The Cuillin Hills Hotel offers luxury 4 star accommodation with some of the finest and most spectacular views from any hotel in Scotland. Set in fifteen acres of mature private grounds with a fantastic view over Portree Bay towards the majestic Cuillin Mountain Range, the hotel welcomes visitors from all round the world and in all seasons.
Originally built as a shooting lodge by the Macdonalds, the hotel offers 29 bespoke bedrooms each individually styled to a very high standard in either traditional or contemporary designs. As well as top quality bed linen in every room, the hotel’s laundry processes towels and robes for guests and table linen for the sea view restaurant.
For many years the Cuillin Hills Hotel had been outsourcing its laundry, but the island’s remote location, several hours’ drive from the nearest city, meant that rental deliveries were often late or even failed to turn up altogether. At times this left the hotel at risk of running out of fresh linens.
The management therefore decided to look at the alternative of equipping and running its own laundry. Girbau UK was able to recommend the best choice of machines to meet the hotel’s needs and provided a cost-benefit analysis for the switch to an in-house laundry operation.
Girbau UK’s factory-trained engineers installed and commissioned all the equipment and gave hotel staff comprehensive training on its use.
“All the Girbau machines are easy to use,” says Glenda Greening, housekeeper at the Cuillin Hills Hotel. “The controls are simple and intuitive and the programs give us to the flexibility handle different fabric types efficiently.”
“Running the laundry here in the hotel gives us much better control over stock and quality,’ she adds.” I won’t let anything go out of the laundry that isn’t perfect.”
As well as improved quality, the hotel expects to make considerable savings as Janet Stoddart, the hotel’s manager confirms: “We were spending upwards of £50,000 per year on our outsourced laundry supplies and we have halved that cost by installing our own laundry and doing it all ourselves.”
Girbau’s drawing office produced a detailed installation layout for the old outbuildings, which were converted to make the new laundry. The company tailored a finance package to suit the hotel’s needs, with no initial capital required. Just as important, bearing in mind the hotel’s location, the financing included a maintenance package guaranteeing a Girbau engineer is available to visit next-day in the event of a breakdown.
For energy efficient washing, the hotel chose two Girbau 6-Series high spin washers: a HS-6017 LOGI model and a smaller HS-6008 LOGI PRO. For drying it is using a combination of a 75-lb capacity Girbau UK Pro Series II tumble dryer and a compact Eco-Dryer for smaller loads. With significant quantities of high quality linens to finish on a daily basis, the hotel also has one of Girbau’s latest dryer ironers, a PB-3221 model, capable of operating at up to 11 metres per minute with the highest quality finish.
With a mix of smaller and larger machines, the hotel has the flexibility to process a wide range of items in varying quantities as well as the ability to launder guests’ items, as required.
