LossLess Group
Sustainable textile management
Like all of us, the hospitality industry has a responsibility to operate in a sustainable manner. Effective textile management can make a significant contribution to hotel sustainability initiatives. Fides is designed to support these efforts in measurable ways.
Preserving raw materials
The production of textiles consumes substantial volumes of water and energy. For instance, producing 1 kilogram of cotton uses 10,000 liters of water. Optimizing stock levels reduces the demand for raw materials like cotton, and the energy required for production. Data-driven stock management avoids over-purchasing, because supply meets demand. Housekeeping can eliminate guesswork on when and what to buy. Proper stock management conserves resources and reduces the environmental strain of textile manufacturing.
Responsible disposal
Textile waste in landfills has a significant environmental impact. Natural fibers like cotton and wool decompose anaerobically, releasing methane. This is a powerful greenhouse gas that accelerates climate change. Dyes and chemicals can leach into soil and groundwater, posing risks to ecosystems. Synthetic fibers, such as polyester, break down into microplastics, potentially harming marine life. Fides provides data to support sustainable decision-making on which items to remove from circulation or continue using.
Sustainable laundry operations
Laundry processes leave an environmental footprint. Fides aligns laundry schedules with actual needs to avoid unnecessary loads, without compromising efficiency. As a result, the laundry can wash items based on real-time stock levels, and seperate out articles that the hotel does not immediately need. Operators who have this Fides functionality available see a reduction in the use of water, energy and detergents.
Distribution
Fides provides precise data on availability of stock, both at the hotel and the laundry. Knowing when and which articles are needed, reduces, and in some cases eliminates, delivery trips. Fewer deliveries reduce fuel consumption and lower the carbon footprint. Importantly, with Fides providing full textile management control, hotels have a secure opportunity to own their textiles, and not rent. This scenario opens up full freedom of laundry choice.
Commitment to sustainability
Fides helps hotels reduce unnecessary stock production. As a result, operators contribute to minimizing waste and improving laundry operations. An innovative system that integrates sustainability into every aspect of textile management.
An essential partnership
It is our firm believe that hotels and laundries are partners in a mutually beneficial relationship. Whilst the history between these two entities has sometimes been adversarial, it doesn’t have to be. Agreement on both sides about the importance of transparency and control over textiles levels the playing field. This understanding ensures accountability for both parties, allowing each to focus on their core business.
Fides gives hotels enhanced control over laundry operations. It helps monitor the four key responsibilities every laundry must fulfill.
Wash Well
A laundry’s primary job is to ensure that all textiles returned to the hotel are fit for purpose. However, achieving 100% success in a single wash cycle isn’t always realistic. To avoid overly harsh wash programs that could damage textiles, laundries take into account a ‘rejection rate’. This is typically around 3%, and the items concerned are separated for rewash. Despite advancements in optical analysis technology, laundries still rely heavily on human inspection. Consequently, rejected items sometimes slip through, and end up at the hotel.
Fides helps hotels to efficiently track and report these rejected articles. It automatically deduct these items from invoices. With hotels having access to real-time rejection data, in turn, it helps laundries identify and resolve internal control issues.
Wash Quickly
Time is critical in laundry operations. The faster items return to the hotel, the lower the stock requirements. Fides tracks this process to ensure hotels and laundries balance speed with quality. It also avoids the pitfalls of rushing processes at the expense of increased rejection or damage rates.
Turnaround times: the exact time, between the moment the soiled linen is checked out at the hote, and returned clean.
Category-specific data: grouping items by category ensures precise tracking and actionable insights.
Wash Carefully
Textiles are often taken out of circulation due to damage or irremovable stains. Fides makes this process simple, enabling hotels or laundries to quickly remove damaged items from inventory. Operators also have access to data on the lifespan of each damaged item, including how often it was washed. These data help identify potential quality or durability issues, allowing hotels to address concerns with suppliers or laundries.
Charge what you wash
Accuracy in invoicing is critical to maintaining trust. Fides ensures that invoices reflect reality by tracking all assets leaving and entering the hotel. The system then incorporates in real-time any rejected items. Based on the last confirmed item location, Fides also allocates losses either to the laundry or the hotel. This transparency ensures that both parties are responsible for their respective losses, fostering a balanced and fair relationship.
Transparency
Fides empowers hotels and laundries with real-time data and actionable insights. Reliable data eliminate guesswork and ensure a transparent, efficient partnership.
A brief history
Over the past three decades, housekeeping technology has significantly transformed the hospitality industry.
1990s: Basic housekeeping features were integrated into Property Management Systems (PMS), enabling digital task assignments and tracking of room status.
