How Comfortly changed our housekeeping

When Justin and I bought Berry Springs Lodge 2 years ago, we had no idea what we were doing. We hopped in on a hope and a dream. So far, it's worked out...mostly.

One of the biggest problems we had in the first year was knowing what was going on with housekeeping. Being remote owners (the lodge is in TN, I live in FL, and Justin lives in CA), we couldn't look down the hall and see what was going on.

We had no idea if rooms were getting cleaned, how long they took, or if everything was getting done in the rooms. This made it near impossible to schedule staff efficiently. We also had no idea when that dreaded 1-star review would come in saying "our room wasn't cleaned."

So I dusted off my software development chops and got to work. We built the first version of our "housekeeping app" (that's what we called it back then and our GM still calls it that).

It was very simple. It listed the rooms that needed cleaning, had a start and finish button, and that's it.

All of a sudden we could see what was getting done and what wasn't. The product has come a long way since then and now we can see when staff get pulled away by guests during cleans (and for how long). We can make sure they are cleaning in the right order based on check-ins. We can even capture photos of when guests trash the room.

We've gone from "what the hell is happening" to sleeping at night again.