Enhanced cleaning standards and a basic safety strategy aren’t enough to get hotels to the occupancy rates they need. So what is?

As July comes to a close, hotels around the world have largely reopened. The United States, China, and Europe are all hoping to show significant rebounds—and are reaching varying levels of success, as reflected by hotel occupancy rates. For the week ending July 25, China boasted a 60.9% occupancy, the United States 48.1%, and Europe, which has remained more cautious, 38.8%.

Overall, the numbers bring optimistic news for the hospitality industry, but there are still significant worries as well, especially for American hoteliers. The numbers have not bounced back as quickly as some hoteliers had hoped. Yet without a vaccine, experts like McKinsey & Company and STR predict a slow, steady recovery curve, not an upward spike.

In the case of the United States, the correlation between American recovery and Chinese recovery seems to be coming to an end. According to STR’s most recent report, American recovery growth has slowed significantly due to new COVID-19 cases and relatively low adoption of mask guidelines.

As things stand now, this slow, halting recovery is likely to continue for the foreseeable future. Hotels cannot simply shut down again amid spikes—but they also cannot stay profitable without raising occupancy rates. The fact is that the pool of travelers is smaller right now. How can you beat out competitors to buck the trend of slow recovery?

Make safety your entire brand—and no, cleaning standards alone aren’t enough.

No one in hospitality needs a refresher on why safety is important. It’s the core component of any successful hospitality business strategy in 2020. But many hotels have misunderstood exactly what level of safety travelers are looking for: enhanced cleaning and suggested distancing protocols are critical, but they aren’t enough on their own.

To truly impress travelers and take your safety strategy to the next level, focus on providing contactless service options. Mobile check-in, for example, allows guests to enter and exit the property without ever needing to stop by the front desk—a high-traffic area in any resort or hotel—and instead use their own device as a mobile key to access their room and any locked amenity spaces and common areas.

Dining is another place where safety measures can and should be extended. Mobile ordering, payment, and touchless deliveries make guests who are hesitant to visit hotel restaurants feel comfortable, with the added benefit of increasing revenue.

Overall, if you can transform a traditionally high-touch process or high-traffic area in order to enable physical distancing and eliminate face-to-face interactions, you’re more likely to pull in a higher number of travelers.

With that information in hand, you can begin to streamline processes, reassign resources appropriately, and optimize your reopening strategy. As occupancy rates rise, you’ll be better equipped to test, refine, and scale an already successful system—one based on hard data.

Offer guests convenience and control without compromising service quality.

With consumers in quarantine for multiple months, almost every single industry, from dining to retail to grocery, has completely pivoted to ensure consumers can comfortably shop online, then receive touchless deliveries or drive to stores for streamlined pick-up experiences. That ease isn’t something consumers are looking to give up as the world slowly returns to normal.

Instead, consumers are looking for that same digital convenience to expand into all of their service experiences post-pandemic. When they travel, they’ll want the same high-quality service hotel staff has provided over the years, but with added flexibility, digital capabilities, and control over who they interact with.

The hotels that provide a simple, mobile-first guest experience will ultimately win out over those that do not. With the ability to request contactless service or chat with staff from their smartphone or tablet, guests can tailor their stay to meet their preferences without ever needing to physically approach staff. With a completely seamless guest experience, satisfaction will rise sharply—and bookings will follow.

It’s certainly not an easy task: safety, convenience, and uncompromised service. But it’s worth putting in the work and investing in new tools to exceed guest expectations, build a strong reputation among travelers, and boost occupancy numbers to bolster recovery in the coming months.

Looking to uplevel your recovery strategy? Start at the beginning: see how mobile check-in technology provides convenient entry for guests while keeping both guests and staff safe.

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Position your property for quick recovery and lift stress from staff by streamlining hotel operations with back-office hospitality tools.

Months into the COVID-19 pandemic, the hospitality industry remains in a unique position compared to others. The novel coronavirus still poses a significant challenge to both operations and occupancy and while hotels have largely reopened, the cautious optimism shared by many hospitality experts is reliant on a slow build back to normal, not a sudden jump.

In the meantime, your team likely has even more responsibility than normal—but with fewer resources to accomplish everything. And you’re facing difficult choices: what can we afford to keep and what needs to be cut in order to make ends meet? All the while, intense scrutiny and pressure to get things just right is hanging over everyone. Yikes!

