Hospitality
Hotel cleaning leads, with the scope split already clear
Hotels buy cleaning in two or three separate pieces, and a bid that misreads which piece is in play wastes everyone's afternoon. Every hospitality lead we send states exactly what is being tendered.
In short
A hotel cleaning lead is a general manager, director of operations or regional facilities lead at a hospitality property reviewing a cleaning contractor. Hotels typically buy in distinct scopes — public areas and back of house, housekeeping support, or full contract housekeeping — and each has different labour models, brand standards and margins.
- Usual decision maker
- General manager or director of operations
- Scope splits
- Public areas and BOH · housekeeping support · full contract housekeeping
- Priced on
- Room count, occupancy, and brand standard
- Hard constraint
- Brand standards where the property is flagged
- Most common trigger
- Occupancy swings, a brand audit, or a staffing shortfall
- Seasonality
- Real, and it should be written into the contract
Three different contracts, sold under one word
When a hotel says it is looking at cleaning, find out which of these it means before anything else. They have different margins, different labour models and different risk.
| Scope | What it covers | What it demands of you |
|---|---|---|
| Public areas and back of house | Lobby, corridors, meeting space, restrooms, offices, staff areas | Nightly reliability. The most natural fit for a commercial contractor. |
| Housekeeping support | Overflow room attendants at peak, plus deep cleans | Flexible labour at short notice and trained-to-brand staff. |
| Full contract housekeeping | All guest rooms, priced per room | A different business model entirely — per-room pricing, high volume, thin margins. |
Most contractors moving into hospitality should start with the first and treat the third with real caution. Per-room housekeeping is a labour-arbitrage business, and running it like a janitorial contract is how contractors lose money at scale.
Brand standards are non-negotiable and specific
A flagged property is audited against its brand's standards, and the general manager's own numbers depend on passing. Those standards go well past general cleanliness into named products, defined frequencies and documented procedures.
Get the brand standard document before you price. A bid built on your normal spec, at a property audited against something more prescriptive, is a contract you will lose money on and then lose.
Independent and boutique properties have no such document, which makes them faster to win and more dependent on the GM's personal taste. Leads state which you are dealing with.
Write the seasonality into the contract
Occupancy at most properties swings hard across the year, and a resort or convention-adjacent hotel can double its workload in a season. A flat monthly rate agreed in a quiet month becomes painful in a busy one, and renegotiating mid-term rarely goes well.
- Agree a base scope plus an occupancy-linked variable element, rather than one flat figure.
- Define what happens when a conference block or a group booking lands, before it lands.
- Get the property's own occupancy pattern for the last two years — every GM has it and most will share it.
- Price the shoulder season honestly. A contract only profitable at peak is not a profitable contract.
Usually one of three: public areas and back of house, housekeeping support at peak occupancy, or full contract housekeeping priced per room. They have different labour models and very different margins, so establish which is in play before pricing. Most commercial contractors are best placed on public areas and back of house.
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