The Challenge
As hotel general manager for Candlewood Suites El Dorado, Michelle Groshong is tasked with ensuring employees do all they can to make a visitor’s stay enjoyable. At the same time, she must also make sure the property runs efficiently and remains profitable. So when Groshong sensed a significant disconnect between the hotel’s housekeeping department and its front desk staff, she searched high and low for a solution to help her employees work smarter, not harder.
Groshong uncovered significant gaps in the hotel’s property management system’s ability to streamline housekeeping services, which was impacted staff time and was causing a costly problem. The issues culminated during MusicFest El Dorado, an annual music festival that coincides with the hotel’s busiest weekend. During this especially hectic time, miscommunication resulted in hotel staff checking multiple guests into rooms that had not yet been cleaned and rooms that staff members were currently cleaning, resulting in guest complaints, wasted time and a frustrated staff.
In addition to internal communication issues, a growing number of guests were complaining to the front desk that their bathrooms’ wall-mounted soap dispensers were empty upon check-in, a task that should be completed when housekeepers service rooms between guest stays.
“Our front desk staff and housekeeping staff just couldn’t keep up with each other and I kept thinking, ‘There has to be a better way,’”
— Michelle Groshong, General Manager, Candlewood Suites El Dorado
The Solution
Groshong discovered Quore through InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG). “After reading about Quore’s Cleanings Plus feature, I realized this was the answer to all of our problems,” said Groshong.
The hospitality industry’s leading innovator of hotel management software, Quore combines state-of-the-art technology and intuitive design to allow hotels of any size to manage all aspects of the guest experience. Quore’s Cleanings Plus feature enables hotel brands to manage housekeeping productivity using smartphones and tablets instead of physical print-outs of rooms and manual processes. This allows the hotel to function in real-time, identifying problem areas and giving management visibility into staff procedures that were previously unavailable while logging extensive data for reporting and trend analysis.
“Before Quore, our only trend data came from post-stay guest surveys, but by the time we get those results, it’s too late because the guest has already checked out,” said Groshong. “Cleanings Plus flags trends and issues immediately, so our staff can make corrections while the guest is still checked in, resulting in a happier team and happier guest.”
The Cleanings Plus feature takes the guesswork out of identifying rooms that need to be cleaned, speeding up the process and ultimately saving the property time and money.
The Results
After implementing Quore’s Cleanings Plus, communication between the housekeeping staff and front desk staff improved dramatically. As a result of Quore’s real-time communications processes, the hotel saw a significant decrease in internal mistakes and, subsequently, fewer guest complaints. The property’s bottom line improved and satisfaction rates increased while internal processes were streamlined – decreasing back-and-forth and increasing accountability among teams and shifts.
“Cleanings Plus has changed the way our staff communicates with one another and has made our property so much more efficient. We no longer have to physically track down housekeepers or rifle through stacks of paperwork to determine whether a room is clean, and we use the program’s trend feature to determine if staff members need additional training.”
— Michelle Groshong, General Manager, Candlewood Suites El Dorado
