Housekeeping jobs are some of the most vital positions within any business in the hotel industry, but there is sometimes some confusion about what these jobs entail and the skills needed. In this article, you will be able to read a detailed housekeeping job description so that you understand the role itself and the qualities required for success.

Table of Contents:

The Hotel Industry: An Overview

Before providing a comprehensive hotel housekeeping job description, it is important to be as clear as possible about what the hotel industry is. Almost all widely accepted definitions agree that the hotel industry is the industry built around providing temporary guest accommodation and related services for paying customers.

Despite the name, the hotel industry actually includes any form of short-term, overnight guest accommodation business. However, it does not include long-term or permanent types of accommodation.

The “Hotel Industry: Everything You Need to Know About Hotels!” guide offers much more information.

What is Hotel Housekeeping?

To provide a housekeeping job description, it is necessary to establish precisely what hotel housekeeping actually is. Housekeeping can be broadly defined as the process of maintaining cleanliness, hygiene, orderliness, and safety. It is the department responsible for cleaning and tidying a hotel or similar business, providing a pleasant and comfortable environment for guests, ensuring in-room items are replenished, and carrying out tasks related to general upkeep.

In the “Housekeeping Department in Hotel Businesses: Why Is It So Important?” article, you will be able to learn more about housekeeping and why it is so valuable while accessing some useful housekeeping tips.

Why is Hotel Housekeeping Important?

Any good housekeeping job descriptions emphasize the value employees working in these roles provide to the business and its customers. Housekeeping staff helps to ensure the property is clean, hygienic, and tidy. They are partially responsible for ensuring the accommodation is safe and operating properly.

Given these responsibilities, it is clear that the hotel housekeeping department has a major influence on guest satisfaction. If guests arrive at a messy or unclean hotel or enter their room to find that items have not been restocked or replenished, it is going to negatively affect their opinion of the accommodation.

Housekeeping staff are a key part of preparing rooms for new guests. Many situations can occur during a stay that may require assistance from the housekeeping department. These include any instances where hotel rooms or other areas of the hotel need to be cleaned or when items like bed sheets need to be replaced.

The success of a hotel is largely based on meeting customer expectations in areas like comfort and cleanliness, while the visual appeal of a hotel can be the difference between selling a room or failing to do so. In other words, a room attendant, laundry assistant, or other housekeeping team member could have a direct bearing on business outcomes.

Housekeeping Job Description: The Key Job Roles

The precise number and nature of roles that will require a housekeeping job description to be written will depend on the size of your hotel, your budget, and the level of service you want to provide. However, in general, housekeeping departments are typically led by a housekeeping manager or executive, who may also have an assistant.

Often, below these figures on the hierarchy, you will have supervisors for specific areas of housekeeping. For instance, a laundry supervisor and a floor supervisor. These supervisors may manage teams of attendants, such as room attendant staff, laundry attendants, and so on. At the bottom of the hierarchy would be trainee staff.

Of course, smaller hotels may have much smaller teams, and some of these positions may not exist.

9 Skills Specified in Any Good Housekeeping Job Description

In the following sections, you can learn about the skills that are required for housekeeping roles. This allows you to create a better, more detailed housekeeping job description and person specification.

1. Cleaning Skills

A large number of housekeeping duties are directly related to cleaning, so a housekeeping job description will need to make clear that cleaning skills are necessary. This cleaning will also take a number of different forms.

For instance, it may be necessary to scrub surfaces, vacuum clean floors and wash bed linen. All cleaning activities should be thorough and carried out with the right level of care. A clean hotel will make a good impression on guests, while an unclean hotel will attract negative feedback and hurt your hotel’s reputation.

Housekeeping 101: Efficiently Cleaning a Guest Room

2. Hygiene Skills and Awareness

Hygiene is vital within any accommodation business, and it has become even more essential in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, with guest awareness of hygiene issues at an all-time high. Housekeeping staff need to have an awareness of hygiene and the skills to perform hygiene-related tasks.

An example of this would be disinfecting surfaces. A surface may look visibly clean, but still harbor invisible threats. Disinfecting the surface could help to keep your hotel’s guests safe. Your housekeeping job description should make clear that there is a health and safety component to the role and that cleaning is not merely superficial.

