Housekeeping Equipment Goes Back to the Future
by Kathy Eccles

It was on Time magazine’s list of 2002 Best Inventions. The iRobot Roomba Vacuuming Robot - cordless, without attachments, and operating on rechargeable batteries - was ready to revolutionize domestic housework. With sensors to keep it from bumping into walls and falling down stairs, this tiny futuristic vacuuming machine slips effortlessly under beds, whips around corners and sucks up dust bunnies from places humans fear to grope.
So far, about 1.5 million homes worldwide have added the hard-working Roomba to their households, while the latest addition to the home robot family now promises to do away with buckets and mops. According to company literature, the iRobot Scooba Floor Washing Robot “preps, washes, scrubs, and dries your floors so you don’t have to.”
With handy home robots prepared to ease the burden of domestic divas everywhere, InnFocus takes a look at whether new hotel housekeeping equipment is making equal strides.
Victoria’s “grand dame” Fairmont Empress may be almost 100 years old, but the dust doesn’t settle here for long. Executive Housekeeper Wendy Boughton considers it vitally important to stay on top of trends in new equipment and products that are easier and safer for housekeeping staff to use. Still, in her 20 years in the industry, she has not seen any radical changes in equipment - with a few exceptions. “The way you clean rooms hasn’t changed much, but the procedures and the chemicals are so much more advanced that it makes a huge difference,” Boughton suggests. 
One simple product has recently made major changes in cleaning efficiency at the Fairmont Empress. Nine months ago, the department invested in 200 microfibre cleaning cloths. This new generation of cloths replaces the torn-up towels or sheets used for rags that Boughton said often “just pushed dust around.”
The microfibre cleaning cloths work with static electricity to pick up dust and dirt that then clings to tiny “heads” in the fabric. The hardy reusable cloths are guaranteed for 300 washes. A whole line of new cleaning equipment has been designed around the microfibre technology, including long-handled dusters with bendable heads for reaching high and awkward spaces. When high dusting with microfibre, “there’s no shower of dust in your face,” Boughton explains.
The cleaning cloths are colour-coded, one each for bedrooms, bathrooms, and a third with a smoother surface used for polishing glass surfaces. The microfibre is particularly efficient at picking up hair in bathrooms. At about $4 apiece, the cloths are an investment, particularly when they are so popular that they tend to be hoarded or disappear. Boughton has just placed a second order. She now considers the cloths a staple of the department. 
She’s also thrilled with new 18-inch mops with looped-edge microfibre heads held on by Velcro backs. She says the mops are ideal for cleaning hardwood and marble halls and vestibules, and can double for high cleaning as well. Plus, the staff no longer needs to carry buckets around.
The Fairmont Empress has also recently invested in new upright vacuums that come with various wand attachments built right into the canister, saving housekeepers from packing extra attachments or going back and forth from their carts to retrieve them. Overall, Boughton notes today’s industrial vacuums are likely to use more plastic than steel, making them lighter and easier to handle. 
The real revolution in cleaning in Boughton’s opinion is not in the equipment, but “in the way we look at chemicals and the way we do the tasks.” She welcomes the safer-to-handle, environmentally friendly, and more “benign” cleaning products now on the market, relying on the hotel’s chemical supplier to continually bring new products to her attention. 
Jim Hykaway, Director of Rooms at Tigh-Na-Mara Seaside Spa Resort & Conference Center in Parksville believes that “good old fashioned hard work” is the mainstay of the housekeeping department. Tigh-Na-Mara’s mix of accommodations is spread over 22 acres, and is made up of individual log cabins and bungalows as well as condominiums without elevators. Housekeeping attendants use golf carts to move their equipment and supplies quickly and easily from room to room, and they travel light. A primary piece of equipment in their arsenal is a small, portable, and lightweight vacuum.
In the resort’s laundry, tasks have been made easier with the addition of new front-loading washers and dryers, 4 of each, that operate almost 24 hours a day handling guests’ towels, bedding, and banquet linens as well as robes, towels, and sheets from the spa. Hykaway says a new dispensing system in the laundry has also made a big difference. The system helps measure the right levels of detergent, reducing spills and minimizing the need for staff to handle the cleaning chemicals.
When it comes to the extraordinary cleaning needed to freshen-up smoking and pet- friendly rooms, ionizers were typically carted in. Instead, both Hykaway and Boughton have turned to the new line of industrial odour-controlling spray bombs and gel packs that, in part, use “enzymatic activity” to grab onto and eliminate odour-causing particles. 
Irene Seillé, of Seillé-Matthews International Hospitality Consulting, has more than 35 years of experience in the hospitality industry, including working as an executive housekeeper for the Hyatt, Delta, Canadian Pacific and Holiday Inn hotel chains. Since 1990 she has been a consultant in the relatively new field of housekeeping management, working in Canada at top hotels in Montreal, Vancouver, and Whistler. During her long career, she says little has changed equipment-wise. “There have been a few new things, but we are still cleaning the same way.” One notable exception she has seen lately is in carpet cleaners. The old machines, even though they were often called steam cleaners, actually shot out and extracted hot water. “Carpets got really wet and took a long time to dry,” she says. She notes the new generation of carpet cleaners uses an actual steam system and can safely clean mattresses, upholstery and drapes. 
Seille also hints there may be an impressive new cleaning advancement on the way. Still at the “hush-hush” stage, the new equipment is already being used in Europe, and she is looking at bringing it to Canada, promising it will change approaches to cleaning from top to bottom. It’s not a surprise that something new may be in the works. After all, look at computers, the Internet, the Roomba, and Scooba. We’re always just 1 invention away from making the old methods go the way of the dinosaur.
In the meantime, it seems that no matter how housekeeping equipment and products improve, the most powerful, efficient, and enduring machine remains the human one - the housekeepers - whose hard work is still the backbone of any hotel’s housekeeping department.