20 Ways To Make Hotel Facilities Management Services Efficient For Guests
How Facilities Management Services Can Have A Long-Term Impact On The Branding And Reputation Of Hotels
The Hotel Facilities Management services is all about ensuring high-quality services for the guests. Some of their regular tasks include improving energy-saving strategies, keeping rooms clean and sanitized, optimizing work operations, constantly striving to enhance the customer experience, providing effective housekeeping services, looking for innovative and more efficient practices, and reducing operating costs.
Slow response, unexpected breakdown of service equipment, and lag in housekeeping and facilities management can inconvenience a guest during their vacation. This can result in guest complaints that can eventually reduce overall customer satisfaction and hamper the hotel’s brand value and reputation. In this case, facility maintenance software is an extremely useful tool for the maintenance team to improve customer experiences and provide instant solutions.
Facility Managers In Hospitality Are Now Using Hotel Software Solutions To:
- Plan preventive maintenance activities.
- Communicate with staff effectively.
- Managing operations in Foodservice.
- Managing Risks and Reducing Environmental Impact.
- Leveraging Security and Technological Solutions.
- Guaranteeing Compliance.
- Maintaining hygienic and safe working conditions for employees.
- Features and resources to help hotel facilities management team stay on target with end objectives.
- Ensure a positive customer experience by meeting their expectations.
- Offer exclusive services and state-of-the-art amenities at the most reasonable rates.
- Enable technology such as offering in-room tablets, Wi-Fi across the board, and keyless entry for guests.
20 Ways To Empower Hotel Facilities Management Services For Guests
Here are 20 ways the hotel facility management can be made efficient
- Hotel Maintenance Management Software
The Hotel and the Hospitality sector need to enhance the capacity of automated manual processes using effective software. This avoids paper checklists and helps to track all the hotel’s routine facilities and maintenance activities efficiently.
- Work Order & Maintenance Tracker
The facilities management team of a hotel needs to help staff with the automation of submitting detailed work orders for pest control, sanitization, maintenance, or housekeeping requests that can be tracked historically with detailed reporting.
- Seamless communication
The staff can seamlessly share information and effectively communicate work orders and requests to the hotel maintenance management. Interaction between the front desk, housekeeping, maintenance, general management, and even guests will ensure that all guest’s needs are addressed speedily and proficiently.
- Guest Complaints Management
A good facilities management system can help the team view inbound guest complaints, track issues, and submit housekeeping/facilities/maintenance requests to address problems and escalate guest satisfaction.
- Supply Chain Management
It is substantial for the hotel staff to immediately submit requests for supplies between the hotel and main office and track item delivery.
- Handle Check-in, Reservations, and Billing Processes
Providing a seamless experience from the reservation to food, billing, and check-in/check-out is an important function of the facilities management system is crucial in ensuring a best-in-class customer experince.
- Improve scheduling and calendars
The hotel staff needs to implement preventive maintenance strategies, conduct routine inspections, and avoid property damage and equipment malfunctioning. Scheduling calendars make the team more organized and proactive.
- Automated Notifications and Maintenance Reports
The right facilities management software allows the flexibility to set reminders and alerts to prepare for urgent problems, update detailed reports on costs and labor activities, plan ahead of time, automate an email reception list to receive reports automatically on a scheduled date.
- Glitch-Free Equipment
IT needs in hotels continue to rise. The hospitality facilities management should effectively manage glitch-free technology and help staff track and manage all assets to mark a guest’s entire experience.
- Reputation Management and Branding
Online reviews, testimonials, social media responses, likes/comments/shares can no longer be ignored. The hotel facilities management must track reviews and manage a hotel’s online presence, promote offers and deals, respond to every negative review professionally, ensure timely response to the guest, and reinvent branding strategies.
- Revenue and Budget Management
The hotel industry needs to consider economic trends, thus strategizing to drive high levels of occupancy. The management must optimize the revenue based on demand, create pricing strategies, track hotel revenue, conduct competition analysis, manage budgets, oversee distribution strategy, analyze sales and marketing channels, and manage daily operations.
- Quick Failure Resolution
Whenever there is a maintenance problem, it should be immediately and directly reported for swift approval and processing of resolutions. The Hotel facility management must establish a centralized platform to help speed up this process and control open and solved failures.
- Streamline Housekeeping
It is imperative to maintain high standards of cleanliness, provision of amenities, food, overall organization, ensuring good ambiance, and sanitized functionality in hotels. To streamline this fundamental task, hotels can outsource this department and use technology to access automated lists.
- Offer Extras
Hospitality facilities management is responsible for driving business by meeting customer demands and attracting new customers by providing exceptional extra services like Spa, Parking, Free Wi-Fi, Guest Histories, Valet, and More. It is integral to watch out for competitors, implement cloud-based technologies to improve hotel management, explore new technology, and provide training to update employees.
- Property Lost & Found Application
Hotels must tag and bag any left-behind items by guests and send automated emails with instructions to them, guiding them on how to retrieve their items. A virtual logbook of all lost and found objects needs to be maintained by the management.
- Maintenance Request Software
A maintenance logbook can be used by all relevant departments of the hotel and should be thoroughly maintained, easing communication facility maintenance needs in hotels.
- Stock Control
Maintenance and facility managers must control stock to better plan the budget, allocate finances, and handling costs. An operations management application can be introduced that automatically generates reports on consumption, tracks the counting of stock, and keeps a tab on the remaining stock to avoid wastage.
The Facilities Management System offers cloud-based software to track stocks, assets, streamline property operations, supervise staff productivity and ensure guest satisfaction.
- Access from any Location
It should be convenient to process a work order for hotel facility software and introduce web-based software solutions to give technicians and staff the flexibility to work from anywhere and from any hotel computer. A designated office or place may deter mobility and flexibility in providing services. Mobile apps for hotel facility software can be fundamental to react and respond to daily activities, complete work orders, and update maintenance tasks on a real-time basis.
- Enhance Staff Performance and Build Customer Loyalty
Facilities management activities must occur behind the curtain as its invisibility ensures customers’ loyalty and enhanced uninterrupted experiences.
Eventually, it is the guest experience that matters the most with the hotels and the hospitality industry. More than 50% of organizations pay close attention to a guest’s requirement, use innovative methods to enhance the guest experience, address issues and concerns, and stay on top of the latest hospitality technology trends to help them build and sustain effective customer relations.
Conclusion
Hotel Facilities Management Services are vast and post-pandemic, the responsibility of this department has reached its pinnacle. Facility leaders thrive on operating efficiently and effectively, incorporating the continuously evolving facilities, and staying up-to-date with facilities management best practices.
References:
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/organizations/hotel-employers.html
https://www.health.state.mn.us/diseases/coronavirus/guidance.html
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/disinfecting-building-facility.html
https://www.hospitalitynet.org/news/4104382.html
https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/2012-151/pdfs/2012-151.pdf
https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/331638/WHO-2019-nCoV-Hotels-2020.1-eng.pdf