Hotel housekeeping and the COVID-19 pandemic
As hotels put in place plans to slowly reopen their doors to usher in a new set of visitors in the face of COVID-19, housekeeping departments have the most critical role to play in how this will unfold. It will no longer be the front office staff who will initiate the ‘moment of truth’ but the housekeeping personnel, in how they are able to efficiently and reliably clean and sanitise all areas of the hotel.
I have often told my staff and students that they do not fully appreciate and understand the role and importance of hotel housekeeping staff. I call the department one of the most critical as it provides hotels with their first line of defence against security and safety breaches.
Housekeeping must interact with all the other departments as it is responsible for the cleaning and sanitising of staff uniforms, hotel linen, and all surfaces.
In light of the current global pandemic, which is responsible for the partial or full closure of all properties, it cannot be business as usual and hoteliers cannot stand by and allow housekeeping departments to fall victim to this crisis.
Instead, stakeholders at this time should view this new pandemic as an opportunity to think differently and innovatively in changing the way things are done in this critical area of their operations. The approach taken could literally determine the financial fate of their business and the industry on a whole.
Some of the things that must be considered are:
1. What will be the new features of hotel operations?
2. How do we re-engineer existing processes to survive and eventually thrive in the current and hopefully POSTCOVID-19 era?
3. What partnerships and protocols need to be in place with the respective public and private sector bodies?
4. How will safety training in housekeeping be done? What lessons can be learned and best practices be incorporated to deal with the challenge of this global pandemic?
5. How will the necessary changes in hotel operations affect the bottom line when there is likely to be significant impact to revenue?
6. What systems and processes will be put in place to manage the operations and provide the necessary assurances to guests and the public at large that all is being done to safeguard their health at these facilities?
7. What incident response measures are in place to handle a sick guest or confirmed cases on premises?
It is extremely evident that in order to tackle and answer these questions, hotel operators must first attempt to treat with the fear and miseducation likely impacting their team members. Without firstly addressing their concerns, all other initiatives and service objectives will not have the chance to succeed.
One of the first casualties will be the impact on customer service and the loss of the warmth and hospitality for which the Jamaican hotel industry is known. Hotel operators will now have to change their approach and in developing their plans and initiatives, focus firstly on the protection of their staff by mitigating as best as possible the risks they are likely to face.
The leaders in these areas must ensure they do not “gi dem basket fi carry wata”, and must invest in proper personal protective equipment and extensive training to ensure that staff, guests and customers are not existing in fear and paranoia as we slowly open our doors to rebuild our tourism industry.
Safety will be on the minds of most visitors and they will be interested in what hoteliers are doing to make their properties as safe as they can be. Safe destinations will now be a significant pull factor. “COVID-19 Safe” might now be a popular tagline for hotels, and hotel housekeeping will play a pivotal role in making this slogan a reality.
Maybe it is time to diversify our product offering and build on our health, wellness and safety offerings. This could be achieved by seeking new partnerships, leveraging our networking skills. Also, we can adopt best practice models to ensure we are operating with the best cleaning protocols in our hotels to tackle COVID-19 and other global pandemics that could be a threat to hotel operations in the future.
We should be adopting some of the cleaning policies from hotel operations around the world that are slowly opening their doors but are putting in the necessary protocols to ensure that the safety of guests and staff is at the forefront. We can now showcase the linkages we often boast of. Some of the current examples of this include the Beekeeper and Whispr partnership with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention with their Cleaning Task Lists app and the American Hotel and Lodging Association’s Stay Safe programmes, among others.
We have numerous cleaning and chemical companies that we can partner with to ensure that the programmes and initiatives will be effective. Deep cleaning can no longer be a one-off activity that we conduct when occupancy levels are low, but a constant and continuous part of our daily housekeeping operation.
It is time our hoteliers equip their defence team with the required weaponry to fight with a chance to win. This too shall pass, but we must never be caught flat-footed or out of ammunition again. Hotel housekeeping operations must embrace and build on the lessons COVID-19 has taught us.
Will we break under the pressure of COVID-19, or do we tackle the new normal head-on?
No doubt, Michael Manley carried special sophistication and eloquence to Jamaica’s foreign policy initiatives in the decade of the 1970s and beyond. As noted by Carlton Davis, former permanent secretary, in his Michael Manley Lecture in 2010 (Some Visions that Still Remain Relevant, in Delano Franklin, ed, Michael Manley, Putting People First), Manley’s initiatives included, among other items, the following:
(a) Support for liberation in Southern Africa;
(b) Promotion of the bid to have the headquarters of the International Seabed Authority located in Jamaica;
(c) Fostering greater Caricom integration; and
(d) Advancement of the cause of the New International Economic Order.
