You can outsource linen. You cannot outsource linen availability

The prevailing model

Across much of Europe, hotels no longer own their linen. They rent it from their laundry provider. It is an attractive model. The hotel avoids purchasing and replacing large textile inventories, while the laundry takes responsibility for supplying, washing and maintaining them.

Consequence

However, when using this model, one can ask the question: if the hotel doesn’t own the linen, why should it bother managing it? The hotel may have outsourced the ownership of the textiles, but it has not outsourced the consequences of not having it available.

Housekeeping issues

A room still needs clean sheets before it can be sold. Housekeeping still needs towels on the right floor when rooms are being serviced. Shortages still create emergency calls, additional movements, delays and frustration. Ultimately, it is the hotel, not the owner of the linen, that needs the right articles, in the right quantities, at the right time.

Efficiency

Suppose a 300-room hotel can operate comfortably with 10,000 towels, circulating efficiently between the property and its laundry. If inefficient circulation means that 12,000 are required to provide exactly the same service, the fact that the additional 2,000 belong to somebody else does not make their cost disappear.

Cost

Someone has purchased the towels. They occupy space. They are transported, handled and washed. They require financing and eventually replacement. Sooner or later, those costs form part of the economics of the laundry service.
This does not mean that laundries deliberately operate inefficiently. Far from it.

Different objectives

A good laundry has every reason to run an efficient industrial operation. But the objectives of the two businesses are not identical. The laundry needs to process textiles efficiently. The hotel needs to ensure availability efficiently.
That distinction matters.

Responsibility

Control of rental linen should not be confused with controlling the laundry. It is not about surveillance, nor determining who is responsible each time a towel disappears. Better information actually improves the relationship and answers important questions. How much left the hotel and how quickly was it returned; is there sufficient stock in circulation, where are shortages developing and are both parties operating within the service levels they agreed.

Poor alternative

The alternative is to manage availability through buffers. If nobody really knows how efficiently linen is circulating, the safest solution is simply to have more of it in the system. That works. But safety stock has a cost, irrespective of who technically owns it.

Control

Hotels routinely outsource important parts of their operations. However, that does not mean giving up control. A hotel using an external housekeeping company still measures room readiness and cleaning quality. A hotel doesn’t stop monitoring energy consumption because the electricity comes from somebody else’s power station.

The bottom line

Linen should be no different. Whether textiles are owned, rented or managed under some hybrid arrangement is a commercial decision. Whether the hotel understands how effectively those textiles support its operation is a management decision. The two should not be confused.

You can outsource linen. You cannot outsource linen availability.