Improving the housekeeping experience: A UX Case Study
The tiny fraction of time between a guest check-out and the next check-in remains one of the most demanding and high-pressure environments within the hotel industry.
At the centre of this hustle is the Housekeeping staff, who are expected to tackle their daily chores, and respond to and respect the intricate requests of enigmatic guests while constantly reporting to the front desk. According to a study, the checklist of cleaning a single room can be at times higher than 18 tasks combined. And estimates say, something as trivial as finding the next room to clean can take 10 to 15 per cent of a housekeeper’s time.
The majority of the industry still runs on paper assignments and telephonic delegations. Imagine a Front Desk and a Housekeeping Manager handling the staff operations during a peak season. Decisions would be made on the fly with inaccurate or inadequate information, leading to some unsavoury outcomes.
Double booking, missed requests, delays etc. are the least of it. At times, the stories are so abysmal that there’s even a dedicated subreddit for the same.
The product was envisioned as a response to this inefficient system helping the housekeeping staff and front desk operators to manage their workload. The aim was to build focused tools to increase the visibility of housekeeping activities, enforce transparent communication and retain customer satisfaction.
To help the industry from being on its toes constantly, we needed to build a solution that could exist on top of existing hotel management platforms. Everest was approached when the product was in its nascent form existing between google sheets and rough sketches. The first step was to Understand.
Understanding the landscape of user behaviour.
We quickly realized the bottlenecks of housekeeping management as we started our conversations with industry veterans.
- A lack of transparency in activity progress: Increasing the need for synchronous communication between housekeeper and front desk
- Dependency on multiple platforms: Room, Occupancy, and Cleaning statuses are managed on different platforms with scattered access.
- Need to make quick decisions on their feet: Be it a housekeeping manager handling new check-ins, or a housekeeper handling guest requests.
To paint an example, imagine a scenario where the housekeeper has been informed of a cleaning request by a guest from the front desk. By the time they arrive — they see that a DND sign has been put up. Taking the request on priority means they have to ‘knock’. Not respecting it means ‘delay’.
The best-case scenario is to call the Front Desk/Housekeeping Manager who then call the customer to confirm the request. And then passes on such information back to the staff. Which again means, delay.
Post this, we talked to users aged 20–35 mostly comprising women and university students, who have either worked or were working in the industry to understand behaviour while users were at the task.
The exercise brought forward interesting key insights:
- The Housekeeping staff do not want to spend their time on what to do next or which rooms or requests to prioritize.
- Even though the rooms have been prioritized and the housekeeper has their hands full and shift packed; there are often new requests to take care of. Housekeepers usually respond to any new requests based on where it’s deriving from — front desk, housekeeping manager or the guest.
- Many of the hotel management software needs to be updated manually back and forth since the option to auto-sync is not present. And the information exists and is passed around multiple systems. For example: TigerTMS for Room Status, Impala for Reservation Status and Cleaning status in Oracle.
- During one session, we got to know that Housekeeping managers are also expected to physically inspect and ensure the quality of any cleaning. But during peak seasons and group bookings, rooms are often marked as clean without an inspection, given the hectic schedule.
Over the course of 12 weeks, the design team was set to work closely with the engineering team to define the product and build it within the technical, timeline and industry constraints.
Building the moat
To make the product simple and adaptable to different user needs and the constraints under which the product exists — the team decided on a few key areas of focus.
a. Foundation of Key Decisions
Since the key information sits on different platforms, Housekeeping managers (HMs) can only look at a singular data point at any time. For the platform to function, it had to fetch details like Type, Size, Room & Cleaning status (live), so that requests can be created and assigned without friction.
The proposed dashboard made it easier for users to get ‘At a glance’ view of the hotel. Tagged rooms showcase details of each room. To start the day, HMs can filter by dirty rooms and start creating and assigning requests. Throughout the day, checkouts/check-ins are notified so that relevant activities can be planned and assigned.
b. Optimizing the request flow
Originally, the requests were assigned in the morning by the HM in the first meeting of the day with housekeeping staff. But as we have mentioned earlier, the requests are generated throughout the day which creates the need for constant communication.
Having worked in hotel operations for close to 25 years now, I know how difficult it can be to manage a busy housekeeping department. Task lists change constantly and communication between staff can be lost very quickly.
- Senior Level Director
The digitized experience solves this by creating automated and manual requests which can be created and assigned at any point of the day. During this process, HMs are notified and have a view of which rooms need cleaning along with details of which staff might be available to assign.
We made sure that the recommended staff for any cleaning requests is in a similar flooring area so that housekeepers don’t have to traverse between floors. A request can be marked as a high priority which makes it sit on top of the task list of a Housekeeper.
These requests are then forwarded to the housekeeper in a simple mobile application, built specifically for them.
c. Empowering Guests
Having established the need for a digital multi-channel experience, we decided to build a very small interface for guests. Hosted on a tablet inside the room, it provides the guest with the ability to mark their room as DND or create a cleaning request (Make Up My Room).
Linked to the Housekeeper Manager’s interface, this helps provide further information about the room and nature of the request (like time, last clean, previously assigned staffer etc.) — without any interruption to the guest. This helps in driving informed decisions for HMs and Front desk operators.
Design-driven product outcomes
a. Successfully launched the MVP to a newly minted 400-room luxury hotel chain in Australia, building to expand further.
b. Increased efficiency and streamlined processes for housekeeping staff with minimal training requirements.
c. Set the stage by building a scalable system that allows for feature expansion and delivery.
