I have a chance to bid on a hotel with 5 floors,the building is only 1 year old.The carpet does not look to bad,but I have no idea what to bid or even when to try and clean the carpet.Do you guys go in late at night,early in the morning,or mid day? This is a Comfort Inn,and is pretty busy so I don't think shutting down a floor will be an option. Any info would be awesome,I will be using the Cimex,and understand the carpet should be dry in a couple hours tops,but I still wondering how you guys do these hotels.Thanks for the help,Scott

I have only bid 1 hotel myself. It was a Best Western, about 2 years old. When I gave my proposal to the manager he about fell over. Said he was paying another cleaner about $5 per room and $50 for the hallway. 2 story hotel with about 30 rooms, 2k in hallways, 2 stairways, and he only wanted to pay $400.00. I told him to get stuffed, I could make that cleaning a home. I would suggest figuring how much time and materials you would have in the job and figure out what you wanted to make from the job, don't lowball the thing just to get the job. You never know what people will do. I can think of a couple of times I lowballed an offer and heard "OH, is that all, I figured it would be alot more, go ahead and do it." I really hate hearing that because that means I just made alot less than I could have!LOL

$5 - $8 is the normal rate for hotel rooms.
There are better ways to make money IMHO!

In most cases, hotels do not make very good clients. You will find that hotels change management all the time, and they change their cleaning/maintenance schemes just as frequently. They will whore out the cleaning to the next guy that can save them 5 bucks on their total price. As a rule they are not loyal customers, and they aren't worth pursuing in most cases.

The exception to this would be large banquet/meeting rooms. Meeting rooms can be profitable, whereas guest rooms seldom are. And in some of the larger hotels, the guest rooms and the banquet rooms are handled on separate management levels within the hotel's hierarchy, so you can bid for just the meeting rooms. If you can bid on just the meeting rooms, you stand a chance of making decent money. But what I said above still applies - they will frequently change their management and they're maintenance plans. And they will dump you as soon as they find the next guy who will do it for $5 less.

My advice would be to look elsewhere for business.
Large office buildings are gravy!






Rick Gelinas
rick@excellent-supply.com

Scott, shoot me an email and ill help you out - I do them all the time for decent $$...

Joe

Desouzadotcom@aol.com

Scott,
If it is an upscale hotel and one of the better ones in your area, go for it. If it is your typical ho hum hotel, stay away unless you need the business. There are 2 hotels in my city that I will do. One I already have and the other I am in the door bidding at the present time (The Chamber post below--my Chamber involvement got me in both--prior to Chamber membership I could never get in the door).
As for shutting down a floor, you have a secret weapon! It's called a Cimex! We can shut down a floor, clean it and have it up and running again by 5 or 6 PM! They are plumb tickled! Prior to us, they had to shut a floor down for a day and a half MINIMUM.
Good luck and go get 'em.

Low paying accounts, and scrub-n-run will eventually result in black sock complaints. So you'd better pad cap it.

Speaking from experience.

Maybe the hotel should just give "Complimentary Black Socks" to all guests.

Make you own luck,

Del Scrivner
Owner/Operator
Cowboy's Carpet Care

Thanks guys for all the info,Scott