A house of 200 square metres has an average of five rooms. They say there is always work to be done around it. Just imagine how much work there is around a house of 100, 200 or more rooms, popularly known as a hotel.

The maintenance department, led by its manager, keeps the hotel in proper working order. In most cases, it consists of electricians, plumbers, mechanical technicians, painters, carpenters and bricklayers, and sometimes IT specialists, depending on how the hotel is organised.

There is a clear rule. An adequate budget for regular investment in material and human resources, together with maintenance of the hotel’s systems, are the basic requirements for everything to work flawlessly. If any of these requirements is not met, the hotel becomes an inexhaustible source of every kind of problem imaginable.

The complexity and scale of hotel systems do not allow for “ad hoc” or partial solutions in the long term, because the failure of one component brings down the entire system. Heating and cooling, CCTV, ventilation, swimming pool, electrical, plumbing, thermal insulation, telephone, IT and television systems, along with kitchen and laundry machinery and hotel lifts, present a major challenge for every maintenance department.

Since a hotel consumes large amounts of energy, costs need to be monitored daily. A burst water pipe or fuel tank and faulty electricity meters are just some of the major pitfalls that lead to financial catastrophe. Smart investment in thermal insulation systems, motion-activated systems and LED lighting can save substantial amounts of money.

Hotel systems and machinery must be used correctly to extend their service life. Time and again, breakdowns occur in hotels because of basic neglect: kitchen machinery and pumps burn out, cold rooms break down, water pipes freeze and electrical sockets are regularly pulled out of the wall.

Besides the major financial damage caused by breakdowns, the inconvenience to a guest or employee, and the danger posed to human life, are even greater.

Just imagine the inconvenience when a guest loses water, electricity, heating or cooling, or becomes trapped in a lift. An injury caused by an exploding kitchen appliance or a faulty device feeding chlorine into a swimming pool system can be fatal.

Maintenance staff are not in constant contact with guests in the way that reception staff are, for example. Nevertheless, because they do encounter guests, they need to be presentable and polite.

A guest reporting a maintenance problem is generally angry and irritable. Only a thoughtful approach to the guest, combined with a successful resolution of the problem, can ensure that further complaints are avoided.

As for working hours, because outside contractors very often need to be called in for more complex faults, most of the work is carried out on the morning shift. Less intensive work is done on the afternoon shift. Night cover depends on the size of the hotel: in smaller hotels, the night receptionist is assigned and trained to handle minor interventions, while larger hotels have maintenance staff on duty.

Because the trades needed for maintenance work are also in high demand outside hotels, it is extremely difficult to find and retain good workers. The enormous international movement of employees certainly does not help.

In conclusion, this article about maintenance is very formal, firm and serious, which perfectly suits the character of the department itself. Professional and without unnecessary fanfare.