Hotel & Motel Management - June 16, 2008 - (Page 36) 36 Hotel Operations LAUNDRY H&MM June 16, 2008 | HotelMotel.com BY ALLIE JOHNSON, CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Get with the program Creating a successful towel and linen reuse program means getting hotel staff to buy into the idea, so training is important. “It took an incredible amount of training on our part; we had a heck of a problem when we first rolled it out,” said Steve Pinetti, senior v.p. of sales and marketing for Kimpton Hotel & Restaurant Group, of Kimpton’s towel and linen reuse program, which has been in place about 10 years. “We got a lot of calls from guests saying, ‘I wanted to participate in your program, but they took my towels.’” Because hotel housekeepers took pride in leaving rooms spotless, they sometimes couldn’t resist changing towels and linens, Pinetti said. So Kimpton executives traveled to each hotel several times over a six-month period to show staff why the hotel was implementing the program. “We showed them a lot of graphs and diagrams—kind of a day in the life of a towel or linen that gets washed—so they could see how Kimpton Hotel & Restaurant Group uses cards much you save if with ecological facts to get guests interested in you save one load, towel and linen reuse programs. 100 loads, or 1,000 loads in a year,” president and owner of Project Pinetti said. “Here’s how much coal you’re not using, Planet Corp., which offers here’s how many trees are not a training CD in English and Spanish as part of its linen and being cut down or how much gray water is not being created.” towel reuse program for hotels. “It’s also a management issue Putting signage in the back of the house to remind with regard to the executive employees about the program housekeeper,” Stanley said. But once employees also helps, said John Stanley, understand the big picture, it shouldn’t be difficult to get them behind the program. “Housekeepers’ jobs are very difficult, so they tend to want to do something that will save them some steps,” said Steve Samson, Marriott International vice-president of rooms operations. “It shouldn’t be a hard sell.” Project Planet Corp.’s training DVD helps hotel staff learn to efficiently implement towel and linen reuse programs. KIMPTON HOTELS PROJECT PLANET CORP. Message matters The wording of the toweland-linen-reuse message left in guestrooms has a subtle effect on guest psychology, which affects rates of participation, according to a study released last year by the Center for Hospitality Research at Cornell University. At hotels, researchers tested a number of messages. They found three messages (pictured at right) get higher rates of participation than the standard pleas to save the environment or to conserve for future generations—that got 30 percent—or to help the hotel save energy, which got just 16 percent. X Percent of Guests Who Stayed in this Room Participated in Our Program. Please Join Your Fellow Guests in Helping to Save the Environment. Participation rate: 49 percent We’ve Donated to an Environmental Non-Profit Group, So Please Reciprocate by Participating in Our Program Participation rate: 45 percent X Percent of Hotel Guests Participate in Our Program. Please Join Your Fellow Guests in Helping to Save the Environment. Participation rate: 44 percent CIRCLE NO. 101 http://HotelMotel.com http://www.uni-linc.com/hospitality http://www.uni-linc.com/hospitality
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