• 14 hotels in Germany work with the latest laundry technology from Miele

• Fast cycles and drying costs cut by half

The Motel One at Cologne's Neumarkt square practices strict segregation: Showers are cleaned with yellow cloths, toilets with red ones and mirrors with blue, whilst green is reserved for the kitchen. Mops made from cotton and microfibres are available for parquet and other floor coverings. All used items land in red baskets. These wing their way via the shortest route to a room where washing machines and tumble dryers from Miele are waiting.

Hotel manager Mathias Gerber is responsible for 424 rooms. He is familiar with processes from his own experience: 'For each room with an en suite bathroom, staff require six or seven cloths. But it can easily be more. It all mounts up to more than 2000 over the course of a day.

The Cologne hotel is one of more than 50 belonging to the fast-growing chain in Germany which has made a name for itself with value-for-money overnight stays in downtown locations. 14 of these have already been using the latest laundry technology from Miele since 2018 and profit from a concept specifically designed by Miele for Motel One – with a particular focus on the reprocessing of cleaning textiles. 'For each hotel, we worked out which machines would fit in order to ensure uniform standards of hygiene and the safe deactivation of bacteria', explains Nadja Lüdke, Professional Marketing Manager with Miele's German subsidiary. 'The biggest hotel equipped by Miele as part of this project has more than 700 rooms and two washing machines with a 13 kg load capacity'.

Full-service package including maintenance and spares

Everything else needed in a fully functional laundry was geared to the 'hardware': A partner company provides detergent and Miele Service performs maintenance at pre-defined intervals. Lüdke: 'Part and parcel of our concept is a full-service maintenance contract guaranteeing maximum machine uptime – including maintenance and the costs of any necessary repairs'.

At the Neumarkt location in the centre of Cologne, cleaning processes have worked smoothly since the hotel was opened last October. Mohamad Jawad and his colleagues await the arrival of trolleys with used cloths in the part of the building behind the reception. They load two washing machines from the latest 'Benchmark' model series. One has a load capacity of 14 kg; the other takes 10 kg of mops and cleaning cloths. 'We switch them on four to seven times a day', team leader Jawad reports, 'depending on the occupancy rate'. 'Close the door, press twice, and off you go! Machine operation is incredibly simple', he says, starting a 70°C programme with chemothermal disinfection on one of the washers and opening the door of the other.

Uninterrupted hygiene guaranteed

After the wash cycle, the colourful cloths are transferred to one of two heat-pump dryers. Compared with vented dryers, these cut energy costs by half. And, to top it all, heat-pump dryers can be installed in cellars without the ducting needed by vented dryers. But above all, heat-pump dryers protect cleaning textiles with their low temperatures – such as the pile of the mops used to clean the parquet flooring in the lobby of the Cologne hotel.

Jawad's boss, too, is full of praise for the new machines: 'They facilitate uninterrupted hygiene which has been confirmed time and time again over the years in regular swab tests'. Cleaning cloths and mops come out hygienically clean after around 90 mins. after which they are transferred to the dryer. Hotel manager Mathias Gerber: 'By about 5 in the afternoon, all have earned a spot of rest and recuperation – both the staff in the laundry and the machines'.

Company profile: Miele is the world's leading manufacturer of premium domestic appliances including cooking, baking and steam-cooking appliances, refrigeration products, coffee makers, dishwashers and laundry and floor care products. This line-up is augmented by dishwashers, washer-extractors and tumble dryers for commercial use as well as washer-disinfectors and sterilisers for use in medical and laboratory applications (Professional Business Unit). The Miele company, founded in 1899, has eight production plants in Germany as well as one plant each in Austria, the Czech Republic, China and Romania. These are joined by the two plants belonging to Miele's Italian medical technology subsidiary Steelco. 2017/18 turnover amounted to approx. EUR 4.1 bn, with sales outside Germany accounting for 70%. Miele is represented with its own sales subsidiaries and via importers in almost 100 countries. Throughout the world, the family-run enterprise, now in its fourth generation, employs a workforce of around 20,100, whereof 11,200 are employed in Germany. The company headquarters are located in Gütersloh/Westphalia, Germany.