Alma’s Back of House tour opens window to fascinating hotel operations

Alma’s one-hour ‘Back of House’ tour casts light on the resort’s inner workings.

Tour stops include the generator station (pictured) as well as the pastry room, staff canteen, engineering workshop, loading dock, laundry and uniform rooms, electric buggy station, air conditioner centralized plant, water treatment plant, and CCTV and fire panel room.

At the CCTV and fire panel room, guests view footage captured by 531 CCTV cameras, and learn of 3162 smoke detectors and 9548 sprinklers designed to ensure safety at the 30-hectare resort.

The 325sqm water treatment plant (pictured) deploys a reverse osmosis system to provide 70,000L weekly of drinkable water and ice for all of the resort’s kitchens.

To be launched upon the resort’s reopening, Alma’s one-hour ‘Back of House’ tour will lead groups of guests through the resort’s inner workings.

Cam Ranh, Vietnam – With Vietnam’s virus flare-up forcing Alma to temporarily close, the resort’s team has kept busy creating a one-of-a-kind tour that answers everything you wanted to know about a hotel but was afraid to ask.

To be launched upon the resort’s reopening, Alma’s one-hour ‘Back of House’ tour will lead groups of guests through the resort’s inner workings each Tuesday and Thursday from 3pm.

Tour stops include the pastry room, staff canteen, engineering workshop, loading dock, laundry and uniform rooms, electric buggy station, generator station, air conditioner centralized plant, water treatment plant, and CCTV and fire panel room.

Participants will learn all sorts of interesting facts. To wit: 28 staff in the laundry room wash an average of 26.4 tonnes of laundry a week including 49,690 towels, 2320 bedsheets and 1160 pillowcases.

In the pastry room, eight pastry chefs and five bakers make 1200 Danish pastries, 1000 croissants, 850 bread rolls and 800 muffins per week, in addition to 50 litres of house-made ice cream, 10 kilograms of Tiramisu and 50 Chinese egg tarts.

At the CCTV and fire panel room, guests view footage captured by 531 CCTV cameras and learn of 3162 smoke detectors and 9548 sprinklers designed to ensure safety at the 30-hectare resort. The air conditioner plant, manned by seven air conditioning technicians, provides chilled water for 1049 air conditioning units.

“It’s fascinating to go behind the scenes and see all of the work and preparation involved in delivering a seamless guest experience at a 580-key resort,” said Alma’s managing director Herbert Laubichler-Pichler. “The resort requires 900 m3 of water a day and 46,720 kWh of power, so we have systems in place to reduce our carbon footprint including a water treatment plant, electric buggy station and recycling in our garbage room.”

The 325sqm water treatment plant deploys a reverse osmosis system to provide 70,000L weekly of drinkable water and ice for all of the resort’s kitchens. The garbage room processes about 250 kilograms of garbage a day, including compostable waste and recyclables, reselling an average of, for example, 110 litres of cooking oil weekly to non-food businesses so that it is recycled.

The resort’s 360sqm buggy station’s 36 electric buggies each take an average of six hours to charge. The 335sqm generator station is home to five generators with a combined capacity of 10000kVA in the event grid power is lost. In the engineering workshop, an average of 35 items is fixed weekly, ranging from tables and chairs to microwaves to garden lights.

Alma has a raft of stringent health and safety measures in place to combat COVID-19.