing people is more difficult that managing things like linen.
1.    Room attendantsThe amount is very large but their roles are very important. But the education level of front line room attendants is low. Most of them are new immigrant from mainland China. So we need to be careful when dealing with the subordinates.
2.    Guests“DND policy – do not disturb”. Although guests do not want hotel staff to disturb, hotel will call them at 2 pm everyday to ensure their safety. Some guests think this action is annoying and complain. Housekeep need to manage the angry guests.

Learning insights
Housekeeping Department of the hotel is actually not boring
It is very interesting
The future of the industry is great and involves many opportunities
As a beginner, we should put our effort on learning from the basic task