Cleanzine: your weekly cleaning and hygiene industry newsletter 25th April 2024 Issue no. 1111
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New Clean-a-Card offers rapid and effective automated hotel key card disinfection
The pandemic has posed never-before-seen challenges for the hospitality industry, requiring owners, managers and brands to take new precautions to keep guests and staff safe. Despite our enthusiasm to travel again, we are more conscious than ever before about sanitation, safety, and cleanliness.
Clean-a-Card addresses the need for rapid and effective automated hotel key card disinfection. The key card disinfection system achieves 99.9% microbe reduction using a combination of EPA-approved liquid sanitiser, dosage-controlled UV-C light and plasma disinfection.
The streamlined cleaning process increases efficiency while reducing staff time and protecting guests and staff from pathogens on used cards - regardless of the type of lock system - giving everyone peace of mind.
A study published in 2017 evaluated both used and new key cards and found that used key cards were considerably dirtier than new key cards (Park, et al., 2017). A key card is the first item that a guest touches during the check-in experience, and that same key card will accompany the guest on visits to the pool, the restaurant, the beach, and local attractions.
The more times that a card is touched, dropped, or set down on a contaminated surface, the more opportunities there are for the card to pick up dirt and germs. That is why guests will feel relieved to know that their key cards were cleaned prior to use.
"Hotels that employ Clean-a-Card for guest key disinfection show that they care about the health & safety of their guests," says Dan Koziol, CEO of MicrobeProof, the system's manufacturer. "The cleaning process is quick and easy. The equipment will clean about 20 cards per minute."
Dr Mark Brunvand, chair of MicrobeProof's advisory board and award-winning research physician and oncologist who has been key in identifying deadly bacteria and microbes in nursing homes, transplant centers and outpatient surgery centers, adds: "The Clean-a-Card surface disinfectant has been pre-approved by the US EPA for use against emerging enveloped viral pathogens including SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19)."
The compact portable proprietary unit uses a disinfectant system and soft roller system to gently remove contaminants, bacteria and disease-causing germs from both sides of used key cards. Positive and negative ions neutralise surrounding bacterial structure or energy conversion, which kills the bacteria and achieves disinfection.
Clean-a-Card is electric powered and designed to run on a desk or small table. The loading and unloading hoppers at both ends of the unit allow the user to load a batch of cards and step away for a few minutes to get other work done as the system cleans and refreshes each individual card.
15th July 2021