3. Organization Skills

Throughout all of the different roles associated with housekeeping, organization skills can play a valuable role and this explains why they are often requested in housekeeping job description and person specification documents. In particular, housekeeping staff need to have the capacity to prioritize the right tasks.

Staff may need to organize their housekeeping trolley logically. Within a laundry room, it is important to be able to sort laundry properly, separating clean and dirty items and ensuring the right items are washed together. Beyond this, organization skills are useful for tidying, cleaning rooms, and keeping public spaces clear.

4. Laundry Knowledge

Skills that are relevant to carrying out laundry tasks are absolutely essential, and there is a lot to remember. Housekeeping staff need to know how to wash sheets and towels properly, dry them, and store them appropriately.

Examples of some of the specific knowledge that may be needed include an understanding of how to use washing machines and dryers and an awareness of the right temperature to wash different items on. Other skills that you might highlight in a housekeeping job description include ironing skills and sheet folding skills.

Housekeeping: Laundry Operations

5. Teamwork Skills

The housekeeping department needs to work together as a team, and this is why teamwork is usually specified as an important quality in a housekeeping job description. Even in relatively small hotels, there will usually be multiple housekeeping staff working at any given time and it is vital to divide housekeeping responsibilities up.

Teamwork skills include the ability to communicate effectively, the ability to delegate, the ability to follow instructions and the ability to work together with other people to achieve common goals. By working well as a team, the housekeeping department can respond to operational needs and guests’ needs more efficiently and effectively.

6. Precision and Attention to Detail

When crafting a housekeeping job description, it is worth highlighting the need for precision and attention to detail in general. After all, housekeeping jobs are the types of roles where the small details really matter, and they can make the difference between a positive guest experience and a negative one.

It can be relatively easy to overlook a minor issue that really matters to your guests. There is a need to be precise with cleaning, laundry and preparing each hotel room, and the best workers will be able to notice small problems early and correct them before they become a bigger issue.

7. Customer Service Skills

Housekeeping staff will often come into contact with guests within the hotel. This is especially likely when staff are cleaning hotel rooms and public spaces, but they may also encounter guests in other situations too. At times, guests may ask them questions or request assistance, and housekeeping employees need to be able to step up.

For this reason, customer service skills feature prominently in a typical housekeeping job description. Staff need to be able to speak politely to customers, respond appropriately to questions, de-escalate issues if customers are angry about something, and generally work towards ensuring guests enjoy the most pleasant stay possible.

8. Flexibility and Adaptability

Any good housekeeping job description should specify the need for flexibility and adaptability. After all, housekeeping staff are often required to respond to situations as they occur, and it is not always possible to plan out every task or action that will need to be performed.

The best housekeeping staff can think on their feet and respond to situations calmly but decisively. Staff will also need to be able to adapt their schedule based on the precise circumstances they encounter. For instance, they may need to clean rooms when they are vacant, or they might need to carry out unexpected laundry tasks.

9. Sensitivity and Trustworthiness

Finally, your housekeeping job description needs to highlight the fact that trustworthiness and sensitivity are absolutely crucial to success. Housekeeping staff can access hotel rooms and could be alone in those rooms with valuable items. Therefore, you need to make sure you are employing people of good character.

Any question marks over the character of a candidate, such as their integrity, their honesty, and their trustworthiness, should be central to your eventual hiring decisions. The cost of having a housekeeping employee who betrays your trust or the trust of guests is devastating and can have a major impact on your hotel’s reputation.

6 Duties You Should Be Aware of When Creating a Housekeeping Job Description

Below, you can explore some of the main duties to remember when creating a job description. Being clear on duties can help when attempting to attract individuals who want a hotel career in the housekeeping department.

Housekeeping Job Description Quote

1. Cleaning Hotel Rooms

The biggest responsibility associated with housekeeping is cleaning hotel rooms. This is an activity that needs to be carried out each time a guest checks out so that the room can be prepared for the arrival of the next guest. However, room cleaning may also need to occur during a guest’s stay in the hotel.

Regardless of precise timing, the duties here will include thoroughly cleaning bathrooms, vacuuming carpets, cleaning furniture in the hotel room, dusting various items in the room, and disinfecting surfaces.

