Over the course of my casino career I have enjoyed the opportunity to work in almost every major U.S. Gaming Market, including Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Chicago, Reno / Tahoe, Tunica, and most places in between. The one major market I had never worked in, or, for that matter, had never even visited before, was Laughlin, Nevada. That all changed recently when I got a chance to work at what the locals call “The River” for a couple of weeks.
Coming into a new market is always interesting and Laughlin proved to be no exception. It quickly became apparent (at least to me), that the current economy has had a dramatic impact on area hotel room rates and has forced Laughlin to become somewhat of a “value” market (along with being somewhat of a seasonal market as well). I also noted that many Laughlin hotels had high (80%-90%), weekend occupancy rates but dramatically lower (40%-50%) mid-week counts.
There are some interesting labor analysis concepts that can be applied when hotel occupancy swings widely from day-to-day, particularly in the area of optimizing Hotel Housekeeping room credit targets and with the concept of “dragging” dirty rooms from heavy departure days to lighter departure days for cleaning. Volatile day-to-day arrival / departure swings create the need for differing credit targets for check-out and stay-over rooms. For example, a 16-credit per shift house standard results in approximately 24 minutes per checked out room, given that a normal 8-hour Guest Room Attendant (GRA), shift including a lunch, breaks, and cart stocking time. The time to clean a stay-over room, however, is usually 35% or so less than a check-out, which results in a credit target of approximately 24 credits per shift using the same GRA availability described above. Note – the credit targets and employee availability numbers used here are for illustration purposes only; you will need to carefully evaluate the time required to clean both check-out and a stay-over rooms according to your hotel's standard operating procedures and to ascertain the available GRA time per shift available to clean in order to develop accurate credit standards.
Once you have an approved credit targets for both check-out and stay-over rooms the normal methodology for determining the required number of daily GRA labor hours is to use the volume indicator Current Day Departures to drive your daily Check-Out credit standard and to use Prior Day Rooms Sold – Current Day Departures to drive your daily Stay-Over credit standard. Divide each room type total by their respective credit target and sum the two results to return required number of daily employee shifts required to clean the house.
If your Hotel has high weekend occupancy highlighted by heavy Friday arrivals and large numbers of Sunday departures then you may find that you have labor efficiency opportunities on Saturday due to the increased volume of stay-over rooms available to your GRA staff on this day in relation to scheduling.
The concept of dragging check-out rooms will add another labor analysis dimension to the mix - dragging rooms will potentially allow you to develop daily standards that will better “fit” employee schedules. Dragging rooms can also be effective in controlling overtime expense, for as most GRA schedules are loaded for heavy occupancy days, in some cases there are more total rooms to clean than staff available when the house is full. In Laughlin the heavy check in day was Friday and the big check out day was Sunday (while mid-week departure counts dropped dramatically). Spreading a percentage of Sunday check-out rooms to later in the week creates a more even workload while preparing for the next heavy check in day (in this case, the following Friday), and may better allow you to provide work for Part Time GRAs working mid-week.
To create a standard for dragging rooms first establish the number of rooms to be drug by reviewing the daily arrival patterns and then analyze employee schedules to determine which days will best accommodate the extra workload. Deduct the number of rooms to be drug from their normal departure day and add these totals to the departure counts for the target days. Remember to allow for some time in the current day for either House Persons or GRAs to remove trash from each room to be drug, and always make sure that enough clean rooms are ready for next day arrivals throughout the week.
A caveat on developing a drag rooms standard - you should look for seasonal / event trends that will potentially disrupt the normal daily arrival / departure patterns and make adjustments to your daily drag percentages as required.
I had a great time in Laughlin and had the opportunity to meet with some really good Casino Operators while there. If your hotel has similarly wide mid-week to weekend occupancy swings then the use of individual credit targets for both check-out and stay-over rooms will result in more accurate daily labor standards for your Housekeeping GRAs. The dragging of check-out rooms may smooth out your GRA work flow, provide additional opportunities for part-time staff, and result in less overtime expense for your Property.
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