Corporate Magazine July 2018

A Day in the Life
A Day in the Life of...
Tina Cadby
Executive Housekeeper, Strand Palace Hotel.
The historic Strand Palace Hotel enjoys an enviable
position right at the heart of London’s West End,
with easy access to the financial centre of the City,
just minutes away.
For Tina Cadby, the hotel’s executive housekeeper, the
journey to work is longer but evidently worth it given
her huge affection for the hotel where she’s worked for
almost twenty years.
Based in Carshalton in Surrey, she gets up at ten to
four every morning, to make sure she’s at her desk at
the Strand by ten to six. “The journey gives me a bit of
peace, because it’s the first tube out, I always get a seat.
Then I get my Kindle out and get absorbed in a book,
take my mind off everything until I get to work.”
The commute is an oasis of tranquility before a
non-stop day. “The first thing I do on getting to work
is to catch up with everything that happened the
evening before, whether there were any incidents or
issues that haven’t been dealt with overnight. It gives
me an immediate picture of the jobs that need doing,
what tasks I need to give the team for the day, which
rooms are ready for departure. I make a list of jobs for
the maintenance team, make sure all the maids and
housekeepers and everyone else is in place.”
Tina oversees a sizeable team, responsible for
the upkeep of 785 guest rooms and a dedicated
conference floor, catering for both leisure and
business guests. It’s a job with a daunting scale of
juggling logistics and expectations while maintaining
high standards. Years of experience make it easier.
“I’ve been here for almost two decades, and I’ve
been in the industry for over thirty years.”
“I started as a room attendant then progressed
through the ranks to deputy housekeeper and now
executive housekeeper. I’ve always known it’s the
right job for me. It’s satisfying to start at the bottom
and work your way up because I have a real
understanding of all the roles. I know how everyone
works, I appreciate how hard each job is, from
bottom to top, because I’ve done it and got the t-shirt.”
After delegating the outstanding tasks of the day,
it’s time for advance planning. We’re speaking in
the days leading up to the Royal Wedding and the
FA Cup Final, so she knows already that the hotel is
fully booked for that weekend. “I know that the road
will be closed to traffic that weekend. So I need to
work out now what we’ll do about linen deliveries,
which is a challenge but we have to meet it. That’s
the kind of thing you need to plan in advance,
and because I have a good team in place and can
delegate, I do have more time for forward planning.”
Once all the checking and double-checking has taken
25