With many industries joining the migration to mobile solutions, hotels are transitioning away from hardware-based legacy platforms. Replacing these systems with cloud-based software allows for greater flexibility. This shift makes perfect sense for the highly-dispersed and on-the-go nature of the hospitality industry.
Your guests expect agile responses to their requests in every element of their hotel stay. Consequently, your hotel’s internal communication should mirror this demand, and be able to keep up to speed with adequate digital technology. A hotel tech platform can help your hotel make this transition.
Invest in Hotel Technology to Meet Mobile Connectivity Demands
The 2018 Hotel Management Voice of the GM study reveals that 46% of general managers say they have or are planning to invest a significant portion of their budget to hotel technology. The study also found that the vast majority cited that they couldn’t live without a mobile device (79%) or a laptop (11%) combining to total 90%.
How can hotel general managers best make the case for implementing a new hotel tech platform? Emphasize how the hotel tech platform approach incorporates all of the necessary capabilities from security, manageability, and scalability into one digital hub instead of having to make siloed hardware and systems “talk” to one another.
Aside from a streamlined working experience, you’ll never have to download fussy updates or delay your operational processes. With a cloud-based hotel tech platform, you can rest assured that your software is always current without gaps in information availability or guest service compromise.
Generate Excitement for Your Hotel Tech Platform
Since the success of any new technology rollout is contingent on leadership buy-in, selling Beekeeper excitement to leadership, and the other general managers in the company, is an important step. The application of the hotel tech platform will fluctuate based on the kind of hotel you are operating.
For example, a select-service hotel has different needs compared to a full-service hotel. With a full-service property, there will often be larger teams along with greater complexity in terms of communication needs between each department. As a result, having multiple departmental communication streams may be beneficial.
Conversely, a select-service property may have a lean operation where employees work multiple job functions making consolidated communication on one stream more important. When asked about some of the most valuable use cases of the platform, our hotel customers called out the following examples:
- Plug-and-play capability with no complicated user manual or extensive staff training.
- Hospitality-specific content plans and schedules that concentrate on valuable daily statistics such as available beds, VIP guest updates, and other property-centric data.
- Moving daily stand-ups or briefings online, which are a known user-stickiness driver because employees need that info on a daily basis, which will keep them coming back to the platform.
Gamify Hotel Operations To Recognize Staff and Improve Guest Service
Another way to build excitement and motivate hotel teams to participate in the new hotel tech platform is to gamify key areas of guest service. Competitions can be announced, measured, and celebrated via your operational communication platform. This helps compel your hotel staff to log on, and continue doing so to keep up to date on the status of the competition.
Some competition ideas that have proved successful and valuable for our customers to drive engagement and user-stickiness include:
- Contest to see which employees can fill the most rooms.
- Posting guest service scores that appear online and that are submitted directly to the hotel in communication streams and recognizing the team member who receives the most shout outs.
- Polling your workforce on their ideas to improve guest service and choosing the most innovative one.
Download our eBook, 5 Steps to Get Executive Buy-In For an Employee App, to begin planning your pitch and adoption strategy for a new hotel tech platform.
