Ice machine for a hotel (guest ice vs F&B)

A hotel is three ice plants, not one brochure number. Guest-floor ice, the restaurant / bar / breakfast line, and banquet are separate loads. Putting the kitchen cuber in a corridor, or expecting a 25 lb hopper to cover a Saturday banquet, is how properties buy bagged ice at 7 p.m.

This is a planning page from published application factors and current OEM sheets. It is not a dealer quote, not a review score, and not a health-code opinion. Confirm electrical, plumbing, clearance, and sanitation with the people who inspect the building.

Three loads

Application charts treat hotel catering as about 1–1.5 lb per person and guest ice as about 5 lb per occupied room. Those are different lines. See how to size a commercial ice machine.

The 5 lb per occupied room rule

Atlantic Store Equipment and The Kitchen Spot both publish about 5 lb of guest ice per occupied room. Kitchen Spot also lists hotel catering at 1 lb per person. Those are dealer/application rules of thumb, not a manufacturer warranty and not a lab measurement.

Work occupied rooms on a peak night, not keys on the door.

Worked 80-room night

Same occupancy math as the sizing page.

• Occupied rooms: 80 × 90% = 72 rooms
• Guest ice: 72 × 5 lb = 360 lb/day
• 20% reserve: about 430 lb/day on the guest-floor side

That 430 lb is guest ice only. A 40-seat lobby bar (~3 lb/seat) and an 80-cover restaurant (~1.5 lb/guest) are extra lines — often 120 + 120 lb before their own reserve — and they belong on a kitchen cube machine, not in the ice room.

Worked 120-room night (Atlantic’s hotel example)

Atlantic’s published hotel example uses 120 rooms at 90% occupancy:

• Occupied: 108 rooms
• Guest ice: 108 × 5 lb = 540 lb
• They then add 90 lb for breakfast and a lobby bar and a 15% reserve, and land near 725 lb/day as a whole-property target

Use that total only if you are buying one plant for everything. The same article says location matters: several guest-floor dispensers usually beat one central bin. Banquet, pool bar, and a full restaurant still have to be added as their own centers.

Size the hopper for the evening fill

A 24-hour rating is not a bucket. Guests take ice in a short window — check-in through late evening — not as 15 lb every hour for 24 hours.

Scotsman HID525 stores 25 lb in the dispenser hopper (current product page and the 06/25 HID525X sheet). Air-cooled production on that same page is 500 lb @ 70/50 and 380 lb @ 90/70 — about 16 lb/hour if you divide the 90/70 figure by 24.

If 36 occupied rooms on one floor each take half of their 5 lb between 5 p.m. and 8 p.m.:

• Evening pull: 36 × 2.5 lb = 90 lb in three hours
• Stored ice: 25 lb
• Make during the window: ~16 lb/h × 3 h ≈ 48 lb
• On paper: ~73 lb against a 90 lb pull

The hopper, not the “500 lb” headline, is the constraint. A busy ice room needs the machine to keep making ice, more than one cabinet per floor, or a different product: a cube head sitting on a hotel dispenser that holds 120–180 lb (see Manitowoc SPA/SFA below). HID540 keeps the same 500 / 380 lb make as HID525 and raises the hopper to 40 lb — useful, still not a banquet bin.

A compact top-hat like Hoshizaki AM-50BAK (54 lb/day, 27 lb bin) is a suite, B&B, or office cabinet. It is not a guest-floor ice room.

Why hotels use ice-and-water dispensers on guest floors

The product is a sealed hopper + chute + water, not an open bin and a scoop in a corridor.

• No guest scoop. Ice stays inside until a cup or bucket is filled. OEM copy for Scotsman Meridian and Hoshizaki DCM talks about contained ice and touch-free or push-button dispense. That is a sanitation design, not a claim that a specific install “meets code.”
• Small hopper. 7–40 lb on the current HID / DCM sheets below. The maker has to run during service. If the alcove is 90°F, use the 90/70 column.
• 115 V cord-and-plug on the HID and DCM examples we cite. A kitchen modular head is often hardwired.
• Height / reach. HID207’s current product page marks an ADA-compliant dispensing area. Hoshizaki’s DCM-271BAK 08/13/25 sheet marks the cabinet ADA compliant (lower buttons, 10-1/4″ cup clearance). Scotsman publishes a separate ADA sell sheet. Have the architect read the current sheet for reach range and stand height. We are not certifying a layout.
• Chewable ice. HID makes Scotsman H² nugget; DCM makes Hoshizaki cubelet. Guests like it in a bucket. It is a poor substitute for a kitchen cube well. See cube vs nugget.

The other hotel product is a cube ice dispenser that does not make ice: a Manitowoc SPA/SFA (or a Hoshizaki DM-series dispenser) under a modular cuber. Storage is 120 lb (SPA-162) or 180 lb (SPA-312) on the current hotel-dispenser sheets. Guests get hard cube ice. The head is a separate 400–550 lb-class cuber. That stack is taller and is a different electrical job than a 35″ HID.

Current guest-floor machines (OEM sheets)

Figures are manufacturer ratings. Full HID525 citations also live on the directory page. Street prices omitted.

