How to Empower Hotel and Gaming Staff in the 2020s
October 28, 2020
As we’ve seen recently, radical shifts in economic landscapes can happen very quickly. Hospitality industry leaders in the hotels, resorts, and gaming spaces have acted quickly, continuing to concentrate on the guest experience even in an era where occupancy rates have dropped to unprecedented levels from the spring of this year.
Some organizations have been scaling their technology platforms for years, the best of them considering that it is their staff who are the prime movers to delivering that guest experience to help them build their brands, increase competitive momentum, and to be more profitable. What have innovative and forward-thinking organizations done to support them? To help answer that, here is a list of hospitality technology innovations and solutions that leading hospitality organizations have put in place to empower their staff to do their jobs better and to help organizations stay resilient in the present and for future, too.
Mobile-based guest experience
In an era of social distancing and capacity restrictions, the role that mobile technology plays in the hospitality industry has ramped up even more. That was always a rising trend, particularly in the areas of reservations and room bookings that guests can manage easily on their personal devices. This is thanks to mobile technology integrations with hotel PMS and reservations systems to make those processes as user-friendly and seamless as possible. With this in place, the burden is removed from hotel and casino staff members to manage those processes, also making direct contact with guests unnecessary.
In implementing contactless technology and processes that center around mobility, hotel organizations have gone from high touch to high tech, still meeting guest needs while serving requirements to minimize contact where necessary. This is advantageous for everyone when comfort levels around face to face interactions have shifted so significantly. This goes beyond just the initial booking and reservations processes, also incorporating communications, maintenance, upgrade requests, and other facets that are common to a guest experience.
Digital tools for housekeeping and maintenance
When it comes to day to day operational activities like housekeeping and property maintenance, the same principles of comfort and safety are in place, along with other important factors for staff. An example would be greater response times when guests submit requests to a centralized hub that easily supports the use of mobile technology. When staff can access schedules and communications whenever they need to do so, this makes their efforts more coordinated and informed. It provides service staff with greater visibility on requests and a more complete view of tasks that they can then prioritize all in one interface.
Greater visibility and up to date information that staff can access on their personal devices is particularly vital in an era when cleaning schedules and standards are essential and top of mind for organizations and their guests alike. Mobile-based hospitality technology integrated with a cloud PMS solution that helps to ensure that staff always have the most current view of requests, schedules, and tasks at a glance while they are on the go. That makes it easier for them to do their best work.
Web-based reporting
As location management are in transit or are working remotely, access to current data is just as essential. Web-based reporting enables management staff to stay connected to what’s happening in a single location or in many locations. Easy remote access makes it easier for location management to plan activities and strategy in conjunction with their teams. Once again, this creates fluidity and greater flexibility for everyone whether they happen to be on-site, at home, or in between.
Given the data-driven nature of the industry, this level of access is important to keeping leadership teams connected to each other, and in touch with what’s happening in much shorter windows of time. With those connections between locations, systems, and teams in place, accessible via the web and supported by a cloud-based platform, the potential to be more resilient as demands on the industry persist is much less of a challenge for staff at every level.
The next steps
The key concept as the hospitality industry enters the 2020s is resiliency. How do hotels, resorts, and casinos continue to scale their businesses for it, even during times of unprecedented disruption? Besides being sure that service and location management teams always have the tools they need to succeed, what are some of the other essentials for which organizations must account to continue to be competitive in a changing landscape?
We’ve created a substantial resource to help hospitality industry decision-makers to address these questions, identifying key areas on which to focus efforts to stay resilient, now and in the future.