6 Smart Tools to Increase Hotel Staff’s Productivity

Productivity is placed on a pedestal in the tourism and hospitality industry. 

It determines long-term corporate health. And of course, the more efficient your hotel staff are, the more you’ll likely provide an excellent guest experience. 

However, optimized hotel staff productivity remains a challenge for hoteliers and hotel managers across the globe. 

While working in a busy accommodation, employees display blank periods and burnout. Understaffing remains a problem to resolve, with unbalanced staff-to-guest ratios. The workforce can’t merely keep up with the growing demand for hotels and the rising bar for the guest experience. 

Hotel management has yet to improve on organizational learning and adapt new techniques as well as trends to keep their customers satisfied.

Hotels are turning to technology.

Noting these challenges and exhibitions of poor performance, hotels today should engineer solutions for these perennial pain points. One way accommodations could effectively address these gaps is by onboarding tools that increase efficiency in the hospitality industry. 

Turning to technology and finding a productivity software that matches your operations are some of the most strategic responses, towards improving productivity in the hotel industry. 

In this post, we will discuss some of the tools that enhance efficiency in the hospitality industry. We hope that by the end of this post, you’ll consider incorporating them into your hotel’s operations. Let us understand ways to increase hotel staff productivity:

1. Online Booking Functionalities 

Running a hotel is very complex and requires staff to deal with guests constantly. Especially when it comes to matters such as room reservations, activity and tour bookings, and organizing other amenities.

As a hotelier, we’re sure you understand that problems can arise when you are dealing with these tasks manually. In this case, using an online hotel management system is an ideal method to resolve these issues and eventually boost hotel productivity. 

Why do you need online booking capabilities for your hotel?

To understand this, let’s look at the scenario of reservation management at a regular hotel. 

While booking a room, the guest needs to meet the receptionist and inquire about available facilities within the accommodation. Afterward, they have to fill up a form, show necessary documents, pay for the booking, get the room key, and undergo customs security.

If any room is not available or the guest cannot afford the available amenities, then they need to haul their baggage and check other suitable accommodations.

An online hotel management system offers an one stop solution for all these problems. 

It is designed to provide you with a convenient, organized, reliable, and precise method of processing manual booking systems for guests (regardless of their location).  

Here are a few ways that an online booking system can benefit your accommodation: 

• With an online booking feature, your guests can book a room, tour, or function area at your property (from anywhere at any time).

• Your guests can also skip the formal inquiries with your front desk staff. They can immediately see which facilities and services are available during their visit. 

• Guests can pay prior to their stay, without worrying about security. Most systems not only improve productivity in hotels but also ensure security when it comes to online transactions.

• Your staff don’t have to go through spreadsheets to check room availability or for any activity. The online hotel management software can provide them with a glance at free services and amenities like spa, site-tour, pick-up or drop-off facility.  

• Besides, the software’s online booking features can provide staff with information like guest details, check-in and check-out dates, expected income, and remaining unpaid dues. 

Owing to all these reasons, most businesses have incorporated online booking tools to improve their hotel staff productivity. These solutions are easy to grasp and highly accessible in the market. They increase staff efficiency and free your front desk workforce from cumbersome day-to-day tasks, that they could set aside to serve your customers better. 

2. Statistical Solutions for Bookings and Transactions 

Apart from empowering your guests via online booking, your online hotel management system is equipped with tools to guide you through statistics. Be it full-fledged reports and logs of reservations bookings, cancellations, and profit generation, the hotel software has covered it all. This makes it another reason to fully embrace all-in-one hotel technology to improve your staff efficiency. Now, let us understand:

What are the tools in your software that can address booking statistics and transactions? 

• Some tools can help you acquire an extensive breakdown of your accommodation’s operations. It includes data on reservations from multiple channels such as web, mobile, and even social media. 

• The collected data can be presented through graphs and charts that are easy to grasp. On top of that, they are readily available on your system’s dashboard. 

During important meetings or making important decisions, your staff can easily pull out this information. They can get detailed insights into reservation summaries, present booking information, occupancy rates, and net profits.  

• Your online hotel management system should offer integrations with other platforms too. A seamless integration with hardware and software helps you improve hotel staff productivity. For instance, can integrate your platform with other tools that help you with statistical analysis such as Google Analytics. 

With this integration, you can conveniently keep track of your website visitor statistics and other details. You can start Google Ads, establish objectives, track their progress and know the total number of guests reserving rooms through Google Ads. 

• Your system should have tools that can document each and every transaction. Most hotel management platforms are equipped with solutions that can record the data to maintain transparency and accountability.  

3. Tools for Nourishing Guest Relationships

Hotel management software capabilities also include maintaining guest relationships and managing customer interactions. Most of the systems allow hotels to store details of their reservations and transactions. 

How can your online hotel management system foster guest relationships at the booking stage? 

• When a guest returns and makes a new reservation, hotel software fetches his data. His transactions and folios are also automatically shown on the screen and can be printed out instantly. 

• The systems also record details of guests who make inquiries but do not book rooms. You can also retain the interaction histories of guests from different platforms.

Now, imagine if you have to perform all these activities manually.

