In part one, author Pablo Lucchesi, a founding partner and CEO at Crown Linen, LLC discussed how contingency planning allowed the company to continue servicing customers through Hurricane Irma during the 2017 hurricane season, even though only two of the five processing facilities retained power following the storm. Today he will review five important lessons that he learned which can help your facility continue to serve your customers should disaster strike.
- Build Redundancy Into Your Supply Chain
One of the most effective forms of disaster preparedness is eliminating single points of failure. For hotels that outsource laundry, that means understanding if their provider has true operational redundancy. This goes beyond simply having additional equipment at one location; ideally this would include access to multiple geographically diverse processing facilities capable of absorbing production if another plant becomes unavailable.
For properties operating on-premise laundry facilities, equipment failures, flooding, power outages or staffing shortages can quickly halt operations as housekeeping teams are unable to prepare rooms for incoming guests. In other words, laundry can become a single point of operational failure. Preparedness means understanding those risks before they occur.
- Par Levels Become Even More Important During Emergencies
Maintaining appropriate par levels is always an operational best practice, but it becomes especially valuable during severe weather events. Additional linen inventory provides flexibility when deliveries are delayed or occupancy unexpectedly increases.
Demand for hotels can increase rapidly while transportation networks become less predictable. Florida destinations frequently become temporary housing for evacuated families, emergency responders and government contractors working on local recovery efforts. Hotels with healthy par levels have more operational breathing room to adapt without immediately affecting guest service. The objective is to ensure inventory strategies account for realistic disruption scenarios, rather than to stockpile unnecessarily or unpredictably.
- Communication Is The Most Valuable Resource
During every major storm, conditions change by the hours: road closures evolve, power restoration estimates shift, guest demands change unexpectedly and transportation routes become unavailable. Under those circumstances, communication often becomes more valuable than equipment.
The strongest emergency partnerships are built long before hurricane season begins. Regular planning meetings between hotel leadership and key vendors, including laundry providers, help establish expectations, define decision-making responsibilities and create communication channels that can be activated immediately when weather threatens. Waiting until landfall is often too late.
- Flexibility Is A Competitive Advantage
One lesson repeatedly reinforced across multiple hurricane seasons is that rigid operational plans rarely survive real-world emergencies unchanged. Successful organizations build flexibility into every aspect of their response, including:
- Adjusting linen replacement schedules temporarily
- Modifying delivery windows
- Prioritizing essential inventory
- Redirecting production between facilities
- Reallocating transportation assets
- Sharing real-time operational updates between partners
The organizations that recover fastest are often those that adapt the quickest.
- Preparedness Is A Year-Round Responsibility
Hurricane season officially begins on June 1, but resilience starts much earlier. Preparedness is built throughout the year through investment in infrastructure, redundant operations, emergency planning, inventory management, employee training and trusted partnerships.
Rather than waiting until a tropical storm enters the forecast cone, hotel operations teams should evaluate their laundry readiness months in advance. With hurricane season already underway, the time is now. Some useful questions include:
- If our laundry operation became unavailable tomorrow, what is our backup plan?
- Do we have sufficient linen inventory to sustain operations during delivery interruptions?
- How quickly can our laundry provider shift production if one facility is affected?
- Who are our primary operational contacts during an emergency?
- Have we discussed emergency procedures with housekeeping, engineering and executive leadership?
These conversations often reveal vulnerabilities that can be addressed before they become operational problems.
When Hurricane Irma tested Florida’s hospitality industry in 2017, successful recovery depended on strong hotels as well as resilient partnerships throughout the supply chain. As another hurricane season begins, the most valuable question every hotel leader can ask is “Can every part of our operation continue serving guests after the storm has passed?”
The answer to that question often begins in places guests never see but rely on every day, such as laundry.
Go here to read Disaster Preparedness Tips From a Laundry Leader, Part 1
About the Author: Pablo Lucchesi is one of the founding partners at Crown Linen, LLC, and has served as CEO since its foundation in 2003. With over 20 years of industry experience, Lucchesi and his team at Crown Linen continue to set the standard for excellence in hospitality laundry services. Lucchesi graduated as a CPA from Universidad National de Cuyo in Argentina. He then earned his master’s degree in business administration at EcoleNationale des Ponts et Chausses in France, as well as a master’s degree in strategic marketing from Cranfield University in the United Kingdom. Today, Crown Linen operates six state-of-the-art commercial laundry facilities and employs over 1,000 associates while servicing over 65,000 hotel rooms
