Bob Lloyd is a veteran of the hotel industry. In fact, he may be one of the longest still in the business of refurbishing and liquidating items from hotels, as well as updating some of the major hotel chains in the world.

The Hotel Furniture Warehouse he owns and operates with his sons, Rob and Jeff Lloyd, in Vicksburg includes many of the items he has removed and refurbished from some of those higher-end hotels.

Recently, the business relocated to a much larger location at 4477 Highway 61 South.

“I’ve been in the hotel business for 53 years,” said Lloyd, who began as a management trainee at the Vicksburg Holiday Inn in 1964. “I’ve always been in the food and beverage business or the hotel business in some way.”

Lloyd said he began installing and remodeling hotels along the East Coast around 45 years ago and eventually gained access to the bigger hotel chains in major cities.

He got into the liquidation business not because he wanted to, but because he had to get rid of the outdated stuff that he was removing from the hotels in order to install the new items.

“We have done some of the best hotels in the country,” Lloyd said. One of the more recent was the hotel at Union Square in San Francisco.

While they are open for business, Hotel Furniture Warehouse is still in the process of moving items from their old location while also adding new merchandise from hotels around the country.

Recently, Lloyd acquired approximately 3,000 chairs, which is an indication of the amount of items the business regularly liquidates. He said he once bought 44,000 TVs all at once.

To handle that amount of merchandise requires a very large building and the new location with 90,000 square feet can certainly contain the vast amount of merchandise. Currently, they have 65,000 square feet of inventory.

Lloyd said a lot of the major hotel chains are no longer allowing bathtubs in their rooms and are installing showers instead.

“It’s happening all over the industry,” Lloyd said. “We’re taking the old ones out and installing showers in hotels.”

Many of those bathtubs will end up for liquidation.

Lloyd also said Hotel Furniture Warehouse deals with a lot of mattresses, but only after they’ve have been thoroughly sanitized.

“We even give our customers more of the chemicals to sanitize if they want,” Lloyd said.

Hotel Furniture Warehouse is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.