Originally Posted by
The Road Goes On Forever
Another data point:
The current HIS I'm at offers M-F dry cleaning via a company that's about ten minutes away which does dry cleaning for a lot of area hotels. They supply the slips. The slips have no pricing on them, no turnaround times and no names. Whatever they charge comes back on a paper that doubles as the hotel's invoice which the guest never sees and we add on (depending on who is working) 25% to that total. Maybe two bags a month go out. We no longer put laundry bags in rooms as guest's just take them for extra take home storage. Bags aren't crazy expensive ($120ish per 1000) but it's an expense the management company has chosen to do what they can to avoid.
TBH that's about the kind of markup I expected and not an uncommon result -- sometimes I see the slip/invoice (and sometimes the total matches what's on the folio -- I've assumed in those cases the hotel is getting a commission/discount/kickback/whatever adjective you want to use over "menu" price; sometimes it doesn't but as long as I'm not charged something like $50/pair for slacks to go out and come back presentable I don't really care and expect I'm paying a premium for the convenience -- much like room service.
I
thought brand standards still required bag(s) in rooms even if dry cleaning isn't offered but Hilton has made it very difficult to find current brand standards online so if HGIs are no longer required to provide dry cleaning, I'd buy HIS not having do do laundry bags. The price per case is actually probably about double would have guessed if you asked me what I thought bags cost.
Out of curiosity if the bags aren't in the rooms are the slips? When I've been at a hotel (Hilton or other; US or International) without laundry bags/slips I've generally assumed that they aren't offering the service.