Yet while that stress is real and undeniable, it doesn’t have to overwhelm you or your staff. By strengthening the backbone of your property—your operations—you can empower employees and accelerate your recovery timeline. Here are three ways to streamline hotel operations:

Lighten the Load on Staff with Automation

In hospitality, automation has often been regarded as a negative, not a positive—something that over-promises and under-delivers. Or worse, something that works, but leads to a loss of service quality or employee cuts. In reality, it can empower employees and transform how you handle guest requests, room service orders, and more.

To be clear, automation can’t solve every problem. But tying service requests into a back-end platform ensures more efficient tracking and fulfillment, greatly reducing the chance of requests falling through the cracks and employees becoming overwhelmed. Fewer employees are needed to effectively manage them all, leaving time to focus on providing great service. Overall, backend automation can save more than three minutes of employee time per request, giving employees back thousands of minutes a month.

Streamline Hotel Operations Using Business Intelligence

Automation can transform day-to-day processes, but to solidify recovery efforts and drive higher revenue, you also need a clear look at the big picture of your business. In that respect, no tool is more useful than business intelligence. It can show you:

• How guest behavior has changed during the COVID-19 period
• Where you’re losing money—and which channels are proving most profitable
• How to identify broken processes and common service issues

With that information in hand, you can begin to streamline processes, reassign resources appropriately, and optimize your reopening strategy. As occupancy rates rise, you’ll be better equipped to test, refine, and scale an already successful system—one based on hard data.

Prevent Common Guest Issues Before They Arise

With business intelligence and automation working hand-in-hand, your property can shift from reactive service to proactive service. First, identify common friction points in every step of the guest journey. Then, look for ways to fix or remove the issues from the guest journey wherever possible. If confusion or frustration remains, pivot to communication. Let guests know in advance if service is disrupted or changed due to new COVID-19 protocols. The simple act of keeping them informed drastically reduces friction.

Once you shift to a proactive mindset, your staff will be able to breathe easier knowing they’ll likely see a drop in service requests and guest complaints, leaving them more time to handle other important tasks. And it’s not just a time-saver, it’s also a critical differentiator for your business. Proof that excellent service relies not on frequent face-to-face interactions between guests and staff, but a deep understanding of what guests need, and when they need it.

For many, investing in technology feels counterintuitive in a time like this. But it’s never been more important to have every tool at your disposal to ensure operations are running smoothly. In the end, the insights a set of back-office tools can provide will help smooth new processes and lift stress, putting your property in a prime position to rebuild and thrive as recovery begins.

See how you can streamline hotel operations to empower staff and form a proven recovery strategy.

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An in-depth look at how global circumstances surrounding COVID-19 have changed the hotel guest experience before, during, and after stays.

Almost overnight, the definition of a top-tier guest experience has completely changed. High-touch service isn’t the ideal; touchless service is. And cleaning standards—always important, but never a top marketing tool—are now the single biggest draw for many consumers. With guest needs and wants shifting so quickly and dramatically, the question for hoteliers isn’t whether or not the traditional hotel guest experience is done for. Everyone knows it is, at least temporarily. Now, the question is, “What’s next?”

For many hoteliers and guests, this is what the new ideal looks like—upon arrival, during the stay, and as guests depart.

Before Guests Arrive

Digital Communication
Whether it’s email, text, or in-app messaging, communication with guests before they arrive on-property has never been more important. This is the time to communicate new policies, reassure the guest that they’re walking into a safe environment, and inform them of how they can contribute to safety. It’s also how you can notify them about contactless services, and encourage them to use those services from the start.

Mobile Check-In
Mobile check-in is now the single most important tool hotels can implement, empowering guests to maintain physical distance and protecting front desk staff from interacting with a large volume of guests. With mobile check-in capabilities, guests can check in before they even step foot on property.

During Their Stay

Keyless Entry
Once a guest has checked in from their mobile device and arrived on-property, they can download their digital key, skip the front desk entirely, and head safely to their room. But keyless entry doesn’t have to stop there—it can also be the gatekeeper for common areas and amenities spaces like meeting rooms, pools, and gyms, keeping contact to a minimum throughout the property.

