AN army of custom made RoboVac Buddies have checked-into Travelodge hotels in Bradford, to support the company’s housekeeping teams.

This investment includes a squadron of hundreds of RoboVac Buddies checking-into the company’s 35 hotels across Yorkshire including Bradford and 579 sites nationwide.

The RoboVacs will be at the Travelodge sites at Bradford Central, Bradford Mid Point and Keighley.

This multi-million pound UK collective investment of 7,500 RoboVac Buddies is Travelodge’s latest brand evolving initiative, specifically designed to support the company’s housekeeping teams – who have to clean up to nearly 44,000 rooms every day, 365 days of the year.

To help lighten the workload for its housekeeping team members, who collectively vacuum the distance from York to New York every day - Travelodge travelled into the future to create an industrial hotel spec RoboVac.

The hotel chain teamed up with KILLIS Ltd, a Sheffield-based company that specialises in manufacturing specialist cleaning equipment and together engineered the UK’s first industrial RoboVac designed for a busy hotel.

Bradford Telegraph and Argus:

This laborious mission took nine months to complete and included the production of five prototypes before the birth of the Travelodge RoboVac Buddy – as this is no ordinary RoboVac. It has robust features to enable it to withstand the daily heavy duty requirements of working in a busy hotel. These feature include

A Travelodge RoboVac Buddy has been allocated to each housekeeping team member to support them during their shift.

While the housekeeping team member completes a comprehensive room and bathroom cleaning task list, its RoboVac Buddy gets to work thoroughly vacuuming the room.

This includes going under the Travelodge Dreamer bed and in every nook and cranny of the room. It also vacuums the hotel’s hallways, public spaces and the Bar Café if the hotel has one.

At the end of their shift, the Travelodge RoboVac Buddies are tucked into their custom made team bunk beds.

Each hotel has been supplied with 12 RoboVac Buddies on average, while larger sites have up to 40.

Craig Bonnar, Travelodge chief executive, said: “We are very excited to kick start 2022 by revolutionising the hospitality sector and supporting our housekeeping teams with the roll-out of the UK’s first hotel RoboVac Buddy recruitment programme.

"Housekeeping is the most important and physically demanding job at Travelodge and we are always looking for low cost and innovative ways to support our colleagues.

"Automating vacuuming with the introduction of the Travelodge RoboVac Buddies is a fun, win-win solution which helps us to drive a greener, cleaner and more efficient room clean.

"The army of Travelodge RoboVac Buddies have settled in really well and are a massive hit with our hotel teams and customers.”

Travelodge has around 1,000 RoboVacs on standby in a secret base so that they can be deployed to a Travelodge hotel in case of an emergency.