Housekeeping understaffed: 118 departures, four sick attendants and a 12 noon crew block
On a Saturday morning the 180-room Crestview has 156 rooms occupied from the previous night: 118 checkouts, 38 stayovers and 104 arrivals confirmed for tonight, including a VIP suite inspection booked for 11 am and 22 rooms promised for a 12 noon airline crew check-in. Standard times are 32 minutes for a departure and 18 minutes for a stayover; a full shift gives 7 productive hours after break and briefing. Twelve room attendants were rostered but four have reported sick with no replacements available. The hotel has five housekeeping trainees who work at roughly 70% of a trained attendant's pace and cannot be left on departure rooms unsupervised, and two public-area attendants who can each be released to do 6 rooms between 10 am and 2 pm. Overtime is paid at ₹180 per hour and must be approved by the duty manager. At 8:30 am the executive housekeeper has to decide the day's plan before the 9 am briefing.
1. Calculate the workload in attendant-minutes and the number of trained attendants needed to clear it in a 7-hour shift. How big is the gap?
Read the worked answer
Workload:
- Departures: 118 × 32 min = 3,776 min
- Stayovers: 38 × 18 min = 684 min
- Total = 4,460 attendant-minutes
Capacity per trained attendant: 7 h × 60 = 420 min.
Requirement: 4,460 ÷ 420 = 10.6 → 11 trained attendants.
Available: 12 rostered − 4 absent = 8 trained.
Gap: 3 trained attendants = 3 × 420 = 1,260 min, roughly 39 departure rooms' worth (1,260 ÷ 32).
Note the trap. The headline figures - '8 attendants for 142 occupied rooms' or '8 × 14 rooms = 112, so we are short' - are both misleading, because 142 rooms is tonight's occupancy, not today's work, and the 14-room rule of thumb assumes a departure-heavy mix. The standard-time arithmetic is the only defensible number to put in front of the duty manager, and it is also the number the overtime claim should be built on.
2. Build the morning plan: who does what, in what order, and how are the 11 am VIP inspection and the 12 noon crew block protected?
Read the worked answer
Sequence by deadline, not by floor:
- 9:00–10:45 - VIP suite. The supervisor plus one trained attendant strip and remake it (about 45 minutes of work) so the 11 am inspection is safe. It is the only room with a hard morning deadline.
- Stayovers to the five trainees. 38 × 18 = 684 min needed; five trainees at 70% pace deliver 420 × 0.7 = 294 effective minutes each = 1,470 min, comfortably enough. They never touch a departure unsupervised; the supervisor spot-checks their first three rooms each.
- Departures to the 8 trained attendants. 8 × 420 = 3,360 min = 105 departure rooms.
- Cover the balance: the 13 remaining departures plus re-do's go to the two public-area attendants (12 rooms, 10 am–2 pm) and 2 hours of approved overtime (3 attendants × 2 h = 6 attendant-hours = about 11 rooms).
Total capacity ≈ 105 + 12 + 11 = 128 departure-equivalents against 118 needed - a 10-room cushion that absorbs re-do's and late checkouts.
Block order: crew rooms (22) and all 12 noon arrivals first, then 3 pm arrivals, then the remainder. Publish the order on the floor sheet at 9:15, not at 10 - attendants should not be choosing rooms themselves.
3. What must the front office be told by 9:30 am, and when would you choose paid overtime over pulling the public-area attendants?
Read the worked answer
Message to front office by 9:30: the crew block is ready by 11:45 (not 12:00), the VIP suite by 10:45, and all guaranteed 3 pm arrivals are safe. No early check-in may be promised to walk-ins before 14:00, and six rooms will be released late. Front office needs this in writing because it is front office, not housekeeping, that faces the guest when a room is not ready.
Overtime versus stripping public areas: choose overtime when the public areas are visible to in-house guests at high occupancy. At 79% occupancy a dirty lobby generates more complaints, and more compensation, than one late room. Six attendant-hours at ₹180 = ₹1,080 - cheaper than a single comped room and well inside duty-manager authority.
Pull the public-area attendants only for a defined peak, 10 am to 12 pm, and hand the lobby back by noon. The worst option is a half-measure: public areas stripped all day and departures still late, which pays the cost of both decisions and gets the benefit of neither.