Enhanced Cleaning Standards
From the moment a guest walks in the door until they leave, they should be surrounded by a new level of cleanliness, one tailored to the threat COVID-19 poses. From wiping down frequently touched surfaces regularly to performing deep cleans between guests, hotels are expected to provide cleanliness safety standards. But it’s not enough to just implement these new practices; guests should be informed and urged to do their part as well—by washing their hands, wearing masks, and following new hotel policies. It not only leads to a safer hotel guest experience all around, but also increases guest satisfaction by ensuring they feel safer and more comfortable throughout their stay.

Contactless Service
Low-contact service isn’t restricted to just check-in and entry. It can and should transform the entire stay. A guest needs extra towels? They’re now looking for a way to request service and receive their towels without direct staff contact. Room service? They’re now expecting contactless ordering, payment, and delivery. As a result, contactless service is a crucial piece of the new guest experience, eliminating the vast majority of face-to-face interactions between guests and staff without compromising service quality.

As They Depart

Mobile Check-Out
Keep things as simple and low contact as they started by giving guests the option to check out on their phone, at once notifying you of their departure without requiring anything more than a few simple taps before they’re on their way.

It’s not just global circumstances that have changed—travelers have changed as well. Even as travel resumes and they return, even as safety levels rise, contact will be regarded with more caution. Safety and cleanliness won’t be taken for granted. These priorities remain, and it’s the responsibility of the hospitality industry to provide an experience that satisfies those needs and rebuilds guest trust for years to come.

Ready to transform your hotel guest experience on every level? Find out how the INTELITY platform can help you reduce contact, increase safety, and rebuild trust post-COVID.

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From delivery type to contactless payments, see how INTELITY has created a completely touchless ordering and delivery process for guests.

Across the globe, a contactless revolution is occurring. Contactless payments are exploding—with 82% of respondents from a global Mastercard study reporting that they view contactless as a cleaner, safer way to pay. Over 70% of consumers from another study say they are more likely to order delivery if given a contactless option. And hospitality is no exception, with even the AHLA “Safe Stay” guidelines recommending hotels adopt technology to reduce contact wherever possible for safety.

In light of this massive spike in demand for contactless service, the INTELITY platform—which already included contactless check-in, mobile key, and mobile dining capabilities—has been quickly upgraded with key new features that further reduce touchpoints throughout the guest journey.

Here’s a rundown of how mobile dining capabilities have been updated to produce a completely contactless dining experience:

What’s new for guests?

Choose delivery type: traditional or contactless.
As the popularity of restaurant and grocery delivery apps continues to rise astronomically, consumers are coming to expect convenient, streamlined mobile ordering experiences. In response to that demand, one feature has become standard across all of these apps in recent months: an option for customers to select their delivery type.

It’s a simple, but effective way to put customers in control of when and how they receive their food. Anyone uncomfortable with physical contact or concerned about safety can choose contactless delivery, and have peace of mind. Imitating these apps, the INTELITY team has updated our mobile ordering process with a similar drop-down menu to ensure that convenience extends to hotel guests and how they receive room service orders.

A fully contactless experience—from ordering to payment to drop-off.
In the quest for a contactless experience, payments can often be problematic. If a guest orders online and specifies that they’re looking for a contactless delivery—but then is greeted by a staff member at their door needing payment or a signature to approve charges, it can be an unpleasant experience.

In order to eliminate the physical exchange of cash or card, the INTELITY platform has long allowed the bill for a mobile order to be added directly to the guest folio. But now, INTELITY has also removed the need for a physical signature. With the new e-signature option that has been added to the mobile ordering process, payments can be handled during the order rather than during drop-off, ensuring there are no barriers to touchless delivery.

What’s new for hoteliers?

Communicate safety policies and service changes to guests as they order.
With fluctuating safety levels, you may need to institute, adjust, or lift safety precautions throughout the rest of the year. In that case, keeping in close contact with guests is the only way to ensure a smooth service transition.
Many hotels are making contactless dining deliveries their default. Others are halting all normal room service deliveries for the time being and only allowing contactless drop-offs. And in either of those situations, the hotel may also have new directions for guests about new protocols for dish and trash pick-up. Whatever policies you adopt, keeping guests informed is essential.

To facilitate better communication of new policies and how they’ll affect service, the INTELITY platform has added a notification option within the mobile ordering process that will cover any of these needs.

