Vac to the future at hotel near Black Country Living Museum

In a contrast to the 19th Century backbreaking house work on show at the museum, the new RoboVac Buddy cleaner at the on-site Travelodge just needs the "on" pushed button and away it goes.

Travelodge have purchased 7,500 Robovacs Buddies to cleans its 579 hotels across the country, including in Dudley, Oldbury and West Bromwich.

Each team member gets their own Robovac Buddy which cleans rooms automatically, saving hundreds of hours work a week for staff.

Lira Namoni, Travelodge's RoboVac Buddy trainer said: "On behalf of my colleagues across all of the UK Travelodge hotels, we are thrilled to welcome our new RoboVac Buddies. They are just incredible and made such a significant difference to housekeeping duties.

"They have now all completed their induction training and passed their probation and are just raring to get to work."

Travelodge chief executive Craig Bonnar said: "We are very excited to kick-start 2022 by revolutionising the hospitality sector and supporting our housekeeping teams with the roll-out of the UK’s first hotel RoboVac Buddy recruitment programme. Housekeeping is the most important and physically demanding job at Travelodge and we are always looking for low cost and innovative ways to support our colleagues.

"Automating vacuuming with the introduction of the Travelodge RoboVac Buddies is a fun, win-win solution which helps us to drive a greener, cleaner and more efficient room clean."

Tibor Killi, MD of RoboVac manufacturer Killis, said: “We are delighted to work with Travelodge and create the UK’s first hospitality spec RoboVac. This is the largest cleaning equipment mobilisation in our company’s history and it has been an honour to be making history with Travelodge within the hospitality world.”

“The Travelodge RoboVac Buddies are going to revolutionise the company’s housekeeping teams' working lives and will be a great addition to the Travelodge hotel teams."