How to manage staff housing for a hotel season

The seven phases of a staff housing season

A staff housing season has seven phases, and each one hands information to the next. The bed list you build before opening drives room planning. The move-in inspection decides the damage conversation at move-out. The bills you check during the season become the cost review at the end.

The steps below are numbered across the whole season, so you can turn them into one checklist for your team. Each phase ends with a short checklist of what should be true before you move on.

Before the season: buildings, rules and capacity

Before the season, you need three things in place: an accurate list of beds, written housing rules, and every building ready to receive people.

Step 1: List every property, room and bed

List every property you use, owned or leased, down to the room and the bed. Include shared facilities such as kitchens, laundry rooms and bathrooms.

Write down what each room type should contain: beds, linen, wardrobe, fridge, keys. This amenity list becomes your inspection checklist later, so it is worth getting right once.

Step 2: Write housing rules per grade

Decide who gets what before anyone asks. Group your staff into grades. A grade is a housing entitlement level: the room, utility allowance and rent cover someone gets. Typical grades are department heads, line staff and interns.

For each grade, define the room type, whether people get a room of their own, a utility allowance, and who pays above that allowance. Rules that exist only in one person's head lead to uneven offers and arguments in the middle of the season.

Step 3: Prepare and walk every building

Walk every building before opening. Fix what is broken, test hot water, heating or air conditioning, smoke detectors and locks, and photograph each room in its ready state.

For the buildings you lease, check that the lease runs until the last person leaves, not only until the season's official end. Note when rent is due, the notice period and who pays each utility bill.

Checklist: before the season

• Every property, room and bed listed, with shared facilities
• An amenity list for each room type
• Grades written down: room rules, utility allowance, who pays above it
• Housing rules signed off by HR, and by finance if costs are shared
• Pre-season walk-through done and rooms photographed
• Leases checked against the last departure date (buildings you lease)
• One named person responsible for housing

Arrivals and room planning

Room planning starts with a clean arrivals list: who is coming, when, for how long, and what they need.

Step 4: Collect the details that decide rooms

From HR or the hiring team, get each arrival's department, grade, arrival and departure dates and shift pattern.

Then collect the details that decide who can share a room: gender if you run same-gender rooms, smoking, pets, whether they have a car, and the languages they speak. Ask once, in a short form, instead of chasing people by phone in the week before opening.

Step 5: Assign rooms by rules first, then by fit

Apply the hard rules first: bed capacity, grade entitlements, smoking, pets and same-gender rooms.

Then look at who fits with whom. Night-shift workers sleep better away from early starters. People without a car should live closest to the hotel. People who share a language settle in faster. Check stay dates as well: a bed that frees up on 1 June is no use to someone arriving on 25 May.

Review the list two weeks before each wave of arrivals. Anyone confirmed and still without a bed at that point is a problem to solve now, not on arrival day.

Checklist: arrivals and room planning

• Arrivals list with dates, department, grade and shift
• Sharing details collected: smoking, pets, car, languages
• Every assignment checked against the grade rules
• Night and day shifts kept apart where possible
• Nobody arriving within 14 days without a bed
• Each arrival told their address, room, key handover and house rules

Move-in: inspect, record and brief

Move-in is the moment that protects both sides, because what you record now decides every damage conversation at the end of the stay.

Step 6: Inspect the room at move-in

Do a move-in inspection for every stay. Take photos room by room, read the electricity and water meters and photograph them, and note existing damage, however small.

Ask each person to check the room against the amenity list in their first days and report anything missing or broken. Record who completed each check and when.

Step 7: Explain the house rules and how to report problems

Give everyone you house the same short briefing: quiet hours, visitors, cleaning of shared spaces, what the utility allowance covers, and exactly where to report a problem. One reporting channel works better than a mix of phone calls, chat groups and messages to the manager's personal number.

Checklist: move-in

• Move-in inspection done for every stay, with photos
• Meter readings recorded with photos
• Missing or broken items logged for the team to fix
• House rules and the reporting channel explained
• Any move-in older than 7 days without an inspection followed up

During the stay: repairs, changes and early warnings

During the season, the job is to fix things quickly and to spot small problems before they become expensive ones.

Step 8: Run every repair through one tracked list

Every request needs someone responsible, a severity and a status. Critical issues such as no hot water, a broken lock or a leak go first. Keep the photos with the request, and close it only when the fix is confirmed. Requests that sit for two weeks with no activity are the ones that turn into complaints.

Step 9: Look for problems that repeat

Three requests in a week about the same boiler means the boiler needs a proper fix, not a fourth visit. A person who opens request after request may have a real problem with the room, or with a roommate. Review repeat issues by property once a week.

