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In short
- Paper consumption in a hotel is not estimated but calculated: number of room-nights × consumption per night, for each type of paper separately.
- A room uses toilet paper and facial tissues; public washrooms, the kitchen and the spa use hand towels, and that is where the biggest difference between systems appears.
- Small rolls for rooms (Lucart Strong Select 4, Satino HiLine) are chosen for the guest experience; jumbo rolls and interleaved sheets (Lucart Identity, Scott Control, Hostess) for cost per user.
- The dispenser decides consumption more than the paper does: sheet-by-sheet or autocut systems reduce waste in public washrooms.
Paper is the cheapest item in a hotel room and is most often ordered by feel: when it runs out, the supplier gets a call. The result is either a full storeroom before winter or an empty shelf in August. Paper consumption can be calculated in advance, room by room, if you know three things: how many sheets there are in a roll, how many room-nights you have and which dispenser hangs on the wall. In this guide we give the method of calculation and the pack data from our range: Lucart, Satino and Kimberly-Clark Professional.
What one room really uses
A room uses two kinds of paper: toilet paper in small rolls and facial tissues. Hand towels are usually absent from the room, because the guest has towels. The numbers vary from hotel to hotel, so we give a calculation with assumptions that you will replace with your own.
A standard roll of 140 to 150 sheets is enough for two to three nights of one guest, depending on whether it is a business guest who is in the room only at night or a family on holiday. At every clean the attendant also leaves a spare roll, so in practice a hotel counts roughly one roll per night in a room with one or two guests. A box of 60 to 100 tissues lasts one stay, i.e. it is replaced at check-out or when empty.
| Product | Format | Capacity | Pack | Where |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lucart Strong Select 4 | Small roll, 4-ply, scented, Rose embossing | 140 sheets / 18.9 m | 56 rolls | 4- and 5-star rooms |
| Satino HiLine | Small roll, 3-ply, pure pulp, Ecolabel | 150 sheets | 8 rolls | 3- and 4-star rooms, Twin Roll dispenser |
| Hagleitner multiROLL Z4 | Small roll, 4-ply, for the LUNA holder with reserve | 425 sheets | 32 rolls | Rooms, less frequent refilling |
| Lucart Strong Elite Premium | Facial tissues, 3-ply, cube box | 60 sheets | 30 boxes | Rooms, reception |
| Satino Prestige tissues | Facial tissues, 2-ply, flat box | 100 sheets | 40 boxes | Rooms, clinics |
| Lucart Identity Strong 900 | Jumbo roll for autocut dispenser, 2-ply | 900 sheets / 202 m | 12 rolls | Public washrooms, lobby, restaurant |
| Scott Control centrefeed | Centrefeed roll, 2-ply, recycled | 1,280 sheets / 314 m | 6 rolls | Public washrooms, spa, staff |
| Hostess interleaved | Interleaved toilet tissue, 2-ply, Ecolabel | 250 sheets per pack | 32 packs (8,000) | Public washrooms, sheet by sheet |
| Scott Essential folded hand towel | V-fold hand towel, Airflex | 340 sheets per pack | 15 packs | Public washrooms, kitchen |
| Lucart Identity Strong 155 | Roll towel for autocut, 2-ply | 155 m, 26.5 cm sheet | 6 rolls | Public washrooms, kitchen |
| Scott Essential Slimroll | Compact roll towel, Airflex | 760 sheets / 190 m | 6 rolls | Small washrooms, kitchen |
The room calculation: a 100-room hotel example
Take a hotel with 100 rooms, 70 % annual occupancy and an average of 1.8 guests per room. That is about 25,500 occupied room-nights a year. If consumption is one roll per occupied room-night, the hotel needs about 25,500 rolls a year.
- Lucart Strong Select 4 in packs of 56 rolls: about 455 packs a year, or 38 a month.
- Satino HiLine in packs of 8 rolls: about 3,190 packs a year, 265 a month.
- Hagleitner multiROLL Z4 with 425 sheets per roll lasts almost three times longer than a standard roll, so consumption drops to about 9,000 rolls, or 280 cases of 32 rolls a year.
Facial tissues: if the box is replaced at every check-out and the average stay is 2.5 nights, that is about 10,200 boxes a year, or 340 cases of Lucart cube boxes of 30.
Summer and winter differ more than you would think. A coastal hotel uses four to five times more paper in August than in February. Instead of an annual average, calculate month by month with last year’s actual occupancy, and order at the start of each month for the next. For regular customers we keep that table and send a reminder before the season.
Public washrooms: here the dispenser decides
In the lobby, restaurant, bar and spa the guest is not in their own room and takes as much paper as comes to hand. So there consumption is set by the dispenser, not the paper:
- A standard small roll on a holder is the most expensive per user, because it unrolls freely and often ends up on the floor.
- A jumbo centrefeed roll (Scott Control in the Aquarius twin dispenser, Satino HiLine jumbo) issues sheet by sheet, and one roll of 180 to 314 m replaces a dozen small rolls, so staff refill less often.
- An autocut system (Lucart Identity) always cuts the same sheet, 22.5 cm for toilet paper and 26.5 cm for towels. Consumption becomes measurable per user.
- Interleaved sheets in a closed dispenser (Aquarius with Hostess paper, Satino Plus) are the most hygienic choice; the guest touches only the sheet they take.
The same applies to hand towels: V-fold sheets give control per sheet, a roll with an autocut dispenser gives the largest capacity. The manufacturer states for Lucart Identity and Scott Airflex that two sheets are enough to dry hands, so a Scott Essential pack of 340 sheets covers about 170 hand washes, and a Lucart Identity 155 roll of 155 m with a 26.5 cm sheet about 290.
In the room the guest feels the difference, so pure pulp with three or four plies goes there. In public washrooms and staff areas, Scott Control made of 100 % recycled FSC fibres and Lucart EcoNatural made of Fiberpack fibres from Tetra Pak cartons do the same job with a smaller footprint, and the unbleached colour of EcoNatural paper is also a visible sign to guests that the hotel chooses sustainably. Most products in the table carry the EU Ecolabel, FSC or PEFC certificate, which is an increasingly common requirement in group and conference bookings.
How to build your own consumption table
- List the dispensers by location: rooms, public washrooms, kitchen, spa, staff. For each, note the system and the product that goes in it.
- Take room-nights per month from last year and the number of covers in the restaurant.
- Set a norm per unit: one roll per occupied room, one box of tissues per check-out, two towel sheets per hand wash. For the first month count the actual consumption and correct the norm.
- Multiply and divide by the pack size to get the number of cases per month.
- Add a reserve for two weeks of the season and keep it in a dry storeroom, because paper absorbs moisture and loses strength.
Send us the number of rooms, occupancy by month and a list of the dispensers you have, and we will return a monthly consumption table with a paper proposal for rooms and public areas, plus a dispenser proposal wherever the old ones do not control consumption. Trial quantities are delivered in Podgorica and on the coast.