Your reservation team would have to input guest information all over again. They have to dig up previous records when a guest contacts the hotel for a folio inquiry months or years after his stay at your property. It’s an immediate downgrade on improving hotel staff productivity. 

We’ve unearthed data from Deloitte that says,

Knowing your guests is fundamental when it comes to delivering next generation customer experience.

Besides, your employees have to go through the tedious process of sorting through files and folders to recall your customer’s previous demands and determine points that could improve their subsequent stay. The latter comes especially integral since most guests consider personalization when it comes to a positive guest experience.

Personalization plays a huge part in creating a memorable stay for your guests. 66% of respondents said that hotels that engage guests in a personalized, authentic and attentive manner, are more likely to achieve guest satisfaction. 

4. Mailing and marketing: the key to building stronger bridges 

To take your hotel promotion up a notch, you can count on your hotel management software to send personalized letters and emails to guests. 

Communicating with guests, at each and every stage (pre-arrival, during the stay, post-departure) of their journey is a significant part of your hotel management. If you have an online hotel management system, it can assist you and provide you with mailing lists, that are part of interaction history. Here’s how: 

The mailing program fosters your relationship with them and helps you achieve increased customer returns and average daily rates.

• Hotel software has thorough details of previous guests, booking enquiries and even subscribers of your website.

• Through your online hotel management system, you can opt for bulk mailing through mailing labels. These labels can be further categorized by various aspects such as subscription, booking source or zip code. Your system sorts this out for you, giving your staff more time to focus on creating interactive content for your audience.  

• You can also target specific customers and concentrate your marketing efforts on guests who are more likely to support your venture or purchase your product. That way, you can shift your focus towards leads and clients who matter more. 

Your software automatically searches your interaction history database to identify whether the guest has previously stayed on your property. With an online hotel management system, maintaining communication with your guests gets automated and it assists you in improving hotel staff productivity.

Another step further 

You can even go further than improving staff efficiency.

With this feature, you can initiate a guest rewards program, where clients can use points to secure a reservation or purchase any amenity from your property. 

According to the data, 75% of consumers favors organizations that offer rewards. 

Setting up a rewards program can lead to better customer retention and higher revenue.

5. Solutions for data analytics 

To become a trailblazer in the hospitality industry, you must acknowledge the fact that you need to go digital. You need to adopt reliable technology to harness the power of data in making daily profitable decisions. 

Let us show you some research. Emerald Insight says,

Big data and analytics are predicted to be one of the most influential technologies affecting the hospitality industry in next five years. 

Because plenty of enterprises are starting to pick up on this trend, several powerful solutions are available in the market. Some of them are grounded on data analytics for automated decision-making to improve hotel staff productivity in the industry.

Digital transformation demands an integrated technological landscape from accommodations across the globe. Here’s when hotel management software comes into the picture for increasing your staff’s productivity. It improves your operations by managing and organizing data effectively.

Let’s see how your tools can promote efficiency and harness the power of data simultaneously: 

• The software automates all the processes and does not require your staff’s efforts at all. Whenever they need to unearth important data, they can just get it from the system swiftly and hassle-free. 

• Apart from making day-to-day administrative work easier, a hotel management system can forecast demand precisely. So, you can plan the rates of your room, restaurant, amenities, and other income streams to generate the most revenue for your establishment. These functionalities automatically free up your staff from regularly updating prices. 

Running a hotel is a busy business and if you want to address both profit-making and efficiency in the hotel industry, data analytics play an important factor.

With industry-leading data analytics that can immediately boost your revenue with reduced risk and optimum efficiency, this aspect of hotel management won’t be a problem. 

Rather than spending time behind the desk, your staff can actually be more attentive to what your guests need. Basically, they can put efforts into improving hotel guest experience throughout their stay. 

6. Capabilities for any type and size of the property

If you want to improve hotel staff productivity in hotels, you should look for the versatility of available solutions in the market. Some solutions are perfect for quaint bed and breakfasts while some are designed to manage hotel chains across the globe. Some are exclusive for managing national park lodging and campgrounds while some are best suited for five-star luxury accommodations.

Simply put, there is a wide array of productivity tools for different types of accommodations, be it large-scale, or small to medium.

However, some online hotel management systems stand out by catering to all kinds of property, from independently run hotels, and beachside resorts to cheap hostels. It is recommended that you get your hands on a buyer’s guide that will help you choose the best system for your property.

Why do you need a flexible hotel management solution?

Acquiring such technology assures that your tools for hotel productivity will be with you throughout the journey of your business.

They are ready to grow and adapt with you if you decide to expand or add another income source to your accommodation such as a restaurant or spa service.

For instance, some platforms have specially integrated solutions to oversee hotel restaurant operations, which improves the hotel staff productivity automatically.

If you decide on either, these solutions ensure that your staff do not have to worry about extra manual work. Since your system can offer functionalities that cover cumbersome processes and day-to-day assignments. 

Rather than focusing on these tiresome things, your staff can just focus on acquiring the top qualities of a great restaurant waiter. You can also breathe easy knowing that your operations are simplified, especially if you plan to continue growing your enterprise. 

Regardless of where you are in the world or what kind of accommodation you run, your tools must be focused on how to improve hotel operations. So that, your staff can focus more on your guests and provide them with the best stay in your hotel.