Wilderness Resort Makes Recruiting Housekeepers Look Easy

Denislav Dzhurov traveled thousands of miles from his native country of Bulgaria to spend eight months throughout 2012 and 2013 as a resort worker at the Wilderness Hotel and Golf Resort in Wisconsin Dells, Wis.

His goals while working as a housekeeper at the popular water park resort were three-fold: To meet and make different kinds of friends, see the world differently, and learn techniques that he could use to make a living on his own. He says his eight months as an exchange worker in America accomplished every one of those goals and more.

“We worked as a team in the housekeeping operation, which also allowed me to improve my English skills,” he points out.

Dzhurov is one of the nearly 700 J-1 participants that travel to Wisconsin Dells every year. These workers populate the Wilderness Resort’s housekeeping, food and beverage, aquatics or attractions divisions.

Wilderness has participated in the U.S. Department of State’s J-1 work and travel program for more than a decade. The program itself has been in operation for approximately 60 years. And, it’s safe to say that the long-standing program is a win-win for both workers and the resort itself.

“We have been participating in the J-1 program since 2002,” says Shaun Tofson, Wilderness Resort’s human resources director in charge of the J-1 program. “Our property opened in 1995, but as we started to grow, it became apparent that we needed some help filling our seasonal positions; J-1 fills that need.”

Staffing A Large Department

Wilderness Resort encompasses 28 different lodging styles within its guest rooms, villas, condos and cabin offerings. Thrown into the mix are also some privately owned units that require the housekeeping operation to work with homeowner groups in terms of upkeep, replacement and refurbishment. The square footage of its lodging offerings also varies, ranging from approximately 400 square feet to 3,500 square feet.

Cleaning varied spaces presents a host of challenges for the housekeeping department. The best way to deal with these obstacles has been to employ housekeeping teams that range from two people for hotel rooms to five people for a five-bedroom, 3,500-square-foot cabin. These teams clean restrooms, common areas (lobbies and hallways) and all guest rooms.

“This is a sprawling resort that occupies 600 acres,” says Pete Tennis, director of housekeeping at Wilderness Resort. “There are 444 rooms at the main hotel, including two lobbies, and an additional 460 rooms at the Glacier Canyon Lodge. There are also 152 free-standing units and 108 Wilderness on the Lake condos. There’s a grand total of 1,164 rooms on the property, many of them being two-, three- and four- bedroom condominiums.”

In addition to cleaning guest rooms and common areas, the housekeeping department manages all the laundry for the resort using seven separate on-site laundry facilities. The main facility handles the bedding for all the properties, processing roughly 1/2 million pounds of linens each month throughout the summer. The other six laundry facilities clean and distribute towels from the resort guest rooms and water parks.

Caring for the Wilderness Resort requires a housekeeping operation of 375 employees during the resort’s peak season.

To keep housekeeping operations fully staffed year-round, Tennis says they bring in approximately 90 J-1 workers during the summer, and 40 in the fall and winter. This last summer the resort employed roughly 60 workers from Eastern European countries in the housekeeping division, and during the off-season it will employ approximately 40 workers from Southeast Asia. (The program has also had students from Thailand, Jamaica, and other countries.)

“Some people have questioned over the years, why we hire abroad when we have so many people unemployed here,” he says. “My response is always, if you were laid off would you take a position where the hours fluctuated from week to week? Would you work as a housekeeper cleaning restrooms? Or, would you hang up your professional suit for a swimsuit to be a lifeguard?”

The answer, he says, is usually no. But these are the positions that are being filled by the J-1 workers.

“We never stop hiring locally; we always, always want local people to work here,” says Tofson. “But we have far too many jobs to fill and that’s why we have this program. Without it, Wisconsin Dells and Lake Delton would be crushed.”

He adds that the Wilderness Resort has roughly 11,000 full-time job openings to fill, but the town only occupies roughly 6,000 full-time residents — and the Wilderness Resort is not the only property in town.

RONNIE GARRETT is a freelance writer based in Fort Atkinson, WI.