05 Aug Laundry, Linen and Housekeeping: The DOs and DON’Ts Every serviced accommodation provider needs to know
ISAAP’s serviced accommodation provider clients use various service providers incorporating such needs as laundry services, linen supply and Housekeeping & Cleaning services.
Through the course of our assessment assignments, we witness varying degrees of delivered service quality from “industry leading” to “in need of some reliable, trustworthy help”.
As with any client/supplier relationship, it’s not always easy to know if the services you, as an accommodation provider, are receiving offer value for money or, equally as importantly, help you to maximise the guest experience.
In these competitive times, keeping existing customers is critical, and encouraging new clients is an essential aspiration.
ISAAP is aware that Love2Laundry operates as a service provider to this part of the industry, and we have asked them to share some of their most relevant insights, some important “DOs” and some definite “DON’Ts”.
Laundry, Linen and Housekeeping: The DOs and DON’Ts every serviced accommodation provider needs to know
By Nadeem Abbas, Founder, Love2Laundry
Guests rarely mention everything that worked correctly. They expect the bed to be fresh, the bathroom to be spotless, the towels to be clean, and the property to be ready when promised. They usually comment when something goes wrong.
That imbalance is why laundry, linen and housekeeping are among the least visible but most commercially important parts of serviced-accommodation operations. It isn’t a soft claim: J.D. Power’s 2025 North America Hotel Guest Satisfaction Index — 28 consecutive years of data — names cleanliness the biggest single driver of guest room satisfaction, ahead of any other factor it tracks for that part of the stay.
We support serviced apartments, short-term-rental operators, Airbnb hosts and hotels with scheduled laundry, linen and housekeeping services. Through that work, we see how apparently small failures in collection, processing or stock control can quickly become guest-facing problems.
The strongest operators don’t rely on heroic last-minute fixes. They build clear processes, sufficient stock and accountable supplier relationships before the pressure arrives. Here are the practical DOs and DON’Ts we’d recommend.
Laundry Services
DO
- Ask whether your laundry operates a documented hygiene and biocontaminationcontrol system — such as BS EN 14065 (RABC) — and how its wash processes are validated. Don’t accept a vague assurance that everything is “washed hot enough”; ask for the specifics in writing.
- Agree measurable service levels: collection and delivery windows, standard and emergency turnaround times, weekend/bank-holiday arrangements, rewash procedures, and who to escalate to when something slips.
- Build in contingency capacity for peak periods, illness, or equipment failure. Ask what your supplier’s actual fallback plan is — not whether they have one, but what it looks like.
- Keep a clear chain of custody: collections and deliveries counted, recorded and acknowledged on both sides. Without records, every shortage becomes an argument instead of a solvable problem.
DON’T
- Don’t select a laundry partner on unit price alone. Weigh the total operational cost – late turnovers, rewashes, emergency replacement buys, staff time chasing suppliers, and the guest-review damage of a bad handover.
- Don’t rely on verbal promises. Put standards in writing so both sides are working from the same assumptions.
- Don’t assume every textile is handled the same way. Ask how items are sorted and controlled — by fabric, colour, soil level, contamination risk, and any handling instructions specific to your property.
Linen Supply and Stock Control
DO
- Start from an operating minimum of 3 PAR per bed — one in use, one being processed, one clean and ready. This is common hospitality practice, not a formal standard, and the right number for you depends on occupancy, turnaround time, collection frequency and delivery reliability. Properties on off-site laundry, high occupancy, or less-frequent collection often need 4–5.
- Plan stock as complete room sets, not just item counts. 200 pillowcases are no use without matching duvet covers.
- Set clear, consistent standards for when linen comes out of guest use — staining, greying, thinning, pilling, fraying, or towels losing absorbency.
- Measure cost-per-use, not sticker price. A cheaper sheet replaced twice as often can cost more over a year.
DON’T
- Don’t run linen to the end of its physical life. The question isn’t whether a sheet can survive another wash — it’s whether it still represents the standard of the property.
- Don’t treat missing stock as an unavoidable mystery. Track it by property or room type, and investigate recurring shortages.
- Don’t let every property run a different linen spec without good reason — it makes purchasing, stock transfers and emergency cover harder than it needs to be.
Housekeeping & Cleaning
DO
- Use a documented checklist per property type, covering more than visible cleaning: bathrooms and drainage, kitchen equipment, odour, high-touch surfaces, heating/cooling controls, missing or damaged items, and maintenance issues – not just “does it look clean.”
- Give housekeeping a clear escalation path. They often spot maintenance problems before anyone else; a problem noticed but not assigned to someone is just an organised failure.
- Audit routinely rather than waiting for a complaint or an accreditation visit.
- Invest in training and retention. Experienced, stable teams produce more consistent results because they know the property and its common failure points.
DON’T
- Don’t treat housekeeping as a low-value cleaning transaction — it’s typically the single biggest driver of guest review scores, and it also covers maintenance reporting and inventory control.
- Don’t schedule turnovers without accounting for the full workflow. An 11am checkout and 3pm check-in look like four hours on paper, but that window also has to cover access, inspection, linen availability and final quality control.
- Don’t paper over recurring defects with last-minute fixes. Repeated late cleans or missing linen usually point to a capacity or process problem – fixing the symptom each time prevents the real issue from ever getting solved.
Five Questions Every Provider Should Ask Its Suppliers
1: What service levels are documented and measured?
2: What evidence is kept for collections, deliveries, shortages and rejected items?
3:What’s the actual contingency plan for breakdowns, staff absence or unexpected demand?
4: How are quality failures escalated, corrected and reported back to you?
5: Who is accountable on each side when something goes wrong?
The strongest supplier relationships aren’t the ones where nothing ever goes wrong – they’re the ones where expectations are clear, problems surface early, and both sides know exactly how they’ll be resolved.
About Love2Laundry
Love2Laundry was founded in 2014 by Nadeem Abbas and has been part of the ByNext group since 2023. It’s a UK-based provider of commercial laundry, linen hire, short-let housekeeping/turnover cleaning, toiletries supply and dry cleaning, serving Airbnb hosts