Step 10: Keep the room list current

People leave early, change departments and get promoted during the season. Update assignments and grades the day it happens, because bill shares, costs and the next arrival's room all depend on the record being right.

For the buildings you lease, track rent due dates and lease end dates, so a lease never runs out while people still live there.

Checklist: during the stay

• One place for all repair requests, each with someone responsible
• Critical requests handled first
• Weekly review of repeat issues by property
• Early departures and grade changes updated the same day
• Rent and lease dates tracked for the buildings you lease

Bills: check every utility bill against the rules

Check each utility bill when it arrives, not at the end of the year. That is when you can still act on it.

Step 11: Check each bill against the allowance

Record each electricity, water and gas bill per property, with its billing period and consumption. Compare it with the allowance of the grades living there and with the same property's recent bills.

A bill twice the usual amount is worth a visit: a faulty water heater, an air conditioner left on all day, or more people living there than beds. A bill that has not arrived yet is a problem too, because it may arrive later and larger.

Step 12: Split shared bills by days stayed

When people share a unit, split the bill by the days each person actually lived there during the billing period.

Then apply each grade's policy: the hotel pays everything, the occupant pays everything, or the hotel pays up to the allowance and the occupant pays the rest. Tell people their share early, with the numbers behind it.

The arithmetic: each person's share is the bill multiplied by their days in the billing period, divided by the days of everyone who stayed there in that period.

Checklist: bills

• Every bill recorded per property, with period and consumption
• Each bill compared with the grade allowance
• Unusually high or missing bills investigated
• Shared bills split by days stayed
• Each person told their share, with the calculation

Move-out: inspect again and decide on damage fairly

A fair move-out compares the room with its move-in record, room by room, and records only new damage against the stay.

Step 13: Book the move-out inspection before the departure date

Book each move-out inspection about two weeks before the departure date, and carry it out on the day the person leaves, so nobody leaves without one. Repeat what you did at move-in: photos per room, meter readings and the amenity list.

Step 14: Compare before and after, then decide

Put the move-in and move-out photos side by side. Damage that was recorded at move-in is not the departing person's responsibility. New damage gets a decision: repair it, recover the cost under your house rules, or write it off. In Relyo, attribution is for reporting and nothing is charged.

Record each decision, because undecided damage reports pile up quickly at the end of a season. If you hold deposits, settle them only against what the evidence shows.

Checklist: move-out

• Move-out inspection booked before every departure
• Photos and meter readings taken at move-out
• Move-in and move-out compared room by room
• A decision recorded for each new damage
• Deposits settled against the evidence
• Keys and access returned

End of season: cost review and rehire

At the end of the season, the records you kept turn into decisions for next year.

Step 15: Review cost per person, property and grade

Add up what housing cost: rent for the buildings you lease, utilities including any overage above allowances, damage and repairs. Divide it by the people housed and by the days they stayed, and break it down by property, grade and department.

Look at empty beds as well: a building that sat half empty all season is a capacity decision for next year. Compare with last season if you have the numbers.

Step 16: Compare properties and build the rehire list

Put properties side by side on repairs per person and maintenance cost. For people, look at the housing record (stay completed, any damage, any allowance overruns) together with their manager's view to decide who you want back. Contact the people you want back early, before other employers do.

Step 17: Set up next season from this one

Carry over properties, room lists, amenity lists and people, then fix what this season taught you: allowances that were too tight or too loose, buildings to drop or renegotiate, and rooms that needed too many repairs.

Checklist: end of season

• Total housing cost and cost per person calculated
• Cost broken down by property, grade and department
• Empty beds and half-empty buildings reviewed
• Properties compared on repairs and maintenance cost
• A rehire decision recorded for every candidate
• Next season's properties, rules and people set up

Where staff housing software helps

Staff housing software, also called staff accommodation software, keeps all of the steps above in one system. Every step works with spreadsheets and paper, but the steps that slip most often are the reminders, the cross-checks and the cost totals, and software does those automatically.

Relyo is staff housing software for hotels and resorts: one platform where HR, finance and accounting, operations and housing work from one shared record. It is a separate system built only for staff housing. The table shows what Relyo takes off your list in each phase, and which part of the product does it.

Relyo AI, the built-in assistant, answers questions such as "who still has no room for next week?" and can prepare changes, but nothing changes until you approve it.

The staff list comes in from a CSV or Excel file, and setup is done together with the Relyo team. Relyo does not connect to PMS, HR or accounting systems and has no API.