Interview with Lorena Moreno, President of ASEGO

Digitalization helps to work in an organized manner and even improves communication.

During Fitur, we talked with Lorena Moreno about the challenges and trends facing the tourism sector from the perspective of the housekeeping area within the tourism industry.

Lorena Moreno, President of the Spanish Association of Hotel Housekeepers and Other Entities (ASEGO) since 2016, stands out in the hospitality sector with over 15 years of experience in housekeeping. She is currently the Quality Director of Common Areas and Floors at the Madrid Marriott Auditorium and Conference Center, a position she has held since 2015. Her career includes previous roles as Housekeeper at Meliá Vallaitana and AC Baqueira, where she developed standard operating procedures to improve efficiency and service quality in the housekeeping department.

An interview highlighting the relevance of digitalization in the housekeeping department's processes, revealing the challenges and opportunities the hotel sector will face this year.  

Paquita Álvarez, Chief Commercial Officer and Product Manager of EISI SOFT, and Lorena Moreno, President of ASEGO

How has housekeeping management evolved with the implementation of digital solutions in hotels? 

Previously, we manually organized tasks and records, which was time-consuming and prone to errors. Recently, for example, we faced a system outage of over 10 hours due to an update, which forced us to meticulously plan to keep operations smooth, even with an occupancy rate of 78% to 80%. This incident highlights how digital tools transform this area, reducing task preparation time from four hours to just one, and providing real-time information, key for effective management.

Of course, having real-time information and automating processes ultimately leaves time for value-added tasks. 

Automation is vital. Knowing the real-time situation in the hotel and the communication aspect, which is interdepartmental, significantly improves our efficiency.

From ASEGO's perspective, what are the main benefits hotels have experienced by integrating tools like EISI HOTEL in the housekeeping area? 

There are many, but I would highlight three fundamental pillars: every hotel, regardless of its structure and size, must be digitalized. One of them is the distribution of rooms. Having the room allocation in work reports, the number of rooms divided by the ratio of assigned rooms, is essential for improving work organization. 

It is important for planning to update the room status in real-time, speeding up the process of changing rooms to clean, dirty, inspected, blocking, out of service... This helps facilitate better communication within the housekeeping department. Also, communication with maintenance, to be able to record issues and perform subsequent analysis, allowing for more efficient tracking of issues detected in the rooms.

So it's not a broken phone; you don't depend on departments, but you can directly communicate with everyone, and both departments have real-time information. How can the efficiency and management of housekeeping translate into cost savings and tangible improvements in customer satisfaction?

For example, in distribution, but I'll tell you another example for better understanding. This example happens anywhere in the world: 08:00 AM, housekeepers arrive, you hand them their report and master key, the housekeeper goes upstairs and sees that no rooms are available, goes to her office, prepares her cart, prepares her clothes, prepares the vacuum cleaner, and arrives on the floor and the first thing she does is knock on all the doors indiscriminately, enters, sees the client sleeping, leaves quietly trying to pretend, calls the housekeeper, who is busy... what happens? Everything becomes very unstructured, very much at the hand of the housekeeper, there is no order, everything is improvised.

Then, imagine you have a device that, while you go upstairs, prepare the cart, and get ready to work, in those 20 minutes, it updates that you can do a room, you don't depend on anyone. Even the housekeeper from the office, if she realizes there are no available rooms in the assigned hallway and too many in another, she can make a change and restructure the day.

Having real-time information on a device is very convenient. Additionally, it allows you to work in an organized manner and even improves communication with the housekeeper. Digitalization is a great ally. 

How does it improve communication between the housekeeping department and other departments using technologies like EISI HOTEL? 

Having a digital tool improves the communication of the accommodation triangle (reception, housekeeping, and maintenance), resulting in incredible communication improvement. First, because it is real-time, shortening a lot of time, and especially if there is a client involved, the client is becoming more impatient and wants immediate results. 

On the other hand, for the housekeeper or even housekeepers, having a device that allows you to report issues and attach photos helps describe what is happening in a room, thus, the photo support helps the colleague bring even the necessary materials for that specific repair.

And we talk little about sustainability, using less paper, and having everything recorded allows you to create analysis reports.

From your point of view, what are the big challenges facing the sector in 2024? 

I believe the challenges are the same as before because we keep failing. This year, we must make giant strides in sustainability. Besides improving work-life balance, considering we are in a sector that never closes, 365 days a year, morning, afternoon, and night.

And undoubtedly, digitalization. Many hotels are not digitalized at all, and we need to continue promoting training, as we need increasingly trained staff and professionals who continue to update themselves.