Efficiency measures to beat operational challenges

As inflation, staffing shortages, and high input costs continue to put pressure on margins, hotels are responding with a variety of efficiency measures.

Recruiting and retaining housekeepers is particularly tough. Some hotel groups have responded by paying above the national minimum wage for entry level jobs.

Martijn Van Der Graaf, COO Western Europe, AccorInvest, added that last year his company introduced vacuum robots at 70 UK Accor economy-scale properties to make his housekeepers’ daily tasks easier, resulting in savings of around £1m a year.

At first staff were sceptical or even worried that the robots might take their jobs, but now they are happy because the vacuum robots have removed one of their hardest daily tasks.

“The guests are happy too,” said Van Der Graaf. “The cleaning scores in those hotels went up because the vacuum robot is going every single day under the bed, and we all know that not every cleaner goes every day underneath every bed.”

Water costs set to soar

Hotels are major consumers of water and the cost of water in the UK is set to rise by a third over the next five years. Efficiency measures will be critical to mitigate these higher costs.

Training is part of the solution. The biggest consumer of water in a hotel is not the guest, but the person cleaning the room, said Van Der Graaf: “On average, every housekeeper flushes the toilet four times while cleaning a room. Is it needed? Of course not. So now we’re training the teams to clean the rooms more efficiently and easily.”

Andrew Katz, consultant, Prospect Hotel Advisors LLC, highlighted greywater systems that filter water from the shower and use it to flush toilets as a solution that can cuts costs by 20 per cent. Many UK businesses, particularly in hospitality and large office buildings, have successfully implemented greywater systems.

Other solutions include installing water-efficient fixtures and appliances, smart metering, and rainwater harvesting.

The UK commercial water market was deregulated in 2017 so there is also the scope for hotels to compare prices and services and potentially change their supplier.

In-room telephones a thing of the past

Fixed-line telephones in bedrooms are often still a brand standard, particularly in upscale segments.

“I would love to get rid of telephones in rooms,” said Katz, who can see no reasons for keeping them. Removing in-room telephones from a single 200-bedroom hotel can reportedly save up to £10,000 a year.

Van Der Graaf said that Accor has removed in-room telephones from its economy-scale hotels and replaced them with a QR code: “You can WhatsApp the team downstairs, which is much more efficient, plus there is the cost-saving.”

Katz said: “I recently stayed in the new One&Only Aesthesis luxury resort just outside Athens and everything was done on WhatsApp and it worked really well. I had a minor problem in my room, and I texted and they replied saying, ‘While you're out to dinner, we'll get it fixed.’  I needed some ice in my room, so I just ordered it by text. It was perfect.”

Chris Penny, senior vice president, Starwood Capital Group, commented that the success of such systems is still very much dependent on having a good team member responding to the messages.

He commented: “I've stayed in some hotels where you're communicating via WhatsApp, and it's great if you've got a great person on the other side of it, but in other cases, your message disappears into the ether.”

“The systems that you need in some of these hotels can get so complicated and sophisticated that, yeah, sometimes I return to the same hotels, but they don't seem to have my preferences. They don't know anything about me, but for the week I was there a year ago, they knew everything.”

Design conversions for efficiency

To achieve greater efficiencies, owners and investors need to pay as much attention to the employee journey as the guest journey, Penny said. This is particularly relevant to today’s high number of conversions. When retrofitting an existing building, is your luggage room 50 metres from reception? In the past, the solution would have been to hire an extra person.

“But, today, when you're paying them £13 an hour, that's not a great, sustainable solution, right?” commented Penny. “So when you're designing your property conversion, pay attention to the employee journey. How are we connecting our kitchens to the restaurant? How are we connecting the luggage room to reception?”

Sometimes a compromise must be struck between potential revenue-generating space and achieving a layout that maximises productivity and efficiency, added Miles Auger, head of hotels, UK, CBRE.

(Image courtesy of /Flickr)

All above quotes taken from the panel ‘Driving Alpha: Efficiency and Productivity to Deliver Above-Market Performance’ at AHC 2024 in Manchester.