HID525 / HID312 / HID540 06/25 sheets: allow 6″ at left, back, and right for air and utilities. Contoured sides are the “breathability” story; they still need that gap. DCM-271BAK and DCM-500B_K sheets: 6″ rear and sides, 24″ above so the auger can come out.

HID and DCM families are also sold into healthcare. This page is about hotels. Do not treat a hospital spec as a guest-floor spec.

Cube head on a hotel dispenser (not a nugget cabinet)

Manitowoc’s current hotel line is a dispenser only. SPA is ice; SFA adds a water valve. The cuber is sold separately.

A Manitowoc IYT0450A (490 lb @ 70/50, 378 lb AHRI @ 90/70, 30″ half-dice) is the directory’s current 450-class match for that 30″ dispenser. The head’s volts and amps are on the head sheet, not the SPA sheet.

Hoshizaki’s KM-520MAJ page lists compatible dispensers (DB-130H, DB-200H, DM-200B) as well as B-series bins. DM-200B is a 30″ ice-and-water dispenser (200 lb class on Hoshizaki’s DCM catalog table). We did not pull a full current DM-200B production table here — it does not make ice; the KM head does.

Kitchen and banquet: a modular cube plant

Guest ice is the wrong ice for a cocktail well and the wrong storage for a 200-person reception.

Current 400–550 lb modular cube heads already in this directory:

Pair the head with a bin from the compatibility list, not with the guest-floor hopper. Banquet sizing cares more about bin pounds for the service window than 24-hour make — same logic as a church kitchen on the sizing page. Form factor background: undercounter vs modular vs countertop.

Power, drain, air, filter

Hotel ice rooms are often alcoves. Air-cooled machines dump heat into that hole.

• Derate. HID525 air-cooled: 500 → 380 lb from 70/50 to 90/70 (24% less) on the current sheet. HID312: 320 → 245. DCM-271BAK: 286 → 211. If the louver is boxed in, you will not even get 90/70. See air-cooled vs water-cooled.
• Heat into the room. HID525 / HID540: 6,800 BTU/h. HID312 / HID207: 3,200. DCM-500BAK: 6,100. DCM-271BAK: 3,500 on the 08/13/25 PDF.
• Clearance. HID 06/25 sheets: 6″ left, back, right. DCM sheets: 6″ rear and sides, 24″ above the cabinet. A decorative grille is not the factory opening.
• Water-cooled HID525. The 06/25 sheet lists 120 gal/100 lb condenser water and 400 lb @ 90/70. Many cities restrict once-through cooling. Do not pick it to dodge an alcove without a mechanical reason.
• Drain. Gravity or a listed pump. HID and DCM sheets show a drain fitting (HID: 3/4″ FPT on the 06/25 drawings). Melt and dump water go somewhere that is not the corridor carpet.
• Filter. Scotsman’s HID sheets say to filter; Hoshizaki points at its filter sheet. Ice-machine filters are not “the building’s drinking-water filter.” See filters and descalers.
• Circuit. One HID525 is a 15 A, 115 V cord-and-plug job on the current sheet. Two cabinets on one ice-room circuit is an electrician question, not a guess from this page. A KM-520MAJ is a hardwired 115 V / 20 A-class head in the kitchen.

Do not use a household countertop nugget machine as if it were NSF commercial equipment unless the listing says it is.

What this page is not

• Not healthcare. HID and DCM are sold into hospitals and nursing units. Patient-ice rules are out of scope.
• Not a code letter. NSF marks and manuals are on the sheets. We do not say an install “meets” a health department.
• Not a review. No scores, no invented “we installed 40 of these.”
• Not a price list.

Sources

1. Atlantic Store Equipment, Commercial Ice Machine Sizing Guide — hotel ~5 lb per occupied room; worked 120-room example; banquet/catering 1–1.5 lb/attendee.
2. The Kitchen Spot, Ice Machines: Sizing for Application — hotel guest ice 5 lb/room; hotel catering 1 lb/person.
3. Scotsman, HID525 product page and spec PDF SIS-SS-MRD-HID525 06-25 (HID525X, R290).
4. Scotsman, HID540 product page.
5. Scotsman, HID312 product page and spec PDF SIS-SS-MRD-HID312 06-25. Older SIS-SS-MRD-HID312 02-18 listed 260/225 lb and R-134A.
6. Scotsman, HID207 product page.
7. Hoshizaki, DCM-271BAK-OS product page and DCM-271BAK spec PDF dated 08/13/25 (Item #13549K).
8. Hoshizaki, DCM-500BAK-OS product page and DCM-500B_K spec PDF dated 08/13/25 (Item #13226).
9. Hoshizaki, ice and water dispensers catalog — current DCM BAK lineup; DM-200B listed as a 30″ dispenser.
10. Manitowoc, SPA-162 product page and SPA-162 / SFA-192 specification sheet (120 lb storage).
11. Manitowoc, SPA-312 / SFA-292 specification sheet (180 lb storage; recommended IT0300–IT0750 heads).
12. Directory pages already citing the same OEM language: HID525, KM-520MAJ, IYT0450A, C0330MA-1, CIM0430A, AM-50BAK.

If two sheets disagree, we say so and prefer the latest OEM PDF.