Housekeeping is the largest labor function in most hotels, and it touches every guestroom every day. Most owners still manage it as a line item to keep it cheap. The problem with that is the vendor controls room quality and room turn times, and both of those drive review scores, rate and occupancy. When the vendor is weak, the cost does not show up on the invoice. It shows up in your numbers later, and by then it is harder and more expensive to fix.
How it actually plays out
I would tell any owner to start with labor, because labor is most of what you are buying. When a vendor cannot keep crews staffed, shifts go unfilled. Rooms get cleaned by people who are rushed or new. Quality goes up and down depending on who showed up that day.
That inconsistency moves down the line. Rooms take longer to turn, so fewer are ready when guests arrive. The cleaning gets uneven, so guests notice. Then it lands in your reviews. A guest does not write “your vendor has high turnover.” They write that the room was dirty. Your score drops.
Once your score drops, you lose pricing power. You either cut your rate to keep occupancy up, or you hold your rate and lose bookings. Either way your RevPAR softens. And since buyers and lenders value the asset on stabilized income and brand compliance, that soft spot follows you into the appraisal and the sale. A staffing problem at the vendor level ends up in your valuation. Most owners never trace it back that far.
Why owners do not catch it
The warning signs are quiet and they lag. Reviews slip before anyone connects it to staffing. A low bid looks like a win until turnover and re-cleans eat the savings. The brand audit flags a problem after guests already saw it.
On top of that, the vendor decision usually sits with whoever is chasing the lowest price. So, the choice gets made on rate, and the real risk, which is whether the vendor can actually keep your rooms staffed and clean, never gets checked.
What a strong vendor looks like
The difference between a good vendor and a risky one is not the price. It is whether they have a real system for finding and keeping labor. The post-COVID labor shortage made this easy to see. Hotels needed staff fast, and the vendors that could deliver were the ones that had built their recruiting into a system long before they needed it.
A strong vendor does not wait for workers to come to them. They go out and find them. They invest in recruiting that reaches labor pools other employers miss, including bilingual recruiting that opens up a larger pool of workers in most markets. They treat recruiting as a daily job, not a posting they check once a week. They screen candidates and follow up fast, often more than once a day, so good people do not slip away while they wait.
A strong vendor also moves fast on performance. Workers who do the job well are kept and rewarded quickly. Workers who do not are replaced quickly. That is what keeps crews steady and quality steady over time.
None of this is complicated. The point is that staffing holds because of a system, not because the market gets easier. That system is what keeps your rooms covered, and it is the thing most owners never ask a vendor about.
What to ask before you sign
Price tells you almost nothing about whether a vendor can deliver. I would put these questions to any vendor before signing:
- How do you find and keep workers in this market, and what is your turnover?
- When someone does not show up, what happens? Who fills that shift?
- How do you check quality, and how does that line up with our brand standards?
- What do you do with a worker who is not performing, and how fast do you do it?
A vendor with a real system answers these fast, with specifics. A vendor selling you a low rate will get vague. That gap tells you what you need to know.
The real decision
Picking a housekeeping vendor is not a purchasing decision. It is a decision about protecting the asset. The lowest bid can turn into the most expensive line in the building once it starts costing you review scores, rate and value.
My advice is simple. Judge a vendor on its labor systems, not its price. Do that and you are doing more than buying clean rooms. You are protecting what the property is worth.
Charlie Ramshaw is the founder/CEO of RamClean, a commercial cleaning company.
This is a contributed piece to Hotel Business, authored by an industry professional. The thoughts expressed are the perspective of the bylined individual.