What Is Attic Stock & Why Do Hotels Need It?
Wear and tear on FF&E and OS&E in a hotel is difficult to avoid. Whether guests or staff inadvertently break an item or unforeseen circumstances such as water leaks damage your products, having to replace particular hospitality items is not an uncommon occurrence.
So how do hoteliers solve this challenge? Attic stock is an additional product kept in on- or off-site storage so that a speedy substitution can happen when needed. By keeping attic stock in a readily available space, hotels can reduce downtime and save on unnecessary costs.
Products to Include in Your Attic Stock
Any hotel necessities that would require you to close off a room if they were missing should be in your attic stock. Items with long lead times, such as lighting, are particularly important to have on hand to avoid extensive waits on resupply. Upholstered products are also good candidates for a property’s attic stock, since specific fabric styles and patterns tend to discontinue frequently.
It’s unnecessary to keep quick-shipping FF&E such as mattresses in your attic stock. Although they are mission critical items, replacing them in a pinch is less of a hassle and expeditious. Hoteliers can also skip ordering extra non-essential goods such as decor that aren’t necessary to keep a room up and running so that they may have more space for must-have items in their storage area.
Consequences of Not Having Attic Stock
Lost Revenue
If you’re missing large items like nightstands and chairs in a guestroom, you’ll likely have to shut down the room entirely until you are able to get replacements. With lead times from overseas products taking anywhere from two to 20 weeks, even a single guestroom being out of service can result in significant lost revenue if you must wait an extended period for reinstatement.
Additional Expenses
Vendors typically require a minimum quantity on order placements, which means hoteliers may have to purchase more goods than necessary to replace one individual product. Even if minimum order quantities are not an issue, the freight expense can easily exceed the cost of FF&E for small POs. Moreover, you might have to pay for a replacement twice if you must buy a temporary local replacement for items while waiting for delivery of your desired product.
Flawed Aesthetics
An item may have gone out of production and be unavailable when you need to replace a single piece of FF&E. At best, this means that one of your rooms won’t match the others. At worst, you may be unable to find an alternative design that fits well with the rest of the space’s furnishings and meets the brand requirements.
The recommended amount of attic stock to keep on hand depends on the size and type of your property. High occupancy hotels should invest in a larger attic stock inventory while smaller hotels can get away with less supply in storage. As a rule of thumb, it’s wise to account for 1% of a room’s product count in your attic stock.
The hospitality procurement specialists at Innvision ensure that your property has all the FF&E you need to stay up and running, for present and future needs. Contact us today to reap the benefits of our end-to-end design and procurement services!
