LEISURE & HOSPITALITY The festival washroom experience
An increasing number of festivals are providing VIP toilets for people willing to pay that little bit extra for such luxuries, but surely event organisers should be working towards making standard festival toilets more comfortable for everyone instead? Jeremy Bennett from Tork manufacturer Essity considers how this could be done.
Nobody relishes the experience of visiting a festival toilet.
These facilities are notorious for being crowded, messy, unsanitary and unpleasant. As a result, many festival-goers are now opting to pay a premium for a VIP washroom package.
The Latitude Festival, for example, offers visitors an upgrade that provides access to flushing toilets, warm showers and hair styling stations along with bespoke toiletries.
Visitors to Reading and Leeds festivals can buy a Refresh wristband which admits them to flushing toilets, hot showers and a ‘pamper parlour’ with mirrors and hair straighteners. Download Festival’s Gold Package offers similar facilities, plus secure lockers and USB charging.
A poor washroom experience can colour one’s whole experience of a festival. Bad washrooms ranked higher on people’s lists of festival negatives than factors such as crowd disorder and poor food and drink in a series of surveys commissioned by Tork. One study revealed that 44% of visitors avoided using the washrooms altogether when attending an open-air event.
Plus, 20% said they deliberately refrained from drinking to avoid having to use the loo. Besides potentially leading to dehydration in hot weather, such a move cannot fail to have an impact on bar profits.
Using a public washroom can be a stressful experience in general – particularly when there is a mismatch between people’s needs and the environment itself. This was revealed in a recent Tork study which polled 11,500 people in 11 countries.
Limited washroom privacy can create an invisible barrier to people with paruresis, or shy bladder syndrome, for example. Similarly, a restricted space or a lack of appropriate disposal options can be challenging for those with a catheter or ostomy bag.
A degree of dexterity is often required to use the dispensers for soap, toilet paper and hand towels which means people who have low hand strength or who experience joint issues may struggle.
Wash hand basins tend to be situated at a uniform height, which can be a problem for the very tall and the very short. Even temporary factors, such as a broken leg or an arm injury, can make standard facilities hard to navigate. So, what can be done to improve festival washrooms for everyone?
Dispensers for soap and paper should be easy and intuitive to use, while hand basins should ideally be placed at different heights to ensure that everyone can reach them. All units should be designed to reduce the risk of waste and mess to prevent product run-outs and to keep the facilities looking clean and tidy.
40 | TOMORROW'S CLEANING
High-capacity washroom dispensers that naturally reduce consumption will minimise the risk of dispensers running out between maintenance checks. They should also be quick to refill and easy to use to prevent queues and logjams.
The sheer volume of people wanting to use the washrooms at once will inevitably create peaks in traffic, and this will put pressure on supplies of toilet paper, hand towels and soaps.
Hand drying often leads to queues. Some venues opt for supplying loose hand towels and leaving them on the units for visitors’ use. However, these create a messy environment since visitors will pick up one or two in a hurry and perhaps drop others on the floor in their impatience to return to the action.
Soap bars and bulk-fill soaps often result in sticky residues left behind on the basins while C-fold towels – which tend to come out of the dispenser in clumps – will lead to soggy discarded towels on the units and floors. Conventional toilet rolls are all too easy to throw around, leave on the floor to become soggy or drop down the toilet. These scenarios will lead to blockages, waste and mess.
The Tork SmartOne Twin Mini Toilet Roll System works well at festivals because it comes in a sturdy, lockable dispenser which delivers one sheet of paper at a time. This helps to prevent runouts, vandalism and blockages while also reducing usage by up to 40%. A new roll can be inserted at any time to ensure a continuous supply, while the SmartCore core removal system enables fast and easy refilling for staff.
Tork Foam Soaps are another good option for large, busy venues because each cartridge caters for up to 1,650 visitors, helping to reduce consumption by up to 50% compared with a liquid refill of the same size. This prevents runouts while the fact that the sealed cartridge can be replaced in seconds speeds up the task of refilling for the cleaner. The dispenser also requires a particularly low push-force, which makes accessing the soap both quick and easy.
A high-capacity hand towel dispenser will allow visitors to take a towel and move on, drying their hands as they go while freeing up the unit for the next user. The Tork PeakServe Continuous Hand Towel Dispenser caters for more than 1,000 guests between refills and delivers each towel in just three seconds, reducing the user’s waiting time. The dispenser has been designed to give out sheets of paper singly to avoid excess use and prevent run-outs.
Digital technology can further help to ensure that the dispensers in a busy festival washroom are kept topped up at all times. Tork Vision Cleaning allows the cleaner to remotely check on which dispensers are running low via
x.com/TomoCleaning
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