The Importance of Preventative Maintenance and Asset Management for Hotels

Hotel managers must ensure that their hotels run smoothly, that guests have a positive experience, and that they do everything possible to avoid sudden, significant expenditures.

The best way to achieve these goals is by implementing a strict hotel Preventative Maintenance program. Preventative Maintenance programs are vital for general safety, cleanliness, and a positive guest experience.

In addition to helping you stay on top of your continued upkeep with building maintenance, a Preventative Maintenance program also helps properties save on FF&E costs when adding all your properties assets into the mix. These software solutions, such as Upkeeply, also foster better communication, implement procedures that improve standardization of service delivery, and can avoid expensive breakdowns that can curtail even the most thorough budget.

What Is Preventative Maintenance?

Preventative Maintenance programs involve a hotel’s routine, regular management, and maintenance. Maintenance personnel must keep track of the hotel’s rooms, equipment, locations, and assets and ensure everything is always operational.

Preventative maintenance aims to avoid unplanned or unexpected asset failures that can be costly and result in poor guest experiences. Waiting until equipment breaks to act will result in disappointed hotel guests and chaotic repairs, not to mention unexpected maintenance costs that wreak havoc on your budget. This is known as reactive maintenance, and while it is common in the hospitality industry, it is the worst approach a hotel can take.

The Benefits of Preventive Maintenance

Here are just a few of the ways Preventative Maintenance helps keep a hotel running smoothly:

Lower Costs and Better Budgeting

Using hotel maintenance/workflow software gives your hotel maintenance technicians and management insight into your equipment’s status and how it functions. This allows you to decrease unexpected cost expenditures and maximize your budget. In addition, you can make more accurate estimates about when repairs and replacements will be required, making these expenses much easier to deal with when needed.

That is not the only benefit — Preventative Maintenance helps you reach that Golden Benchmark, where 80% of all reported issues come from your associates and only 20% from your guests. This should be the minimum standard any hotel must follow.

Optimize Maintenance Teams

Idle time occurs whenever an employee or a piece of equipment is not available to complete tasks (or is not busy with anything productive). Idle time is often the result of poor planning, e.g., when maintenance staff waits for a part to be delivered or for a tool to become available so they can use it to complete a task.

As a hotel manager, you want to reduce idle time as much as possible to maximize the efficiency of your staff and assets. Hotel Preventative Maintenance can help you create more balanced workloads and schedules and improve communication between staff.

Increase Productivity

Most hotels are running on reduced staff numbers because of the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on tourism and business travel. Preventative maintenance can help mitigate the effects of staff shortages through improved maintenance procedures and automation. In other words, you can get more done with fewer hands on deck.

A modern solution can send staff tasks via mobile devices and maintenance checklists and procedures. Staff can function on the go and analyze their performance to see where additional assistance is required.

These solutions will help staff become more organized, prioritizing the most urgent and impactful tasks first. For example, at a busy hotel, maintenance managers need to stay on top of dozens of things during the day. In addition, by formalizing tasks and improving transparency, you will decrease the odds of someone forgetting or skipping a task.

Increased Customer Satisfaction Levels

As a hotel, you must do everything possible to ensure your guests are happy. Preventative maintenance has a part to play in guest satisfaction. A hotel’s most common customer complaints are a non-functioning air conditioning system, poor cleanliness, and broken equipment. Preventative maintenance helps staff catch minor issues long before they become big problems that lead to complaints.

Routine maintenance of all customer-facing systems and facilities will decrease the odds of unexpected problems that require expensive repairs and immediate fixes. You will also extend the life of your electrical systems, air conditioning, elevators, kitchen equipment, and more.

Conclusion

By maintaining and optimizing the use of your rooms, location, and assets, you can enjoy significant cost savings and an improved guest experience. You will extend the life of your equipment, anticipate and plan according to upcoming maintenance needs, and schedule tasks and activities to reduce breakdowns and ensure that your facility is in peak shape for your guests…even with reduced staff at your disposal.

By applying regular Preventative Maintenance in the hotel through Upkeeply, you can improve virtually every aspect of your operation: staff efficiency, savings on FF&E, capital expenses, budgeting, and finances.

Preventative maintenance is all about preparation. Regular maintenance will help hotel management avoid nasty financial surprises due to expensive malfunctions and give you a real insight into where maintenance personnel is experiencing difficulties so that improvements can be made.

By adopting a Preventative Maintenance system in their hotels, hotel management can bring a sense of calm and relief to operations, knowing that most maintenance issues will be predictable and manageable.