2. Disposing of Trash and Waste

Another of the duties mentioned in a typical housekeeping job description will involve disposing of trash and other waste. This includes guest waste and waste generated by the various hotel departments.

It is important to always keep on top of this particular task, as excess trash in a hotel room is unhygienic and could lead to bad odors, or valuable space being taken up. Aside from physically removing trash from hotel rooms and other key areas, housekeeping staff need to know where to put the trash, how to handle it safely, and how to dispose of it so that your hotel’s waste removal activities are in keeping with local regulations and best practices.

3. Changing Towels and Bedding

Aside from cleaning hotel rooms, part of the process of getting rooms ready for new guests will involve providing fresh towels and bed linen. It may also be necessary to replace these items during a guest’s stay too.

Thus, various associated duties will be required. Housekeeping staff will need to develop a system for replacing items in hotel rooms and ensuring that guests always have clean bed sheets and towels. The housekeeping team will also need to know how to put bed sheets on so that the bed is comfortable and looks presentable.

4. Replenishing Supplies

Supplies in hotel rooms will need to be replenished between guests and potentially during guest stays. Examples of this include toilet paper, soap, shower gel, and other toiletries, along with items in the room, including tea bags, coffee supplies, soft drinks, and basic snacks.

It may also be worth highlighting in a housekeeping job description that this responsibility can extend beyond hotel rooms. For example, it may be the duty of housekeeping staff to ensure hand gel is always available in the hotel for guests to use and public restrooms have all of the necessary supplies.

5. Laundry Duties

One of the biggest needs in any hotel or guest accommodation business is clean sheets, towels, and other similar items. Therefore, laundry duties form a key part of a typical housekeeping job description.

Not only will housekeeping staff need to know how to wash, dry, and prepare towels, bed linen, and other similar items, but they will also need to develop a routine for washing these items efficiently. Clean items need to be kept separate from dirty items and need to be stored hygienically, and ready for use.

6. Keeping Public Areas Clean

When it comes to impressing guests, any hotel owner or manager knows that guest rooms are only part of the battle. Guests are also going to form their opinions about their experience from the public areas in your property too, so you need to make sure your housekeeping department is keeping these areas clean and tidy.

Floors and surfaces need to be cleaned regularly, and any wet floors need to be clearly marked to avoid accidents. Your housekeeping job description may also highlight the need to keep public areas clutter-free.

Everything to Know About Hotel Management

A housekeeping job description will cover a large number of duties, which actually provide a great base for a long career in the hotel industry. Many of those working in the industry ultimately aspire to work in hotel management, however, so it may be useful to explore what this entails and the main responsibilities.

In the guide “Hotel Management: Everything You Need to Know About Managing a Hotel“, you will find out the most critical information about what a hotel manager does and why the role is so important.

The Main Trends Within the Hotel Industry

When creating a housekeeping job description, you must remain aware of the key hotel trends. This includes trends that are directly related to the housekeeping department, as well as trends that may not be as immediately obvious. Examples of major trends right now include AI, VR, and the rise of ‘bleisure’ travel and the metaverse.

In the guide “Hotel Trends: Discover The Latest Hotel Industry Trends” you can examine the major trends in the hotel industry, including housekeeping trends like the renewed emphasis on safety and hygiene.

An Overview of Hotel Technology Trends

Your housekeeping job description may also draw attention to the need to use housekeeping technology. This could include everything from hotel apps to robots. Meanwhile, the rest of the hotel should also use up-to-date technology, ranging from AI and contactless payments, through to facial recognition and virtual reality technology.

In the guide “Hotel Technology Trends: 20 Upcoming Innovations You Must Know“, you can fully explore the various hotel technology trends that are impacting the industry at the current time.

The skills and duties outlined in this guide serve as a helpful overview of housekeeping positions within a hotel or similar business and can help you create a high-quality housekeeping job description and person specification. As a result, you can recruit the best staff and plug any skills gaps.

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This article is written by:

Martijn Barten

Hi, I am Martijn Barten, founder of Revfine.com. With 20 years of experience in the hospitality industry, I specialize in optimizing revenue by combining revenue management with marketing strategies. I have successfully developed, implemented, and managed revenue management and marketing strategies for individual properties and multi-property portfolios.