In January 2023, the Director of Engineering at a 450-room luxury resort in the Mid-Atlantic region pulled the previous year's TripAdvisor reviews and sorted them by mention of physical condition. Of 312 reviews mentioning a room or facility issue, 89 specifically referenced something that the engineering team had received a work order for — but had not resolved before the guest checked in. The resort's TripAdvisor rating was 4.1. The competitive set average was 4.5. The general manager set a target: reach 4.5 within 12 months. The engineering team deployed Oxmaint's guest-centric maintenance platform in February 2023. By April 2024, the property had reached 4.7 — six-tenths above the original target and four-tenths above the competitive set. This is how they did it.
Luxury Resort Improves TripAdvisor Rating from 4.1 to 4.7 with Proactive Maintenance
What Was Broken Before Oxmaint
The engineering team at the resort was not underperforming — they were completing an average of 1,100 work orders per month on a reactive basis, responding to guest complaints, front desk calls, and housekeeping reports. The problem was structural: by the time a maintenance issue became a work order, it had often already been experienced by a guest. Oxmaint changed that sequence — shifting the trigger for maintenance action from guest complaint to scheduled inspection.
Preventive maintenance was tracked on a shared spreadsheet that each supervisor updated manually. PM completion rate was 34% — meaning 2 out of every 3 scheduled PMs were either completed late or not completed at all. PTAC filters averaged 74 days between cleanings despite a 30-day schedule on the spreadsheet.
When a guest called the front desk with a maintenance complaint, the front desk would call the engineering desk, which would dispatch the next available technician. Average time from guest call to technician arrival at the room was 47 minutes. For a luxury property with ADR above $350, a 47-minute wait is a guaranteed review mention.
Work orders were logged in a paper book by room number. There was no way to see that Room 312 had received four PTAC work orders in the previous 90 days, or that the pool pump on the east pool had required three impeller replacements in 18 months. Repeat failures were addressed reactively, one at a time, without the pattern data to address the underlying cause.
The chief engineer began systematically reading TripAdvisor reviews each Friday. In a 90-day sample, 89 reviews mentioned a specific maintenance issue — HVAC noise, low water pressure, a broken drawer, a non-charging USB port. None of these had generated a complaint to the front desk during the stay. Guests were absorbing the friction and reporting it publicly rather than requesting a fix.
Implementation in Four Phases — 16 Weeks to Full Deployment
The Oxmaint deployment was structured in four 4-week phases, each with a defined deliverable before moving to the next. The phased approach allowed the engineering team to adopt the platform incrementally without disrupting day-to-day operations during a high-occupancy spring period.
The team spent four weeks walking every area of the property with the Oxmaint mobile app — scanning existing asset tags or creating new ones for 2,840 individual assets across 450 guest rooms, 3 pool areas, 2 spa facilities, 4 restaurant areas, the fitness center, ballroom, and all back-of-house equipment. Each asset was registered with its location, make, model, serial number, installation date (estimated where records were unavailable), and category. By the end of week four, every physical asset the engineering team was responsible for had a digital record.
Using the asset inventory from Phase 1 as the input, the Oxmaint implementation team and the chief engineer built 847 recurring PM tasks — covering monthly PTAC inspections, quarterly room full inspections, daily pool chemistry tests, weekly equipment checks, and annual compliance inspections. Each PM task was assigned a time estimate, required materials, and the minimum qualification level required to complete it. Tasks were distributed across the engineering team by specialization — pool operator certification required for all aquatic PM tasks, for example.
All 23 engineering technicians, 2 supervisors, the chief engineer, 8 housekeeping supervisors, and 4 pool operators received mobile Oxmaint access and a 90-minute training session. The training focused on three workflows: completing an assigned PM task on mobile, logging a deficiency with a photo, and responding to a guest complaint work order. By the end of week 12, the team was completing more than 85% of PM tasks on mobile with no paper backup. Oxmaint's mobile-first design made adoption faster than any system the chief engineer had deployed previously.
The final phase connected the front desk complaint intake process to the Oxmaint work order system. When a guest called with a maintenance issue, the front desk created an Oxmaint work order directly from the property management system integration — assigning it to the on-duty supervisor, who dispatched the nearest qualified technician via mobile notification. Average response time dropped from 47 minutes to 8 minutes within the first two weeks of Phase 4 operation. The chief engineer credits this single change with generating more positive review mentions about "how quickly the hotel fixed the issue" than any other improvement in the program. Book a demo to see the front desk to engineering dispatch workflow.
14 Months of Measurable Outcomes
From below the competitive set average to 0.4 points above it in 14 months. The property rose from position 14 to position 3 among comparable luxury resorts in the destination market on TripAdvisor's ranking algorithm, which weights recent review score heavily. The general manager credited the rating improvement with a measurable increase in direct booking conversion from the TripAdvisor referral channel.
From 89 reviews mentioning a maintenance issue in calendar year 2022 to 15 in the 12 months ending March 2024 — an 83% reduction. The remaining 15 were all in-stay issues that were addressed quickly and generated positive secondary mentions.
RevPAR increased from $187 to $205 in the same 14-month period, against a competitive set that showed flat RevPAR growth of approximately $3. Management attributed 60–70% of the outperformance directly to the review improvement driving higher ADR on direct and OTA bookings.
Preventive maintenance completion climbed from 34% on the spreadsheet system to 94% on Oxmaint — driven by automatic task generation, mobile assignment, and supervisor escalation for overdue tasks. The 6% non-completion represents tasks rescheduled for legitimate reasons (room OOO, equipment shutdown) with documented deferrals.
Engineering overtime hours dropped 42% in the 12 months post-deployment versus the prior year. The chief engineer attributed the reduction to two factors: proactive PM catching issues during scheduled work hours rather than generating emergency calls after hours, and the faster dispatch system reducing the back-and-forth coordination time that previously consumed significant technician time.
Same-day work order completion rate improved from 58% to 91% — meaning 9 out of 10 work orders opened during a shift were closed within that same shift. For guest complaint work orders, the same-day rate reached 98%. The remaining 2% were complex repairs requiring parts that were ordered and delivered within 48 hours with the guest notified and compensated proactively.
The 4.7 is not what I am most proud of. What I am most proud of is that my team now knows what needs to be done before a guest tells us. We went from 1,100 reactive work orders per month to 680 — and the 680 are getting done better and faster than the 1,100 ever were. Oxmaint did not make our team bigger. It made the same team dramatically more effective.
