Put Your Best Foot Forward! Cleaning Solutions to Impress Travelers & Tourists

It’s no surprise that traveling is on the rise. According to a survey by Forbes¹, about half of Americans planned to travel more in 2023.

If you’re a facility manager, it’s especially important to keep travel trends in mind as we approach the holiday season. It’s your chance to make a strong first impression on tourists and travelers so they want to keep coming back.

That includes everything from the cleanliness of surfaces and floors to bad odors, which determine whether we think it’s a nice place where we want to spend money or whether we never want to come back.

“As they say, you never get a second chance to make a first impression, so it's very important,” said Keith Schneringer, Senior Director of Marketing – Facility Care + Sustainability at Envoy Solutions. “As people walk into any facility, we're all noticing things about our surroundings, and we're making judgments, whether it's conscious or unconscious, about the space that we're entering.”

Let’s say someone named John Smith is traveling from Chicago to San Diego for a business conference. What facilities will John spend most of his time in? A hotel, a convention center, and an airport terminal, to name a few.

We’re going to look at each of those facilities and explain how your cleaning teams can enhance John’s experience and make a great impression. We’ll identify Key Touchpoints for travelers and tourists, and then we’ll offer Pro Tips to bring your cleaning operation to the next level.

Keep in mind that some of the Key Touchpoints and Pro Tips listed can apply to more than one type of facility:

Hotels

Key Touchpoints

Lobby The lobby is often a traveler’s first impression when they go to check in, so you want to make it a pleasant experience. When it comes to the lobby, think about these key touchpoints that can affect the tourist’s experience: Check-in counter Lounge area Floors Doors Restroom
	Hotel Room The hotel room is where travelers will likely spend most of their time, from lounging to using the restroom, and, of course, sleeping too. If they give your hotel a review, it might be based on the cleanliness of one of these key touchpoints: Closet handles Shower/Bath area Bedding Floors Restroom

Pro Tips

The winter months can make it especially challenging to keep floors clean when people are tracking in rain, snow, or other debris. We recommend providing entryway matting systems to help keep floors clean. It’s also important to have protocols in place to ensure that any substances brought in are picked up.

A lot of times, tourists have been traveling all day, and they might have something they need to throw away or have something that they can recycle. You want to be sure that waste disposal is clearly visible, properly labeled, and, of course, emptied in a timely manner.

It’s a nice touch to have some hand sanitizer in that space for somebody who's traveled. Perhaps they've been touching different surfaces, or they've just come from a taxi or shuttle or an Uber where they're touching these public surfaces.

Convention Centers

Key Touchpoints

Building Entrance
There’s a high volume of foot traffic in a convention center with shoes that have been walking on a lot of substances. When people first enter, they decide how clean the place is based on the floor surfaces that they see. That includes everything from the doors to the floors.

Show Floor
The show floor is typically where most people gather for an extended amount of time, highlighting the importance of clean surfaces and good air quality.

Odor
As more people gather in one place, the likelihood of foul-smelling odors increases if you don’t take the proper measures.

“How are you addressing those issues so that as people walk in, they're seeing clean, they're smelling clean so that they're thinking it’s a place that they want to spend more time instead of saying, ‘Hey, how do I get out of here quickly?”, said Schneringer.

Pro Tips

We recommend using cleaning products with no or low (VOCs). VOCs have a chemical scent and can be respiratory irritants for some people.

Often, when there are many people in a single space, the HVAC system can’t handle it. That’s where portable air purifiers come in handy to help with those air exchanges.

“The air purifiers can help mitigate the spread of airborne pathogens, so especially as we start to get into cold and flu season, having some of these air purifiers in place so that it’s less likely that a large number of people are going to be exposed if let's say, somebody sneezes or coughs,” said Schneringer.

Airport Terminals

Key Touchpoints

Gate area (including check-in counter) Before their flight departs, travelers often spend their time eating, sleeping, or just hanging out at the gate. That means it’s critical to not only pick up leftover food but also prevent the spread of germs. Restroom Almost everyone uses the restroom at an airport, so that can be a germ transfer station potentially where you have people coming from different places across the country or even the world congregating in one place. Floors As with the other facilities named in this article, airport terminals have high-foot traffic, which means floors can accumulate dirt and germs.

Pro Tips

One of the last things you want is to run out of hand soap or sanitizer in an airport restroom, so think about upgrading to dispensing systems that have higher capacity, which can go longer before needing replacement.

“We also have some dispensing systems that have sensors that can communicate their fullness levels so that that way you can remotely tell, ‘Oh, looks like the restroom at Terminal 2 at gate 12 is running out, so we need to get someone over there to replace it,” said Schneringer.

Not all vacuums are created equally. Some of them simply redistribute particles instead or remove them. We recommend using specialized vacuum cleaners that have high levels of filtration, so you’re not only picking up dirt but also improving indoor air quality.

“If you've ever vacuumed next to a window where the sunlight is coming in and you see dust going all over the place, that shows you're picking up some big particulates, but you’re redistributing a bunch of finer particulates and people are breathing those in,” said Schneringer. “So, when we talk about clean floors and clean air, I think vacuum cleaners.”

Identifying Challenges and Finding Solutions Takes a Comprehensive Approach

While each high-trafficked facility named in this article is different, they each have overarching challenges when it comes to proper cleaning:

1. Keeping surfaces clean and high-traffic touch points disinfected
2. Maintaining clean and dry floors
3. Providing high indoor air quality and mitigating odor
4. Ensuring hand dispensers are full
5. Offering proper waste disposal

No matter what cleaning challenge your facility is dealing with, it takes an in-depth comprehensive approach to get to the bottom of it. That’s why we created the Essential 8 to help facility managers uncover areas of improvement throughout the building and deliver impactful solutions.

“Essential 8 is a systematic approach to providing spaces that are cleaner, healthier and safer, more productive and more sustainable,” said Schneringer.

So, did John have a positive experience on his trip from Chicago to San Diego? If you implemented our Pro Tips, we’re sure he would!

If you’re ready to make a great impression on travelers and tourists, reach out to us today, and our industry experts will work with you to identify best-in-class cleaning solutions. It’s simple; just click on the “Contact Us” button directly below:

1. Travel Trends 2023: 49% of Consumers Plan to Travel More in 2023