The demand for contactless isn’t going away: as consumers continue to request contactless deliveries and experiences, they will quickly become a standard of good service. And while COVID-19 remains a threat worldwide, hoteliers would be wise to adapt mobile dining capabilities that bring the same level of convenience as GrubHub and Postmates—and reap the rewards of increased guest satisfaction and in-room revenue. To find out more about what your hotel can achieve with contactless dining, read the dining one-sheet.

Read the Dining One-Sheet

Discover the three steps hoteliers can take to increase safety for hotel staff, soothe fear, and drive recovery as COVID-19 surges in reopened countries.

In the wake of COVID-19, the entire hospitality industry has come to agree on one thing: making guests feel safe and regaining their trust is the only way to come back from the devastating losses of the past few months. Hospitality Technology wrote about it. Skift wrote about it. We wrote about it. And so did just about everyone else.

But the key to making guests feel safe and satisfied lies largely in the hands of hotel staff—a group that has suffered major losses since COVID-19 hit, with even industry leaders like Hyatt and Hilton implementing significant workforce cuts. Beyond layoff anxiety, there are serious health concerns. Coronavirus cases are surging in the United States and could rise in other countries as well. Are staff members who are still working endangering themselves and family members?

Frankly, there is no easy way to remove health and economic anxiety from your employees. So what can you do? Take their concerns seriously, and take care of them as much as you can. You’ll reap the rewards in the form of lower turnover rates and higher guest satisfaction.

Here are a few simple ways you can start:

Enforce health and safety policies—even when it’s awkward

There will always be guests (and staff members!) who have no interest in following the health protocols you’ve implemented to keep everyone safe. Whether it’s requiring masks or limiting the number of people in common areas, your protocols will only work if you’re serious about them. The easiest way to lose employee trust is to let unsafe actions slide.

Be clear with employees about what they should do if a guest or a coworker is breaking protocol—and emphasize that all unsafe actions should be confronted or reported. Safety is not optional for anyone. It’s the type of thing that may seem obvious, but reiterating your commitment to their safety will go a long way to soothing fear and boosting safety for hotel staff.

Then, when issues are reported or confrontations arise, follow through, stand by them, and take decisive action to resolve the situation. It may not be pleasant at the time, but it will pay off.

Optimize and automate daily workflows to lighten the load

Because the hospitality industry has been one of the industries devastated by COVID-19 closures, many hotels have furloughed or laid off many of their employees. Even with many economies reopening, the teams coming back to work are likely much smaller than the ones in place at the start of the year.

With fewer hands—and more work, thanks to heightened cleaning and safety standards—it’s easy for hotel staff to become overwhelmed. As fear rises with case numbers, that’s only more likely. You may not be able to hire more people to help, but you can easily change your processes.

Using technology to automate processes and increase cross-departmental communication so nothing slips through the cracks can transform the daily workflows that may otherwise be difficult or frustrating. Without the stress of lost service requests and miscommunication, your staff will work more cohesively as a unit and be able to tackle the challenges they’re facing right now.

Reduce contact between staff and guests by implementing touchless service

Basic health and cleaning standards can do a lot to minimize the chance of spreading infection—especially in common areas—but they can’t do everything. There are certain staff members who will still incur significant risk as they go about their daily duties. Housekeeping, food and beverage, and front desk employees all traditionally require direct contact with guests to do their jobs well.

Yet contactless technology and processes can reduce those risks as well and, in some cases, eliminate them altogether. There’s no better way to show staff how deeply invested in their success and wellbeing you are than to provide them with ways to deliver excellent service without compromising their personal health. Currently, there are several contactless strategies hotels can implement: from mobile check-in and mobile key, which enable guests to skip the front desk altogether, to mobile dining and service requests, which make contactless deliveries possible.

The more you can turn face-to-face interactions into digital ones, the better for your employees. In this scenario, automation won’t dampen or depersonalize the spirit of great customer service your staff brings to your company, but will streamline processes and reduce contact so they’re better able to provide even higher quality service both during and after the pandemic.

If the past few weeks of surging American cases are any indicator, COVID-19 will remain a concern across the world for the foreseeable future. The bottom line is this: How you treat your employees now will affect how your hotel recovers. Now is the time to invest heavily in hotel staff safety and satisfaction—it’s not just good for them, it’s also good for your business.

Looking to increase guest and hotel staff safety with contactless service? See why mobile check-in may be the best place to start.

Read the Mobile Check-In One-Sheet