Cleanzine: your weekly cleaning and hygiene industry newsletter 25th April 2024 Issue no. 1111
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New nanoseptic self-cleaning surfaces address travellers' hygiene issues
With a flurry of news reports about germs in airports and hotels, travellers are more concerned about cleanliness than ever so it follows that businesses need to become more aware of their responsibilities too.
NanoTouch Materials' new self-cleaning surfaces address these concerns and particularly so its new launch - a self-cleaning film for touch screens that can turn any airport check-in kiosk or in-flight screen into a continuously self-cleaning surface.
The company has also released self-cleaning elevator button covers.
These innovations add to NanoTouch Materials' current lineup of travel products which include portable self-cleaning mats that the individual traveller can use on the airplane tray table or hotel bathroom vanity, and super durable self-cleaning mats for security bins. This was the same product line that won the Innovation Award at last year's ISSA Conference in Las Vegas.
"I think we can now say for sure that travellers are paranoid about dirty public surfaces when travelling," says NanoSeptic co-founder Dennis Hackemeyer. "Whether it's the airplane tray table, hotel bathroom vanity, or security bin, travellers just don't trust the cleanliness of these surfaces."
The portable self-cleaning travel mat is one product that both holiday and business travellers seem to be clamouring for since it provides a cleaner place to rest a toothbrush, eyeglasses, medications or other personal items on a hotel bathroom vanity. And it provides a much cleaner place to rest your sandwich wrapper or pretzels on the airplane tray table.
Mark Sisson, co-founder, adds: "Our travel mat not only makes travellers feel safer and more secure, it's also a great in-room or in-plane amenity that can generate new revenue. And because we can add the hotel, airline or cruise line logo to the mat, it's another way these travel companies can extend their brand wherever the traveller goes and however they get there."
But the product that generates the most excitement from the travel industry is the NanoSeptic self-cleaning mat for security bins in airports.
"Over and over again, we would tell the story of how travellers walk around the airport, including on bathroom floors, then take off their shoes and put them in the bin going through l security," says Hackemeyer. "Then the next traveller puts their phone, glasses, keys and other personal items where those shoes were. Before we could even finish telling the story, the reaction was always the same... 'please stop, I think I'm going to be sick'."
After six months of testing by a regional Transportation Security Administration team, the NanoSeptic mats were sent to TSA's national testing facility for verification. After TSA approval, the mats made their debut at the Akron-Canton airport, providing a cleaner surface for more than 1.4 million travellers per year.
Dennis Hackemeyer says the mats made a huge impact: "One thing that really surprised our team was when we started getting calls about using the security bin mat in other facilities," he reports. "We designed the mat specifically for airports, but soon after the launch we were contacted by nuclear power plants and government facilities since they have similar security screening processes."
NanoSeptic products are positively disrupting the travel and hospitality industry by getting businesses to look at cleanliness differently. Historically, hotels and other travel-related businesses took the approach of hiding their cleaning efforts. The old line of thought was that if people saw a facility taking steps to improve cleanliness, they might think the facility was dirty.
"But research has shown the opposite to be true. Travellers already assume the airplane, hotel or cruise ship is dirty. Furthermore, their purchase decisions can be directly affected by addressing hygiene issues and making clean visible. A NanoSeptic self-cleaning mat placed on the bathroom vanity of each room in a hotel has been shown to cause a halo effect, positively affecting a guest's perception of the cleanliness of the room and the facility in general.
NanoSeptic self-cleaning products could also be a valuable part of a hotel, airline, cruise line, or credit card reward program.
More than 150 travelers volunteered to be part of experiential market research that was conducted at the Akron airport on the day the TSA bin mats were launched. To download the research report on traveler perception just visit:
20th December 2018