What are the pros and cons of being a hotel housekeeper? (2024)

FAQs

What are the pros and cons of being a hotel housekeeper? ›

The pros of being a hotel housekeeper are daytime work shifts and travel opportunities, while the cons are a fast-paced environment and rude clients.

The life of a hotel housekeeper is physically demanding, with long hours spent cleaning and maintaining guest rooms. Bending, reaching, and lifting heavy objects can take a toll on the body and lead to serious injuries such as back pain, sprains, and strains.

Among the toughest jobs to have in the hospitality industry are in housekeeping. From small roadside motels to five-star resorts, cleaning guests' rooms can tax just about every muscle in the body – and that's just the beginning of the risks.

Physical strain and overexertion

Some of the most frequent injuries among housekeeping staff are due to physical strain. Moving heavy furniture, carrying bulky bed linens and performing repetitive motions, such as vacuuming or scrubbing, can lead to musculoskeletal disorders.

A lack of adequate training and experience is a common weakness among cleaning services. Aspiring cleaners may think that cleaning is easy, given that it's a routine activity that most people do regularly. However, many cleaning tasks require specific skills that only come with proper training and experience.

Hotel housekeepers are exposed to a multitude of work hazards that may contribute to job stress, thus leading to adverse health consequences. This study investigated the sources of hotel housekeepers' work-related stress from a holistic work system perspective.

Understanding how many rooms a professional cleaner should tackle per hour is crucial for maintaining efficiency and achieving thorough results in house cleaning. Generally, a housekeeper can effectively manage 3 to 4 rooms per hour, with variations depending on room size and the extent of cleaning required.

The housekeeping team is arguably one of the most hard-working departments in the hospitality industry. Though their work is often unseen (and often taken for granted), housekeeping staff play a pivotal role in one of the most crucial aspects of any hotel — its cleanliness.

As a Hotel Housekeeper, you typically work eight to 10-hour shifts during the day, when hotel guests are out of their rooms for activities, or they are checked out of their rooms.

Creating a housekeeping strategy

It takes roughly 45 minutes for a housekeeping attendant to completely clean a room, although it may take less time if only a basic turn-down service is needed.

What are the side effects of being a housekeeper? ›

Exposure to chemicals in cleaning products, including skin reactions or respiratory illnesses. Exposure to biological infectious diseases from soiled linens, uncapped needles and/or bodily fluids. Slips, trips and falls. Fatigue and other health problems from shift work or long hours of work.

What do we mean by poor housekeeping? One of the most common findings in workplaces is poor housekeeping i.e. untidiness, disorder, poor storage of materials and stock. On many workplace inspection visits one can usually see dirt and dust on the workbenches, light fittings and floors etc.

They typically have a physically heavy workload with a variety of tasks, including pushing carts, vacuuming, moving furniture, scrubbing bathrooms and kitchens, laundry, and changing linens. Many housekeeping staff also work under tight time constraints, under pressure of turning over rooms quickly.

Slip-trip, and fall hazards

Poor housekeeping practices can lead to slip-trip, fall, and other hazards. Workers are more likely to trip on objects, materials, tools and equipment if they aren't properly stored.

Hotels bear higher cleaning costs due to new hygiene regulations. The proliferation of opt-in and opt-out housekeeping was the result. In both cases, guests can choose whether they want a daily room cleaning during their stay.