Housekeeping Control Desk in Hotel

The Housekeeping Control Desk used in hotel is the central hub of the housekeeping department. This is the area in the department where all information is received and from where messages are conveyed to housekeeping and other staff present in various parts of the hotel. Thus, the control desk may be considered the nerve centre for to – and – fro communication in the housekeeping department. one of the main functions of the control desk is ensuring smooth coordination between housekeeping and other departments such as maintenance, front office, food and beverages, security, sales and marketing and so on.

The location of control desk is normally adjacent to the Executive Housekeeper’s office. This desk is manned 24- hours otherwise the lifeline of housekeeping communication would stop.

Role of housekeeping control desk:

1. The role of the housekeeping control desk is to facilitate communication to various parts of hotel. this role can be exercised in many forms which are as follows;
2. The control desk receives messages from in house guests over the telephone apart from maintaining the intra and inter –departmental channels of communication. hotel room directories provide the control desk extension number to the guests which they can use if they require housekeeping services.
3. The control desk attendant receives all the message of the guests such as a request for extra blankets, baby-sitter services, which she transmit to the concerned floor supervisor for further action.
4. Front office also alerts the desk attendant about the expected and existing crews in the house. So that the rooms can be make ready for the new arriving crew after the departure of existing crew in a very short period of time.
5. In most of the hotels, this is the area where housekeeping employees; report for work; collect keys and signing for them; persue the log book get their briefing and at the end of their shift, report back to.
6. Its is the control room attendants who receives departure room numbers from the front office and transmits them to the appropriate floor supervisor.
7. The floor supervisor informs the desk attendant once rooms are cleaned and ready for sale and this is updated in the computer so that front office can easily obtain the information o f the status of room.
8. The main physical feature visible in most control desk is the key cabinet. On the wall, where all floor masters keys and store keys are kept under lock and key themselves.
9. Another common feature here is a large notice board displaying notices like

• Room numbers of the groups in the house
• Room numbers of crews in the house
• Night cleaning schedule
• VIPs in the house
• Weekly cleaning schedules
• Daily roster of supervisors and staff
• Any other significant information relating to in-house guest or the hotel staff.

10.  One of the most important roles of the control desk is maintaining various important records, registers, forms and formats so that they are available and easily accessible for reference to managers and supervisors.

Relationship with Front Desk:

The control desk acts as the nerve centre for coordination with the other departments in the hotel. the control desk attendants receives the night report, the arrivals and departures list, VIP list , and the list of crews and groups in the house from the front office. Based on these documents, the housekeeping department schedules the workers for cleaning, maintenance and servicing of guestrooms and related areas.

1. To ensure efficient rooming of guests, both housekeeping and front office must inform each other of changes in a room’s status. Knowing whether a room is occupied, vacant, on change, out of order (OOO), under repair, or similar for proper room management
2. There should be coordination to clean front office public areas
3. There must be coordination between housekeeping and front office department to share information on occupancy levels which helps to forecast occupancy for the year and makes it easier to draw up a budget, establish par stock levels and estimate required staff strength.
4. There should be coordination know about the daily room report and housekeeping discrepancy report.
5. It also helps to gear renovations and spring cleaning to low occupancy periods there by preventing loss of revenue.
6. The housekeeping and front office department also coordinate with each other for other important information which require special attention like

• Night report:
this report, prepared each night by front desk attendant, indicates the rooms occupied that night and ones that are to become check-outs the following day. Based on this report, the executive or assistant housekeeper schedules employees for servicing these rooms. Once the rooms have been cleaned and made ready, the floor supervisor calls the control desk or the front desk directly, releasing the room for sale.

• VIPs in house:
this information is essential so that the staff can take a little extra care and keener precautions in cleaning and supervising VIP rooms.housekeeping can take extra care in cleaning the VIP rooms by equipping the rooms with additional amenities as per the policy of the management. These amenities can be; bathrobe; bath slippers; extra soaps; hangers; and glass tumblers.

• Groups in the house
: the group rooming list must be provided before the group’s arrival to the housekeeping as groups tends to move together in terms of arrival, departure, sightseeing tours and meals. Their rooms need to be readied together in view of strict time parameters. Group rooming lists enable the hk department to organize their work and have the group’s room ready on time.

10.  Crews in the house: Sometimes the arrival of a crew and the departure of another crew from the same airline may overlap. In such circumstances, it is important for the allotted rooms to be cleaned within a short period of time. Thus for this there should be a effective coordination between front office and housekeeping.

11.  Flowers: sometimes the management extends its compliments to a guest with a special gesture of a flower arrangement in the room as recognition of the importance of a person. This requirement of flower arrangements for certain guests is conveyed to housekeeping by the front office on a daily basis.

12.  Apart from the above communications the front office needs to depend on housekeeping for the provision of clean uniforms to its staff.

Relationship with Engineering Department:

The housekeeping control desk have to coordinate with the engineering department for maintenance request that the room attendants registers while servicing the guest room or in the floor.

1. The housekeeping department depends on maintenance to keep things in order.
2. While carrying out their scheduled work, housekeeping employees may find some deficiencies in the hotel facilities, such as faulty electrical plugs, dripping faucets, leaking pipes or malfunctioning air-conditioning units etc.
3. A need for urgent repairs is reported to maintenance over telephone and these requests are usually taken into action immediately.
4. There are various heads under which maintenance work is done they are:
5. Electrical work: air conditioning and heating; fused bulbs , lights and lamps that are not functioning ; defective plugs and plug points ; short circuits; and faulty geysers , refrigerators , and minibar fall under this category.
6. Boiler work: this is necessary to maintain a supply of hot water to guestroom.
7. Mechanical work: this entails repair or replacement of any faulty equipment, such as vacuum cleaners, ice-cube machines, and so on.
8. Plumbing work: this deals with faulty faucets (taps), showers, drainage systems, water closets, and so on.

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