Notes to Editors
For high res photos of the visit or, for more details on the Textile Services Association, visit www.tsa-uk.org or email gillian.farrar@tsa-uk.org
For more details on The Omni Group, visit www.omnifm.com or email Christoph Hoffmann Christoph.Hoffmann@omnifm.com
For more details on the courses run by Doncaster College, visit http://www.don.ac.uk/waterfront/
For more details on Imperial Laundry, visit http://imperiallaundry.co.uk/
Laundry joins the Hospitality Education
Laundries deliver great feats of service delivery for the hospitality industry every day.
“The key to a great relationship with your textile rental provider is communication and trust.” This was the main message delivered to hospitality students from Doncaster College when they visited linen provider, Imperial Laundry in January.
Based in Nottingham, Imperial Laundry celebrated their 100th birthday last year and currently have fourth and fifth generations of the founding family working for the company.
Students of Doncaster College’s BTEC Level 3 Extended Diploma in Hospitality and NVQ Level 3 Hospitality Supervision courses attended the site visit as part of a scheme set up with through The Omni Group and Holiday Inn Express Doncaster. With the help of the Textile Services Association, the students visited Imperial Laundry to understand the wider hospitality supply chain.
‘In 2015 The Omni Group – Omni Facilities Management, Holiday Inn Express Doncaster and Doncaster College started a partnership enabling BTEC Hospitality students to gain work experience in a fully commercial hotel as part of their studies. With this initiative now being in its second year, we were looking at adding additional value to the student learning experience and to cover additional aspects of the industry; hence we organised this visit to Imperial Laundry to enable the students to see and understand the housekeeping supply chain better.
As future team members, supervisors or managers in the hospitality industry, it is important that the students gain a good understanding of industry as a whole; considering that the success of the housekeeping operation in a hotel is closely linked to the outsourced laundry operation, we believe that showcasing a laundry operation as part of this work experience initiative broadens the student’s horizon and might make them aware of career opportunities in this part of the hospitality industry.’ said Christoph Hoffmann, Director of Quality Assurance, Health & Safety and Systems Development, The Omni Group.
At Doncaster College, students are studying in preparation to either move onto a degree in hotel management or to head straight into the hospitality world of work. Working in the college’s award winning College AA Rosette training restaurant, The Waterfront Restaurant, and undertaking the work experience at the Holiday Inn Express, students encounter linen every day.
By visiting a laundry before embarking on their careers, the next generation of managers will develop with a deeper understanding and appreciation of the customer/supplier relationship as well as where the linen comes from and the effects of linen abuse on the product and the supplier.
The main message that was put across to students by Imperial Laundry’s leadership team and the Textile Services Association (TSA), the trade association for laundry and dry cleaning companies, was that communication is vital to achieve optimum levels of service. But, additional to communication was the principle of “trust”. The laundry industry delivers linen to thousands of sites across the country and process extreme volumes of linen every day with numerous disaster recovery plans in place for the force majeure instances that may affect delivery. The textile rental providers deserve trust. It’s this trust that the provider will deliver that helps the flow of linen.
Trusting a provider reduces stock hoarding and stock hoarding provides a smoother production process in the laundry and better quality stock for the hotel. The Doncaster College students really locked onto this principle and it is hoped this will filter across into their daily treatment of their linen providers in the future.
Gillian Farrar, Head of Membership and Communications at the TSA, gave a brief overview of the wider industry to the students and told us that there are hopes to coordinate a broader relationship with hospitality educators to roll out more site visits and develop stronger bonds across the hospitality supply chain from the educators upwards.
The trip was a success and the students walked away inspired with different career options in mind and a new-found appreciation for the table cloths set on their training restaurants’ tables.