Clean sweep for Kuwait-based housekeeper

Akshi Singh, cluster director of housekeeping, Crowne Plaza & Holiday Inn Al Thuraya City, Kuwait, was named Hotelier Middle East's Housekeeper of the Year 2016. 

The award was sponsored by Sealed Air Diversey and Singh was presented her trophy by the company's UAE sales manager, Sherif Fahmy.

Singh has been with The Crowne Plaza Kuwait for the last eight years and in 2016 she opened a new property while simultaneously rebranding a second. During this period, she also set up and handled an off-site housekeeping operation, which generated a lot of revenue for the company.

Her untiring dedication to her work led the judging team to crown her with this year’s title.

She fought off competition from five other housekeepers across the region including: Chandana Rathnasiri, housekeeping assistant manager, Melia Dubai; Christine Saldanha, executive housekeeper, Crowne Plaza Dubai; Kishore Kumar Pemmasani, executive housekeeper, Hilton Dubai The Walk; Pamini Hemaprabha, executive housekeeper, Emirates Palace Abu Dhabi; 

Highly commended in this category was Prabhat Shukla, executive housekeeper, Intercontinental Doha The City, whom judges felt has done a lot to further the attractiveness of housekeeping as a career.

Singh told Hotelier Middle East: “Housekeeping is my passion and I have been doing this for 18 years. I am always on the go, so I don't feel like it's something I've been doing for a long time - I feel something new is happening all the time.

"It is something that I really look forward to [doing]. I have had opportunities to move into HR but housekeeping is my passion."

Speaking about the process of opening the new Crowne Plaza property while rebranding the existing Crowne Plaza into a Holiday Inn, she said: "Because of the downturn that is happening, we did it without recruiting a single person. We re-utiliised our resouces instead and then, once we were up and running, we did the recruitment as per our yearly plan. It was very challenging but I didn't have the additional stress of training people, as I had the existing team, and everyone was very supportive." 

The Hotelier Middle East Awards 2016 took place on October 26, 2016, at The Ritz-Carlton DIFC.