Operational plan — 5 phases, around 10 weeks
A switchover rarely fails on the product. It fails on operations: an executive housekeeper who discovers the bulk containers on the day, a pilot floor that never happened, a stockout in the middle of high season. Here is the order to take things in, and who does what.
Do not start in high season. Allow eight weeks before the switchover and twelve after it to measure. If your peak falls inside that window, move it: a failed switchover costs more than three months of waiting.
Lock the decision and the scope before committing a single euro.
One floor, ten rooms, four weeks. The only phase that produces real data.
Everything delivered, fitted and understood before the first room switches.
Floor by floor, never the whole hotel at once.
The first month is always distorted. Conclude nothing before twelve weeks.
Allow around ten weeks between the decision and full roll-out, four of them on a pilot floor. Most of that time is not production: it is ordering the holders, fitting them, and giving housekeeping long enough to pass judgement on the format before it is imposed everywhere.
Add twelve weeks after the switchover before concluding anything about savings. The first month is always distorted: single-dose stock still running down, the routine not yet automatic, consumption unsettled.
It is housekeeping that lives with the format every day. A switchover decided in a management meeting and announced on Monday morning comes apart within weeks — not out of ill will, but because nobody checked whether the routine fits on a trolley.
Ten rooms over four weeks reveal everything: how often refilling really happens, breakage, theft, how guests react. Switching 100 rooms at once means discovering the same problems all at the same time, with no way back.
An attractive, unsecured 500 ml bottle disappears. The anti-theft holder exists and costs a few euros more per bottle; it is decided before the order, not after the first stocktake.
With no explanation, refillable can read as a saving made at the guest's expense. A card in the bathroom explaining the product and the reasoning turns that perception right around — and it is the cheapest thing in the whole operation.
The day a bulk container runs out there is no fallback if the single-dose stock has been cleared. Keep a buffer until supplier lead times have been proved on two real resupplies.
Yes, and four weeks at minimum. One week is not enough: you need to cover a full refill cycle to learn the real frequency, and to give the irritants time to surface. It is also what lets housekeeping confirm — or correct — the choice before it is rolled out.
Write the procedure and post it: who refills, how often, what visual check, and what to do with a part-used bottle when a guest leaves. Refillable is no less hygienic than single-dose, but it is the only one of the two that requires a procedure — and without a written one, everybody improvises.
The procedure to fill in and post already exists: housekeeping refill guide →
Run it down in the rooms not yet switched during the pilot, keep a buffer, and save the remainder for VIPs or emergencies. Do not throw it out for tidiness: it is product you have bought, and skipping it cancels part of the saving you have just made.
At twelve weeks, on three indicators: actual consumption in litres, time spent in the room by housekeeping, and guest comments. If consumption runs well above the assumption used in the calculator, the saving announced will not materialise — better to know at three months than at the annual renewal.
The pilot reading is used twice: it corrects the consumption assumption, and it sizes the annual order. It is the input to the par stock calculation.
This plan assumes the decision is made. If it is not:
Eight-question diagnostic → does your current decision hold up
Real cost calculator → what each format costs you
Supplier comparison grid → which one to choose, on 15 checkable criteria
Five sequential phases: the order matters, because each phase produces what the next one needs. The timings are indicative and set for an independent property of 50 to 150 rooms.
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