What Are the Duties of a Hotel Housekeeper?
Hotel housekeepers are charged with cleaning and maintaining the rooms and premises in and around a hotel. This may involve sweeping, waxing and polishing floors, emptying waste baskets, changing sheets, folding and ironing clothes and cleaning the rooms and hallways.
Cleaning the hotel rooms each day is the primary duty of a hotel housekeeper. Each morning, housekeepers load supplies necessary for cleaning onto a cart. As guests check out or leave for the day, housekeepers move from room to room carrying out cleaning duties.
Some housekeeping staff members clean the lobbies, elevators and other areas of the hotel. The staff sometimes restocks these areas with consumable items such as coffee creamer in the lobby or toilet paper in public restrooms. Other housekeepers run the washing machines and dryers in the hotel’s laundry room to supply the hotel with clean linens.
After the cleaning is complete, hotel housekeepers may also be charged with putting the final touches to a room, such as spraying air freshener, refolding the towels and wiping down the coffee pot (if the room has one).
In addition to cleaning duties, hotel housekeepers may also be responsible for shared duties, such as delivering beds to guest rooms, replenishing toiletry supplies and lifting and moving lightweight objects around the room.
While a formal education is not required to become a hotel housekeeper, most hotels prefer that housekeepers have at least high school diploma or GED. Most housekeepers receive their training on the job, where they get to work next to a more experienced cleaner.
To work as a hotel housekeeper, candidates will need to have a strong eye for detail. Since they may sometimes be working in close contact with guests, it also helps if hotel housekeepers have good interpersonal and communication skills. Hotel housekeepers spend long hours standing on their feet, while scrubbing, cleaning and dusting; this work environment requires that hotel housekeepers have good stamina.
