For years, hotel maintenance has been seen as a “necessary evil”. It was mostly reactive maintenance, which only came into play when something was damaged. Minor repairs to plasterboard walls, painting walls stained by suitcase wheels, substitution of damaged TVs, replacing towel racks, fixing water leaks, and unclogging toilets. However, having a reactive attitude with all the equipment in your hotel can be expensive. This is where preventive maintenance for hotels comes in, often supported by cmms software to streamline maintenance operations.
When it comes to hospitality, preventive maintenance has several advantages. The first is to offer more safety to everyone who uses the hotel, as it prevents outbreaks of legionella and other public health problems (and by the way, you can also improve the safety your hotel conventions with contactless event check-in and capacity control tools). The second is to provide a more pleasant stay for your guests, as it significantly reduces unscheduled downtime. The third is a longer useful life of the equipment, which provides a higher return on investment.
Beyond safety and service quality, hotels must also ensure they meet safety regulations and health standards, making compliance management software crucial for tracking inspections and maintaining regulatory compliance. This becomes particularly important when dealing with legionella prevention and other public health requirements that hotels face.
The prospect of more safety, better service quality, and savings in maintenance should be enough to sharpen your interest in preventive maintenance for hotels. But how? A 2005 study performed in hotels from one of our favourite holiday destinations – the Algarve – indicates that 4-star hotels have an average of 5.7 maintenance staff. In 5-star hotels that number rises to 18.8 (as if there were doubts that maintenance also contributes to top service!). Modern hotels often leverage asset management software to help these teams track and maintain their equipment more efficiently.
Maintenance teams, which include engineers, electricians, plumbers, carpenters, gardeners, housekeeping, and multipurpose maintenance technicians, make up a relatively small percentage of employees. Many hotels resort to outsourcing for the maintenance of lifts, HVAC equipment, and swimming pools, for example. This does not mean that you should not have a general maintenance program, with some monitoring activities in charge of your internal team.
Whether you’re managing maintenance internally or through outsourcing, hotels with multiple properties or those that coordinate with external contractors often benefit from field service management software to manage maintenance activities across different locations. This becomes especially valuable when coordinating between your internal team and subcontracted services.
Start by surveying equipment that needs preventive maintenance. Then, plan more in-depth maintenance for the low season, so as not to disturb normal hotel activity. Finally, determine what services you need to subcontract to another company and which ones are performed by your team. Many hotels find that facility management software helps coordinate these activities effectively. We’ll give you a helping hand! We have prepared a maintenance checklist for hotels so that you can:
As you develop your maintenance program, remember that effective hotel maintenance also requires proper tracking of spare parts and supplies, which is where inventory management software becomes essential for maintaining adequate stock levels. This ensures your team has the necessary materials to complete both scheduled and unexpected maintenance tasks.
- better plan your maintenance activities;
- help your maintenance team to fulfil all essential tasks on a daily basis;
- evaluate the activities to be carried out with any external suppliers.
The checklist includes a list of preventive maintenance tasks for hotels for the following equipment:
- Lifts and docks
- Air handling units
- Cooling towers
- Chillers
- Boilers
- Industrial kitchens
- Electrical installation
- Generators
- Industrial laundry
- Water points and plumbing
- Swimming pools and spas
- Gymnasiums
- Solar panels
- Fire pumping station and other safety services
- Gardening and outdoors
- And preventive tasks to provide greater comfort to your guests.
We give you a suggestion on how often you should perform each task and some extra predictive maintenance tips for hotels. If you have any HVAC equipment that is not on this list, remember that you can also consult our HVAC Maintenance Checklist.
For large hotel properties with complex facility requirements, you may need a comprehensive cafm system to integrate all aspects of facility management and maintenance operations. This becomes particularly valuable when managing the extensive equipment lists like those covered in our maintenance checklist.