News
Better than bog standard - Moto has cleanest loos on Britain's motorways
02 December 2002
Top motorway service area chain, Moto was flushed with success after cleaning up at the recent Loo of the Year Awards.
And who better to offer his seal of approval than ‘King Of Clean’, Big Brother’s Alex Sibley. Alex who was obsessed with hygiene in the last series was invited to Moto to check out their loos.
Said bacteria busting Alex:” I was amazed, I always thought of service areas as pretty unhygienic places but these loos were sparkling, so clean I could almost eat my dinner off them.”
Moto picked up a record 42 awards – one for each of their service areas – that’s a total of 2,220 loos – the biggest prizes coup organisers have ever seen.
Because of the high number of visits, loos are one of the most difficult places in a service area to keep clean, so Moto is all the more delighted to have got wind of news that it also picked up the Loo of the Year’s Overall Standard of Excellence for England.
Bowled over at the award, Tim Moss, Moto's managing director, said: "It's fantastic to have all our hard work recognised. We've always known we have the cleanest loos on the motorway and now it’s official and even Alex thinks so."
The public loo is a British institution that for years has been bogged down with poor hygiene standards. When Moto appeared on the motorways 18months ago they pledged to bring the nation clean loos and that idea has never gone down the pan, they’ve kept their end of the bargain.
Mr Miss added: “The most popular destination at our service areas is the loo, so we have invested a great deal of time and money to introduce a rigorous cleaning regime that includes thorough hourly inspections, providing toilet sanitisers for customers and making sure there are fresh flowers in every toilet, every day of the week, every hour of the day. Providing spotlessly clean toilets is the very essence of what we do for our 120million customers and we are proud that the hard work that so many people put into keeping them hygienically clean and fresh smelling has been so publicly acknowledged.
“Winning so many individual awards as well as the Overall Standard of Excellence proves that we are on the right track. What we’ve done is certainly not a bog standard achievement, it’s something that no other motorway service area operator has ever accomplished.”
Judges secretly visited more than 1,000 public toilets the length and breadth of the country scrutinising cleanliness, overall management and customer care as well as signage, accessibility, décor and the standard of fixtures and fittings.
Oliver Weisflog, managing director of Cannon Hygiene, organisers of Loo of the Year Award said: “When you realise that so many individual loos were judged both independently and anonymously, it becomes clear that there are a rapidly rising number of organisations that realise first class toilet facilities are an integral part of the overall customer package.”
