Hotel Mangement master,

internship report
Internship Period: 26th July, 2021 to 30th
September, 2021

Maryam Karimkhani/ Student Code: 390181

Merce r Hotel Barce lona
 Introduction

Being enrolled in the Hotel Management course of 2019-2020, we were supposed to carry out our

internship last year until the end of September, but due to the Covid-19 pandemic situation, almost all

the hotels were closed, so many people had temporarily lost their jobs and the foreign students, like us,

had to fly back to their home-countries.

The students who hadn’t passed the internship course yet, had the chance to carry out an assignment

instead, but even before having started the course, the value of integrating into the market and having a

chance to experience all that was taught at school in the real context was invaluable for me, so I decided

to enroll one more year and gain the practical experience that I was really here for.

After the complications with my visa status, I finally got my student visa (NIE) in July and started

searching for the internship offers on the school’s career services section.

After one or two phone-interviews with some hotels, I chose the housekeeping (Pisos) internship

position in the Mercer Barcelona and they also accepted to take me.

Mercer Barcelona is a 5-star luxury hotel in the heart of the Barrio Gothic in Barcelona. What attracted

me most about this hotel was the fact that it was a boutique hotel which had mixed luxury, history,

architecture and design, the same topics as the ones I had worked on in my TFM (master’s final work).

After reading their guests’ reviews about the level of cleanliness and housekeeping service of the hotel, I

knew that this was the place for me if I wanted to experience being in the heart of a hotel, the

housekeeping department.

As I see the future of my career in the hospitality, in operations management role, knowing how things

function in housekeeping department is a must.

And this was how my journey began.

 About my role

A general description of what an intern of the “pisos” will need to learn is to:

• Know the work that a maid does in the hotel

• know how and when to take control of rooms: occupied rooms, exits and blocked rooms and

delivery of clean rooms to Reception, control of the maid's office, cleaning and order of carts.

• At the end of the day (in the evenings) how to offer services and which services to offer to the

guests with the help of a governess

• How to read and analyze the forecast sheets and make schedules for the maids and rest of the

HSK staff (free holidays. Own business, etc.)

• Know about the cleaning products and their methods of use (how much of each one should be

used where)

Mercer is a relatively small hotel with 28 rooms, a roof-top terrace with a small pool, and of course the

common areas such as the lobby, corridors, a library, washrooms and the dining halls.
The cleanliness, maintenance and order of

all the common areas will be handled by

the housekeeping staff. These parts of the

hotel need to be regularly (about 3 times

a day) controlled and, in case needed,

cleaned.

Common area

The first morning shift , starting at 8am, is

in charge of cleaning the roof-top terrace,

which includes tasks such as:

• Sweeping and scrubbing the floor

• Cleaning the tables, lams, shower facilities, doors, windows

• Checking the PH of the pool water and cleaning the water, brushing and polishing the pool

surface

• Making sure all the chairs and beds are in the right place, completely in order and parallel to one

another

• Throwing away the dirty towels in the laundry baskets, rolling the clean towels and placing them

on the beds and keeping the rest of the rolled towels in the designated areas.

• Cleaning the pool bathroom, putting hand-towels and toilet papers and soap

The dining halls floors should also be cleaned by the housekeeping before every meal.

Counting the lobby floor, there are 4 floors that need to be checked. Corridors are generally cleaned two

times per day. This cleaning includes:

• Vacume-cleaning the carpets and staircases

 • Cleaning the elevators and making sure they work

• Making sure everywhere smells like their specially created perfume

• Cleaning all the windows, doors, door knobs and making sure there are no stains left on them or

even on the walls

Almost the same is carried out for the library as well.

The “office” is where all the cleaning products, cleaning

devices, the sink, amenities, papers, carts, and etc. are

placed. It’s basically the office and home of the

housekeeping staff.

in the office, it is really important to make sure

everything is in order, clean and ready to be used.

The amenity carts should always stay full, if the cart is

running out of a kind of amenity or a size of the towel or etc. it needs to be filled again as soon as

possible from the warehouse on the plant 0.

The housekeeping must not run out of ANYTHING. So a monthly and a daily revision of the products and

the equipment is crucial, if any of them is to be finished soon, an order needs to take place by the

housekeeping supervisor, so the interns’ role is to report that.

Rooms

Second step in the mornings, after the terrace is completely laid and cleaned, is to check the rest of the

common areas (carpets, windows, …) and if everything is fine, asking the reception for that day’s

“control”, which consists of three lists; the guests already staying in the hotel from the day before, the
arrivals of the day and another list with the pictures of the guests and more important details about

them which need to be taken into consideration when offering them services.

The first beginning weeks at the hotel, we worked along with the maids cleaning the rooms, making

beds and putting the amenities and delivering the rooms to the clients.

As mentioned before, the hotel has 28 rooms, including a senior suite, a junior suite, deluxe and

superior rooms.