2000s: Mobile devices and cloud-based platforms introduced real-time updates. This evolution streamlined communication between housekeeping and front desk teams.
2010s: Smart tools and IoT integration automated tasks like inventory management. An essential aim was to prioritize tasks, with a focus on sustainability.
2020s: Artificial intelligence (AI) and predictive analytics optimized labor allocation and operational efficiency.
Despite these advancements, the industry paid hardly any attention to including textile management in these technological innovations.
Labor shortages
The hospitality industry faces unprecedented labor shortages, particularly in the US and Europe. Hotels struggle to recruit and retain housekeeping staff, exacerbated by post-pandemic economic shifts. Hotels must find ways to maintain service quality with fewer workers.
Housekeeping time
Housekeeping is a labor-intensive, manual and error-prone activity. On average, staff spend 20-30% of their allocated time per room on linen management tasks. These include stripping soiled linens from beds, transporting and inspecting clean linens, making beds and folding towels. Over a 30-minute cleaning cycle, Housekeeping deal with textiles, before moving on to other cleaning tasks.
Transform linen management
Fides integrates RFID technology with advanced textile tracking tools to save time. On average, hotels using Fides save 3-5 minutes per room, improving productivity by 10-15%. Linen management represents one of the last operational areas for significant productivity gains.
Retrive items faster: real-time tracking ensures linens are always where needed.
Manage damaged items: automatically identifies and removes damaged linens.
Streamline workflow: automates notifications and optimizes stock management.
Relieve labor shortages
Fides improves all areas of housekeeping and prevents erosion of productivity during labor shortages. The system helps your team save time, it enhances service standards and addresses staffing challenges.
Optimize Staff Allocation: have more time for other tasks.
Handle Occupancy Spikes: meet demand without overburdening staff.
Enhance Job Satisfaction: reduce repetitive tasks, improve retention.
The new efficiency
Fides transforms hotel textile management, saving 3-5 minutes per room. For a 100-room hotel this amounts to a saving of up to 7.5 hours of labor per day. Increase your productivity and save costs. Let your housekeeping team work smarter, not harder.
Black box
Linen & Laundry (L&L) operations rank as the second-largest direct cost, following staff expenses. On average, L&L consumes 4-6% of a hotel’s revenues. Whether owned or rented, linen expenses account for 25-50% of the L&L budget. Despite this significant slice of the budget, linen management often remains poor. Other areas of operation are intensely scrutinized, driving implementation of advanced Property management systems. However, linen management lacks such comprehensive system support, making it a ‘black box’.
PAR today
Fides brings control to L&L operations, starting with linen stock management. In general, hotels use the standard formula of calculating the Periodic Automatic Replacement inventory. This calculation assumes one set of items for the room, one for the pantry, one for the laundry, and one for transport. This way of quantifying stock levels is overly simplistic and often ineffective. In our experience, these traditional formulas result in overbuying some items while underbuying others. Without exception, this leads to inefficiencies and unnecessary costs.
PAR in the future
Instead of using these common formulas, Fides calculates precise linen order and reorder requirements by considering daily linen rotation, laundry turnaround time, actual linen usage, and loss and damage rates. This data-driven approach reduces order quantities, optimizes costs, and enhances operational efficiency.
Predictive analysis
Fides proactively alerts managers to issues with recommended actions and supporting data. This improves decision-making, and ensures timely and cost-effective operations. Depending on your configuration preferences, Fides notifies you of the exact date you need to place a reorder. This predictive signaling gives you sufficient time to plan your purchase, secure the best possible conditions, and prevent operational disruptions. It’s a game-changing way to save money while maintaining seamless operations.
See Fides in action
Understanding linen stock is key to optimization, and our mission is to help hotels master their textile operations. Our experience shows that Fides helps hotels save 10-25% on linen spend. Contact us to show you how.
Crisis Sparks Change
A major crisis often causes a significant revolution. Ignited by a spark, groups of dedicated believers will often carry it forward. To illustrate, in the post-Pandemic era, the Hospitality industry is prioritizing digital transformation, implementing a broad spectrum of new technology. The obvious areas of automation have been guest-facing and on the topline of the business. However, increasingly, the industry recognizes the importance of back-office operations as an immediate contributor to operational and financial efficiency.
Embracing Change
Whilst too rapid an introduction of new systems risks disrupting the old way of doing things, it can not be denied that most hotel operators experience a meaningful impact from the industry’s technological evolution. This is especially true in an industry that increasingly suffers from staff shortages and high staff turnover.
