Real Lives: Angeles makes sure her hotel is a shining example

Published on Monday 8 August 2011 11:26

Angeles Moreno has been voted Scotland's Housekeeper of the Year and she still makes the beds at home.

She has made her own bed and she's lying in it.

Make that beds plural. Angeles Moreno makes beds for a living.

And she is so accomplished at it that she has just been voted Scotland's Housekeeper of the Year at an awards ceremony in Glasgow.

Madrid-born and bred Angeles, who will be 46 on Sunday, came to Scotland from Spain in 2001.

"My first job in Edinburgh was on the Royal Mile in the 252-room Crowne Plaza Hotel, now the Radisson, where I doubled with cleaning rooms and serving breakfast in the restaurant.

"You might say that was the start of my affair with Edinburgh. I love the city and I've spent all my working life here.

"I had six years on the Mile before moving to the 249-room George for two years as assistant head housekeeper."

Now she is head housekeeper at MacDonalds, with its 156 rooms at Holyrood, where she has a staff of 29.

"Actually, the title bestowed on me at the awards dinner was 'Superstar Housekeeper of the Year'," she says.

"I couldn't hide a little giggle, but they've presented a trophy to me and I've put it on our mantelpiece."

She lives in West Lothian with her 55-year-old insurance employee partner. Broxburn is his home town.

"Our aim is to some day have a bed and breakfast, hopefully in Cumbria. No more than six or seven rooms.

"I'll make the beds. It's always me who makes the bed at home, by the way."

Angeles has, over the years in the city she loves, picked up her impressive English from her workplace.

"I keep telling my friends in Madrid that I've picked up another language - Scots."

And she lapses into the local lingo with a few examples . . . doon the stairs, gaun hame, awright hen.

Dirty linen?

"I'm well used to that by now. It goes with the job," she says.

Angeles has yet to be acquainted with the new technology, radio frequency identification (RFID), testing in hotels down south.

It monitors the whereabouts of bathrobes, duvet covers, bath mats and the like. Some 20 per cent of hotels' stock goes missing.

"A lot of guests help themselves to bath robes and toiletries supplied in hotel rooms and that's something housekeepers habitually have learned to live with," she says.

"But maybe this could change with a high-tech tagging system."

Which would be a shame - gaun hame with goodies nicked from hotels traditionally is some of the "fun".