To be successful in the hotel industry, it is important to keep your guests happy and loyal. Guests’ experience starts as soon as the booking of their accommodation, to arrival at hotel, their stay in the hotel, and eventually their checking-out process. During the whole journey, guests are bound to have multiple communication experiences with the hotel staff.
A bad communication experience at any stage can leave guests with bad overall experience. Besides not returning to stay with the hotel again, guest may also share their unhappy experiences over social media which in turn, affects the hotel’s reputation. Therefore, misunderstandings due to miscommunications between guests and employees can be very costly to the hotels.
Challenges of Communication in Hotels
In hotels, only about 20% of employees are mainly deskbound and reachable via company emailing. The remaining 80% comprises of valet, housekeeping and maintenance teams who generally are not reachable or not able to respond quickly to urgent matters via company email address.
Not having effective communication with employee could also lead to poor employee engagement, which in turn affects retention rates, motivation and ultimately the overall organisational performance. As hotel staff are the ones who shape guests’ experiences and often interact with guests face to face, the quality of their engagement is very important.
Solutions to Better Communication in Hotels
Centralised and secured digital workplace, and push-to-talk (PTT) walkie-talkie apps are two effective solutions to the communication and engagement challenges faced in the hotel industry.
Digital communications bridges the communication and engagement gap with non-desk employees. For non-desk employees, most, if not all, of them carries a smartphone with them today. A digital workplace mobile application could be installed on these smartphones to enable centralised and secured real-time communication with employees. The app could also incorporate an enterprise messaging system to give employees the ability to communicate with colleagues instantly (privately or in a group).
Security within an enterprise messenger could include protection of sensitive information and allowing them to be communicated securely to authorised personnel only. The employees can then be engaged and be informed of the latest updates or job instructions to be carried out.
If instant voice communication (privately or in a group) is needed, a PTT app can be installed to enable walkie-talkie like PTT communications on the smartphones. One example of a PTT app is VoicePing.
Having better communications means higher work efficiency between departments, such as sales and operations, in hotels, especially during peak seasons.