A brushless, water-efficient future for hotel bathrooms with Villeroy & Boch

As the hotel industry picks up with renewed energy post-pandemic, hygiene is under the spotlight like never before. Today, products specified for hotels must not only be aesthetically pleasing, but must also consider the effect of ongoing maintenance – particularly when it comes to well-used spaces held to immaculately high standards of cleanliness such as hotel bathrooms. According to industry research by ceramic specialist Villeroy & Boch, hygiene is one of the most important factors to guests when choosing a hotel. Cleanliness makes guests feel safe and relaxed, and a luxury hotel experience is impossible without it.

Headquartered in Mettlach, Germany, Villeroy & Boch has been pioneering ceramic products in the bathroom, wellness, dining and lifestyle sectors since 1748. Their designers are intimately aware of how hygiene can be designed into products – from streamlining simplicity for more efficient maintenance, to developing scientifically-tested antibacterial finishes, and pioneering innovations that actively disrupt and improve cleaning protocols.

An example of this is Villeroy & Boch’s latest innovation, the patent-pending TwistFlush toilet flushing technology. Its powerfully controlled water vortex flushes almost the entire inner surface of the intelligent conical toilet bowl, combining power, efficiency and sustainability to reach the highest level of hygiene possible. When specified in the hotel sector (and even in smaller scale projects such as family homes), the design offers plenty of hygiene-related advantages – from eliminating the need for the toilet brush, to saving time cleaning, saving water and reducing the need for chemicals.

‘Based on what the big hospitality players are saying, the presence of the toilet brush in a hotel bathroom is always up for debate and discussion. Many hoteliers would like to completely banish this almost universally unpopular item due to the associated hygiene issues and guests’ understandable reluctance to use it,’ says Anna Romanova, Global Projects Manager, Villeroy & Boch Bathroom and Wellness. And let’s face it, no designer wants their elegant hotel bathroom to be ruined with the unsightly clutter of a toilet brush. The powerful cleaning action of the TwistFlush promises a brush-free future for hotel toilets.

Conversations with leading hotels revealed further challenges that can now be solved by the TwistFlush. ‘Cleaning and keeping the rooms and especially the bathrooms clean is not a quick and easy task,’ she says. That’s why Villeroy & Boch offers plenty of design features to make cleaning more efficient and reduce staff working hours – such as the optional easy-care CeramicPlus surface finish and special AntiBac glaze with silver ions, which reduce bacterial growth by around 99.9%. As well as the DirectFlush, a more streamlined, rimless WC that is much easier to clean.

In addition to hygiene, sustainability is another key factor driving hotel bathroom design today. When a toilet has the power to dramatically reduce water consumption, it makes both environmental and financial sense to invest. ‘The TwistFlush is not only about designing out the need for toilet brushes, but it is also about the water saving,’ says Romanova. ‘TwistFlush only requires 4.5 litres of water for a large flush, and a mere 3 litres for a small one. So for example, a family of four can save up to approximately 19,700 litres of water a year with TwistFlush.’ When comparing this to the 6-litre flush of an average conventional toilet, imagine how these water savings can translate when scaled up to the hotel context.

When it comes to the experience of staying at a hotel, good design is often as much about the things that guests don’t notice as about the ones they do. Whether that is eliminating an unsightly toilet brush, or the flush sound in a neighbouring bathroom: Villeroy & Boch has achieved both with the innovative and quiet TwistFlush. When a product enables life to run more smoothly and sustainably, that’s when you know it’s a real game changer.

© Architonic