Summer is here and the hotel’s guest profile has shifted significantly towards families, resulting in substantially higher linen and towel consumption compared to a predominantly business-traveler hotel. Additionally, if your hotel has extended recreational facilities or even a water park, then this will further increase laundry volumes due to the continuous circulation of pool towels, increased guest towel usage, and more frequent replacement requirements throughout the day. 

Family Holidays Mean Higher Linen Consumption 

Catering for families on holidays has a significant impact on the daily laundry volumes, in particular for bath towels, pool towels, bath robes, extra bed linens and baby crib linens.  

There is also a higher turnover of all types of linens as families require extra towels on a daily basis and bed linen changes on a more frequently basis.  While we are used to change bed linen only after every third night of a guests stay, when catering for holiday makers the bed linens often get changed on a daily basis. Reason being, kids like to munch while in bed watching a movie; perhaps parents enjoy a cup of tea or coffee in bed in the morning. Spills and food stains are unavoidable in most of the cases and therefore the linens need to be changed.  

This certainly puts extra strain on the laundry operations as they need to ensure uninterrupted availability of linens and towels during peak operating hours. Knowing the extra numbers of pax in the hotel, it is wise to put and extra pair of linen into circulation to ensure adequate supply of clean linens at all times. 

The Cost Of A Busy Summer 

And there will be certainly an increase in costs for labor and utility costs during these busy months. Water, electricity, detergents and perhaps gas increase costs and reinforcing the need for sustainable laundry practices. During these busy times it is also important to ensure adequate staffing is on hand as productivity increases and to manage peak demand while maintaining service standards. 

While the laundry operations is extremely busy, there will be greater pressure on equipment capacity. This requires careful scheduling of wash cycles and most important, preventive maintenance in order to avoid machineries of breaking down. A broken washer or dryer can cause serious delays in linen availability and these bottle necks can cause service delays and ultimately unhappy customers. 

The busy summer month operations call for a very close collaboration between laundry, housekeeping and recreation in order to forecast demand, manage inventories and to ensure the timely distribution and collection of linen.    

The Housekeeping Leader’s Role 

The Housekeeping Manager or Director of Housekeeping must focus on the response to the operational changes a busy summer brings along. 

In close collaboration with the laundry manager, the laundry workflow needs to be optimized and careful planning is required to cope with the increased production demand. Staffing needs to be reviewed, shift patterns aligned with peak operation hours. Increasing the inventory in order to ensure adequate par stock is available to cover the demands of triple and quadruple occupancy of guest rooms is a must. 

While productivity and quality needs to be constantly and consistently monitored to ensure the same luxury standards during a higher output, sustainable laundry practices should always be monitored despite the increased volumes.  

When business shifts, adaptive operational leadership is key. The housekeeping manager must recognize how changes in the business model affect the operation and proactively redesigning processes, staffing, and resource management in order to maintain excellence.