How to improve your hotels processes behind the scenes, to deliver visible and consistent excellence to your guests? Explore simple digital solutions to streamline your QA processes, addressing continued staff shortages and training challenges.
Addressing the challenge of hospitality staff shortages
Hotel guests today are more sophisticated and educated than ever. With the access to online reputation, customer expectations grow and their loyalty has a direct link to brand standards that they come to expect.
On the other hand, hospitality industry experts expect accelerated growth, as well as continued staff shortages in the post-pandemic landscape. According to IBISWorld's analysis reports, the hotels and resorts global market size will reach $1.2tr in revenue in 2023, a rebound of 13.6% compared to 2022.
This trend of "revenge travel" is putting unprecedented pressure on hotel staff, just as many of their colleagues moved on to different career paths during the pandemic. Hotels face the challenge of not only finding talented staff, but also training them to meet their internal brand and service standards.
"It's no secret that the hospitality industry has always found it challenging to find, train and retain talented employees. Many hotels faced these issues long before the Covid-19 travel restrictions," said Ram Bukka, founder and CEO of GoAudits.
“We have found that our cost-effective GoAudits auditing app meets hotels’ needs particularly well, helping them optimize training and resources, ultimately leading to improved standards for their guests,” added Ram Bukka.
Fast forward to 2023 - digital tools for hotel quality assurance and staff training
One of the 2023 trends in hospitality aims to develop more sustainable practices, improving the experience and well-being of guests but also staff. That includes a strong focus on staff training and development. As Zig Ziglar said: "You don't build a business. You build people, then people build the business."
On the other hand, untrained staff will reflect in your customers' ratings. Due to a lack of strong quality processes and inconsistencies, some customers might give good reviews and others might encounter unfortunate incidents. Streamlined QA and training processes are an essential piece of the puzzle.
Defining brand standards is often the first step in the process. The second step consists in ensuring they are adhered to. Traditional methods of measuring consistency and excellence include manual checklists, intermittent quality assurance inspections, and completion of time-consuming reports. However, a change to digital solutions is taking the hospitality industry by storm.
A digital tool for efficient hotel quality inspections and staff training
With an auditing software/ app, you can quickly and easily digitize your quality processes, ensuring every staff member is aware of the brand standards and procedures.
Replace stacks of paper forms with digital audit checklists that employees can fill out from phones, tablets, or computers. Having all information in one place speeds up the inspection process and helps spot any issues sooner. You can log corrective action plans to immediately escalate and address such issues. Management gets real-time reports into all departments and locations - all in one tool.
According to Ram Bukka, "Seamless digital quality assurance provides ongoing guidance and training to staff. In addition to saved paperwork and time, Management teams particularly appreciate the increased visibility into operations and actionable insights. As a result, this frees up your staff to focus on creating memorable guest experiences”.
The human connection goes hand in hand with the digitalization of your processes. With the GoAudits hotel inspection app, you can efficiently train your staff and easily update checklists to changed circumstances or regulations. Identify and resolve issues faster, directly translating into higher customer satisfaction and better service.
“Working with many top hospitality groups over the last few years, at GoAudits we’ve noticed that busy Management teams appreciate the extra help rolling out the software. Therefore in addition to the user-friendly app, we offer full support to digitize your existing checklists, train app users and more. Our customers’ feedback is that they really appreciate this additional support”, explains Ram Bukka.
Results: better standards, more motivated staff, improved bottom line
The result of digitized Quality Assurance? Efficient processes and training behind the scenes, enabling you to provide unforgettable experiences to your hotel guests, every day.
Our customers, including top brands like Rosewood Hotels, Marriott, LaTour Hotels & Resorts or Radisson, can confirm the advantages through their incredible results.
It helps improve your bottom line, as the digital inspections process saves valuable time and resources. As Kristin Ingram, of LaTour Hotels & Resorts, said:
"We saved over $8k in the first year just by performing digital inspections, digital documentation of daily huddle meetings, by not printing, etc."
She added, "After successfully using GoAudits for our yearly quality assurance audits, we decided to roll it out to all 30+ resorts for daily ops checks. We saved time, money, and got an improvement roadmap. A no brainer for me!"
Additionally, numerical Scores generated by the software are a useful training and performance management tool. It helps staff understand the issues and visualize improvements over time. As one of our customers, a Regional Talent Development Manager at Rosewood Hotels said:
“With its dynamic dashboards, GoAudits is a very powerful tool to spot the commonly missed standards for a specific employee, department or even a hotel. This helps to set the suitable action plan in order to rectify performance and processes where needed.”
How can you achieve the same results for your hotel?
Start by trying out GoAudits, the all-in-one app for hotel operational standards. Discover more about how GoAudits can help you: book a free demo and free 14-day trial here. We also offer a library of free editable checklists for Hotels, Vacation Rentals & Leisure Venues.