The year 2020 has been a difficult one for the hospitality industry — fears over the COVID-19 pandemic, massive reductions in global travel, and a general slowdown in the global economy have contributed to hotel occupancy rates as low as 24 percent.
Luckily, the future is looking brighter. A promising vaccine could be rolled out in early 2021, hopefully leading to fewer restrictions, increased travel for business and recreation. Hotel occupancy should rise again in 2021, and the priorities of hoteliers will return to creating the best hotel experience that they can.
Guests Come First
Hotels are unique among other large businesses in that your guests are in the building with you around the clock — as such, your top priority will always be the needs and well being of your guests. The more efficiently and effectively your staff can address one guest’s concerns, the faster they can help the next guest.
Technology is one of the most powerful tools you can leverage to increase the efficiency of your staff and your hotel — and hotel technology starts with your communication systems. Here’s how a VoIP system can help you make your hotel staff as useful as possible.
Better Multitasking
Hotel staff will consistently need to jump back and forth between in-person guest requests and your hotel’s day-to-day operations, which is challenging to do when they’re sitting behind a desk all day. You can’t take the chance of missing important calls while a member of your staff is showing a guest to the restaurant, but you can’t refuse to help a guest, either.
A VoIP system can help your staff do both. You can set up a system for your team to forward any calls to someone else when that staff member is busy. If your managers prefer to roam the hotel, you can arrange your system such that all calls are forwarded to their cell from the main hotel number, without any guest needing to know the manager’s personal number.
Quicker Call Transferring
Even the best hotels will occasionally experience escalations with dissatisfied guests such that managers need to be brought in to remedy the situation. When that happens, the last thing you want to do is go looking for a manager while asking the guest to wait. With Phonesuite VoIP technology, you can utilize the Find Me / Follow Me functionality to instantly locate the manager or other staff member and forward a call to them, no matter where they are.
Less Stress Makes Better Staff
In too many hotels, staff members spend a majority of their time addressing simple, repetitive tasks. In hotels, your staff might have to answer basic questions on the phone like where the hotel is, what time dinner is served, and what the wi-fi password is.
By implementing a high-tech, modern VoIP system, you can cut down on the repetitive tasks and free them up to help guests in person. When your staff aren’t continually jumping back and forth between helping guests and answering phones, they’ll be less stressed about potentially missing problems and calls, which will make them happier and more productive.
Talk to Phonesuite Today
If you’re ready to upgrade your hotel’s phone system to an affordable, modern, flexible VoIP system, talk to Phonesuite. We can give you a ballpark estimate or a specific quote for upgrading your hotel’s phone system based on a comprehensive examination of your infrastructure, priorities, and needs. Curious about the cost or installation process? Get in touch today.able, since the signal has to travel so much farther over physical copper cables.
