How to improve your hotel’s laundry room
Every decision that goes into the building and maintenance of your hotel is important. From the staff you hire to the types of machines you use in your laundry facilities, every component of your business touches your customers, which leads to an impact on their experience. If they have a poor experience, you can bet they will be telling their friends and family about it. For obvious reasons, this is something you want to avoid at all costs.
There are many ways to improve efficiency around your hotel, such as using energy efficient equipment, occupancy sensors, low-flow showerheads, reducing food waste, investing in your staff, etc. One area easily can be overlooked when it comes time to make upgrades – your hotel’s laundry room. Here are a few easy ways you can make improvements to this high-traffic, important area.
Use up-to-date, energy efficient equipment. While purchasing a slew of new machines can be costly, upgrading to newer energy efficient machines is one the first and easiest ways you can significantly improve your hotel’s laundry operations (and guest experiences). Old commercial laundry equipment is less energy-efficient and needs more maintenance, which could cost you thousands of extra dollars in utility, labor, and repair/replacement costs.
Learn more about upgrading to energy-efficient laundry equipment
Use all the available technology. Laundry machines are more technologically advanced than ever, which is beneficial for your business. Cutting-edge tools, like UniLinc can help you better manage your hotel’s on-premises laundry room. Automated alerts, reporting and monitoring technology enable you to track machine performance and make educated business decisions. That, in turn, improves performance and saves the property money.
Properly load machines. Each model washer and dryer is designed to hold a specific load size. Overloading or underloading them means they’re not operating at peak efficiency, which can have a serious impact on your linens, laundry throughput, and the machines themselves. A good commercial laundry distributor can help you find the best capacity machines to meet your hotel’s needs and laundry scales can help make sure you’re filling washers and dryers to the right capacity. It’s important to remember that, in the hospitality world, rarely do all linens arrive in the laundry at the same time. Therefore, it often makes more sense to install several lower capacity machines rather than a couple large ones. This way staff is not stuck waiting around for enough laundry to fill a large capacity washer-extractor.
Follow all chemical recommendations. Always follow the recommendations of the machine’s manufacturer when it comes to chemicals. While your property may offer a variety of amenities, bed linens and towels are the most important elements contributing to a quality guest experience (and those important online reviews). Work with your chemical company representative to ensure the correct formulas are used and chemicals are added at the correct step in the cycle. Using the wrong type or amounts will greatly reduce linen quality and guests’ experiences.
Properly train your staff. If your employees don’t understand how to use industrial laundry equipment or follow your processes, it can cause damage to your machines, increase linen replacement costs, and impact the overall productivity, quality, and efficiency of your hotel’s OPL. Educated and engaged staff members are your first line of defense. They should be trained to identify issues before they become a major problem. Not to mention, proper training can help you reduce injuries in your on-premises laundry room.
With the proper equipment and processes in place efficiency in your hotel’s on-premises laundry is within your grasp.
