MIAMI BEACH? The 1,200-room Fontainebleau Hilton Resort & Towers has what Louis Rodriguez, director of laundry and valet services for the property, feels is a competitive advantage over other area hotels because of its on-premise laundry facility. Guests looking to have their clothes cleaned can have the hotel do so in a relatively short period of time, as opposed to other area properties which send their laundry out. A spokesperson for the hotel recounted a true, anecdotal story from a few years back, underlining the importance of this feature. Michael Richards, better known as Kramer, Jerry Sienfeld?s strange friend and neighbor, was attending a function in the Miami area. ?The hotel he was staying at didn?t have an on-premise laundry facility so his suit was sent out to be dry cleaned for the function that day. When the time came for Richards to get dressed, his suit had not yet been returned.? In true Kramer fashion, ?Richards put on his socks, shoes and bathrobe and then hopped into a cab to go to the function at the Fontainebleau. Apparently, the driver, who was returning with Richard?s clothes, had gotten stuck in traffic on the way back to the hotel…a humiliation that our guests would not have to go through,? said the spokesperson. Rodriguez has 35 employees working for him in the laundry facility at the Fontainebleau which does approximately 900,000 to one million pounds of laundry per month, depending on occupancy. That breaks down to around 33,000 pounds daily, he said. Table linen is processed starting at 5 a.m. each day while other linens (i.e. towels, pillowcases, sheets, etc.) are picked up from the shoot in each building and brought to the main building to be sorted and processed starting in the early afternoon. ?We have a separate dry cleaning plant for guest clothing. We pick up clothes in the morning and deliver them after three o?clock Monday through Saturday,? said Rodriquez. The laundry facility at the Fontainebleau contains four 250-pound washers; two 400-pound washers; one 800-pound washer; four towel folders; two 400-pound dryers; and three 125-pound dryers. In the dry cleaning facility there is a steam tunnel, shirt press, cuff and collar press; three presses for pants and skirts; two folders; two spreaders and two ironers. ?Our competitive advantage comes from the fact that we are one of the only hotels to have an on-premise laundry facility in the area. Maybe the only other one is the new Loews property,? Rodriguez noted. ?The laundry has a fairly seamless operation. We just do our jobs and get it done,? he said. In addition to offering a competitive advantage, having an on-premise facility is more cost effective, said Rodriguez. ?It costs us roughly $0.15 per pound to process here. To send it out would cost us more than double that amount,? he said.
