Owners and operators of limited-service hotels with 50+ rooms who are looking for workforce technologies to improve staff communications and better meet guests’ expectations should plan to visit HotelTap at HITEC. The HotelTap “digital log book in the cloud” uses a social media network format to replace notebooks, paper tickets, sticky notes, internal emails, spreadsheets, text messages and radios for recording and responding to guest requests. The solution not only improves communications, but it also aids in performing and tracking maintenance tasks, and resolving customer complaints.
“HotelTap leverages mobility and the cloud to share information from department to department, employee to manager, and manager to owner, in one comprehensive location,” said Sandip Jariwala, HotelTap founder and CEO. “This easy and fun-to-use digital log book communicates a steady stream of daily activities and information in chronological order by department and by staff start time. Staff who are familiar and comfortable using a social media network like Facebook or Twitter, will absolutely love HotelTap. ”
HotelTap is designed to:
- Replace notebooks, paper tickets, internal emails, spreadsheets, text messages and radios
- Be easily accessible from any Wi-Fi device
- Facilitate mobile notifications sent to employees with links for responding directly to issues
- Print task list for employees
- Deliver daily activity reports to keep a paper trail of all communications
- Manage Waitlist, Lost & Found, Group Reservations and other operational tasks
- Enable employees to communicate in their language of choice, including Spanish
- Track and analyze guest complaints and maintenance issues
- Search information with TAGS and words
- Create recurring checklists for shifts, inspections and preventive maintenance
- Attach documents, photos and videos to notes and tasks
- Provide equipment records to save time and make informed expense decisions
- Store unlimited data and notifications
Rather than requiring hotel staff to click through a series of tabs or buttons, HotelTap uses a steady messaging stream of interactive notes and tasks that are relevant to each department and staff member. For example, a front desk agent will log into HotelTap and see only the information or incomplete tasks that he or she needs to address during the shift. Any information relevant to the front desk — or tasks that need performed during the shift — is presented to the agent upon log in. Staff only see the communication stream relevant to their department, while managers and owners have access to all hotel correspondence.
The tool contains a comprehensive analytical dashboard that records and tracks guest complaints and provides a snapshot of maintenance and equipment issues and task history relating to them, by category and physical areas of the hotel. The dashboard neatly organizes the property’s complaint records so operators can easily pinpoint problem areas. The system offers alerts for tags so that managers and owners can be notified via text messages about particular issues as soon as they are entered in HotelTap. For example, owners and managers can sign up to get a text notification for issues with #GuestComplaint or #911 or #SoldOutTonight tags. In short, they can choose what issues are important for them to be notified immediately.
The HotelTap dashboard also organizes maintenance tasks in a To Do list so they can be viewed at any time and from anywhere. Daily activity reports of all staff and department communications can be received in PDF format so they too can be accessed and viewed on any Wi-Fi enabled device.
Filling Unsold Rooms
HotelTap’s WaitList feature is helping hoteliers to increase revenues. When the hotel is sold out for a particular day or days (especially during special events or conventions) and guests call to book a room, the front desk staff can create a task in HotelTap to put the guest on a wait list which shows up on the To Do list of the Front Desk board. Each day, the manager or staff will check the room availability chart to see if a room has opened up; if so, the wait listed guest will be called to book the reservation. This function enables hoteliers to fill rooms that may have opened up on the last day due to cancellations. The WaitList also can be used to fill rooms that were being held by management, but were then released, and to fill out-of-order rooms that were addressed and have been put back into inventory.
“While there are Internet-based guest-response systems in the market, most are focused solely on maintenance and large properties; few are structured for the cloud or for mid-size and limited-service hotels,” Jariwala said. “We hope everyone looking to improve staff and guest communications and improve their maintenance management and housekeeping processes visits us next week at HITEC in Booth 1702.”
