As South Africa heads towards its busy summer tourism season, hotels, lodges, resorts and guesthouses have reason to be optimistic if recent figures are anything to go by. International tourist arrivals rose by 12.8% between January and May 2026, with arrivals from the rest of Africa up 14.7% and Europe 11.1%.¹
More visitors mean more business for accommodation service providers, but along with the good news comes a less welcome reality: rising input costs. FEDHASA (Federated Hospitality Association of South Africa) recently cautioned operators to plan carefully for these², and that squeeze is only being made tighter by broader economic pressures.
Water and electricity are two input costs that have been increasing significantly ahead of wages and food. Producer prices for both rose 12.5% year-on-year in April 2026², adding further pressure on establishments already looking to run leaner operations. But efficiency cannot come at the expense of cleanliness. This was highlighted in a 2024 study commissioned by the Department of Tourism, where 92.7% of respondents rated hygiene and cleanliness standards as ‘very important’ criteria for South Africa’s tourism accommodation grading system.⁴
So, with demand growing and utilities costing more, are there less obvious opportunities to operate more economically without compromising guest experience?
One of the answers may be hiding in the laundry cupboard.
“Laundry is hardly a glamorous part of hospitality, easy to overlook because it happens behind the scenes,” says Jeffrey Madkins, Marketing Manager for Unilever Professional SA. “Yet it is an extremely busy, resource-intensive operation and depending on the number of rooms, large volumes of sheets, pillowcases, towels, bathmats, robes, table linen and staff uniforms pass through a property’s laundry daily.”
“Each load requires water, energy, cleaning products and staff time and poor washing or handling can shorten the useful life of valuable textiles. Even small inefficiencies can become meaningful when they are consistently repeated,” he observes.
This does not make the laundry a magic wand for cost savings. It does, however, make it a sensible place to look for avoidable waste by asking some simple questions.
Are machines running full loads, or cycling more often than they need to? Are quality laundry products being used, and dosed according to the load and level of soiling? Are stains being treated correctly before a full wash? Are temperatures and programmes appropriate for the textile? And is linen being retired because it’s genuinely worn out, or because the laundry wore it out first?
“Even the decision about whether something needs washing at all can be worth revisiting. Laundering linen, towels, robes and uniforms according to their particular requirements, rather than through a one-size-fits-all routine, also helps reduce unnecessary wear and extend their useful life,” notes Madkins. “These may sound like small details, but they add up in the wash.”
The next opportunity may be harder to see, hidden in the patterns behind every laundry cycle.
“AI has the potential to take this much further,” he adds. “Imagine being able to analyse patterns across hundreds of laundry cycles: water and energy consumption, machine performance, wash programmes, product use and textile replacement. That information could help identify where resources may be wasted.”
Globally, some hotel groups are already putting this type of thinking to work at scale. Hilton’s predictive analytics platform for resource management has banked more than a billion dollars in savings since 2008, alongside a 20% cut in utility consumption across the chain.³
The same thinking is starting to translate into various other ways of trimming utility bills using technology. A sensor that catches a dripping pipe before it becomes a flood. A room that only heats or cools itself when someone’s in it. A meter that measures water and energy use room by room, floor by floor instead of a consolidated figure. A maintenance system that identifies a tired pump or boiler before it gives up entirely.
“But not every saving requires massive change or investment,” Madkins concludes. “Some of the most useful ones may be made in the everyday decisions, repeated often enough to matter. From laundry basket to linen cupboard, and everywhere in between, that’s where you may find them.”
For more information on how Unilever Professional products can complement your laundry operations, visit https://www.unileverprofessional.co.za/.
