“Our work really has become easier with hotelkit – all information and events are collected there, and you can’t inform your colleagues of anything they don’t already know.”
Jens Zelletin
Rooms Division Manager
The introduction of hotelkit far exceeded the expectations of Hotel Platzl ́s plan to create a central platform for its employees. Today, hotelkit acts as a hub for all kinds of internal communications. It has become the hotel’s key knowledge base, and has improved the efficiency of countless operational processes.
Wanted
A central platform for all employees
The hotelkit set-up process began in 2015. Based on the hotelkit team’s experience, the hotel agreed on a small-scale start: employees from the Front Office, Building Services, Management & Administration departments would implement a limited number of processes exclusively via hotelkit for 30 days. These included handovers, the daily employee newsletter containing important information from all departments, as well a the entire coordination of the hotel’s damage reports and repair orders.
After two weeks of using hotelkit every day, the results were positively overwhelming for staff and management. After the 30-day test phase was completed, the team agreed with Heiko Buchta and decided to implement hotelkit permanently in the Hotel Platzl, and to roll it out to the entire workforce. Within a few weeks with the support of the hotelkit team, the hotel operations and communications software was integrated into all other departments, and employees were trained in how to use it on a daily basis.
Result
More time and relief for the team
Since then, the majority of the Hotel Platzl’s internal communications have taken place via hotelkit. Information is passed on digitally, and a daily newsletter informs all employees about the most important facts, figures and events in all departments. Information is made available to employees in a structured manner at the beginning of their shift.
“You might think that now we have hotelkit, we don’t talk to each other any more! But in fact, exactly the opposite is true, because we save so much time searching for information. You can also see that the team is less stressed”, says Sabine Schneider, Reservations Manager.
Better overview for the Maintenance team
Many other departments also benefit daily from hotelkit. Maintenance does not accept any repairs that have not first been logged in hotelkit. In this way, they have a perfect overview of all open orders, and team members’ workloads can be better coordinated. Around 315 damage reports are logged every month, mostly by employees in Housekeeping, Reception, and Management. All information relating to damage reports is available to the hotel for evaluation.
Knowledge documented centrally and sustainably
After the test phase they began to organize their existing knowledge within hotelkit. They collaborated with the Munich University of Applied Sciences, to ensure all quality standards were updated and improved. The results of this process have been directly integrated into the hotelkit handbook. Entries have since been expanded to include many helpful tips from all departments.
Implementation of new ideas
Together with the Quality & Training Manager, the General Manager has made it his task to document employee ideas in hotelkit, keep them up-to-date, and to promote their implementation. On average, 5 ideas per month are are created and discussed in hotelkit, from which 70% are successfully implemented.
“Our work really has become easier with hotelkit – all information and events are collected there, and you can’t inform your colleagues of anything they don’t already know.”
Heiko Buchta
General Manager
“The exciting thing is that hotelkit doesn’t stand still. The hotelkit team is continually introducing new ideas and tools to help us make our daily work more efficient through digital means.” Heiko Buchta, General Manager at Hotel Platzl.
