How can utilising automation help your hotel staff?

Written by Net Affinity | Oct 20, 2021 11:00:00 PM

It’s no secret the hospitality industry is currently struggling with a staffing crisis – in fact, more than a third of hospitality professionals are not considering returning to their jobs.

Pre-pandemic hospitality was the third-largest industry in the private sector, was estimated to contribute £133.5bn to national gross domestic product and employed over 3.2m people.

Hospitality isn’t the only industry facing a mass exodus of staff – it seems the pandemic has encouraged a trend sweeping the globe called the ‘great resignation’.

Based on a survey of 3,400 enterprise workers in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan, more than half of Gen Z workers plan to pursue a new job in the next year

So, how can you combat staff shortages within your hotel?

The answer is by implementing automation processes. By using the right automation tools and then utilising them in the right way, you’re intelligently compromising with the current crisis facing the hospitality industry – you’re taking the menial, time consuming tasks off the plates of your employees, freeing up precious time in their day for the most important thing – customer service.

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Avoid unnecessary phone calls by utilising what your booking engine has to offer

If you have the right landing pages set up for your latest offers, perhaps you’re getting most bookings for those online. Great. However when it comes to different types of bookings like weddings for example, are you utilising everything you can so as to avoid receiving a large portion of bookings over the phone? Within our booking engine, we have a wedding module which allows you to seamlessly manage all room bookings for a wedding in the one place. This is an incredibly useful and personalised feature for your couple too, who you can personalise a landing page for. They will have their own code specific to their wedding and can choose to have a specific package for people to book. Another benefit for your hotel, is that you can also use the opportunity to upsell.

As well as the wedding module, we also offer a corporate module within our booking engine which you can use in relation to corporate bookings. The same idea applies – utilising these modules will mean less unnecessary time on the phone.

Learn more about Net Affinity’s booking engine

Getting organised

There are so many small efficiencies you can make that will create a lasting and positive impact within your hotel’s eco system, which in turn, will benefit staff and make everyone happier.

FAQ pages

Making sure you are constantly keeping on top of your FAQ pages will save you time in the long run. You will have your standard FAQ page together, but continue to think about what you can add to it depending on the kind of questions, feedback or reviews you are getting from guests. Perhaps it’s Covid-related, perhaps it’s just something small that’s come up once or twice – whatever it is, get it added to your FAQ page and save time that might’ve been spent explaining on the phone.

Use a channel manager

Channel managers allow hotels to manage their rates and availability in real time across their chosen channels through one online platform. A smart channel manager has a two-way connection that not only sends inventory to your booking engine and OTAs, but reservations are sent directly to your PMS. This saves you time, reduces overbooking and helps you gain the ability to sell the most rooms as possible through as many channels as possible.

With a channel manager, you can enjoy your morning coffee while interacting with your guests; leave the front desk and take a vacation! Automate recurring operations to save time and money

Detail everything out within your rate plans – including enhancements

The more detailed your specific rate plans are, the less room for confusion or queries. When you are developing your rate plans, remember to include information on the likes of room extras – do you need to mention a baby cot for families? Or remote working facilities for someone taking a workation? Include all relevant detail!

You can also cut queries in half by offering and detailing out specific enhancements as part of your rate plans. Whether it’s dinner, wine, a movie night, a spa offer – leave nothing to the imagination.

Review all of your forms and update where necessary

Reviewing your existing site content is as important as paying attention to anything new you’re uploading. Take a good look through all of your website forms for dining, wedding, corporates etc. Make sure all of the fields are relevant and up to date, and importantly, that they are going to the right person internally. This will save time and leave less room for unnecessary confusion!

Utilise email

Utilising email as a tool is such an incredible timesaver and when done correctly, email can foster loyalty and help to successfully nurture return guests. Consider email marketing systems like Revinate. Organising things like pre stay emails will help you receive more bookings in advance which is helpful from a time perspective.

Another way you can efficiently use email on the lead up to Christmas is by allowing guests (and informing them of this option) to have vouchers emailed to them.

How can hotel vouchers benefit your customers in the current climate?

Plan and automate your social content

A key theme throughout many of these suggestions is in relation to planning. Planning and automation go hand in hand, and it’s no different when it comes to your social content. Using a content calendar and a social media scheduling tool (or the various platform’s own scheduling tools) will not only help your team save time, it will also give you greater visibility of what’s coming down the line – which leaves more room for innovation and creativity.

Chatbots

A Global Web Index survey found that nearly 4 out of 10 internet users prefer to use automated services rather than speak to a customer service representative

The appeal of chatbots is one of convenience and speed. Messaging apps have grown monumentally over the last few years, both socially and elsewhere – in fact, a significant amount of businesses are using messaging to communicate with customers and prospects. A Facebook study revealed that each month over 20 billion messages are exchanged between people and businesses on Messenger – and when they can help reduce your customer service costs by 30%, why wouldn’t you be interested?

When it comes to the small queries your guests might need an immediate answer to, chatbots can be a helpful solution for both them and you – it means they don’t have to go searching through information to find their answer, and you don’t have to spend time answering something very simple on the phone when you could’ve been chatting face to face with current guests. It’s something to consider if you haven’t already done so.

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