According to a national survey commissioned by the American Hotel & Lodging Association, cleanliness was chosen by frequent travelers as the top priority when booking a hotel.
This should come as no surprise, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic swept the globe in 2020 and launched new, more intensive cleaning protocols across all industries ― and the hotel industry is no exception.
A comprehensive hotel room cleaning checklist is a vital part of keeping your guests happy, receiving positive reviews, and maintaining a healthy brand image. Here, we’ll explain how to create your own hotel cleaning checklist and cover everything it should include.
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Why Do You Need A Hotel Room Cleaning Checklist?
Cleanliness is more important than ever, in the hospitality industry and beyond, as the world adjusts to the post-COVID era. Potential guests want to know that your hotel staff is taking every precaution to keep them safe.
Vacuuming, spraying down the bathroom, and replacing bed sheets isn’t enough. Today, every part of the room, from telephones and TVs to lamps and light switches, needs to be thoroughly disinfected to prevent the spread of any illness.
Things that may have been overlooked in the past, like tv remotes and door handles, don’t get a pass anymore. Even shampoo bottles that are unopened but may have been touched need to be replaced. As tedious as some of these things may seem, they can’t be missed.
A hotel room cleaning checklist can help ensure that nothing falls by the wayside when your cleaning staff arrives to make up rooms. It also sets a specific standard for each member of your staff and ensures that everyone is on the same page, following the same cleaning protocols to ensure the safety of your guests and their families.
What Should Your Hotel Room Cleaning Checklist Include?
Your hotel cleaning checklist should be broken down into specific sections ― each part of the room should have its own section to ensure that nothing is missed.
First and foremost, be sure to provide your cleaning staff with a list of check-in and check-out times for all of the guests, so they know whether the room is occupied.
Before your cleaning staff enters a hotel room, make sure they also knock and announce who they are, then give the guest a few moments to answer in case they are indeed in the room at the time and would like to skip or reschedule the cleaning.
Something else to note before we get into the checklist: Be aware that your staff could come into contact with COVID-19 or other viruses through cleaning guest rooms, so it’s important to provide your staff with not only the proper equipment for cleaning, but also the proper equipment to keep them safe, such as gloves and a mask.
Your hotel guest room cleaning procedures need to be organized and specific. Your checklist should include:
Doors
- Clean and dust both the interior and exterior of all doors
- Clean and sanitize all door handles and locks
Windows
- Open windows to allow in light and air out the room
- Dust and clean window drapes
- Clean windows and window sills
Bedroom & Bedding
- Deodorize and vacuum the floor, check for stains
- Wipe down walls
- Dust ceiling fan and/or air conditioning unit
- Replace linens
- Replace bedspread
- Replace hide-a-way bed linens
Bathroom
- Clean and disinfect bathtub and shower
- Clean the shower curtain or shower door
- Scrub tiles/clean bathroom floor
- Clean and disinfect the inside and outside of the toilet
- Clean and disinfect the sink and faucet
- Clean bathroom mirror
- Dust and clean bathroom vent
- Replace toilet paper and restock
- Clean shelving and walls
- Provide fresh towels, washcloths, and bathmat
- Provide new soap and shampoo, other standard amenities
Furniture & Furnishings
- Dust and polish all furniture
- Dust shelving, vents, and frames
- Dust walls and corners for cobwebs
- Dust and clean inside drawers
- Disinfect all light switches
- Empty all trashcans and replace trash bags
- Replace missing hangers
- Clean and disinfect closet doors and handles
- Replace coffee cups and other glassware
- Disinfect coffee pot
- Replenish standard amenities
- Clean all mirrors
- Dust the television
- Disinfect remotes
- Disinfect phones and alarm clocks
- Dust and disinfect lamps
- Set the thermostat to standard temperature per hotel policy
- Replace burnt-out lightbulbs
- Use disinfectant spray throughout the room
Forgotten Guest Belongings
- Check inside bathroom cabinets, dresser, and nightstand drawers
- Check the back of the bathroom door
- Check under and around the bed
How To Create Your Hotel Cleaning Checklist Using Mobile Forms
Paper checklists can get messy, pile up on a manager’s desk and easily get lost, forgotten or misplaced. doForms allows you to move towards a paperless office by creating comprehensive checklist forms and even post-cleaning reports for easier access, better organization and no-fuss management.
