May and June are critical months for hotels on the Andalusian coast. While occupancy is still at moderate levels, the management team has its last window to get ready for the rush of July and August. One of the areas that causes the most problems in high season is linen management: not enough stock, items in poor condition and loose coordination with the laundry supplier.
This article is a practical checklist of what you should do before your high season starts. Tick it off and you'll avoid 80% of the usual August problems.
Why May-June is the right time
The logic is simple: if you spot problems in July, it's too late to fix them properly. Textile suppliers have lead times of 2-4 weeks. Professional laundries close their reserved summer capacity between April and June. Changing supplier in the middle of the season is next to impossible.
In May, on the other hand, you still have time to audit what you have, buy what's missing, agree terms with suppliers and train your team.
1. Audit your current stock
Before buying anything new, you need to know what you have and what state it's in. The audit should cover:
A real physical count
Physically count every sheet, duvet cover, towel, bathrobe and piece of auxiliary linen. Compare it with what the system or the housekeeper's records say. There are almost always discrepancies: lost items, items someone decided were "ruined" and never replaced, items sitting in a team member's home.
Condition assessment
For each type of item, sort into three groups:
- Excellent: white, soft, no visible defects. Fine for any room.
- Acceptable: some signs of use (slight yellowing, a little pilling) but still presentable. Fine for standard rooms, not for suites.
- Retire: permanent stains, loose seams, worn-out fabric, whiteness that can't be recovered. Turn them into cleaning rags or get rid of them.
Working out what you really need
The classic working rule for hotel linen is 4 sets of sheets per bed: one in use, one at the laundry, one just delivered and one in reserve. Ideally the same applies to towels.
If your hotel has 80 rooms, you need at least 320 complete sets of sheets. In high season at 95% occupancy, that allows daily changes without ever running out.
2. Replace what's missing
Once the audit is done, work out the difference between what you have (excellent + acceptable) and what you need. That difference is what you have to buy in.
Tips when buying:
- Buy the same type and colour you already have. If you mix whites of a slightly different shade, it shows when the bed is made.
- The quality should be the same or better, never worse.
- Get an invoice dated before 31 May so you have room to manoeuvre if anything goes wrong.
- Wash new items once before first use so any shrinkage happens beforehand and doesn't show up in the first room.
3. Coordinate with your laundry supplier
In May-June you should sit down with your laundry supplier to:
- Confirm your expected occupancy for July-August. The supplier needs this to reserve capacity.
- Agree the high-season collection frequency: do we stay at 3 times a week or move to daily?
- Agree collection windows: many hotels ask for collection at 11:00 (after room changes) and for the linen to come back the same day or first thing the next morning.
- Review prices: if your contract has annual reviews, make sure there are no surprises in summer.
- Set up emergency protocols: what to do if there's an unexpected peak one day.
If your laundry announces a "high-season surcharge", it probably doesn't have the industrial capacity it claims. Suppliers correctly sized for the hospitality sector keep the same price all year round.
4. Train your team
Many linen problems come from mistakes by the team, not the supplier:
- Throwing damp towels into unventilated bags (they end up mouldy).
- Mixing heavily stained linen with normal whites.
- Tying sheets in knots when bagging them (which strains them unnecessarily).
- Not separating specially coloured linen.
A 20-minute meeting with the housekeeping team at the start of the season cuts these problems dramatically.
5. A plan B for the unexpected
Even with everything prepared, things will happen: a supplier's van breaks down, the wrong linen gets taken, a room is added at the last minute for a wedding. Having a plan B includes:
- Knowing which nearby hotels could lend you sheets in an emergency (and vice versa).
- Having the details of a second laundry, even if you don't normally use it.
- Emergency stock in your own store: between 10 and 15 extra sets for every 50 rooms.
Quick checklist before 1 June
- ✔ Real physical stock count done
- ✔ Condition sorted (excellent / acceptable / retire)
- ✔ Replacement stock purchased
- ✔ New linen washed once before use
- ✔ Meeting with laundry supplier: expected occupancy, frequency, prices, emergency protocol
- ✔ Housekeeping team trained
- ✔ Plan B defined and contacts updated
In short
A hotel's high season isn't won in August: it's won in May. The hotels that run best in summer are the ones that spent 2-3 weeks in spring auditing their linen, coordinating with suppliers and training their teams. The cost of that preparation is low; the cost of skipping it can be disastrous for your reviews.
If your hotel is in San Roque or Sotogrande, Algeciras, Tarifa or anywhere else we cover, and you haven't yet secured a laundry supplier for the summer, get in touch before June. July-August capacity is usually booked up in May.
