While travel remains a top priority for many consumers, hospitality businesses around the globe are all facing the same challenge: they just don’t have enough staff to keep up with demand.
One recent study by the American Hotel and Lodging Association reported that 65% percent of hotel owners and managers face staffing shortages. Around 7 in 10 said they have open positions that they are unable to fill despite their efforts, with housekeeping roles being the hardest to hire.
With such high turnover rates and not enough talent, many hotel businesses are scrambling to not only attract, but retain employees. One way they've been filling the gaps is by introducing technologies such as AI, unified hospitality platforms, self-service, and more into their daily operations to lessen the workload on the limited staff they do have.
Here, we’ve put together four ideas for how technology can step in to give a helping hand – allowing you to keep your business running without compromising the guest experience:
1. Embrace a centralized, easy-to-use system
If you currently run your business using different pieces of software - one for rooms, another for the restaurant, a separate one for the spa and events, then keeping information consistent across your departments can be challenging, especially for your employees.
Hotels like hospitality and wellness resort Blue Lagoon Iceland are increasingly turning to unified platforms to manage their entire operation – and for good reason. Having the functionality to handle room bookings, restaurants, activities, and all other services from one place not only reduces manual errors, like double bookings, but it also gives you a central place for your staff to access availability and make changes. There’s no need for them to waste time calling around to different departments in the hotel to book customers for services, and they also don't have to spend a long time training to use multiple systems.
An intuitive, easy to use hotel management solution makes it simpler for your employees to perform multiple roles across the property. Why have employees sitting bored at a quiet check-in desk while your restaurant staff are running around handling dinner service? If everyone knows how to use the same interface – whether it’s for checking out guests or taking their table order – staff can step in to support each other and mix up their day-to-day tasks. Not only will this improve the guest experience, but it’s likely to boost team morale. And a happy team is usually a more productive team.
2. Give guests more control over their experience
A recent survey from Hotel Tech Report found that almost half of hotel guests prefer to use their mobile devices to manage their experience, including checking in and out, paying, ordering food, and more. As staffing shortages continue to strain the smooth running of daily operations, embracing a mobile service strategy is a great way of keeping up with your customers’ needs and letting them make changes to their stay.
But it’s not just your customers that should benefit from being able to use their mobile devices. Staff should also be able to assist guests, check their duties and manage their shifts on the go. If more of your guests are checking in online before arrival and using self-service kiosks, you don’t need your staff to be sat behind the front desk at all times. Equipping workers with mobile devices frees them up to perform different tasks and deliver high service standards. Hotel receptionists can double as concierges, available to answer guests’ needs from wherever they are in the property.
Mobile alerts can keep services running more smoothly too. If a guest suddenly requests housekeeping, all on-duty staff can be notified of the pending task on their mobile device until an available staff member accepts the alert. Not only could this mean that guests are tended to faster, but staff are empowered to manage their daily duties and ensure the workload is more evenly divided.
3. Eliminate manual tasks with automation
According to Hotel Tech Report: “automation, when thoughtfully applied to a hotel operation, can unlock more revenue, increase guest satisfaction, boost staff productivity and happiness, and generally make an operation run more smoothly and profitably.”
Despite staffing challenges, still need to maintain the same standard and service to keep consumers happy. With the right technology, time-consuming tasks can become quick and easy, enabling employees to do more in less time. This includes eliminating the need for unnecessary manual jobs such as re-typing customer details, managing individual reservations across different systems, and updating staff rosters and shifts on spreadsheets.
This is where a unified hotel and property management system can make a real difference, seamlessly combining all the tools needed to manage reservations, sales, inventory, payments, reporting, staff management, customer profiles, and more, in one place.
4. Introduce AI to take the pressure off employees
AI is quickly becoming more common in the hospitality industry as a way to automate task, enhance operations, and elevate the guest experience when teams are stretched thin.
According to the European Hospitality Industry Conference survey from Deloitte, 53% of hotels believe generative AI will be most useful for customer interactions. From AI‑powered chatbots that are capable of handling larger loads of guest inquiries to virtual assistants that speed up response times, these tools are designed to support your employees by taking away menial tasks that eat up time. Plus, AI tools can provide personalized recommendations based on what guests are looking for, or their previous stays, in real-time.
In the back office, AI predictive analytics are helping hotels anticipate demand both during the day and across different seasons, giving them a better idea of how much staff they need on site at any given time. This not only prevents employee burnout by distributing workloads more effectively but also allows managers to make smarter scheduling decisions, ensuring that the team on hand can focus on high‑impact tasks.
As hotels focus on streamlining their services and getting the most from their staff, many recognize the value of implementing centralized software to run their business. This technology is designed to empower rather than replace the people that make your business tick and, in turn, will transform your guest experience for the better. Need some help getting started? Contact us.
