The Best Hotels and Resorts Outsource Their Laundry Departments

If you plan on reserving a suite at a renowned hotel or resort during your next holiday getaway, you’ll obviously want to be greeted with a fresh, clean, and fragrant aura throughout the entire facility. In this regard, many avid travellers agree that the quality of a hotel’s towels, tablecloths, and other linen products is actually a huge selling point when deciding whether to book a particular room. Modern vacations tend to involve extensive tours, sightseeing jaunts, and other far-reaching adventures, which implies that travellers rarely spend large stretches of time in their hotel rooms. As a result, high-quality bed linens and towels are much more important than flat-screen televisions and contemporary trimmings. As a matter of fact, a recent study on hotel-goers in the UK brought to light the following statistics:

• 99% of people believe that providing high-quality linens is important.
• 97% admit to checking the cleanliness of towels, linens, and washcloths before settling down in the room.
• 96% of survey participants would be less likely to book a return visit if their linens were stained, discoloured, tattered, or low in quality.
• 95% claim that they would tell others about a bad or unhygienic experience.

Hotels Struggle with In-House Laundry Departments

From the budget-busting amounts of water and electricity needed to power on-site washing machines and dryers to the exorbitant rates associated with purchasing replacement towels, linens, and tablecloths, maintaining an in-house laundry department is extremely laborious and time-consuming, not to mention wildly expensive. Plus, many of these laundry departments are meagrely appointed and fail to effectively clean linens, which usually ends up irritating travellers and harming the hotel’s reputation.

Outsourcing Linen Services Enhances the Customer Experience

As a result, many prudent hotel owners are beginning to use commercial laundry services in an effort to streamline operations, cut costs, and most importantly, eliminate the taxing responsibilities associated with laundry management. For travellers, on the other hand, hotels that outsource their laundry responsibilities tend to offer better service, more cost-effective rates, and above all else, some of the cleanest, freshest linens in the world.

Although many hotels are beginning to outsource their laundry services, it’s important to note that 60% of travellers still believe that linens are washed in-house by the actual hotels. Likewise, 88% of those interviewed claim that they would hold the hotel responsible for poor-quality linens regardless of where the items were washed. As such, it is the responsibility of hotel owners to keep up with the times by passing on their laundry responsibilities to companies that actually have the manpower, equipment, commercial-grade chemicals, and know-how to provide top-notch linen services on a year-round basis.

In Summary

Although the aforementioned statistics indicate that a bad experience will likely deter guests from returning in the future, it’s worth noting that clean towels and bed linens made a positive, lasting impression on almost 33% of survey participants. So whether you happen to own a hotel or simply plan on visiting one in the near future, it’s easy to see the importance of having access to clean, flawless linens round-the-clock.