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San Antonio Marriott Rivercenter and Riverwalk Hotels

“Our goal is to provide a personalized and elevated guest experience, to engage our customers and show our appreciation for the opportunity to serve them. And, Guestware is an integral component that makes this possible for us on so many levels. ,” says Kristina Brown, Resident Manager for San Antonio Marriott Rivercenter & San Antonio Marriott Riverwalk hotels. “This includes proper pre-arrival planning and a solid problem resolution process which are the drivers for a great guest experience.”

To help facilitate and automate their operations, the hotels have implemented Guestware CRM software. A fully integrated software solution, Guestware enables hotels to deliver exceptional guest service, perfect guest room experiences, and provide effective service recovery. Recently, the hotels decided to bring Jeff Bowes, Guestware Senior Training Consultant, on-site to provide a five day refresher training session. Per Brown, it was a huge success.

“This training was a complete reset. We found a lot of new things that we could do with Guestware software including some easy tips to help clean up the data,” says Brown, “Jeff was incredibly helpful.”

The week long session involved all departments from both hotels including housekeeping, food and beverage, loss prevention, engineering, front of house, and management. The consulting and training allowed both teams the opportunity to collaboratively put together action plans and fine-tune different workflow operations. They were able to pull important information including automated reports from Guestware to establish trends, define needs, and turn important information into actionable items.

After discussing and reviewing the properties’ current processes with the various departments, it was clear they were using Guestware, but they realized they could really take it to the next level.

“Being on-site gave us the opportunity to schedule various management round table discussions with the different departments,” says Bowes. “This allowed us to discuss in detail the challenges they were facing that were preventing them from moving forward and implementing new processes into their day-to-day operations that would help improve their overall Guestware usage.”

For instance, the group brainstormed on how to refine and optimize their mobile device Auto Dispatching process. Though not uncommon for Engineers to carry multiple devices, the teams wanted to reduce the number of devices they needed to carry in an effort to “work smarter, not harder.” They considered how they could route Guestware calls to the Engineering department through iPads instead of cell phones. The plan was a success! Better communication was created between AYS and engineering while they eliminated yet another device.

Additionally, the group also learned a cool and forward-thinking method to capture social media comments directly into Guestware to help identify trends. Kristina added, “Guestware has made our jobs easier. I highly recommend Guestware training to all of my colleagues. It creates a great synergy amongst the team. It is truly priceless.”

Tangible Results

The on-site training not only greatly improved the performance of the hotel’s operations it boosted their internal metrics generated by the Guestware Scorecard. The Guestware Scorecard provides usage metrics based off things such as the number of closed tickets within a specific time frame, logging compensation, and number of negative incidents. Properties that utilize the Guestware Scorecard have immediately correlated boosts in their Guestware performance with an increase in G.S.S. scores.

At the end of October, Marriott Riverwalk ranked #1 in the Texas Market with a score of 148.4% of the monthly Guestware goal ; Marriott Rivercenter ranked #4 finishing at 130.3% of this monthly goal. Year to date, Marriott Riverwalk ranks #10 and Marriott Rivercenter ranks #26 amongst all Full Service properties in North and South America. Brown attributes these high scores to a combination of Guestware training and the improvement of workflow process and associate behavior.

The two properties now meet to review the Guestware scorecard on a daily and weekly basis. “These meetings create accountability and give us the opportunity to share Guestware tips and tricks,” says Brown. “Our mantra is if it is not in Guestware, it doesn’t exist.”