Choose housekeeping trolleys for your hotel

In this blog post, we are trying to put together the ultimate guide to making the best housekeeping trolley purchase decision possible for your hotel.

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Understand the requirements

Housekeeping trolleys are ubiquitous, you find them everywhere and judging by some of the properties we’ve stayed at, sometimes too little attention has been paid to the ones purchased. This is a missed opportunity, spending a little time thinking about the needs reaps real rewards.  We go into this below.

Before diving into the world of housekeeping trolleys, it’s essential to assess your hotel’s unique needs. All hotels are different and have different needs. From budget to boutique, small to large and simple to complex. Many properties have differing needs in the same property. All these factors will be considerations when choosing housekeeping trolleys.

Ergonomics and Staff

Why should you care? Maids are working very hard and anything that makes their lives easier is important for productivity and job satisfaction. Retaining and keeping staff is key to keeping costs down.

Purchase Considerations

How are you going to break your rooms down? How many rooms does each trolley service? What compartments are required to carry necessary supplies. Remember going back to reload it impact productivity. If you’re restricted on space then you can go taller. The obvious drawback is the ability of staff to manage the weight. This can be a real challenge with uneven floors. Consider your customers. They need to be able to get past with luggage. Through experience we’ve had customers come back to us and say oh we forgot this opening was only this wide or this lift was only this big and we can’t get the trolley in. Consider:

• Build quality, warranty and back up service
• Storage Capacity and Customization
• Physical Trolley Storage when not in use
• The size of your lift , doorways and hallways

Design

Aesthetics are really important. They are part of the final experience your customer has of your property. As they’re leaving typically, they’ll be in the hallway. A trolley matched to the environment has a subtle impact to how they remember the property. It’s about end to end experience. We were recently involved in a project where they trolley was designed to blend into coordinate with the hotels theme and other furniture, when you see it, in situ, it helps with the ambience. This needn’t be an expensive process, picking the right colour can achieve great results.

Budget

The most important consideration is the efficiency of housekeeping staff. These costs far outweigh the cost of the cart. Sometimes the temptation is to take the cheapest one. But this is often a false economy. Take an average trolley. It will last 10 to 15 years. At 70% occupancy, that’s 2000 to 3000 days. When you consider the cost of a trolley spread cost, 20 rooms , it’s not a significant sum of money. Buy the best you can in the budget you have. If the budget is not enough, consider the possibility of going back to request more budget with a business case based upon the above if you can.

Summary

As a hotelier, or specifier your objective is to maximize the efficiency of your housekeeping staff. For efficiency consider the size and number of compartments, as well as the cart’s manoeuvrability and the space you’re working with. You need housekeeping carts that align with your hotel’s specific branding, the volume of rooms to be serviced daily. Remember, you might choose different trolleys for different floors or room types. We hope this guide is useful for you.

At Hospitality Store we offer the widest range from one supplier, you will find the right trolley on this site. Should you need help specifying or customisation (subject to volume) we can accommodate.

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