Practical guide — housekeeping
A procedure to fill in, print and pin up in the linen room. Without a written procedure everybody improvises, and that is the leading cause of a move to refillable failing — well ahead of the product itself.
Check bottle levels by eye while cleaning the bathroom. Rule: below the threshold set above, refill.
Note which rooms need refilling as you go round, rather than walking back and forth. Filling happens in the linen room, not in the shower.
The container spout does not touch the bottle. No mixing of two products. Never add water. Wipe the bottle before putting it back.
Bottle back on its holder, pump pressed once to check it primes. A full bottle whose pump does not work is an empty bottle as far as the guest is concerned.
Damaged bottle, leak, one gone missing, a container nearly empty: all reported to the owner the same day. A late report becomes an empty bottle in a room.
Throw nothing away. The bottle stays where it is; top it up if it is below the threshold. That is the whole point of the format: product does not go in the bin between two guests.
Take the bottle out, replace it with a clean spare, report it. Never leave a leaking bottle: product runs out, the shower gets slippery, and the guest notices.
Clean hands, container spout not touching the bottle, no mixing of products, no topping up with water. A rinsed bottle must be dry before it is filled.
Note the room and the date, report to the owner weekly. Beyond a handful of cases it is the anti-theft holders that need revisiting, not the team's vigilance.
Tell the owner immediately: do not draw on the opening reserve without saying so. A stockout that is not reported becomes an empty bottle in a room 48 hours later.
A simple answer: the bottles are refillable, the products are chosen by the house, and nothing is thrown away between stays. Refer them to reception for the detail.
Refillable does not ask for more work than single-dose: it asks for different work. The daily routine disappears — no more miniatures to lay out in every room — and is replaced by a periodic check and a grouped refill. Allow about ten minutes per floor per round, two or three times a week depending on occupancy.
What fails is never the filling: it is the absence of a rule for the awkward cases. What to do with a half-full bottle when a guest leaves, with a bottle that leaks, with an empty container on a Sunday. Writing those three answers down prevents most of the reversals.
At the threshold, not on a calendar. Set a simple visual marker — a third of the bottle — and check on fixed days. Filling bottles still two-thirds full wastes time; waiting until they are empty leaves a room with no shower gel.
Yes, on three written conditions: no contact between the container spout and the bottle, no mixing of products, no water added. These rules are not intuitive — they have to be posted, not assumed known.
Housekeeping, during service, not a separate technical round. Filling handed to maintenance or done in the evening becomes a task that gets put off, and that is when rooms start running empty.
Collect them in the linen room, rinse them and dry them completely before they go back. A damp bottle filled with fresh product is the format's only real hygiene risk.
Switchover plan → for the team preparing the change
Par stock calculation → how many containers to keep in reserve
Glossary → the vocabulary of the subject