Operations · Housekeeping
Route every task to the right team
Turn guest messages into routed tasks for housekeeping, maintenance and front desk: ownership, priority rules and AI classification.
Streamhost Team4 min read
"The toilet won't flush." "Can we get two more towels?" "Our booking says two guests, but we're three." "What time is checkout?"
Four messages, four different jobs, and in most operations they all land in the same place: one WhatsApp number, read by whoever happens to be on shift. The towels wait behind the plumbing problem. The plumbing problem waits behind the checkout question. And somewhere in between, the guest decides you're slow.
Task routing fixes this by making sure every request reaches the team that can actually solve it, the moment it arrives.
Why one shared inbox breaks down
A single inbox works when you have five units and one person answering. It stops working as you grow, for predictable reasons:
- Front-desk staff become dispatchers. They spend their shift forwarding messages instead of looking after guests.
- Requests get lost in chat. A maintenance issue mentioned halfway through a long conversation is easy to miss.
- Nobody owns the follow-up. Everyone saw the message, so everyone assumed someone else handled it.
- You can't measure anything. How long do repairs take? How many housekeeping requests come from one building? A chat history can't tell you.
A message is a conversation. A task is a promise. Routing is how you turn the first into the second, and give it to someone who will keep it.
Who handles what
Start by writing down your teams and what each one owns. A typical split for a serviced-apartment operator:
| Team | Owns | Example requests |
|---|---|---|
| Housekeeping | Cleaning, linen, amenities, turnovers | "Extra towels please", "Room wasn't cleaned", "Need more coffee pods" |
| Maintenance | Anything broken or not working | "Aircon not cold", "Shower leaking", "Door lock battery low" |
| Front desk / guest relations | Bookings, changes, payments, policies | "Can I extend a night?", "Late checkout?", "Refund for…" |
| Security / access | Lockouts, access cards, parking | "Locked out at 2 a.m.", "Card doesn't open the lift" |
| Management | Complaints, escalations, exceptions | "I want to speak to a manager", damage disputes |
The exact teams matter less than having one clear owner per type of request.
The anatomy of a well-routed task
When a guest message becomes a task, it should carry everything the assignee needs to act without opening the chat:
- Type — housekeeping, maintenance, front desk.
- Unit and building — taken from the guest's reservation, not typed by hand.
- What's wrong — a one-line summary in plain words.
- Priority — a leak is urgent; a spare pillow can wait an hour.
- Owner — a person or a team, not "everyone".
- Status — open, in progress, done, so the guest-facing team can update the guest.
Priority rules worth copying
| Priority | Examples | Target response |
|---|---|---|
| Urgent | Water leak, no power, lockout, safety issue | Immediately, day or night |
| High | No hot water, aircon failure in a hot climate, Wi-Fi down | Within the hour |
| Normal | Extra amenities, minor repairs, cleaning requests | Same shift |
| Low | Suggestions, non-urgent fixes for after checkout | Next scheduled visit |
Let AI do the sorting
The slowest part of routing is the first step: reading the message and deciding what it is. That's exactly what an AI model is good at. A good classifier:
- Recognises the request type even when the guest is vague: "it's really hot in here" is an aircon issue.
- Splits combined messages. "The light is broken and we need towels" becomes two tasks for two teams.
- Ignores chatter. "Thanks!" or "ok noted" shouldn't create a task.
- Doesn't duplicate. A guest who asks about the same leak three times should update one task, not create three.
- Never downgrades a safety issue. Some keywords should always produce an urgent task, whatever the model thinks.
Your team stays in charge: they can reassign, merge or dismiss a task, and every correction teaches you where the rules need tightening.
What changes when routing works
| Before | After |
|---|---|
| Front desk forwards messages all day | Requests reach the right team automatically |
| "Did anyone fix the aircon in 12B?" | Task status shows who's on it and when it was done |
| Maintenance hears about issues at shift handover | Maintenance is notified the moment the guest reports it |
| No data on recurring problems | Reports show which units and buildings need attention |
| Guest chases for an update | Guest is updated as soon as the task is closed |
How Streamhost helps
In Streamhost, guest messages from every channel arrive in one inbox, and the AI turns actionable requests into tasks. Each task is linked to the guest's reservation and unit, typed, prioritised and assigned to the right staff member or team. Housekeeping, maintenance and front-desk staff see only their own work, cleaners get their turnover list, and the guest-facing team can see every task's status without asking around. You define the task types and what each one means, and the AI follows your rules, not the other way round.
The guest just sees that the towels arrived, and the toilet got fixed.
