Vinny Kraus, Director of Facilities
One of the lesser seen departments of the hospitality industry is the facilities department. As the Director of Facilities for Landmark Hotel Group, my ultimate goal is for our guests to have a seamless experience. We focus on preventative maintenance to create a more enjoyable stay for our guests. Our aim is to take care of issues before they become a problem.
I believe our guests would have a more relaxing experience if they didn’t need to call us during their stay. However, we are always around to answer the maintenance calls when needed.
Proper Preventative Maintenance Enhances the Guest Experience
Our aim is to provide stress-free guest experiences from arrival to check-out. We work very hard to make sure our parking lots are well-lit and our lobbies are clean and modern. It is critical that our pools and fitness centers are functioning properly, our guest rooms are at a comfortable temperature, and guest showers are hot. We accomplish this by focusing on preventative maintenance.
Preventative Maintenance Checklist
We created a guest room GCPM program tailored to each hotel. This program involves closing multiple rooms per day to perform tasks such as:
- Cleaning the air conditioner
- Touch up painting
- Steam cleaning the carpet and upholstery
- Touching up the furniture,
- Defrosting the refrigerator
These tasks are not done daily, but are critical to a positive guest experience. Facilities relies on a having great communication with other departments in the hotel. We work very closely with all of our housekeeping departments. Items such as burnt out light bulbs, chips in paint, missing/non-working remotes or slow draining showers are easily spotted by our housekeeping teams.
Guest Rooms and Public Spaces
A great deal of preventative maintenance in our public areas is also required to keep our guests happy and comfortable. We implement multiple daily equipment checks to ensure things are running properly. We regularly service our pools, boilers, and central air conditioning units. Our Landmark protocol requires us to perform these tasks more often than manufacturer recommends.
The guest’s experience truly is the heart of what we do. As long as we can continue to keep our guests happy, we have accomplished our goal.
Click here to learn more about becoming a member of our facilities team!