“hotelkit is easy to understand and therefore incorporated into the daily work routine right from the start – regardless of language skills or technological know-how.”
Neeraja Anil
Assistant Maintenance Manager,
Radisson Blu Dubai Deira Creek
Before the implementation of hotelkit, the engineers at the Radisson Blu Hotel, Dubai Deira Creek had their hands full with noting down repair orders that were coming in over the phone, while at the same time keeping up with the daily operations. As deputy head of the department, she oversees all the processes concerning the management and rectification of repairs. In the following article, Neeraja Anil tells us how repair orders are communicated, handled, and tracked with the help of the hotelkit Repairs tool.
Challenge
Inefficient communication systems
The lack of an appropriate communications system was very challenging for us. When it came to registering an incoming repair order, writing it down, and tracking its progress, we were always faced with major communication barriers that required a significant amount of effort to overcome.
Before the implementation of hotelkit, our engineers as well as our team members in the different departments communicated exclusively by telephone. For the people on duty this meant that next to the tasks at hand, they also had to keep an eye on their phone. This resulted in a serious quandary: If a phone call was missed, the repair order was overlooked and forgotten about. In the PMS it is only possible to track requests from the housekeeping department.
Solution
How hotelkit improves repair management?
Digital repairs recording accelerates workflows
Thanks to the hotelkit Repairs tool, the time needed for the repair order process from the receipt of the repair down to the rectification of the damage has been drastically reduced. Before the implementation of hotelkit, the repair order was received, registered, and in the next step communicated to the engineers in a phone call. It therefore took some time until the actual rectification of the damage was carried out. The quick transmission of repair orders via the hotelkit Repairs tool has notably decreased the time needed for this process. It’s also very practical that the duration of a repair can be tracked in the system. And, of course, damages that are quickly taken care of, lead to more satisfied hotel guests.
Photos supporting detailed repair reporting
Repair orders can now be noted in the hotelkit Repairs tool. For example, if a member of the housekeeping team detects damage during cleaning, he can now digitally note it in the hotelkit Repairs tool. Our engineers then immediately receive a notification in their hotelkit that informs them about the location of the damage, the type as well as the urgency. It’s also possible to add photos to the repair order; this allows the person who detected the damage to provide the engineers with a detailed description of the damage. The engineers can then proceed to take care of the damage without holdup.
Real-time progress monitoring
I really like that I can track the progress of the repairs. It’s great that lots of details, such as pictures, can be added to the repair orders. The auto-complete feature also spares you from typing in all the details such as the location in the hotel, room number, responsible person, or repair type; you only need to choose from the predefined options. This not only saves a ton of time but also guarantees that the repair orders are always structured in the same way. This facilitates the work of our maintenance team a lot.
Statistics provide insights into peak times for better planning
We use this feature primarily to have an overview of all the pending repair orders. In the future, we would also like to use this feature to detect how many repair orders are created and completed per day and at a certain time of day. This enables us to determine, when most of the repairs are generated on average and consequently assign more staff to complete repairs during peak hours.
Automatic maintenance notifications
hotelkit helps us take care of all the maintenance work in due time. All our maintenance works are configured as tasks in hotelkit. As soon as a maintenance work must be dealt with, for example, the maintenance of the cooling system, our engineers receive a notification in hotelkit. Before implementing hotelkit, the maintenance work was noted down on paper; now we have a compact overview of everything that needs to be done in hotelkit. Moreover, the recurring tasks ensure that necessary inspections are carried out at the scheduled time. This has facilitated our daily planning enormously.
Smartphones: a new uniform essential
All of our engineers are equipped with a smartphone from which they can access the hotelkit App. The moment a repair order is created, the engineers immediately receive a notification. In the hotelkit App, it is furthermore always visible who is going to take care of the repair. For me as a manager, it is, of course, practical to have an overview of all repair orders. This gives me the possibility to contact the responsible engineer, in case a repair order is indeed forgotten or overlooked.
