Junior boss Thomas Bartmann does the laundry at his own country hotel

Greeting guests, negotiating with suppliers and, between times, looking after the washing machine and tumble dryer: Change is the spice of the life of employees at the Bartmann country hotel in Sendenhorst in the Münsterland area of Germany. Many bookings for the 25 rooms at the hotel arrive last-minute, and many guests on business trips only stay for one night. That's why junior hotel boss Thomas Bartmann needed a washing machine that is as flexible as he is.

For more than a year, he tested a model from the new Performance Plus range on behalf of Miele Professional. Bartmann's verdict: 'Passed with flying colours'. The machine with an 11 kg load capacity is in use from morning until evening, with the boss himself doing most of the washing. From table runner to Turkish towelling, bed and kitchen linen and sheets for allergy sufferers: 'We use many different programmes'. The 'Starch' function is ideal for our table linen. And freshly laundered pillows feel like new: They come out of the machine spruce and bouncy – impressing us time and time again'.

Since the hotel was founded at the beginning of the Nineties, Miele technology has been deployed in the hotel's on-premise laundry. The initial decision was taken by Thomas Bartmann's mother: 'I never wanted white bed linen for our rooms. It had to be high-quality colour-coordinated sets made from finest jersey'. These are more expensive to buy, but last longer if cared for properly. And there's no-one who can do that better than us', says Elisabeth Bartmann, glancing towards a neatly stacked pile of red, brown and grey-patterned bed sheets. By washing ourselves, we can use temperatures which prevent any transmission of disease. And, just as important: 'It isn't that much work after all. After drying, we simply fold the laundry and it's all finished in next to no time', the senior boss explains.

And a new dryer was needed, too, as the old model was too small to cope with the daily mountains of laundry and had to run practically the whole day long - and was anything other than economical when it came to resources. That didn't fit with Thomas Bartmann's concept of a hotel with its own solar power supply, sewage treatment plant and two modern co-generation plants, run as efficiently as possible. Miele Professional had the perfect solution up its sleeve: an H₂O dryer using hot water, a by-product of co-generation plant cooling, as its source of heating. It works almost for free even though it has a capacity of 13 kg of laundry – and is now only run four times a day.

'Investing in new technology was a sound decision', Thomas Bartmann muses with hindsight. Today, the laundry machines only run until the afternoon, when the kitchen starts its preparations for evening meals. 'Shorter machine cycles help us gauge energy requirements throughout the entire hotel so as to avoid excessive and hence expensive consumption peaks'. And, another positive observation is that it is considerably quieter in the laundry than it used to be. The combination of additional shock absorbers and a patented suspension system comprising two independent sets of springs in the washing machine is invisible from the outside but peace and quiet is a value cherished by hotel guests', says Bartmann: 'After all, many businessmen who have booked into hotels in the centre of Münster just half an hour's drive from here make a point of coming out to us to enjoy a pleasant evening on our terrace – fleeing the hustle and bustle of the inner city'.

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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 (Miele Professional). The Miele company, founded in 1899, has 8 production plants in Germany as well as one plant each in Austria, the Czech Republic, China and Romania. 2015/16 turnover amounted to approx. EUR 3.71 bn with sales outside Germany accounting for around 70%. Miele is represented with its own sales subsidiaries and via importers in almost 100 countries. The Miele company, now in the fourth generation of family ownership, employs a workforce of around 19,000, 10,500 thereof in Germany. The company headquarters are located in Gütersloh/Westphalia, Germany.