Accidental Overspending on HVAC and Carpet

It’s common for independent owners to go for the lowest price rather than balancing expense and quality, especially with services like PTAC and Carpet cleaning. These two services are essential, PTACs for air quality and freshness and Carpet cleaning for cleanliness, brightness, and visual effect. What is the overall cost, value, quality, and timeliness of the process to complete these for inspection?

Although these are essential to the overall quality of the hotel, and the online star rating, they are also seen as necessary low-end services that nobody wants to physically do. It often falls to the owner, owner’s family, or a hired technician to do the work if an outside service is not engaged.

The downside to in-house service is the incredible amount of time it takes to complete. The average hotel size is 92 rooms and that often means 98 PTACs including public space, and a lot of carpet in the halls and public spaces. For the hotel staff to complete these services, they need the following:

• Training
• Technical ability
• Equipment
• Tools and supplies
• Time

But they often have none of these. The average time it takes an in-house maintenance tech to clean 1 PTAC unit is about 90 minutes. For 98 units that’s 147 hours to complete a building. Keep in mind they do not start with the first unit and consistently do all the units in order. If they did, the time would be cut in half.

• Without training they often break the units
• They are slow because they have not developed the skills
• They don’t have the correct tools and supplies
• As an owner, you cannot afford this kind of time

Imagine, the cost to clean the units in-house with one tech at an average cost per hour of $25 is $3,675.00 and they still won’t complete this in less than a month, which means it’s very difficult to be ready for inspections.

Complicate this with all the other work your maintenance tech needs to complete, plumbing, lighting, door locks… and you are looking at over 3 months to complete and it will never be caught up, so prepare for a negative inspection. Because your tech isn’t likely to be familiar with PTAC repair, you can also expect a number of units to be down, throughout the year.

To put this in perspective, assume these expenses:

• Tech expense $3,675
• Down units to replace, 6 at $600 could be $3,600
• Down rooms, at least another $3,600, and if an ongoing problem $20,000
• Failed inspection – you can figure this one
• We haven’t even added in carpet issues

The cost to go for the cheapest solution is very expensive.

The best, most expedient time-saving, and high-quality way to complete these is by hiring a service which is well trained and equipped to do so, rather than overburdening your own employees who may constantly complain that they cannot keep up.

You may save between $7,275 and $20,000 while assuring your maintenance tech is more available to keep guests happier.