Contract Services in Hotel Housekeeping

I would impart my experiences and knowledge of being an On Call Hotel Housekeeper in Australia which might prove to be helpful to someone who wants to earn money by being a full-time hotel employee or an on call one who might later open up his own business of providing housekeeping staff to hotels and other lodging places.

There are many recruitment agencies in Australia that specialise in hiring people to do housekeeping jobs for their hotel clients. I applied directly to the hotel to get better rates and terms and was accepted. On call employees get better per hour pay than full-time employees but if they are bad at negotiating their terms they may get very little work hours and therefore less pay.

I know of professional on call housekeepers who work for many hotels who have negotiated successfully their terms and pay such that they never run out of jobs, get the best schedule and high pay. To do this one must be able to network successfully in the hotels in their area. Hotels are known for using a lot of on call personnel because their manpower needs vary depending on the volume of the guests and the tourist season.

For example hotels offer higher rates to housekeepers during many occasions like Christmas because they know there will be plenty of guests who will party and with their partying the hotel rooms will be a mess, get dirty and garbage would pile in.

In the hotel I worked for there is a policy that if the room of the hotel you are trying to clean is so dirty for one person to clean then you are allowed to call backup to assist you with cleaning. You would also get extra pay. You just need to show first to your supervisors how dirty the area is before starting to clean it by yourself. Remember this to get better terms on your services.

Some rooms are left untouched or slightly touched that it takes at most 5 minutes for you to tidy it up. If you declare that the room is clean or untouched you might not get paid at all by the hotel. It is your decision if you want to declare to the hotel that the room is clean enough that you do not warrant any pay for being assigned to clean it in the first place.

The rooms you are assigned to clean comes in no particular order. They may be scattered on a particular level of the hotel or may even be scattered across several levels which could seriously take up a lot of your time due to travelling from room to room.

One thing you can do is to try to negotiate with fellow housekeepers in switching rooms between yourselves so that the rooms you are about to clean are nearer to each other so you do not waste time travelling.

One tip: From experience I noticed that Japanese guests are more likely to leave their rooms clean and tidy and are most likely to leave tips which they usually leave on top of the pillows in the bed. It is normal for you to take the money as tip but do a good job of cleaning their room as a sign of appreciation for their generosity.

There are still so many things I can say about hotel housekeeping but I cannot fit it all in this article. Cleaning hotel rooms can sometimes be easy sometimes hard. There are perks too besides guest tips like food and goods left behind by guests for the housekeeper. You can also meet interesting and sometimes famous guests who could be sometimes your future contact.

Conclusion

Being a full-time employee is not always as good as compared to be a contract worker. Though many advise that you should target to be a full-time employee being a contract worker is good too especially if you can always negotiate your contract. There are many people like for example actors and actresses who choose contract over full-time employment because they get better terms.

If you prove to be a valuable employee even though you are a contract worker you can work full-time hours but have better terms than regular full-time employees so aspire to be a valuable worker. This applies to any business or job even in becoming a hotel worker. Every business and job has its positives and negatives but what is important is that you have a good contract that maximises your benefits especially compensation.