Challenges
The SIDE Design Hotel in Hamburg is a stylish hotel in the heart of Hamburg which makes the perfect combination of urban design and Hanseatic hospitality its top priority. It belongs to the Seaside Hotel Group and is also a member of Design Hotels. Exceptional style and personal service meet at a convenient central location, along with the hotels own “best steak restaurant in the city” and a first-class spa area rounding off the range of services on offer.
The challenges for the SIDE Design Hotel largely lay in internal communication. An easy tool was required to allow all employees to quickly and easily communicate within departments as well as clearly designate responsibility for all pending tasks. The idea was to completely avoid a potential loss of information during different working hours and further optimise guest services.
I use hotelkit daily and it is really fun to interact with the team on various topics in this way!
Implementation & Trial Phase
The hotelkit trial phase at the SIDE Design Hotel took place from the beginning of May until the beginning of June 2016, with a total of 50 employees. The team got off to a rapid start, with more than 800 activities being entered into hotelkit before its official launch. Initial results in the area of repair management and communications were clearly visible after just two weeks, satisfying both the management and the team. It was therefore decided to incorporate all 100 employees into hotelkit during the trial.
Results
At SIDE, all hotelkit tools and functions are now being used as a matter of course. More than 500 repairs are documented each month: within just six months the total average time to fix issues was reduced to less than 24 hours. It has now nbecome very easy for all hotel employees to support the technical team in their work. Documentation of repairs using self-taken photos, which can be attached to the damage reports directly via the hotelkit app, proved to be extremely helpful.
The main focus was to optimise all forms of communication in the hotel, which has clearly been a success. At the same time, we have managed to simplify processes such as repair management, which we are delighted with!
Statistics on evaluation purposes in this area are also provided and assist with any potential investment decisions.
General manager, Alex Obertop, is one of the top hotelkit users: “Internal communication in real time, simple to use and accessible to all of our employees – that was our goal. By using hotelkit we have come even further because the tool now displays a number of our operational processes. What’s more, the team behind hotelkit provides us with new ways of organising ourselves more easily with their regular updates.”
When it comes to regular tasks, however, nothing falls through the cracks at SIDE. Around 80 tasks a month are taken care of by the team, such as light checks, printing weekly overviews, ordering fresh flowers and various invoicing in all departments.
Daily communication is illustrated with over 137 handovers a month, whereby each handover on average is commented on more than once by colleagues for amendments and queries. Orders, accountancy topics, complaints handling and various internal hotel changes are communicated using hotelkit. The team creates 120 news items each month, which corresponds to 4 entries per day. The recipients of various news items and handovers naturally vary significantly: depending on department, competence and responsibility, employees receive personally tailored information that is required to perform their work tasks.
At the beginning of 2018, SIDE will be renovate it’s property. hotelkit will also be part of this process, as the goal is to communicate with external construction companies and suppliers directly through the popular solution.
About the author
Julia Stiefsohn
Enjoys giving websites an attractive look, this blog also bears her creative handwriting, at least in part. Speaking of handwriting: every now and then, when she’s in the flow, she also writes.
