One of the key activities of hotel managers is staff management. It is difficult to select a team, to motivate it, getting a good result, but it is possible. How to do it? Let's talk about this.
Guests: hotel employees may be invisible, but we feel their care
We all know that the prosperity of any hotel directly depends on the staff performance. And even if it seems your employees do a great job, often guests think the opposite.
A simple life example. Late in the evening, a cold and tired guest appears on the hotel doorstep. The manager is gone, so the porter is out "for 5 minutes", and the receptionist is slow and lazy. Little things? But the guest feels bad, he needs attention and care.
Nobody accompanies him, nobody shows the room or offers dinner. He needs an aspirin and an extra blanket, but there is no RA.
Guest loyalty begins to fade. In a crisis situation (sickness, a long journey, personal troubles), individual care comes first. If it doesn’t — there will be no regular customers.
What will the hotel manager do in this case if he finds out? From our practice — nothing. Probably will scold the staff just a little bit. And the guest will never come to this hotel again, and in the worst case — will share in social networks the story of "the worst night in the hotel." From the first impression at the reception until the last minute of his stay at the hotel, he received only negative impressions:
- he was unwelcomed here;
- the staff was not particularly polite;
- the staff did not help the guest to solve minor problems;
- high-quality service was out of the question.
Unfortunately, such an attitude of the line staff towards guests always affects the reputation of the entire hotel and its revenue. You have to understand: no investment will pay off if your staff doesn’t work, but condescend to guests, killing their desire to stay at your hotel again.
Hotel Staff: Working by Inertia
Success in the hospitality business depends on people. According to the Gallup survey in Germany, only 13% have eyes light up at work. In other countries, the personnel situation is not much better. This means that in a small hotel (line staff 22-25 people) only 1-2 employees love their job. The same research says that 20% of the hotel employees have already quit in their heads. The rest are working by inertia. So when a guest with two huge suitcases appears on the doorstep, the porter is busy with cleaning instead of holding the door, while the receptionist is inhospitable and glum. External "luxury" does not matter. With such an attitude towards guests, only emptiness will settle in hotel rooms.
Working in a hotel is not considered to be prestigious. Its features are:
- hard physical labor;
- shift work;
- material responsibility
- small salary.
The motivation in the form of fines will make people think of getting another job.
The hotel staff awaits recognition for the quality of the work done. Small holiday gifts, cash bonuses, a social package will help keep the best employees, raise the prestige of working in a hotel, but such methods have little effect on internal motivation that can increase the efficiency of daily work.
Hotel Manager's view: I can't run after employees
One of the main tasks of any hotel manager is to organize the hotel staff's working process. High staff turnover, cases of theft and sabotage, irresponsible attitude to work are frequent situations in practice. Hotel line staff often have no permanent workplace, which complicates management and control. Salary as a driving motivational factor does not always work (by the way, salary is only in the 4th place in the “list of job expectations”).
The management typically solves some other tasks, shifting control over the performance of official duties to the employees themselves. Occasionally, the manager can superficially check room cleaning and scold the bored receptionist. But discipline and motivation issues are not addressed holistically.
There is a reason for that. Strengthening mentoring as a method of management leads to negativity since the introduction of any control and accountability is perceived as paperwork and a waste of time. Decent employees are more likely to be offended: they work hard and conscientiously, they are overloaded with extra work, but at the same time they are not going to be paid more. The bad ones, instead of working, will pay attention to the correctness of filling out reports, but not to guests.
Although a change of staff is necessary, the dismissal of employees is an extreme measure. The disgruntled ones will spread rumors, vilify the hotel management, preventing the arrival of new employees. It is worth holding on to conscientious staff: the labor market is overburdened with theoretical managers, but finding a sensible administrator, understanding the subtleties of the hotel business is a difficult task.
How a hotel manager usually solves the problem
Analysis of the working time costs of hotel line personnel showed that on average 25% of working time is spent on paper reports. Loss of time also occurs, for example, when the administrator needs to check the quality of the room cleaning. The manager looks for optimization options:
- forces employees to communicate via some messenger;
- makes a maid make a photo report of the cleaned room;
- introduces a new staffing position — a controller.
