ORLANDO, Fla. — Over the past year, Rosen Hotels & Resorts has been renovating rooms in two of its seven properties here: the 800-room Rosen Plaza Hotel and the 1,500-room Rosen Shingle Creek Resort.
“It’s a modernization, updating them from top to bottom,” says Nick Fertig, director of laundry for Rosen and a member of the American Laundry News Editorial Advisory Board. “Corridors inside the rooms, all of the furniture, completely different bathrooms, the whole nine yards.
“You design the room. You get samples in. You set up multiple mock rooms to see what the design looks like. You invite salespeople in, marketing people in, executives in. Everybody takes a look to see which room they like, what style they like. What do the salespeople think would hit our customer base better, trying to cater to the clientele and different things?
“Once you decide on the room that you want, then you’ve got all of the manufacturing that has to take place for all the furniture that you’ve selected and getting all that stuff done with delivery dates, selecting general contractors, liquidating existing furniture — planning that whole process out before you even take your first room out for the so-called renovation.”
Fertig has been deeply involved in the process because new linens are a key part of Rosen’s room updates.
REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL
Several things are happening on the linen front because of the renovations, Fertig says.
“One, it’s time for an RFP (request for proposal) for basically all of our linen in all seven of our hotels, just to make sure that we’re still getting the best linen available or at least the type of linen that we want to put in our hotels,” he says. “We have two distinct sets of hotels under our Rosen brand: convention hotels and then what we consider leisure hotels.
“We have three giant convention hotels, and each of those has large convention spaces, and they’re all within probably two to three miles of each other right where The Clean Show was (in Orlando). There are a lot of convention hotels in that area with convention space for city sellouts and also individual companies that want to come in and have an individual event.
“The leisure hotels are more for outsiders coming to visit, extended stays. We have a lot of clients that come over from Brazil, England, and these different places.
“We have different styles of linen that go in each type, and so we have a giant RFP out right now to ensure that we’re still getting the linen we like, the linen that we want, that it’s readily available. You’ve got the craziness of the taxes and tariff situations. You’ve got pricing that’s fluctuating all over the place. You have brands that were previously trying to do everything within the USA that are now getting priced out by folks that are able to do it internationally.”
“We initiated the RFP for two primary reasons,” says Derek Baum, Rosen’s vice president of facilities and building operations. “First, with renovations underway at two of our locations, we saw an opportunity to explore linen options that better complement the updated room designs.
“Second, we have an ongoing responsibility to ensure we’re sourcing high-quality products at the most cost-effective price. The RFP process provides a structured, transparent way to evaluate potential partners and select those who can best support our operational and financial goals.”
Fertig says that if a large cost-saving opportunity is available, while maintaining the same quality levels, then Rosen would consider making a switch at every property.
“It’s healthy for every aspect of the business to do that every couple of years,” he points out.
But the focus right now is on selecting the linens for the renovated hotel rooms.
“It’s a time where we can take a look at what these rooms will look like once they’re completed and give them a little bit of an added flair or a distinct character by way of maybe something different, like custom top sheets, custom pillowcases, or anything fun that we can do to make us stand out a little,” shares Fertig.
Check back Tuesday, March 10, to read about the role Rosen’s laundry department played in the linen selection process.
Have a question or comment? E-mail our editor Matt Poe at [email protected].
