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Revenue from laundry facilities

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kristof started this discussion 11 years 8 months ago

Hello everybody,

I am thinking of opening a hostel so we're doing all the calculations now.
One thing that is still a bit vague is the fact of offering laundry facilities to the guests and how to estimate the revenue that comes from that.
I assume that a laundry facility in hostels is required nowadays and it's a great way to make some extra money.
I hope to get some ideas of how other hostels are organizing the concept offering laundry facilities.

Kind regards,
Kristof

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Rucksack Brian

11 years

Laundry facilities aren’t required for a hostel, unless that is a local law. It is a nice service to offer though, and your guests will appreciate it.

In my current hostel we have two options for laundry, and neither of them are profitable:

The outsourced company that washes our sheets can wash our guests’ laundry as well. It’s expensive, so we charge the guest exactly what the company charges us with no markup.
We can wash their clothes in our own washing machine. We hang it to dry (no drying machine) so the costs are relatively low. We charge enough to cover the water, electricity, detergent, and the staff member who handles the laundry. Any profit we might accidentally make from that is negligible.

Another option is to use coin-operated machines that guests can use themselves. This is probably your most profitable option. This post has some good information about those machines: How many washing machines for guests?

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Scotch Argus

11 years

We have coin operated machines, and make a small amount from them. How much you make would depend a lot on your location and your customer profile. For example if you are expecting a lot of medium to long staying guests you should do alright on it. We get a lot of short stay guests, and don't get a lot of money from the laundry. We also use the machines to wash all the hostel linen, so they are there anyway, and any extra revenue is a bonus. If we we just to provide coin operated washer and dryer for the guest and our sheets were done externally it wouldn't pay for itself.

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greenhorn

11 years

what kind of washing machine people use in their hostels ?
commercial or regular household with much smaller size ?
After all , 40 beds needs 30 to 45 thousands pieces to be washed a year.

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Rucksack Brian

11 years

If it's just for washing the guests' clothes a regular household machine would probably be sufficient. When you start washing all of the sheets too, then the load may be too much for a regular machine to handle. A commercial machine will hold up much better under constant use.

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gordo

11 years

Greenhorn - 30-45,000 a year? That's over 100 a day! Are you planning on changing everyone's sheets every day?

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greenhorn

11 years

that brings interesting question
what is the average stay in hostel ??
and what is maximum number of days w/o changing ( I would say 3 or 4)

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slushysnow

11 years

Our laundry revenue is between AUD 200-300 per week from our laundry facilities in an 85 bed hostel. Our smaller property with 45 beds makes about AUD 150 per week.

We use high quality Maytag commercial washers and driers - these things are sturdy as hell and our maintenance costs are very low as they very rarely need repairs.

Obviously once you take away the cost of water, gas and electricity the profit is small to non-existent, but it is a service that I feel must be offered to guests (and in our case, is actually required as part of our licence, we need 1 washer and either 1 drier or 30m clothes line and 1 washing trough per 15 guests)

Coin operated is definitely the way to go in my opinion. Hassle free for the most part - You occasionally get smarties using cotton buds to fool the coin slots (if you don't know how this works I won't tell you!), but apart from that it works very well.

For our linen we have a commercial linen supplier who delivers 3 times per week - again, very hassle free but more costly than doing laundry inhouse - for us it is worth the expense.

Average stay will depend on a number of different factors and will vary from city to city and hostel to hostel. For us the average stay is around 2.7 nights, but increases over winter.

We change our guests sheets once per week, but will also change them when requested.

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blyth backpacke...

11 years

Laundry facilities we have one Maytag washer and Maytag natural gas dryer and gas water heater(s). We wash all our own sheets on Mondays and on wed. often wash 20 sets of sheets (20 beds) that takes about 6 hours then wash shop coveralls another 2 and half hours. WE wash towels on tuesdays and fridays. IF things are slow we allow the guests to wash clothes at $2. per load for the washer including soap and $1 for the dryer. We are going change our way of doing things as too many guests leave clothes in the washer or dryer and leave coins or pens or other sharp objects in the clothes as this ties up the washer because we are not on town water (own well) we do not permit washing if the hostel is near full between 18.30 hours and 21.30 hours or between 7.30 hours and 9.00 hours and no washing between 23.30 hours and 5.00 hours I think for next summer in the busy season other than work exchange staff we will do laundry and fold it and charge by the pound or the load for full loads On other days it takes about 3 to 4 hours to wash the sheets and towels Note we do have a second washer and dryer in the barn for shop and farm staff that we keep for very dirty items. The biggest cost of laundry is wages this reduced by cleaning rooms at the same time, and having 2 sets of sheets for every bed so anything not washed one day can be washed next day as a laundry service would take too much storage and we do not have same number of guests all the time this way if things change can change things faster. If we were to add a second washer dryer and extra water heater even if we could find the space it would cost a min of $5000.( excluding septic permits which might need a new septic and weeper bed at $ 15,000 plus)
for a cost if $20,000. So we will make do for a short busy season hostel. So make sure about your water and sewage costs before you put the laundry facilities in.

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greenhorn

11 years

http://www.gfxtechnology.com/

interesting gizmo to recover some of the ENERGY
washed directly to the drain.

Seems like people operating Laundry benefit a lot with using that device
http://www.gfxtechnology.com/Coin-Op.pdf

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greenhorn

11 years

economics of laundry room

what is the advantage or disadvantage of having laundry done "in house" vs. sending outside ??
Preparation for pick up takes some time of the workers, shelving and distribution takes time etc etc.
Doing laundry in house requires time as well, electricity, maintenance , service , water.
So which approach is better , and what is the threshold of the number of beds to decide to go with one or another approach.

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