TRSA Members: FREE | Nonmembers: $45
Get insight into why U.K. hotels prefer full-service linen rental to buying inventory and outsourcing its laundering. You’ll also hear from a U.S. linen service that has 90% of its hotel volume in rental as opposed to customer owned goods (COG). The vast majority of U.S. TRSA members who specialize in this market point to difficulty achieving such success as rental fees are higher and customers don’t do the math to recognize the bottom-line benefit. In the U.K., linen services can charge more for COG. Hoteliers view rental as more effective, economical and satisfying to guests.
Virtues of rental perceived by hoteliers that may incline them to choose this option:
- Simplicity of delegating purchasing and laundering so they can dedicate labor to other functions
- Linen service pinpoints losses by evaluating each customer’s linen replacement rate, recognizing where deliveries exceed pickups
- Availability of luxury, mid-scale and economy linen lines
- Expertise of linen service in choosing merchandise economizes with selection of more durable, equally attractive products
Learn from rental success stories how hoteliers recognize they don’t buy enough linen on their own, which requires repeated servicing of the same linen. They realize their merchandise costs increase and so do the linen service’s (especially route labor and fuel). Hoteliers ultimately bear these COG service costs, further increasing the allure of rental.
Presenters: David Stevens, CEO, Textile Services Association, London, England; Mike Benik, chief operating officer, People’s Linen, Keene, NH
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David Stevens, CEO, Textile Services Association, Bracknell (Berkshire/London), England
Focusing on Sales, Service and Marketing although technically trained having attended the only UK Laundry-based higher education course at Derby College and was awarded the Silver Medal for the best overall student on the course – Laundry Technology and Management.
Joined Paragon Laundry in 1982 as a Production Manager and then progressed to General Manager of both Moreton-on-Marsh and Swindon laundries before becoming a Director and Joint Managing Director with my twin brother in 1995. Director of the Textile Services Association (UK Trade Association) and Chairman of the Industry’s Commercial Committee as well as a Director of The Brilliant Laundry Group. Following sale of Paragon in 2015, set up a dry-cleaning and laundry consultancy company, NewGen Business Services. Became CEO of the Textile Services Association in February 2019.
Mike Benik, COO, People’s Linen, Keene, NH
Mike has been an owner-operator of People’s Linen Service, LLC for 39 years and has long been an active member of the TRSA F&B/Hospitality Committee People’s services hotel and restaurant customers primarily in New Hampshire, Vermont and Massachusetts with accounts across all New England states. In persuading hotels with on-premises laundries to convert to outsourcing, People’s highlights significant reduction in utility and payroll expenditures, as well as space-savings. Greater scale in laundry than smaller facilities maximizes efficiency and reduces environmental impact, including less intrusive waste, the company notes.
Andrew Glassford, Director, NewGen Business Services, Gloucester, England
Andrew oversees operations for NewGen, an outgrowth of Paragon Laundry, which was one of largest independent commercial laundries in the U.K. and worked with a host of blue chip multi-national hotel, leisure and manufacturing companies. Then owned by Robert and David Stevens, Paragon had an international laundry consultancy, which seeded NewGen’s project management and consulting for clients in countries including Qatar, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Bahrain, Oman, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Today, NewGen provides consultancy, marketing and support services to hospitality and leisure sectors in the U.K., Middle East and beyond, offering its specialist LaundryAssist brand to laundry and dry cleaning businesses. Andrew joined NewGen in 2016. He was a Paragon GM before moving up to operations support director there.
