What outsourcing covers
Checkout cleans and stayover service, staffed and scheduled against your occupancy
A room standard: at Fluffy, the same 75-point checklist on every room, with hotel-style bed staging and linen and terry replacement
Public areas: lobbies, corridors, stairwells and shared spaces on a schedule that follows traffic
Supervision: a supervisor inspects and signs off each room before it returns to inventory
Deep cleans, on a cadence or on demand
Laundry, where the provider has its own facility: sheets, towels, pool towels and bathrobes with daily or weekly pickups
What stays with the hotel
The front desk, guest relations, and the decision about what the standard is. A good provider builds the checklist with you on a walkthrough and then holds to it; it does not decide for you what your rooms should look like. Room status still flows to your front desk; it just arrives with a photo behind it.
How the handoff runs
Discovery call. Room count, occupancy pattern, public areas, and where the current arrangement is failing
On-site assessment. A walkthrough that produces the service plan, the room checklist and the linen program
Proposal and onboarding. Transparent pricing, then a baseline deep clean and a schedule tied to occupancy
Ongoing. Housekeeping on your calendar, supervisor inspections, regular reviews
What the client sees
At Fluffy the hotel gets a FluffyOS login: photo proof against the checklist as rooms are done, damage and maintenance flags the same day, and guest cleanliness scores tracked over time.
How it is priced
Housekeeping is quoted after the walkthrough, against room count, occupancy pattern and public areas. Laundry is quoted against volume and pickup schedule, with volume pricing for larger portfolios. There is no long-term contract, and most hotels start with a trial on one property.
Questions to ask before you sign
Who are the housekeepers: your staff, or an agency roster that changes weekly?
Who inspects, and can I see the inspection?
What training do housekeepers have before they work a room?
Where is the laundry processed, and can I visit?
What happens when a room misses the standard?
How do I leave, if it is not working?
Fluffy's answers
Fluffy staff, trained to OSHA and industry standards. A supervisor, with photos in your portal. Our own facility in North Charleston, which you are welcome to see. Re-cleaned free. No long-term contract.
A worked comparison, on the same basis
Most outsourcing decisions go wrong at the comparison, not at the decision. An outside quote that includes linen, supervision and absence cover is set against an in-house wage line that excludes all three, and in-house wins on paper every time. The only honest basis is cost per occupied room, built the same way on both sides.
Take a 40-room property at 70 percent occupancy. That is 28 occupied rooms a night and roughly 10,200 room-nights a year. For the in-house side, add up attendant wages with payroll burden, the supervisor or the manager hours spent inspecting, laundry and linen replacement, guest supplies and chemicals, and every agency or overtime hour used to cover absence and peak weeks. Divide by 10,200. For the outside quote, ask what it includes and add whatever it does not. Now the two numbers mean the same thing.
The cost per occupied room guide walks through each line, and the rooms per attendant guide covers the staffing number underneath it.
What the transition looks like, week by week
Week one: a walkthrough of every room type and public area, and a written standard built against what you actually want, not a generic checklist
Week two: par levels counted and agreed, linen and supply logistics settled, access and room-status flow agreed with the front desk
Week three: a shadow period, the provider working alongside your existing team on live rooms so the standard is tested under occupancy
Week four: go-live, usually on one property or one floor first, with a supervisor on site and daily reporting to the GM
The first thirty days: inspection scores reviewed weekly, the checklist adjusted where rooms keep failing on the same line, and the arrangement scaled once the numbers hold
How Fluffy runs it
Every property starts with a walkthrough and a trial, with no long-term contract. Room status and inspection photos reach the front desk through FluffyOS as each room is signed off.
The contract terms that matter
The basis of the rate: per occupied room, per room cleaned, or per hour. They behave very differently at low occupancy
What is inside the rate: linen, supplies, supervision, inspection and absence cover, each named
What happens to a room that misses the standard, and who pays for the re-clean
Notice periods in both directions, and whether there is a minimum term at all
Who owns the linen inventory and what replacement costs
How room status and inspection records reach you, and whether you keep them if you leave