The measures taken do not solve the major task — to increase the efficiency of the team. Group chat distracts all employees and doesn’t allow tracking the entire process of interaction between staff and guests.
The time management of the hotel staff has identified critical points of loss of time. These are:
- wrong organization of the front desk working process;
- a linear, but not a parallel or combined process of solving typical tasks;
- the lack of quick communication between guests and hotel staff.
The conclusion is simple: for personnel management, hotels need to implement a centralized control system — a single IT tool, in which the manager sees the staff performance, guests — can easily order any service, and staff — quickly process requests.
Alternative: Satisfy Travel — IT solution for hotels
Let's see on the example of Satisfy Travel, how an IT solution can really help with the above tasks: effectively manage staff and motivate them to perform their duties conscientiously.
Satisfy Travel hotel management package includes 3 modules compatible with each other:
- web service for the administrator, thanks to which you can manage the work of staff and accept guests’ orders;
- mobile application for staff;
- mobile application for guests.
Web service for the administrator
It is, so to say, a command post, where your administrator controls the line staff workflow and sees guests' orders. For example, a guest asks to send breakfast to the room - the task immediately goes to the responsible employee. No waste of time. No Chinese whispers.
A load of all personnel is visible on the monitor. At any given time, you know which task has already been completed, which rooms are ready for check-in, and which ones are not.
If earlier the maid ran to the administrator, who tried to quickly find an electrician to fix the outlet or change the light bulb, now the electrician immediately gets a task right to his smartphone. The administrator only controls the execution.
Thanks to the web service, you can pay more attention to guests, for example, send a push notification or message via a multilingual chat. The service takes into account customer’s wishes. If the guest sets the “do not disturb” status, both the administrator and the staff will immediately know about it.
Staff app
Nothing superfluous: employees receive tasks from the administrator or directly from guests. All the questions can be checked with the administrator via our chat. Using the application, it is convenient to plan your workflow: it is better to find out about the guest’s "do not disturb" status beforehand via a smartphone than to roll the cart to the room and only then see the sign.
Guest app
The guest app increases loyalty. All services (both paid and free) can be ordered and paid for, and guests can communicate with the administrator through the chat without a language barrier. The chat is multilingual – during communication, all messages are translated into any language of the world automatically.
What benefits does your hotel get from the implementation of the system?
The implementation of the multi-tool solution Satisfy Travel at the hotel will boost the average monthly income while increasing the efficiency of human resources. Most importantly, customer loyalty increases without additional marketing and advertising costs. Profit grows due to several factors:
- boosting of sales of additional hotel services;
- reduction of the number of check-outs without payment for services;
- increasing the number of regular guests due to satisfied customers and word of mouth;
- reduction of hotel costs for paper products (letterheads, bills, Forms, etc.) and printed materials for the hotel.
By organizing the staff workflow, the time for completing each task is reduced. You can easily and visually control the work of any employee. The administrator at the front desk is unloaded, he does not need to manually distribute tasks between the employees or look for a maid to help the guest. All this is done automatically.
Satisfy Travel keeps statistics on personnel, work performed, and ordered services. Based on it, an analyst or manager can analyze performance, identify best employees, develop and implement new services, etc.
This is a new level of customer service without significant costs. It is remote, which is important in the ongoing pandemic. From the app, guests learn about new dishes in the restaurant, special offers, and new services, and can immediately order and pay for what they want and need. Here, and not in the сomplaint book, the guest can leave wishes, comments and quickly receive a response from the administrator. Thanks to this, it is possible to reduce the level of negativity and increase the overall positive impression of the hotel.
Chatting is possible in any language without a translator — this is a good reason to think about expanding the geography of the hotel's client base.
Satisfy Travel is one of the best hotel staff management solutions today. It does not require investment in additional equipment and the creation of an internal computer network. Any hotelier with basic PC & smartphone skills can start using the system in a couple of minutes without involving IT specialists.
We don’t require any investment as our prices are affordable even for small hotels.
The guest app is also user-friendly and easy to use. It’s absolutely free for your guests.
Want to make an informed decision about using the service?
Sign up for a free demo. We will tell you how to use Satisfy Travel effectively precisely in your hotel.