From Front Desk to General Manager: Travis Maschino's Hospitality Journey

The hospitality industry is full of people who love taking care of others, and Travis Maschino is no exception to this. He’s been a part of the hospitality industry for over 15 years now, and he doesn’t plan to change his career path anytime soon. Starting right out of college, Travis walked into a Holiday Inn Express and asked if they had any openings at the front desk—his initiative landed him a job at the property, and he didn’t stop there.

Because of his love for hospitality, Travis continued growing in the industry, and within 6 months he was working as a manager on-duty at another Holiday Inn hotel. Within a year, he was given more responsibilities and became a local spokesperson for the company! Travis continued working his way up, taking on several management positions until he found himself as the General Manager of the Holiday Inn Detroit Northwest in Livonia Michigan, where he helped to open the hotel and ultimately got the team started using Quore.

We were happy to work with him to make sure his team could actively use our solutions! And once our team at Quore started talking to Travis, we knew we had to share a little more about his story and how he uses our features to support his team.

The Quore of the Hotel

“When I came to the Holiday Inn in Livonia, that’s really when I told our ownership group that Quore was something that we needed to have,” says Travis.

Travis originally learned about Quore in 2016 when he heard our solutions were approved for preventative maintenance, deep cleaning and documentation. But as he researched to understand the costs and benefits, he found that there were more advantages to using Quore than he originally realized. He saw that our features also provided a great way to enhance communication between staff and guests, and that’s something he was really looking for as he helped to open the new property in Livonia.

“We’re in a digital day and age now,” he explains, “and we want to be able to see information right in front of us and respond to it immediately without having to go back five pages to reference something that happened a few days ago. And Quore allows us to do that without the hassle of paperwork.”

So when he came to the Holiday Inn in Livonia, he convinced his management company to let him utilize Quore to get an idea of what we could truly offer. He’d done enough digging to know that we might be able to streamline their operations, help them track work orders and allow them to manage maintenance without having to utilize paper and binders. But he was pleasantly surprised to find out just how much our solutions improved their communication, especially with guests.

As soon as the team started using Quore, they also began using the Connect add-on feature to engage with their guests. Connect allowed the front desk team to provide guests with customized welcome messages upon check-in. This way each guest receives a personalized greeting and any additional information once they make it to their room.  

“That customization has been so important, especially during the pandemic,” he says.

The team has not only been able to greet guests in a non-touch capacity, but they’ve also been able to include additional information in their welcome messages. This allows them to ensure that each guest has important health and cleaning details about how the hotel ensures safety during COVID-19.

A Big Difference in Customer Satisfaction

As the COVID-19 crisis escalated, however, a lot of hotel tools and services utilized by staff had to be cut. It happened across the industry, and Travis’s hotel was no exception. But as the team tried to continue their processes without Quore, they found themselves struggling going back to analog methods of data tracking and communication.

“We tried it without Quore for two weeks and it was a nightmare,” says Travis.

The team wasn’t able to easily transition information between shifts. And Travis felt like their customer service suffered without our Connect feature. Things took longer, and there were more breakdowns in communication, and he didn’t want his staff to be burdened with miscommunications or process breakdowns because they didn’t know where and how to document things.

That’s why Travis took advantage of the Quore Reactivation Rollout pricing and elected to pay out of his own pocket for the time being to ease the financial burdens at their properties and make sure that guests and staff weren’t inconvenienced.

“Without Quore, we noticed a huge difference in our guest service scores, because we weren’t able to problem solve as quickly and easily as we could with Quore,” says Travis.

The functionality of Connect allows guests to communicate with the team and quickly resolve any issues or complaints they might have. This way, the team won’t spend more time and money trying to fix things later.

“Having that ability to instantaneously communicate with a guest has been so valuable, and it actually saves money in the long run by saving us time and additional resources that can be solved in Quore with a quick conversation or follow up,” he explains.

With Quore’s Logs and Memos, the team can easily follow social distancing guidelines and communicate policies across departments, too, ensuring that local mandates and hotel procedures are met. Brand standards are easy to share and access across the hotel as well, and templates for any inspections or maintenance procedures can be shared within Quore’s Preventative Maintenance and Inspections apps so everyone stays on the same (digital) page.

Better Together

“I really truly love Quore because I feel like it’s allowing us to make the most out of our guest experiences even during a time where guest experiences are different because of social distancing,” says Travis.

When they had to stop using Quore, his staff understood the financial aspect of the decision and didn’t complain. But when Travis told them that he was bringing it back, his team was so relieved! They had been struggling to track their processes and maintain guest interactions by using binders and notebooks. They made it work, but it wasn’t as clear, and it didn’t allow them to speed up service recovery times like Quore did.

Travis says that Quore has become a really important piece of his hotel. Our solutions are even a part of their employee onboarding now! Whenever they bring in someone new to the team, they give them a full rundown of the functionalities and where everything is in Quore. It’s part of the first 3 or 4 days starting at Travis’s hotel, and he believes it really sets up his team for success.  

“My team definitely notices when Quore’s not there, and they definitely appreciate having it back,” Travis says.  

And we’re glad to be able to support customers like Travis using our software to adapt to changing needs and help teams work smarter and guests stay happier.

To learn more about our solutions, visit our website. To read more customer features and industry insights, check out our other blog posts.

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