Looking for a great hotel for a few nights? There are more than 50,000 hotels, motels, and bed and breakfast inns across America that offer a total of almost 5 million hotel rooms for temporary and extended stay rental. Posting more than $160 billion in sales every year, hotels play host to guests from every state in America – and every country in the world.
Of course, there is a hidden side to every hotel: scores of employees must keep every hotel operating smoothly. Housekeepers, in particular, may remain unseen by the average hotel guest, as they tend to clean rooms while guests are out enjoying the sights and activities around town. “Turning over” a room, or making a hotel room ready for new guests, must be accomplished swiftly every morning and early afternoon.
Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the hotel industry is just how much laundry needs to be done every day. Some hotels do their laundry — sheets, quilts, pillowcases, towels — on site, while others outsource laundry duties to off site processing plants. Industrial washing machines must run for 24 hours a day at some facilities to keep up with hotels’ demand for clean linens. Processing more than 60,000 pounds of laundry in a single shift would not be uncommon for an industrial washing facility; some hotels have one or two housekeeping shifts on site but add a third laundry shift just to keep up with demand.
Newer hotels may face certain laundry and cleaning issues that they need to solve as close to their opening date as possible: some older facilities may lack elevators — not for guests, but for moving cleaning personnel and rolling laundry carts around without interrupting guests during the day. Typically, hotel housekeeping staff turn over up to 20 rooms in the course of six to seven hours; since it is impossible to carry several hundred pounds of laundry without effective carts, hotels must find custom laundry carts that can fit in existing elevators.
Rotational molding, or the creation of custom industrial laundry carts, custom recycling bins, or other custom plastic containers, is one option for hotels located in older buildings that may have smaller elevators. Basically, plastic resin is heated without the application of any pressure, and rotomolding specialists should be able to work with hotels, motels, inns, and restaurants — and other businesses — to customize plastic solutions to storage and housekeeping needs.
Custom plastic recycling carts, for example, could be customized to separate glass bottles from aluminum cans, and custom rolling laundry carts could be made to fit any storage room or elevator. Carts can also be designed to fit together like puzzle pieces for storage in smaller areas. Rotational molding can actually produce products from the size of a golf ball up to a large, above ground, outdoor pool. While production capacity may vary by facility, some rotational molded product manufacturers can make custom plastic solutions up to half a ton in weight and more than 15 feet long.
In addition to recycling bins and rolling laundry carts, hotels and restaurants may wish to order permanent solutions for linen storage closets or food storage coolers. As businesses upgrade, they may find that investing in permanent, custom plastic bins and shelves is one way to keep track of their inventory and to ensure a positive customer experience.
