Take a moment to remember your last stay at a hotel.
You were sure to have encountered a service trolley piled with towels and bedding as you walked along the corridors. Weight: up to 150 kg. A load that presents a difficult challenge for service personnel, but need do so no longer, thanks to the TENTE E-Drive flex. In cooperation with our customer Mercura, we put this solution into practice at the Starling Hotel in Geneva, making work processes more efficient.
The starting point
Mercura Industries Suisse S.A. produces lightweight aluminium service trolleys and is present in more than 45 countries. These products are used in hotels, airports and healthcare facilities, for example. The company was commissioned by the Starling Hotel & Conference Centre Geneva to provide new trolleys for room service and for restocking the minibars. Starling Geneva is the largest 4-star hotel in Switzerland. It has 496 rooms, 43 conference rooms and 270 employees.
150 kilos and difficult floors
Mercura Switzerland's service trolleys are used in aisles with very thick carpets. The unfavourable running properties on this floor covering and a trolley weight of up to 150 kilograms combine to produce an extremely high rolling resistance. This makes it almost impossible to move the service trolleys without assistance. In order to minimise the effort required of hotel employees, Mercura was looking for a solution that would help overcome the resistance. For the hotel, it was essential to create optimum working conditions for its employees, minimise the burden and protect their health.
We equipped each of the 15 service trolleys with an E-Drive flex. A control unit on the handle allows flexible control of the drive aid. If the cleaning personnel activate the E-Drive flex, an electric drive wheel lowers and helps personnel to move the trolley.
In combination with four swivel castors, specially selected to deal with this situation, the solution noticeably simplifies forward movement and makes it possible to drive the service and bar trolleys effortlessly, even on the high-pile carpet. The innovative system has been successfully perfected in the course of TENTE’s project partnership with Mercura. In addition to also working closely with the employees of the Starling Hotel.
Together, we have optimised the motor parameters to correspond to the weight of the individual trolleys and adapted the performance of the rechargeable batteries. Now the E-Drive flex is able to lighten the load for service personnel all day long, as well as provide continuous assistance to the staff.
"The electric drive increases the level of satisfaction of our staff and improves our service."
Anne Elise Choux, Operations Manager, Starling Hotels & Conference Centres, Geneva
With the help of this intelligent solution, service personnel can move the heavy service and bar trolleys effortlessly along the hotel's long corridors. The E-Drive flex noticeably lightens the employees’ load and enables them to concentrate fully on their actual tasks.
The results: Increased employee satisfaction, a lower sickness rate and significant improvement of the work processes.
