Hotel staff, like guests, want to feel engaged with the hotel. With labor constraints forcing fewer hotel team members to take on more responsibilities, frontline workers want to ensure that their increased responsibility comes with more capability. The best way to address these issues is through new technologies, starting with property management systems.
No one says running a hotel has to be easy, but there’s no reason the experience has to be challenging. With day-to-day hotel operations negatively impacted by the labor crisis, expectations are higher than ever for hotel staff, including managing rooms, scheduling, and even turning over when the schedule calls for it. This is the reality of today’s hospitality industry, but if hoteliers are to realistically address these challenges, they must equip their employees with the tools they need to succeed.
Modern PMS tools provide employees with the ability to handle tasks more efficiently, relying on fewer individuals to accomplish tasks in an efficient manner that used to require an entire team. Simply put, when technology works, so do employees.
At the recent Maestro User Conference, guest speaker Larry Mogelonsky, the world’s most published hotel writer and co-founder of Mogel Hotel Consulting, said “For years, the hospitality industry has been guest-centric when it comes to service and loyalty. While hoteliers must do everything possible to ensure guest satisfaction, it must not come at the expense of their employees. There needs to be a huge paradigm shift in the way we operate; employees Satisfaction must trump guest satisfaction at all costs. Ultimately, happy employees can’t help but translate into happy guests. This is the most radical change in hospitality today, and it cannot be deployed effectively without relying on technology.”
fast learner
Starting today, hoteliers should aim to find new ways to retain employees and employ tools that are efficient, clear, concise and optimized. However, all these capabilities are for naught if hoteliers fail to dedicate enough time to training. Onboarding remains a persistent challenge, and PMS providers should ensure new hires can take advantage of e-learning tools and other services to get started as quickly as possible while retaining critical information.
If a PMS provider could offer live chat assistance instead of AI, new hotel team members would be able to get instant help from a live agent when they need it most, in the way they expect. Employees are more inclined to use tools that provide quality, consistent support and service through mechanisms they are generally familiar with, especially when it’s built directly into the technology they already use. Live agents are able to provide more meaningful direct, accurate responses than automated chatbots typically provide, something that hotel staff place a lot of value on during training and even during a crisis.
Regardless of how hoteliers view PMS training, when it is delivered correctly, it can provide value at every level of hotel operations, and hotel leaders should make it a priority. Doing so spreads more knowledge and skills across the hotel organization, empowers hotel staff to do more with less, connects their skills directly to the hotel that teaches them, allows them to move freely across departments, and develops them as hotel experts ‘s career.
like home
Newer modern technologies, such as web-based and mobile-platform-based PMS user interfaces for frontline users, also require less training time than their static counterparts, and leverage existing societal trends in mobile technology to provide significant benefits to hotel workforces and operations. Benefit. Combined with a sophisticated integrated property PMS platform that can handle every aspect of operations, this is an important distinction to remember as the hotel welcomes the most tech-savvy class of qualified employees in its history. Now is the time for the industry to believe in the capabilities of these employees and empower them to use these skills to improve hotel operations across the board.
Hospitality technology providers closely monitor consumer technology developments to find ways to capitalize on these business trends. Today’s consumer market has helped define the rules that make up the effective use of applications, and PMS providers have seized on these developments to streamline hotel operations, especially by offering new spaces in mobility and communications.
The pervasiveness and usefulness of mobile technology should not be underestimated when applied to the workforce. Travelers have been demanding innovations in mobile check-in for nearly a decade, but the technology was rare across the industry until the pandemic made it a necessity. Now that mobile check-in and two-way SMS communication have revolutionized hotel operations, making them leaner and easier to use for smaller teams, the same trend is now occurring in business operations.
As employees are better able to work on the go, it’s also important to consolidate the number of necessary programs and apps they’re forced to interact with in order to run a hotel. Some PMS providers are adopting more third-party integrations or offering multiple modules stored in a central database for easier access to them while creating a seamless and unified guest booking experience. The more hotels are able to integrate these tools, the more hotel staff can do without being overwhelmed by the tools around them.
Unfortunately, innovation in hotel technology has developed in a market characterized by a high degree of labor compression. The right modern PMS technology provides a more efficient and easy-to-use technology ecosystem, helping services at your fingertips and covering nearly every area of hotel operations. What’s more, these tools are comparable to those that consumers and workers already use in their daily lives. The more satisfied these employees are, the more hotels can increase retention and focus on improving the guest experience.
About the author
Warren Dehan is President of Maestro, the cloud and on-premises PMS solution of choice for independent hotels, luxury resorts, convention centers, vacation rentals and multi-property groups. Maestro pioneered fully integrated Windows PMS and Sales & Catering solutions and continues this trend with leading web and mobile based solutions. Platform and deployment independence sees Maestro as an investment that will continue to grow and adapt as new technologies emerge.
About Master PMS
Maestro is the preferred web browser-based cloud and on-premises PMS solution for independent hotels, luxury resorts, convention centers, vacation rentals and multi-property groups. Maestro’s PCI-certified and EMV-ready enterprise system offers a web browser version (or Windows) with more than 20 integrated modules in a single database, including mobile and contactless apps, to support the digital guest journey and workforce operation. Maestro’s sophisticated solutions enable operators to increase profitability, drive direct bookings, centralize operations, and allow guests to personalize their experience from booking to check-out and everything in between. For more than 40 years, Maestro’s Diamond Plus service has provided unmatched 24/7 North American support and education to keep hotel groups productive and competitive. More about the masters. Click here for a free PMS Buying Guide.
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