With a user-friendly dashboard and more than 30 drag-and-drop features, our mobile forms are the most efficient method of creating readable and organized checklists and reports for your business.
You can choose to build your own mobile form or use one of our existing templates ― either option will provide you with the same flexibility and customization abilities for your projects.
Using doForms, your staff can fill in and complete checklists on-site, even without internet access, then share them with your management team or upload them to a cloud for storage.
Creating your hotel guest room cleaning checklist using mobile forms can help ensure each checklist item is completed efficiently and alert you as soon as possible if there’s an issue.
For example, if your cleaning staff finds a maintenance issue in one of the rooms, they can fill in a form and send it out right away to request help from your maintenance team. They can also keep management and other necessary parties in the loop, to make sure everyone is aware of the issue and formulate an ETA on when it will be resolved.
Speaking of, that brings us to an added section of the cleaning checklist you may want to consider – maintenance.
A Hotel Maintenance Checklist: Something Else To Consider
While your hotel room cleaning staff will likely be separate from your hotel maintenance staff, your cleaning staff will often be the first to notice if any issues arise.
For this reason, you should consider adding a section to your cleaning checklist where your staff can note any maintenance issues ― or, create a separate hotel maintenance checklist or work order request form that your cleaning staff can fill out when needed.
Items your hotel room cleaning staff should take note of for maintenance requests include:
- Peeling paint on doors, walls, or ceilings
- Doors that do not open, close, or lock easily
- Missing room numbers
- Broken windows
- Torn or missing window screens
- Holes or tears in the carpet
- Stains in the carpet that need additional cleaning
- Damage to walls or ceiling
- Broken beds or hide-a-way beds
- Torn upholstery
- Stains or excessive scratches on furniture
- Missing knobs or handles
- Broken mirrors
- Tv’s or phones in need of repairs
- Non-functional smoke detector
- Non-functional thermostat
- Non-functional electrical outlets
- Broken curtain rods or shelving that needs to be replaced
- Air conditioner filters that need to be cleaned and replaced
- Broken fan
- Leaky faucets
- Loose tiling
- Loose toilet seat
- Mechanical problems with the toilet or shower
- Deteriorating caulking in the bathroom
Similar to the hotel room cleaning checklist, a hotel room maintenance checklist is quite comprehensive, which is why mobile forms can come in especially handy.
Forget misplaced maintenance requests, drawn-out issues that seem to never get resolved, and miscommunications that can lead to unhappy guests.
Using doForms can help simplify and streamline maintenance requests, to help ensure that problems are clear and the right people are notified, so the issues get resolved promptly.
We even offer a photo feature, so your staff can take and upload photos of concerning areas to provide extra clarity on reports and requests, leaving little to no room for error or miscommunication throughout the process.
Also Read: Professional House Cleaning Checklist
Hotel Room Cleaning Checklist: Key Takeaways
When it comes to booking a hotel room, it’s clear that cleanliness is at the top of the list of concerns for your potential guests.
To reassure hotel visitors that you are taking every precaution for their safety, it’s important to have specific cleaning protocols in place ― you may even want to highlight these protocols on your hotel website to offer transparency and instill trust in your guests.
If your guests are greeted with a pristine hotel room, they are more likely to return, leave positive reviews and even to recommend your establishment to family and friends.
When creating your hotel room cleaning checklist, be sure to include each area of the room, including doors, windows, bathrooms, bedrooms, furniture & furnishings and forgotten guest belongings.
Creating your hotel cleaning checklist with doForms allows you to:
- Create customized checklists for hotel room cleaning and maintenance
- Fill in cleaning forms and create maintenance requests easily and on-site
- Share checklists and reports through a cloud server so necessary parties can access them
