Hotels, as you might guess, produce quite a substantial amount of laundry. Bathrobes, linens, towels, tablecloths from the restaurant all need to be clean and ready so that the next guests can be properly received. How much of this laundry comes out “in total“?
Well, it depends – primarily on the occupancy of the hotel and its size. However, it is safe to assume that one occupied room will “produce” from 3 to 5 kilograms of laundry. This means that a 100-room hotel with a full house will have to wash an average of 400 kilograms of different textiles per day, not counting tablecloths of course, and things outside the rooms that may also need refreshing. Is it worth dealing with this amount of laundry in-house, or is it better to give it to an outside company?
Own laundry – savings real or apparent?
Having your own dry cleaner or even a water laundry located in your hotel is usually quite problematic. It is necessary to adapt a particular room and to purchase all the equipment necessary for the process of washing, drying, ironing and sometimes mangle. Employees are also needed to watch over the whole process, which further increases the costs of the procedure. In addition, there are chemicals, water and electricity, so after building your own laundry room, it may turn out that this one-time expense will not bring the expected savings.
Use of external laundry services
Laundry for hotels, on the other hand, has a lot of advantages that are not apparent at first glance. First of all, it is a significant time-saver for all textile workers – all you need is a suitable laundry collection trolley, which you then simply hand over to the person collecting the textiles.This cuts out the cost of hiring additional staff altogether, as it can be done by any room cleaner without much loss of time. Also, you don‘t need to invest any money for a basement renovation or new machines, you only need to count the cost of the laundry billed by an outside company. Here it is worth mentioning that laundries from larger cities with many customers allow you to negotiate the cost of the service, which will further reduce costs. The last advantage is that textiles have a longer lifespan and therefore cost less to replace. Outsourced companies are laundry specialists with high quality equipment, which guarantees longer life of hotel linens, tablecloths or curtains.
So as you can see, the own laundry is an option that does not necessarily bring the expected savings – the higher consumption of money for utilities, employees and the need to adapt the entire premises may turn out to be a more serious cost than even a few years of using the services of an external company, especially in larger cities, which are able to offer a much better deal due to the larger number of customers. The quality is also incomparable, so if you have the option of using an outside company, definitely consider it.