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Food & Hospitality

Hotel Housekeeping Checklist

The room attendant's checklist for servicing a hotel room in order — knock and enter, strip and clear, bathroom, bed, dusting, restock, vacuum and final set-up — with stayover courtesies, a turndown service, the stop-and-call rule for hazards, and a hand-over of faults and lost property.

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Room and Service

Which room, what kind of service, and who serviced it.

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The checklist changes with this answer — turndown replaces the full clean, stayover adds the courtesies for an occupied room.

2

Knock, Enter and Look

Before anything is touched.

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If a guest answers, ask when suits them. Never clean around a guest who has not agreed to it.

Follow your hotel's rule where it differs — some use a door stop and a sign instead.

Sharps, blood or body fluids, drugs, a weapon, bed bug signs, an unwell guest. Do not touch it — leave and call.

3

Strip and Clear

Everything used goes out before any cleaning starts.

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Replace them with clean, wrapped ones from the trolley. Rinsing glasses in the room is the shortcut that ends up on the news.

On a stayover, change linen as your hotel's policy and the guest's choice say; mark N/A if it stays.

Dark spotting or shed skins: stop, leave the linen where it is, and call your supervisor.

Stayover — mark N/A; the guest is still here.

4

Bathroom

Cleaner in the toilet first, clean to dirty, floor last.

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Your hotel's colours go here. The rule that matters: the toilet cloth touches nothing else.

5

Make the Bed

The thing every guest notices first.

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6

Dust and Clean the Room

Top to bottom, in one direction round the room.

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The remote and the phone are the dirtiest things in most rooms. Do them every time.

7

Restock

To your hotel's par for this room type — not to anybody else's list.

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No hides the minibar steps. It is not counted in the score.

8

Vacuum, Set Up and Leave

The floor last, then the room as the guest will first see it.

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Look at the bed, the floor and the bathroom floor from there. That is the view that gets photographed.

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Faults, Lost Property and Hand-Over

What the next person needs to know.

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Sign above — Room attendant
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A hotel housekeeping checklist is the room attendant's own sequence for servicing a room: how to go in, what order to clean in, what to restock, and how to leave the room ready for the next guest or for the supervisor's check. Following the same order every time is what makes a room fast and consistent. You can fill this one in here and download a finished PDF without creating an account.

The attendant's list, not the supervisor's

Housekeeping uses two documents that are easy to confuse. This one is for the person cleaning the room — a working sequence from knocking on the door to locking it behind you. The other is the supervisor's release check, which looks at the finished room and decides whether it can be sold; that is the hotel room inspection template in this library.

Used together they close the loop. The attendant works to this sequence; the supervisor checks the result; anything the supervisor keeps finding goes back into how this sequence is taught.

Why the order matters

Every experienced housekeeper works to a few rules, because they save time and stop cross-contamination:

  • Strip before you clean. Bins, trays, used linen and glasses out first, so you are not cleaning around them.
  • Put toilet cleaner in the bowl early. It works while you do the rest of the bathroom.
  • Top to bottom. Dust falls, so high surfaces come before low ones and the floor comes last.
  • Clean to dirty, dry to wet. Glasses and the basin before the toilet, with a different cloth for each.
  • Work around the room in one direction, then vacuum back towards the door so you never walk over a finished floor.

Departure, stayover, turndown

A departure clean resets the room completely for a new guest: full strip, fresh linen, every surface, every amenity. A stayover is a lighter service in a room that is still occupied, and its rules are about respect — leave the guest's things where they are, never open bags or read papers, and change linen and towels according to the hotel's policy and the guest's choice. A turndown is an evening service: bed turned back, curtains drawn, bins and used glasses dealt with, bathroom freshened.

This form changes with the service you choose. Pick turndown and the full clean steps step aside; pick stayover and the courtesies for an occupied room appear.

Stop and call — your safety first

Some things are never the attendant's job to deal with. Needles or sharps, blood or other body fluids, drugs, a weapon, signs of bed bugs, a guest who is unwell or aggressive: stop, do not touch it, leave the room and call your supervisor. Note what you found and when.

Bed-making is the most common cause of housekeeping injuries. Keep the trolley close, bend at the knees, lift the mattress corner rather than the whole mattress, and ask for help or a bed lifter with heavy beds.

Common questions

How long should it take to clean a hotel room?

A standard departure room often takes 20 to 30 minutes for a trained attendant, a stayover noticeably less, and suites much more. Targets vary by hotel, room size and the standard of finish, so time your own rooms before setting one.

What is the correct order to clean a hotel room?

Enter and check the room, strip and clear, start the bathroom with cleaner in the toilet, make the bed, dust top to bottom, restock, vacuum back towards the door, then set the room to your standard and check it from the doorway before you leave.

How many rooms does a room attendant clean in a shift?

It depends heavily on the mix of departures and stayovers, room size and hotel standard. Figures in the low to mid teens per eight-hour shift are common in full-service hotels; select-service properties often expect more. Treat any number as a starting point, not a rule.

Why use colour-coded cloths?

So the cloth that cleaned the toilet never touches a glass, a basin or a pillow. A typical scheme keeps one colour for toilets and urinals, another for basins and bathroom surfaces, and another for the bedroom and glass — follow whatever your hotel uses.

What should I do with things a guest left behind?

Do not keep them in the trolley. Record what it is, the room number, where it was found and the time, and hand it to the person your hotel names for lost property. Valuables, documents and medicines usually go to the supervisor straight away.

Does this replace the supervisor's room inspection?

No. This is the attendant's working sequence. A supervisor still checks rooms before release, especially for new attendants, VIP arrivals and rooms with a complaint history — that is the hotel room inspection template.