“Reception: Departure in room 302. Next guest expected tomorrow at 9.30 

Operations: Ok, noted, I’m going to pass the information to housekeeping 

Operations: Cleaning required in 302, followed by an inspection. Arrival expected tomorrow at 9.30

Housekeeping team: Noted, I’ll get on with it. I’ll let you know when I’ve finished.”

Does that sound familiar? Then take a moment to discover the new app from Infraspeak: Housekeeper, developed with the hotel sector in mind. 

 

What is Housekeeper? 

Housekeeper is Infraspeak’s new app, created to optimise the management of housekeeping and maintenance operations in spaces such as hotels, chalets and other types of accommodation, without the back and forth of calls and messages. 

 

This application enables you to manage assets, in other words, locations like hotel rooms, and pieces of equipment like beds and lifts. It also helps distribute work more efficiently. But that’s not all! Among the possibilities, the main advantages of Housekeeper are:

 

Greater visibility and control

You just need to take a look at the Asset Dashboard to stay informed about everything that is happening. You can find out the status of each asset, jobs schedules, in progress and closed, who is carrying out the work, evaluate the SLAs and also know the occupancy rate of your accommodation.
In other words, you can find out what is happening, where it is happening and who is doing it.

 

This type of information enables you to adapt your operations and respond appropriately to the real needs of your accommodation. 

 

Elimination of repetitive tasks and centralisation

With Housekeeper, you can transform routine tasks into automations and free yourself from repetitive tasks, which have until now been coordinated by telephone and on paper. Moreover, since Housekeeper combines with the Infraspeak mobile (technician’s app), your team, whether housekeeping or maintenance, knows what work needs to be done and, as soon as it’s finished, it can be marked as closed. 

The automations and combination with the technician’s app makes the operation more agile and efficient. Everything is centralised in one place, in Infraspeak. 

 

Integration potential with PMS

Another of Housekeeper’s strengths is the possibility of integrating it with Property Management Systems (PMS), meaning, software for managing bookings, arrivals and departures. 

 

With this synergy, you will be able to simplify communication between reception and your team, combining booking and occupancy details with the housekeeping and maintenance operations. That way, you don’t just optimise the processes, the entire working routine of your staff is improved. 

 

[And, while we’re at it… Have you heard of Infraspeak integration with Nonius? Nonius is a hub of technological solutions for the hotel sector which facilitates the integration of various PMS solutions, from Opera, Tesipro, to so many others. Find out more about this solution here]. 

 

One operation, different statuses

Housekeeper is based on asset status change, in other words, whether the room is clean, dirty, ready for inspection, etc. These statuses should reflect your hotel’s operational flow so that Housekeeper can satisfy the real needs of your accommodation. 

So, by configuring Housekeeper, in addition to having to associate asset categories and technical skills, you will need to create statuses and order them in accordance with your operations. 

 

Example of statuses: Clean, Dirty, Free/Dirty, Ready for inspection

 

Statuses help to keep your operation organised, enabling you to know the status of each asset at all times. Moreover, they are a starting point for automations. 

Infraspeak's new app, Housekeeper

Automations 

An automation is an automatic and customisable workflow (or part of it), where a stimulus triggers an action, moving an asset from the initial status to a final status. 

 

[ Initial status -» Automation -» Final status] 

 

Through Housekeeper’s automations, you will be able to define what happens to an asset of a specific building and define an automatic flow of operations.

 

In the case of Housekeeper, you can create 2 types of automations: 

 

Time-based automation 

Time-based automation has the aim of altering the status of the asset.
An asset from a specific category moves from the initial status to the final status every day at the established time.

 

Example: Every day at 06.00, the assets from the Double Room category move from Clean status to Occupied/Dirty status.

On check-out day, you can change the rules and opt for one of following options: 

  • Maintain automation.
  • Stop the automation, in other words, the asset remains in its initial stage.
  • Maintain the automation, changing to a different final status, for example, Free/Dirty

 

Status-based automation

Status-based automation has the aim of scheduling jobs. In other words, instead of modifying the status, as happens in time-based automation, this automation triggers the scheduling of a job order that your team must carry out. As soon as this task is completed, this asset will move to a new status. 

 

Example: When the assets of a Double Room category move to the Occupied/Dirty status, the Daily Housekeeping tasks will be scheduled. As soon as they are finished, it moves to the Clean status.

 

The main advantage of both types of automations is that you can combine them to create automated workflows that guarantee the consistency of your operations and level of quality. By combining the time-based automations with the status-based automations, you will be able to create workflows such as:

 

Status A -» Time-based automation -» Status B -» Status-based automation -» Scheduled job order -» Job closed -» Status C -» (And so on…Isn’t it fantastic?)

 

By way of example, this sequence would result in something similar to: 

Every day at 06.00, the assets from the Double Room category move from the Clean status to Occupied/Dirty status. When the assets of a Double Room category move to the Occupied/Dirty status, the Daily Housekeeping job will be scheduled. As soon as the job is closed, it moves to the Clean status.

 

Similar to what happens with other tasks on Infraspeak, you can associate an SLA to Housekeeper’s jobs while creating a status-based automation. 

 

Infraspeak's new app, Housekeeper

 

The Asset Dashboard

Housekeeper organises the rooms, teams and other assets on a highly intuitive panel: the Asset Dashboard, where each column corresponds to a status and each card corresponds to an asset.

 

Through the Asset Dashboard you will be able to: 

  1.  Find out the status of assets.
  2. Assign jobs to your team or find out who they are assigned to.
  3. Discover the most relevant data regarding the assets and access more information.
  4. Find out which jobs with SLA are at risk of not being completed.
  5. Move assets to another status and trigger automations manually (you can just drag and drop the cards).
  6. Use filters so you only see what you want to see.

 

Among other data, in the cards for each asset, you will be able to discover the check-in and check-out date, the following job, who it is assigned to (or assign it using the button) and tally of the SLA.  The icons and colour scheme make it easier to interpret the information, making the experience highly intuitive.

 

Infraspeak's new app, Housekeeper

 

With Housekeeper, you free yourself from repetitive tasks, coordinate operations with ease and ensure that everything is perfect and ready to welcome your guests. 

 

If you’re already using Infraspeak, connect Housekeeper here, or contact your Customer Success Manager.
Not an Infraspeak user yet? Schedule a free demo!