Perhaps one of the most important sections of a hotel business though not intending to undermine the significance of the rest of the team, the rooms division plays a vital role to ensure that all guests within the facility are having a wonderful time; and this is not any different at Hotel Des Mille Collines.
Headed by a lady whose smile never withers, the team of 88 members scattered across numerous sections of service ensures that there is a transfer of joy; from them to the customer by giving their best when serving. “Including the front desk staff, housekeeping and drivers, ours is a job that requires us to work tirelessly hard and ensure that every guest receives the best there can be”, Claire Kangwage, the Rooms Division Manager at Hotel Des Mille Collines scored.
Taking an example of an international guest, the rooms division’s service begins right at the time when clients are received at the airport with a shuttle ready to drive them to the hotel.
The activities carry on all through the period customers stay until the very last minute when they are driven to the airport for their departure. Thus ensuring that the employees in the respective departments of the division are conversant with their respective duties is a major role of the manager as Ms. Kangwage noted.
But beyond personnel, the rooms division at Hotel Des Mille Collines has had numerous upgrades in the most recent past enabling the acquisition of world class equipment and as well as renovating the hotel’s structures to suit ever shifting trends in customers’ accommodation needs.
Included in such developments according to Ms. Kangwage is installing air conditioning in all the rooms, changing the television sets from the old fashioned screens to new flat ones, equipping each room with a minibar and changing furniture and furnishing in all the rooms in addition to the main reception lobby. “All these renovation resulted into a beautiful Hotel Des Mille Collines with increased guests’ comfort”.
Ms. Kangwage commands a chain of 112 rooms including; two senior suits with a lounge where visitors to the guest can be received, a dining room and a standard room for the guest; six junior suits having a lounge and a standard room for the guest respectively; while the remainder comprising standard rooms of which 12 are twin rooms, implying that they each have two beds to accommodate guests who would love to share a room. As competition in the hospitality industry in Rwanda gears, there is question what the originals like Hotel Des Mille Collines are up to.
However Ms. Kangwage ends the pessimism saying that the hotel has upped performance offering international standard services a fours star hotel elsewhere offers globally. However inasmuch as it is a four star establishment that offers standard services that one can find in four stars elsewhere, there is a specialty that it carries; “every customer needs to experience what Rwanda’s only 40 years old facility of Hotel Des Mille Collines’ kind offers”.
