How Do You Bridge the Gap Between Peak Season in Hospitality and Your Contractors' Holidays?

In the South African hospitality sector, December is when everything has to work: every hotel room is usually full, the kitchen is flat out and the pool is busy from breakfast until sunset. It's also the one time of year when help is hardest to find. The building and maintenance trades traditionally shut down from mid-December until the first or second week of January. Many of the contractors you rely on all year are on leave exactly when your property is under the most pressure.

So, when a geyser bursts or the cold room stops holding temperature over Christmas, you're often phoning around for someone who's available, paying holiday call-out rates, and explaining a system they've never seen.

The good news: most of what goes wrong in December can usually be seen coming in October and November.

The things guests notice first

Guests don't see your plant room, but they feel it. These are the systems that turn into complaints, refunds and one-star reviews when they fail in peak season:

• Guest-room air conditioning: filters, gas levels and drainage, especially on units that struggled last summer
• Hot water: geysers, heat pumps and solar systems, plus the valves and elements that fail under constant use
• Pool and spa equipment: pumps, filters, chlorinators and heaters
• Kitchen and cold rooms: fridges, freezers, extraction and dishwashers, where one failure can mean lost stock and a closed kitchen
• Backup power and water: generators, inverters, batteries and water storage, tested under load rather than assumed to work
• Gas installations: kitchen, braai and heating gas, checked by a registered installer

A pre-season check and pre-emptive maintenance of these, done while your regular contractors are still working, is far cheaper than an emergency call-out on Boxing Day, and it avoids unhappy guests, at least where these items are concerned.

Get the paperwork ready before you're busy

Peak season is also when an incident is most likely, and when an incident happens, you usually need to be able to show evidence of maintenance and compliance on high-risk installations.

• Gas: South African law requires a valid Certificate of Conformity for a gas installation, issued by a registered installer and updated after alterations. After gas-related damage, insurers can ask for it, and not having one may affect your claim.
• Electrical: a valid electrical Certificate of Compliance, plus supplementary certificates for additions, such as a new inverter or solar installation. Insurers have rejected claims where the certificate couldn't be produced.
• Fire equipment: extinguishers serviced by an accredited company, with service records on file.

Find out before peak season which certificates are current, which are close to expiry and where the originals actually are. In December, nobody has time to search an old email inbox. (We've written more about this in The maintenance happened. Can you prove it? and Insured, but not necessarily covered?)

Look for the units that keep failing

Every property has them: the aircon in the same corner room that's repaired every summer, or the geyser that's had three new elements in two years. Each repair seems small, but together they end up costing more than a replacement, and they always seem to fail at the worst time.

Before peak season, look back at last year. Which assets had repeat call-outs? How much has been spent on each? If a unit is likely to fail again in December, replacing it in November may be the better decision – another fix during the holidays might cost you as much as a replacement before the peak period. (See Reactive maintenance: are you managing your assets, or just fixing things when they break?)

Plan your contractor cover for the holidays

Before your regular service providers close, confirm:

• Who is available over the festive season for aircon, plumbing, electrical, refrigeration, pool and generators
• Their contact numbers and call-out arrangements
• What each one looked after during the year, so a stand-in technician doesn't start from zero

Most importantly, make sure the history of each unit isn't in one person's head. When your maintenance manager or regular technician is on leave, someone else needs to see what was done, when and by whom.

Make it easy for staff to report problems early

Housekeeping usually notices first: a unit that's noisy, a tap that drips, a fridge running warm. A quick report with a photo, made while the problem is small, is the difference between a planned fix and a crisis with a guest in the room.

How Axario Business helps

Axario Business keeps all the information you need in one place, rather than spread across inboxes, spreadsheets and people's memories.

• Every asset in its place. Register aircons, geysers, pool pumps, cold rooms, kitchen equipment, generators, fire equipment and any other core assets by site, building and room, with make, model, serial number, photos and manuals.
• Planned maintenance for one unit or forty. Schedule recurring services for a single asset, or for a whole group, such as all your room aircons, and see what's coming up before it's due.
• Problems reported from a phone. Staff can report a fault with a photo and its location, and you review it before it becomes a job. Scan an asset's QR label to bring up its details and history straight away.
• Contractor work recorded against the asset. Assign jobs to external contractors, who record the work, photos and sign-off. The full service history stays with the asset, not with the person who did the work.
• Repeat failures and spend, visible. See breakdowns, job history and repair costs per asset and per site, so repair-versus-replace decisions are based on facts.
• Certificates with expiry reminders. Keep gas, electrical, fire and other compliance certificates linked to the assets they cover, with reminders before they expire.
• Reports when you need them. Maintenance, register and insurance reports, plus compliance packs, ready for an owner, insurer or inspector.
• Several properties, one view. Run a group of hotels or lodges from one account, with each site's information kept separate.
• Works on site. Field mode keeps working where signal is weak and syncs once you're back online.

Holiday periods will always be busy. They don't have to be a gamble.

Frequently asked questions

When should a hotel or lodge start preparing for the festive season? Ideally in October and November, while regular contractors are still working. That leaves time to service key equipment, replace units that keep failing and renew certificates before the builders' holiday begins in mid-December.

What should be on a hotel maintenance checklist before peak season? Guest-room air conditioning, hot water systems, pool and spa equipment, kitchen and cold-room equipment, backup power and water, gas installations and fire equipment, plus the compliance certificates that go with them.

What compliance certificates does a hospitality business need on file? At a minimum, a gas Certificate of Conformity for any gas installation, an electrical Certificate of Compliance (with supplementary certificates for additions) and fire equipment service records. Requirements vary by property, so confirm with your registered installers and your insurer.

How do I decide whether to repair or replace equipment? Look at how often the unit has failed, what you've spent on repairs and how disruptive another failure would be. If it's likely to fail again in peak season, replacing it beforehand is often the cheaper option.

So you can know your risk, control your assets and prove your compliance.