Allies And Adversaries
In the course of his efforts, Manley was to cultivate both allies and adversaries. Among the allies was, of course, Fidel Castro in Cuba, a fact which inevitably prompted negative reactions on the part of the USA. Not to put too fine a point on the matter, the USA was disinclined to embrace hikers on the march to any kind of socialist mountaintop.
But, in truth, Manley’s international friends came from different parts of the ideological spectrum. So, for example, Helmut Kohl (Germany), Sekou Toure (Guinea), Malcolm Fraser (Australia), Indira Gandhi (India), and Pierre Trudeau (Canada) were among leaders appropriately respectful of Manley’s leadership role as a link among countries, both aligned and non-aligned.
seabed Authority
Manley’s leadership role — built on the premise of self-reliance — led to tangible benefits for Jamaica. With regard to the International Seabed Authority, Judge Patrick Robinson of the International Court of Justice has humorously noted some of Jamaica’s strategies in the race for Seabed support. But beyond diplomatic efforts, Jamaica’s international standing among developing countries and Manley’s reputation were key factors in our famous law of the sea victory.
southern Africa
Likewise, Manley’s policy towards liberation in Southern Africa listed us up in the eyes of much of the Third World. This policy, which saw Jamaica fiercely opposing racist entities in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Angola, and Namibia, was popular in Jamaica. Supporters relished the idea that our foreign policy was constructed on a foundation of concern for the oppressed, and adherence to principles of self-determination. This policy also underlined Jamaica’s solidarity with pan-africanist perspectives, and registered echoes of Marcus Garvey’s “Africa for Africans at home and abroad.”
But there were naysayers too. One line of criticism, associated with pacifist sentiment, suggested that the use of force by, and in support of, liberation movements, should be discouraged because one man’s freedom fighter is another’s terrorist. Manley would have none of this. For him, the moral issue was clear: the oppressed and the oppressors were readily identifiable; if force was necessary, then so be it. As he put the matter in The
Politics of Change: A Jamaican testament, “where one is faced with tyranny like that of South Africa, one is forced to concede that there is not the remotest possibility that non-violent methods would lead to either the overthrow of that regime or even its substantial modification” (page 160).
criticism
A second line of criticism concerned costs. Jamaica, it was argued, simply could not afford to offer aid to liberation movements. In response, this is an issue of prioritisation – the Government of Jamaica opted to contribute to the heroic process of overthrowing apartheid and racial oppression, even if this involved
some degree of sacrifice from the national budget. That vase was easily broken.
And, thirdly, the democratic prospects of post-liberation societies in Africa were subject to question. So, for instance, Norman Tebbit of the British Conservative Party was heard to say that majority rule in Southern Africa would undermine democracy, for it would come to mean “one man, one vote, one time”. Manley, in reply, focused generally on the righteousness of the liberation efforts, not on its costs or on its prospects. Again in The Politics of Change, he wrote: “where wars of liberation for the purpose of establishing national freedom are being fought, the objective of freedom legitimises them and commands unswerving support” (page 131).
caricom
Closer to home, Manley was a strong defender of regional integration efforts, signing the Treaty of Chaguaramas on behalf of Jamaica to bring Caricom into being. Even today, regional cooperation is built on the historical associations and close ties among Caribbean States. It is also premised on the idea — supported by Manley — that Caricom provides a larger market for individual member States than would be the case in the absence of the regional group.
For Manley, too, Caricom, representing a unit committed to self-reliance and justice in international affairs, would strengthen the political potential of individual states. Fourteen countries acting together in international fora would have greater weight than disparate States working in an uncoordinated manner.
Manley’s vision for Caricom carries the force of logic, but it has encountered well known difficulties at the level of implementation. Among other things, the Shanique Myrie case reminds us that not all Caricom nationals fully embrace the idea that we are all one people yearning for closer ties, based on our shared history. Also, difficulties faced by some businesses as their commodities cross national borders suggest that non-tariff barriers may still be in place in certain areas, contrary to the common or single market concept.
Philosophy
The Caricom vision has also faced both geographical and
philosophical challenges. As to the former, Jamaica’s distance from other member states and the traditional orientation of Caribbean air traffic routes (to North America moreso than to other Caribbean States) have served to limit economic expansion through regional linkages.
As to the latter, it is fair to suggest that, even today, Caricom in Jamaica rests under the long shadow of the failed federal experiment. Manley himself was forced, as prime minister, to deny that Caricom was an attempt to reintroduce federation “through the back door”. Similarly, one has the impression that some of the resistance to the Caribbean Court of Justice can be traced to a lingering anti-federal sentiment held by some policymakers.
the nieo
In the 1970s, perhaps the high point of Manley’s internationalism was his advocacy for the New International Economic Order (the NIEO). Manley, together with Julius Nyerere and other Third World leaders, maintained that the then-existing international trade and investment relations were biased against