Textile Management
Historically, many hotels have suffered from poor textile control, not limited to a specific brand or chain. Over-sizing of stock, preventable losses and rising costs are challenges facing global hospitality. Handling and control of expensive textile assets is a manual, error-prone and labor-intensive activities. As a result, these operational inefficiencies adversily impact quality control and depress operating margins. Lack of textile control affects both back of house and guest-facing operations.
Lack of reliable data
To support their textile management decisions, hotels often rely on limited data that their linen-rental laundries provide, if at all. However, the systems in use at these industrial plants are primarily focused on the laundry operations. For this reason, they are not equipped to provide the data hotel operators need to get the best out of their daily textile operations. Unfortunately, over the last few decades, hotels have accepted this status quo. They are unaware of any hotel-centric systems that provide reliable data for the hotel-specific KPIs the monitor.
Data innovation
Introducing Fides, the cloud-bases SaaS solution for the hospitality industry. LossLess Group developed this eco-system uniquely to give hotels full control of all aspects of textile operations, on-site and at the laundry. Fides automates all textile management processes, throughout the logistic and life cycle of each individual textile item. Fides also supports hotels to meet their sustainability targets, which typically focus on energy efficiency, carbon emissions, water conservation and waste reduction.
Key Performance Indicators
Hotels love using acronyms to express their KPIs. To mention just a few, without going into detail: ALOS, RevPOR, MPI, GSS, TRevPAR, CPOR, ADR, RevPAR and OCC. Operators know exactly what these KPIs stand for; however, for the casual visitor of this website who is not familiar with hotel logo, in this article, we are digging a bit deeper into the meaning and application of the last three acronyms: ADR, RevPAR and OCC.
In the hotel industry, understanding and utilizing key performance indicators (KPIs) is crucial for evaluating financial health, operational efficiency, and overall success. Among the most important KPIs are Average Daily Rate (ADR), Revenue per Available Room (RevPAR), and Occupancy Rate. These metrics provide valuable insights into a hotel’s performance and help shape strategic decisions.
Average Daily Rate (ADR)
ADR represents the average revenue earned for an occupied room per day. It is calculated by dividing the total room revenue by the number of rooms sold. This KPI helps hotel managers gauge the pricing power and revenue potential of their property. A higher ADR indicates better pricing strategies and premium service offerings. It’s essential for comparing performance over different periods and against competitors.
Revenue per Available Room (RevPAR)
RevPAR measures the revenue generated per available room, combining both the occupancy rate and ADR. It reflects overall room revenue performance and is a key indicator of a hotel’s ability to fill its rooms at profitable rates. RevPAR provides a comprehensive view of revenue performance, taking into account both pricing and occupancy levels. It’s useful for assessing how well a hotel is utilizing its room inventory and generating revenue.
Occupancy Rate (OCC)
The Occupancy Rate indicates the percentage of available rooms that are occupied over a specific period. It is calculated by dividing the number of rooms sold by the number of rooms available, then multiplying by 100. The Occupancy Rate is a fundamental metric for understanding demand and operational efficiency. A higher occupancy rate suggests strong demand and effective room management, while a lower rate may indicate areas for improvement in sales and marketing strategies.
Strategic Decisions
While ADR, RevPAR, and Occupancy Rate are valuable individually, their true power lies in how they work together to provide a holistic view of a hotel’s performance. By analyzing these KPIs in conjunction, hotel managers can make informed decisions on pricing, marketing, and operational improvements. By mastering the interpretation and application of these metrics, hotel managers can drive performance and ensure long-term success in a competitive market.
The origin
Many people have accused The Internet of Things of being a solution looking for a problem. However, at its inception, it was a solution for a very real problem. The US retail industry was running out of barcode combinations, and approached MIT to develop a different method to represent data. Through their involvement, MIT played a pivotal role in the development of the Electronic Product Code (EPC).
EPC
EPC serves as a unique identifier for tracking and managing items within the supply chain. It offers more advanced features compared to a barcode. EPCglobal, a not-for-profit organization, is responsible for developing and maintaining global standards for the EPC system. This enables the use of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology for efficient tracking and management of goods.
Purpose
The goal of EPCglobal is to ensure these standards are widely adopted and integrated across various industries. The primary purpose of this standardization is to facilitate seamless data sharing, precise identification, and efficient product tracking. This uniformity fosters a more interconnected and efficient global supply chain. It drives innovation and enhances operational efficiencies.
How Fides uses EPCglobal in IoT
Fides, the SaaS system by LossLess Group, provides a consistent way to identify and track objects. It offers real-time visibility into the location and status of hotel textiles. By automating data capture and sharing, our system helps to streamline operations and reduce manual intervention. Fides supports informed decision-making as operators have around the clock access to accurate, timely and predictive data.