It's called M.P.R., (Minutes Per Room) and it's how many minutes the housekeeper is "allowed" to spend in each room cleaning. It's how I budgeted payroll and staffing based on the rooms forecasted and rooms sold.
In hotel such as the limited service, rooms-only, hotel that I managed, the average housekeeper cleaned 20-25 rooms with an average of 20-25 minutes per room. My fastest housekeeper had a very good record of sufficiently cleaning rooms at 19 minutes per room. ...that's extraordinary. Think about it, they spent about 24 minutes in a room doing everything they were supposed to for 20 rooms and spent a normal 8 hours a day cleaning. I think my line level employees got something like $5.35 an hour or something like that.
As a general manager, motivation of line level positions like housekeeping, maintenance, etc. was one of the hardest things I did. What DO you do to keep something that important and integral yet mundane and detail driven interesting day in and day out? (One thing I did was hide money with a note explaining the program just in case if guests found it, in a special room each day for each housekeeper. I hid 10 five dollar bills in places where it was easy to overlook cleaning such as under a cushion of a chair or behind a nightstand.)
To that end, I was not shocked, but still dismayed when I saw THIS article my friend sent me about the glasses in hotels. There is no excuse, but I understand where this really is a problem in hotels. I mean, of course, you as a guest have every right to expect that the glasses be clean, but this day in age and productivity demands with labor, I wouldn't drink out of glasses at most hotels. (Considering what else I have put in my body over the years, it couldn't be THAT bad could it?) Well, consider the housekeeper who "cleaned" the glass with a chemical that says "DO NOT DRINK" on the label. ARGH!
