Self Check-in Success Story at the SwissTech Hotel
As guest expectations evolve and digital solutions become increasingly essential, Swiss Tech Hotel in Lausanne has embraced innovation. By adopting ...
3 min read
Miles Gaudoin : Dec 9, 2022 4:07:43 PM
Hotels, being part of the hospitality industry, focus on guest satisfaction aiming to deal effectively in meeting a variety of important needs. For many hotels, the only way to achieve the desired service levels is by using highly trained and attentive staff. Self-service is often seen as contradictory to this essential aim because it is seen as lacking the personal touch.
This is changing as more hotels look to offer a wider choice for their guests, many of whom now prefer the convenience of self-service channels. Add to this the challenge hotel operators face with recruitment and staff turnover, and there is also a need to protect the business from external forces that cannot be easily controlled and managed.
Today hotels face a call to deliver more, deliver better at competitive prices against a backdrop of high competition, fewer resources and increasing costs – this is the market landscape many hoteliers are struggling with.
By mixing staff with self-service, the ‘barrier’ of seeing self-service as unsuitable for many types of hotels (luxury, upscale, midscale) is being broken down. It also provides a tool hotel operators can use to mitigate the twin risks of staff availability and burgeoning running costs. An initial benefit of mixing staff with self-service is the removal of the perception self-service is low service.
Many self-service projects across various industries, fail. There are many reasons, but staff resistance and poor execution are two of the primary inhibitors to success.
Staff buy-in is therefore critical for success, and deploying self-service is as much about a change management process for staff as it is for guests. Mixing staff and self-service is now understood to be a vital step in making such projects a success. Hotels deploying self-service solutions dramatically increase the likelihood of success when staff sees them as an extension of their day-to-day toolkit in managing guest arrivals and departures.
Following the right principles will ensure you achieve the target goals, and these are underpinned by four ingredients for a successful self-service implementation;
Self-service solutions must help the staff and make their working lives easier, as well as provide guests with a simplified, fast check-in and check-out experience. If the service is more convenient than existing options (i.e. no queuing, quicker and easier) - both guests and staff benefit. They will all embrace the solution!
It is often stated that the initial impression a guest gets of a hotel is at check-in and that it can "make or break" the whole experience, so getting it right is key.
Self-service helps turn your guests into your willing workers, and when combined with a host assisting guests, it translates into unprecedented benefits for the business whilst maintaining a degree of personalisation. A different kind of personalisation but personalised, nonetheless.
Whilst some benefits are more evident than others; some deliver unexpected value. For example, if using more than one kiosk in conjunction with online check-in service, one member of staff can assist more than a single guest at the same time. This is not possible with a traditional check-in reception desk.
At peak times, hotels also elevate their personal approach further by deploying a guest host, front of house, as a welcomer that helps with the guest journey.
When the right balance is achieved, the combination delivers ground-breaking results such as;
As a hotel, be it a large chain, small chain, international group, local independent or boutique operation, the most important attributes of excellent customer service include;
The only way to deliver all these attributes is in mixing staff with best-of-breed self-service solutions. Don’t compromise, do it all and do it better.
With more and more hoteliers planning a future with self-service, already implementing solutions or have already implemented them, it is vital to approach it correctly, and the evidence is a hybrid approach is the best approach.
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