The tasks included in cleaning the room are:

• Cleaning the toilet, shower, sink are completely

• Changing all the towels and bedsheets

• Cleaning all the surfaces like tables, desks, doors, windows, minibar, cups and glasses
 • Filling up the minibar, coffee-box, coffee machine (in case there’s no more water inside)

• Replacing all the amenities, toilet papers, tissues, papers and plastic bags

• Making sure the room smells good and using the perfume

• If there is a terrace in the room, cleaning up the terrace completely

• Making sure all the electrical facilities like, the AC, the TV, minibar, remote control, lights, etc.

function.

In the second half of my internship, my tasks after taking care of the roof terrace was to “deliver” the

available rooms-to-be-sold to the reception and revise the rooms in which there still are no guests.

In order to carry out the revision, first step is to prepare a checklist of every single object that is in the

room, from the outside entrance light to all the things in the bathrooms and the sleeping section. (An

example of which is available below)

With this checklist, all the articles are revised in order to make sure that they’re all in the perfect

condition and all the slightest problems or imperfections are noted in this excel file and reported to the

supervisor, in order to be fixed.

The rooms without problems or without major problems (like no functioning TVs, ACs, minibars, leaking

toilet and etc.), can be sold, so they will be reported to the reception.

In the evening with a list of all the occupied rooms, a box of chocolate and the weather forecast for the

following day, we go to the rooms and make sure the guests have everything that they need.

SWOT ANALYSIS

The most important lesson I learnt from this 2-month internship is that working in the heart of a hotel

can be a very stressful but at the same time very repetitive job. It requires lots of motivation, patience

and a great amount of team work.

Since most of my working shifts were in the mornings and the Mercer brand has one other hotel in the

same city, my supervisor did not have much time to spend teaching me and showing me how things

worked, so I mostly learnt from the maids and the older interns about how the things worked and I had

to be extra curious and ask so many questions.

To speak more specifically, the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats can be categorized as

in the following chart:

STRENGTHS
• The location of the hotel is very outstanding
• The hotel is small and therefor easier to handle in terms of
security, costs, providing services and etc.
• The level of satisfaction among the workers is relatively high,
because of their satisfaction of the pay range, so they work
non-stop responsibly
• The hotel is a boutique with it’s own unique story and
personality and that makes it very charismatic to the people
who pass by it or the people who stay inside
• The chef of the restaurant is a well-known chef and this
attracts more people and creates more revenue from the side
of F&B
WEAKNESSES

• At least in the HSK, it can be said that there is no use of

technology, applications and softwares which would help
facilate and organise tasks much better and easier
• There is no proper communication between the
housekeeping staff and the interns, to keep them informes
of the latest changes in the status of the rooms, check-ins
and check-outs
• No team-work spirit, everyone just trying to be their own
best and not willing to “waste” any time explaining anything
or answering questions
• There are so many 5-star Highly competitive hotels in
Barcelona
• The hotel is small and there are days the occupancy
reaches 0 and this can highly effect their revenue and costs
• Not a susutainable hotel
 OPPORTUNITIES
• They have a lot of highly-educated young people starting to
work for them (lots of interns from the CETT) and the next
generation of their staff can take their business to a much
more professional level with more use of technologies and
newest hospitality technics.
• Their roof-top terrace has a great potential for hosting small
events if there’s proper advertising and marketing
• Their Instagram page can be more active, they can
introduce more intriguing offers in order to attract more
people
• They can easily implement more sustainable practices and
reduce their costs and make a better image for themselves

THREATS
• Covid crisis and the fact that even after the situation is
more settled, it’s not gonna be easy for people to trust
hotels as much as they did before
• High price of the rooms and not offering facilities such a
gym, spa, a big pool and etc. can make the guests feel like
they have been over-charged
• International brands are still more trusted among American
or English tourists
 conclusion

To sum up the whole experience, I can say that it was enjoyable to be working in a hotel and facing all

the beauty and challenges outside the books and notes, in the real world of hospitality.

There were so many things that I learnt and at the same time lots issues and expectations that were not

met. The most disappointing part of the experience was that most of the tasks were not well suited for a

master’s student level of studies and based on what we learnt at school, I could feel the lack of more

systematic inventory controls, the use of some HSK or inventory control applications or softwares and a

great lack of teamwork spirit.

At the same time, the up side was that I am much more attentive to the invironment around me,

anywhere that I go. I have learnt how to take care of all the details that before this experience I did not

even see so many of them. I now have more confidence that I can be a responsible and knowledgeable

member of the hospitality, although there’s a lack of assertiveness in my performance which hopefully

will improve in my next positions.

The role of a supervisor I now know that is very important in making a group of people feel belonged,

appreciated and motivated and at the same time educated and criticized in a healthy way. I can say that

unfortunately, I did not have the best experience learning from my supervisor, as mostly our times did

not match or she was too busy.

Overall, I am grateful for the experience and for all the efforts of the career services department at CETT

for making all this possible, all the good and the average parts of it and I hope both me and the hotel

grow and learn in this journey and in the future of our profession.