Hotel Outsourcing: Ricci Touts Sustainability

In a recent online article, TRSA President and CEO Joseph Ricci outlined the environmental and financial benefits of hospitality laundry outsourcing.

“Economics and sustainability are inextricably linked and their bond is growing tighter,” Ricci wrote in the piece that appeared on www.hotelexecutive.com. “It’s long been true that the fewer natural resources you deplete, the less it costs you. Because large commercial laundries use mass-production technologies that conserve supplies and labor, hotels save significantly by outsourcing, instead of operating on-premise laundries (OPLs). It’s better for the environment and a hotel’s bottom line.”

Ricci’s article detailed the various advantages of outsourcing, such as the high-efficiency wash aisle equipment that uses far less water, natural gas and electricity than smaller machines. These savings add up to a significant cost advantage for hotels that outsource their laundry services, he said. On average, an OPL will pay $13.35 more per 100 weight than an outsourced laundry, he wrote.

Ricci also encouraged hotel operators to compare their own costs to outsourcing by plugging in their expenses to TRSA’s OPL cost calculator. This excel spreadsheet program familiarizes hoteliers with the expense items they need to consider when comparing options by inputting costs and other variables, such as the number of rooms, pounds per room and occupancy level for both outsourcing and OPL options. Hotel operators can download the spreadsheet at www.trsa.org/oplcalculator.

It’s more challenging to track the inefficiencies common to OPLs, but they’re nonetheless significant, he added. “Other costs are hard to quantify, but are undeniably factors. For example, OPLs tend to ‘short load’ machines to get their work done faster, thus reducing labor and technology efficiencies. Plus, these laundries don’t have enough work to justify using modern-day material-handling, soil-sorting and inventory-control systems. Outsource laundries, which must be profitable to survive, cannot afford to cut these corners.”

In addition, Ricci cited the benefits of hotels contracting with companies that have achieved TRSA’s Clean Green Hospitality Certification, which requires the implementation of environmental best management practices (BMPs) for water and energy conversation. This program also requires plant inspections to verify that the certified company is following the BMPs mandated by the Clean Green program.

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