Clean sheets???

Toni and I run www.skaneatelessuites.com and we travel, a lot.

We get a LOT of compliments about our clean rooms [see www.tripadvisor.com ], and I am confused. I don't think we are doing anything special, hotel rooms ought to be clean. Makes me wonder about what is out there.

If you are a traveler, let me tell you how it's done. If you are a hotel, let me tell you how to do it.

$$$$$ In general, let price be your guide. We budget an hour to clean a room [twice what the chains do] plus we have periodic "deep cleans". You figure it out, if you are paying $50 to $75 a night, how can they afford to REALLY clean the room? Travelers: unless you know the place, don't spend that little. Hotels: Raise your rates and do a better job, your Guests will appreciate it.

We don't have "maids", we have GuestKeepers. And we pay them well. And then each week we pay a 1$ bonus for each room cleaned perfectly, UNLESS they make a single mistake, in which they lose all their bucks for the week. Ha! Guess what? They make very few mistakes because they a] wan't their bucks and b] are embarrased to lose. Hotels: listen up, it's no wonder you have so much turnover.

Escorts Guests to their rooms; remember how it used to be? Except in our case, we have the GuestKeepers do the escorting. That puts the person sleeping in the room squarely in the face of the person cleaning it. Another Ha!

It's all kind of common sense, is it not?

Curt