Two birds, one stone!
How guest messaging solutions can help hotels overcome staffing shortages & improve guest satisfaction by Harman Singh Narula
Labour shortages have long been an issue in the New Zealand economy, and they’ve recently gotten worse.
As of Dec. 2021, the unemployment rate in New Zealand was just 3.2 percent – down 1.7 percent from the previous year. In the wake of COVID-19, labour shortages have hit virtually every sector of the economy, but they have truly battered the hospitality industry.
Making matters worse, staff members who are retained by hotels, resorts and other lodging properties now have to spend precious time dealing with COVID-related protocols such as checking vaccine passports.
Somewhat obviously, this has a knock-on effect on front desk lines, phone queue volumes and other vital areas of hotel operations.
Hotels looking to weather this storm need to find creative ways to operate more efficiently, while keeping revenue and guest satisfaction scores as high as possible.
To address this historic staffing crisis and ensure that guests still receive a high level of service and enjoyable experience, many hotels are turning to technology solutions to automate rote administrative functions like check-in, checkout, upgrade package purchases and other things that many guests would prefer to do in a contactless manner anyway.
For instance, many hotels are eliminating paper credit card authorizations and replacing them with digital authorizations completed in a few clicks from any mobile device or computer. This cuts down on both unnecessary physical engagement between staff and hotel guests and reduces the amount of paper required to be used by the hotel, lowering overhead costs.
However, possibly no digital solution has the power to improve staff productivity as much as guest messaging. Modern consumers are more comfortable than ever communicating with all kinds of businesses via SMS and text messaging apps like WhatsApp.
Efficiency-minded hotels can benefit greatly from the deployment of technology solutions that enable staff members to easily communicate with guests at scale through these popular existing mobile device apps.
Of course, this prompts the questions: what does a comprehensive guest messaging solution for hotels look like? What features should it include? What other criteria should it satisfy?
In addition to the ability to directly text back and forth with hotel guests, an effective guest messaging solution should allow hotel staff to broadcast messages to all guests with on-property updates (e.g., the pool is closing early).
Hotel staff should also be able to send these messages as one-off, independent messages or automated messages related to the pre-arrival, check-in, in-stay and checkout stages of the hotel guest cycle.
Any modern hotel guest messaging solution will also include AI responses to the most common guest questions, so hotel staff can focus solely on providing top-notch, personalized service to the guests that really need it.
Last but not least, it’s critically important for hotel guest messaging solutions to present as low of a barrier to entry as possible to users.
Beware of messaging solutions that require guests to download additional apps or communicate with a phone number that is different from the main line of the hotel. The more seamless the deployment of a guest messaging solution into the guest experience the better.
Automated guest messaging saves your front desk staff valuable time, while enabling them to provide a more personalized service. Used effectively, these types of solutions are exactly what hotels need to weather the current staffing crisis and improve guest satisfaction scores over the long term.
Two birds, one stone.
Harman Singh Narula is Co-Founder of Canary Technologies, a leading hotel technology solutions provider with thousands of customers worldwide. Prior to Canary, Harman was a part of the Global Strategy Group at Starwood Hotels, and a management consultant at Bain, where he advised senior executives of hospitality and technology clients.
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