In today's ever-changing hospitality and travel industry, guest satisfaction is the primary concern. Guests desire attentive care before, during, and even after their stay. Fulfilling this need is pivotal for cultivating satisfaction and, ultimately, fostering loyal and returning guests.
Providing excellent experiences for the guests requires a lot of dedication and consistency from the staff. Still, in today's digital-first environment, surpassing expectations without putting too much strain on the team is simpler than ever.
Customer satisfaction and convenience are frequently interchangeable, and technology can help to attain this goal more effectively. Powerful and robust technologies that automate processes make it simpler for your guests and staff to provide the convenience they require.
When you work smarter with technology, everyone benefits from a better experience.
Automation & Adaptability
It’s pretty easy to continue doing things with what’s familiar to you. It makes you work more confidently and efficiently. Additionally, it makes sense to want to restrict employee retraining and prevent production from being slowed down by learning new procedures. However, maintaining a routine might make it challenging to keep up with the outside forces that always bring about change.
It’s important to adapt to changing expectations early and even lead transformation. For example, you might be used to printing documents and scanning them to email or fax out, but on the receiving end, your digital-minded guests are wondering why your process requires so much manual effort. For them, it’s far easier to send you information online (and convenience aside, that way is also far more secure).
Then there’s your staff. Consider all the small tasks your front desk or events teams could easily automate with technology – small tasks that add up. Lean on technology where you can so you can create more time for tasks that are harder to hand off. Better yet, create more time to invent new ways to deliver a great guest experience.
Ultimately, technology makes it easier to adapt to change, whether change is predictable like a busy season or the opening of a new property, or unpredictable like the sudden departure of a staff member or changing consumer behavior. Plus, the best technology is easy to use and lets your staff see value quickly, limiting the hassle of retraining and strain of stalled productivity.
Automation & Integrated Experiences
With more people using technology, the risk of creating an unwieldy tech stack is high. If you want your technological solutions to thrive in a few key areas rather than being mediocre throughout, opting for best-in-breed solutions is essential.
However, if a situation arises in which these technologies don’t work better together, then it will create inefficiencies for you. To prevent this situation, identify reliable technology providers who invest efforts in creating new robust integrations, and many even provide open APIs to construct custom integrations tailored to your team's particular requirements.
Automating the flow of information across systems and ensuring its accuracy and security along the way is essential for maintaining staff efficiency and a positive brand perception among your customers.
Automation & The Network Effect
Technology is crucial in enhancing the overall customer experience in various industries, including the hotel industry. In corporate travel, for example, multiple parties are involved, such as the traveler, the trip coordinator, the paying company, and the hotel. Technology enables seamless communication and automation among these players, creating a convenient and secure experience for everyone. Imagine a scenario where a travel manager makes a booking, and instantly, the hotel receives all the trip and payment details in their Property Management System (PMS). As a result, the business traveler arrives at the hotel with everything already taken care of, creating a stress-free and enjoyable experience reminiscent of a vacation.
Wrapping Up!
Automation is the key to being successful in the hospitality industry. Hotels can use technology to automate various processes, including event management, digital invoicing, chain management, and streamlining and digitizing contract and payment systems.
We strongly believe that the automation solutions provided by Sertifi and Event Temple offer numerous benefits to the hospitality industry. Sertifi's e-signature and payment solutions simplify creating and signing contracts and automate payment collection. Event Temple's CRM and sales automation capabilities enable hotels and event venues to manage client relationships efficiently.
Both platforms ultimately enhance operational efficiency, reduce administrative burden, and provide a seamless experience for both guests and hospitality businesses.
Contributed By-
Amy King is the director of brand and content marketing at Sertifi. In collaboration with teams across and outside of Sertifi, she guides brand and creative marketing, content strategy, public relations, and community engagement.
Sertifi provides a complete agreements platform used by tens of thousands of hospitality and travel businesses in more than 135 countries. Brands like Marriott, Topgolf, and AEG Worldwide trust Sertifi to efficiently and securely sign documents, complete payments and credit card authorizations, and exchange virtual card information. With decades of experience in hospitality and travel, Sertifi is building a network that gives guests and travelers across the globe a great experience from the start.
