In 2013 Prince de Galles, a Luxury Collection Hotel located in the heart of Paris, re-opened its 159 rooms to the public after a 27 months renovation orchestrated by Pierre-Yves Rochon. The design targeted the 1930s Art Deco Era to bring the hotel back to its roots, but with a modern twist.
The executive committee wanted to take the opportunity during the renovation period to elevate the services they provide to their guests. They wanted to deliver true 5-Star luxury experience to all their guests.
One of the biggest challenges they wanted to tackle was room readiness due to an insufficient inventory of clean guestrooms upon guest arrival. Housekeeping was overwhelmed with all room rushes and last minute changes on a daily basis.
Alexandre Germain, Director of Housekeeping, tells me that the hotel relied on the basic methods of communication for management, whether it was verbal or through noisy radios. The day was spent searching for the room attendants throughout the floors to update them on last minute changes and room cleaning priorities. Little time was left to manage their department, inspect the quality of guestrooms, or even coach their staff.
Management wanted to invest in an automated solution that provided consistent communication in real-time. Managers wanted to manage their own departments virtually, without returning to the office and have the ability to supervise their room attendants and update guest room statuses on one screen, anywhere in the hotel. Housekeeping also wanted to alleviate job stress, improve the quality of work, and provide seamless updates to their room attendants to ultimately reduce wasted time and increase productivity.
Today, Alexandre confirms that his team has succeeded in turning these “want to haves” into a fully automated proactive housekeeping department. He no longer needs to worry about a room in DND not being revisited again during the day, nor wonder whether his team is ahead or behind in the day.
Everything is recorded and tracked in real time for proactive decision making.
What the team appreciates is having the early morning opening assignment of dirty guestrooms completed within 20 minutes versus the hours it used to take before automation. Moreover, their daily room rush count has dropped tremendously due to the robust customization of prioritizing guestroom cleaning based on the daily or even season business needs.
Alexandre says:
“Our GEI scores for 2016 show a 2% increase in guestroom cleanliness and a 5% increase in guestroom condition since 2014. Having more time to spend on guestroom inspections and the ease and efficiency in reporting deficiencies in real time, have helped improve our guest ratings.”
Besides these improvements, today the housekeeping department is enjoying a tremendous improvement in staff productivity and efficiency. The average daily cleaning credits per room attendant surged from 14 credits in 2014 to almost 15.5 credits in 2016. This translates to an increase of 10.5% in cleaning credits, or one and half more clean guestrooms on average, daily, per room attendant.
The team believes that being able to increase the room attendants’ productivity without risking the quality of guestroom cleanliness or condition proves a successful partnership with Amadeus Service Optimization – (HotSOS Housekeeping). Moreover; the robust quantitative and qualitative reporting functionality has allowed Alexandre to create unbiased tailored training programs to coach and develop his team.
Gerald R. Krischek-Cruypelan, Hotel General Manager says: “The entire team at the Prince de Galles is devoted in delivering customized and unique hotel experiences to each and every guest. Our guests expect nothing but the very best and technology helps us to provide an outstanding service in order to be able to exceed their expectations. A flawless guest stay depends on meticulously well-defined processes. HotSOS Housekeeping helps us a lot with this on a daily basis,”
Alexandre feels that there are a lot more features and functionalities he still wishes to explore in in the system. One such feature is Gamification which will allow him to introduce a fun, engaging, self-motivating and rewarding tool to his Room Attendants. He is also creating unbiased tailored training programs to coach and develop his room attendants based on qualitative and quantitative analysis extracted through the system’s robust reports.
