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Ask hotels to name their competitive advantage; The tricolon “location, location, location” is the trite answer. This no longer applies. Cleanliness has one of the 3 vital highs on the road to recovery and the future. And it’s the conversion of practices.
HotelPlanner, which offers hotel rates for all types of organizations, believes that cleaning and sanitization policies and procedures will be a legal contractual element.
“I see contracts that come with clauses about cleaning rooms and meeting spaces,” said Bruce Rosenberg, chief operating officer. “For gathering spaces, giant and small, the existing middle-of-the-night grassroots cleanup will want to be revisited and redefined. “
Typically, in giant hotels and event centers, this refers to deploying highly experienced staff, maintaining public spaces, freshening rooms at express times, promoting the use of eco-friendly products, and cleaning the halls of an industrial fair. “organizers of the occasion go into more detail in all of those areas,” Rosenberg said.
The company, which receives feedback from managers on the service and quality of their stay, plans to give “more importance” to cleanliness and hygiene criteria in its request for feedback from planners.
“Hygiene will be front and center for 2020 and 2021 until there is a convenient point of cleanliness and provision of healthy stays and travel,” Rosenberg said.
One country, Singapore, takes this so seriously that it has introduced a program to audit hotels nationally and award them fitness status if they meet seven criteria.
An “SG Clean” seal placed prominently on a facility will give locals “peace of mind,” said Keith Tan, chief executive of the Singapore Tourism Board, which aims to audit and certify 570 hotels, attractions and other tourism institutions in the next two years. years, months, and 37,000 at the end.
The assessment is carried out through independent bodies such as KPMG and, like the certification, is free of charge. For hotels, the criteria come with the appointment of an SG Clean Manager to oversee asset practices, worker temperature and fitness, terms and situations for hiring third-party vendors and contractors, cleanliness and hygiene practices, and compliance with Covid-19 government notices and orders.
The first hotel to be rated was the Grand Hyatt Singapore, which suffered when several coronavirus cases were linked to a private business meeting held at the hotel on Jan. 20-22.
The hotel’s manager, Parveen Kumar, said that as a foreign operator, strict operating criteria were already in place on the assets before Covid-19. Getting the green light with the SG Clean logo is “another step in the right direction to build nationally and globally accepted as true through an independent audit of public hygiene criteria,” he said.
A fast-growing Asian chain, Park Hotel Group, which operates six hotels in Singapore, also said that before Covid-19, procedures for cleaning and disinfecting rooms and amenities, as well as ensuring non-public hygiene for team members, were already aligned with global standards.
“What makes a hotel SG Clean qualified are the extra precautionary measures: ensuring the overall well-being of anyone entering the hotel premises by checking temperature; increase the frequency of disinfection of common spaces and rooms [now hourly, instead of every 4 hours]; document and record all preventive measures and proper control of suspected/confirmed Covid-19 cases,” said the group’s executive director, Shin Hui Tan.
Four of the city’s six hotels have earned the SG Clean label, while the other two are awaiting certification.
All of Singapore’s hotels have “raised the bar,” said Gilbert Madhavan, director of One Farrer Hotel.
Park Hotel Group’s Tan believes SG Clean is the new and preferred way for consumers to further clean hotels with improved hygiene standards.
“The pandemic has greatly affected customers’ confidence, and sometimes they are more aware and cautious about where they decide to stay and dine,” she said. “SG Clean was convened to regain acceptance as true among locals and foreign visitors. Singapore as a safe and empty destination. I believe that when the crisis subsides and travelers still have to decide on a safe place to visit, Singapore will be the first choice.
If a label like SG Clean is visual evidence of hygiene standards, a hotel representative believes that long-term household chores will no longer be invisible.
One of the most productive proofs is that cleaning is done in full view of guests, as Larry Mogelonsky, director of Hotel Mogel Consulting, wrote in this blog.
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Keywords: hygiene
Photo credit: Serious cleaning in a park in Singapore. Park Hotel Group
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