Interview: Marine, Housekeeper Maison Helya
You joined the Maison Helya teams as a general housekeeper and have since worked in a Parisian mansion. What is your professional background?
Originally, I was not intended to work in the hotel industry, having started studying tourism. It was ultimately thanks to my higher education and certain encounters that I was able to move towards the luxury hotel industry.
Not knowing this world, I decided to discover it from the ground up with the ambition to climb the ladder one by one. So I applied as a chambermaid to discover the environment and acquire the basics that seemed necessary to me. I began my professional career as a chambermaid at the Mandarin Oriental hotel in Paris, when it opened. My managers quickly believed in me and allowed me to progress to a position as a floor housekeeper, where I stayed for almost 3 years.
I then joined the Le Meurice hotel in Paris, as a confirmed floor housekeeper. I was notably in charge of the presidential and royal suites – in which artists or foreign delegations stayed – and this thanks to the trust of my superiors, including the general housekeeper.
After having spent almost 3 years at Le Meurice, I joined the teams at the Hôtel la Réserve Paris, as the first housekeeper. My functions were still different and my position included more responsibilities.
In summary, my objective was to take advantage of these first active years to master my position, enrich myself with the knowledge of the professionals around me, discover what I liked and where I wanted to go. Having not attended hotel school, it was an excellent way to learn, and, looking back, it was very good training. I’m still learning every day and that’s what excites me.
How did you get started in private services?
After these experiences, I wanted to see something else. I really wanted to stay in the luxury and service sector, it was close to my heart and it suits me perfectly. Attention to detail, high standards, providing a high level of service…
I first had the opportunity to be a trainer within the EPM Paris school thanks to the trust of its founder, Laurent Pascal. My role was therefore to train future professionals working at home on home maintenance, work organization, products, etc. Although coming from the hotel industry, my knowledge and skills were actually very suited to the private service sector. This is how I started in personal services. And one thing led to another, I ended up joining Maison Helya and had the opportunity to have a position as general housekeeper in a private mansion in Paris, a position that I still hold today.
How would you describe your current position and your responsibilities?
The residence in which I work is like a mini luxury hotel that I have to manage from A to Z. My tasks include those done by a housekeeper in the hotel industry and it is a good part of my daily life, hence the advantage of having started at the bottom of the ladder in the palaces.
I am responsible for ensuring the perfect maintenance of this magnificent mansion both in terms of cleanliness, thanks to the help of maids, as well as technical maintenance with the help of the technician. The technical part is as important as the housekeeping part. We must be able to manage both facets. If the air conditioning, TV or Wi-Fi don’t work, even with the cleanest and most beautiful spaces it is, it won’t be enough to satisfy customers. I therefore coordinate the entire maintenance part with the technician and external companies. I have been in my position for two years and the residence has been renovated, but the work is never really finished. There are always adjustments and improvements to be made. This part is therefore important in my daily life.
I also have to manage all the administrative part and respond to requests from owners. This could be booking restaurants, organizing activities for the children when they are there, or finding the latest item from a major fashion brand at any time.
The residence in which I work is like a mini luxury hotel that I have to manage from A to Z
Marine, Maison Helya housekeeper
When the owners are present, are your functions more focused on “Hotel services” as you did in a palace?
Yes, absolutely. When the family is not there, the team is made up of around 5 people. And when everyone is present, the teams grow to more than 30 people. And all these mouths must be fed! The arrival of the family therefore requires quite a lot of preparation in advance. I work with the chef and all the catering service providers and suppliers as well as with the housekeeping staff in order to be able to best prepare the private spaces before their arrival. When I took up this position, it was also important to quickly create an address book and find the best professionals in any field. We tested what worked and what didn’t. It’s like opening a hotel. We research, we test, we improve and we refine again and again. The goal was for them to feel good right away and for us to be able to meet all their needs.
Then, we create procedures and train employees in order to make each of them autonomous, so that they do not need to call on me directly for daily tasks.
Having independent colleagues allows me to then devote myself to other tasks intended for me directly (purchasing, restaurant reservations, organization of outings, etc.), checking the work of the teams and ensuring that everything goes well.
What are the most significant difficulties you encountered when you took office? You must have discovered many new things?
Yes, almost everything! You have to be versatile but that’s also what makes the position exciting, you learn every day.
One of the biggest difficulties was arriving in an environment at the end of work within of which there were many different companies. It was necessary to understand the responsibilities of each person, their fields of intervention and discover the role of each of the interlocutors even though I had never set foot on a construction site. Because, for the future, if you have the slightest problem with air conditioning or carpentry for example, you need to know who to contact. I had to get to know that whole part. I didn’t hesitate to approach them and be curious. I ended up knowing them and learning much more in construction than I would have ever thought.
And then my role was, and still is, to pull everyone up so that in the end my customers are perfectly satisfied. Having an overall image of the house was not easy, but it is of course essential to manage it well.
Could you tell us about a typical day?
I would say that I have two typical days depending on whether the family is present or not.
When the family is absent, my daily missions are multiple. I have to organize the work of the teams, jointly with them, whether it is the housekeeper or the technician. I also have to follow up with all external service providers. I also spend part of my week shopping for family or home. And finally I spend part of my days behind my desk to manage administrative matters, whether contracts or invoices, tracking mail, small accounting…
And as I As I mentioned, the second typical day is when the family is present.
There it goes at 100 miles an hour, non-stop. My first mission in this context is to make sure everyone is okay and make sure they have everything they need. It is important to reach out to them and gather their needs, both before arrival and during. This allows us to be better organized and anticipate things as much as possible.
I also have to manage everyone’s outings, the children’s activities, an outing to a Museum or Disney For example. I assist them with restaurant reservations, I research the latest possible activities or outings in order to recommend them to them. And I take care of all the purchases including shopping. I try to check the accounting every day so that I have an almost constant eye on it. Fortunately, I have the help of my superior and am not completely alone when the whole family is there!
So I almost have two different jobs depending on whether the clients are there or not. But for each of these facets, the most important thing is to be on deck so that my clients are “on top of it”, that they lack nothing, and to offer them a service in continuity with those they have. used to have, always perfectly adapted to their needs and expectations, whether I know them or not. You can’t be perfect all at once. But we learn as we go along with the goal of achieving perfection!
How do you verify the residency? Do you have time to check everything every day?
I generally do a general check of the entire residence at the beginning of the week. This allows me to ensure that there are no major technical and safety problems such as water damage for example and that everything is in order.
Then I do a more in-depth check of certain parts every day. For example, on Tuesdays I check the owners’ sleeping area from floor to ceiling, whether in terms of cleanliness or technical maintenance. And this in collaboration with my colleague as housekeeper who also invests a lot in this verification and maintenance part. She is practically my housekeeping assistant and this allows her to evolve gradually.
What are the things you are most proud of? Did you imagine having the chance to manage a private hotel when you started as a chambermaid in palaces?
I am very happy to occupy these positions today in such a beautiful setting. And above all to have the trust of my managers and customers. Of that I am proud.
And no, I never imagined having this position when I started in the hotel industry. I wanted to progress and have a career, that’s obvious, but the housekeeper position was already huge when I was 20. And then everything happened gradually. It didn’t happen alone either. What I went looking for and the people who believed in me are what allowed me to get here. I don’t regret having fought, investing and persevering.