EP #37 – An Open and Shut Case for Cleaning Guest Rooms

Cleaning guest rooms with the door 0pen or closed? Hotel housekeeping can be a dangerous job.   A harmless ask. A simple delivery. General cleaning. Restocking rooms. Greeting guests in the hallway. These are all duties performed by hotel housekeeping staff every day in millions of hotels across the world. Tasks that seem routine and relatively safe. But the fact is staff puts up with a lot and often their safety can be at risk.   Take the example of the well-known Dominique Strauss-Kahn allegations from 2011. Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the International Monetary Fund and once-front-runner for French President, was arrested and later settled for sexual assault charges leveled against him for brutally sexually assaulting a housekeeper that was cleaning his room while he was present. Read more here. This was the case that encouraged many New York City hotels, and eventually others in major cities across the U.S., to provide their housekeeping staff with panic buttons.   Another example comes from the Sunshine State where a Holiday Inn Express housekeeper in Collier County, Florida, was sexually assaulted at gunpoint after a guest entered the room she was cleaning and claimed she didn’t make the bed well enough. He then demanded she “treat him well” or he would kill her. Read more here.   Yet another recent example where a millionaire in a Washington, D.C., hotel harassed a maid who was making his bed by grabbing her buttocks and making lewd comments about her. A situation many hotel workers say is all too common. Read more here.   And it’s not limited to those simply cleaning the rooms. Any staff making deliveries might be at risk too. That was the case in the story of a New York City hotel employee that was asked to bring tissues to a guest. Upon making the delivery, the door was shut behind her and she was asked for her phone number. She gave a fake number and explained she wasn’t interested which gave her enough time to unlock the door and leave but not before becoming extremely uncomfortable.   How do you keep your hotel employees safe?   The list goes on and on. And unfortunately, many of these occurrences aren’t even reported due to workers being afraid they won’t be taken seriously or fear of upsetting the guests or damaging the hotel’s reputation. They say there are three sides to every story and the truth is somewhere in the middle. But for this episode, there’s no gray area – when it comes to cleaning with doors open or closed, the answer is an open and shut door case. Keeping your hotel employees safe when they clean rooms is a paramount concern in today’s climate. And in an industry where the “customer is always right” we have to be vigilant to make sure the customer is happy, but also that housekeeper safety is at the forefront of our minds. In this episode, I’ll cover what I feel is the best approach to the door open or shut debate based on my 30 years of hospitality experience and countless feedback from hotel managers and employees. Topics include: * Keeping housekeeping staff safe with closed-door cleaning * Keeping guest belongings safe