Keeping the MGM Grand’s laundry clean is a dirty job

When you check into a hotel room, you expect to have clean sheets on your bed and towels in the bathroom.

Maybe the only time you think about dirty clothes during your vacation is when you're running out of socks and underwear and you realize, there's a lot of laundry in your future.

But take your average household's load of laundry; depending on the size of the washing machine, that load weighs anywhere from 12 to 25 pounds. Now multiply that by the grandest scale: the city's largest hotel, MGM Grand.

Annually, the hotel's laundry division washes, dries, irons, folds and transports 28 million pounds of laundry for its 6,000 rooms, restaurants, bars and swimming pools, says Tim Kelly, vice president of hotel operations for MGM Grand and The Signature suites.

In 2010, that translated into 1.4 million pool towels, 3.5 million bed sheets and 14.5 million room towels, not to mention the other odds and ends: bar mops, table cloths and bath robes, to name a few. And it took about 74 million gallons of water to do it.

Laundry, Kelly says, is a big deal for the hotel.

"As a customer, the basic expectation is to have a clean room prepared upon arrival," Kelly says. "Still, I don't think they understand the intricacies involved: where laundry's prepared, how it's prepared and the care and attention paid to it."

Not surprisingly, washing laundry is an undertaking of tremendous scope for the resort, requiring an off-site facility, a fleet of delivery trucks and a staff of 165 to run it all. The hotel owns and operates a 65,000-square-foot facility in North Las Vegas. About 12 to 14 daily trips are required to transport laundry from the hotel to the MGM Laundry and then back again. And this happens every day, even on Christmas. The facility operates 365 days a year, 16 hours a day. During peak summer months, it may stay open for 19 or 20 hours daily, Kelly says.

When the laundry opened in 1993, it was fully automated, boasting 10 full-service industrial washing machines, 10 industrial dryers and folding machines. Several household washing machines also are on site, used to handle delicate fabrics and special loads, Kelly says.

Humans operate the machines, loading laundry into them and fixing them. The biggest challenge to running a smooth laundry operation, says laundry director Lou Hodorich, is equipment. Eight full-time engineers are responsible for maintenance and troubleshooting when something stops working.

A few weeks ago, a new piece of equipment called a tunnel washer was installed. It can do the work of seven regular industrial washers, Kelly says.

The tunnel washer is about the size of a semitruck, standing 12 feet tall and measuring 40 feet long; it represents about 60 percent of the wash room's capacity, Kelly says. In one hour, it can wash 4,500 pounds of laundry, while the average industrial washer can do 650 pounds an hour.

In time, the company plans to install another one. It's not only more efficient volumewise, it uses less water and energy than a traditional industrial machine, Kelly notes.

While the equipment is important to the process, the laundry detergent plays a major role, too. There's no Tide or Cheer here; seven chemicals blended by a local chemical company are used, Hodorich says. Each chemical -- alkali, detergent, chlorine bleach, hydrogen peroxide, bleach neutralizers, acids and softeners -- is introduced at a precise stage.

The whole process, Kelly says, is "awe-inspiring" and one of the most important aspects of running a hotel.

"Laundry is critical to our success," Kelly says.

Contact reporter Sonya Padgett at spadgett@ reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4564.