Tips
Even if you’re fully staffed today, there’s a better chance than ever that at some point in the near future you’ll but short an employee or two. The reason? Turnover. At our latest user group we did live, interactive trends session where we asked a few questions around staffing challenges. One of which was this:
Within your team over the last 5+ years, are you seeing more frequent turnover in reservation and marketing roles?
Here’s what the numbers looked like for our group.
More than 80% of the resorts who responded said they are seeing more frequent turnover than they used to. Even those who aren’t seeing that number increase are still concerned with the current rate of turnover as 85% of resorts said this was an issue and something they were actively trying to overcome.
Listen, Inntopia is not some silver bullet that can solve all of these problems. But because all of your guest data available in each guest profile and because you can trigger an email off an any behavior or trait, there are a handful of ways marketing automation can take repetitive tasks off the plate of your smaller-than-hoped-for team and relieve some of the burden you may be carrying.
Contactless pickup is something that many resorts still haven’t adopted. It’s not something you have to go all-in on, just giving guests the option can mean fewer staff required to sell tickets at windows. Revelstoke is one of many resorts who have seen the benefit of this first hand.
Another great example is simply talking to your front desk or call center about the reasons guests call in and brainstorming whether any of these can be addressed with a well-timed email. For example, if construction on a nearby interstate is getting soon-to-be-arriving guests lost, send them an arrival day email with one-click directions to a better route in Google Maps. Likewise, if guests aren’t signing waivers before they arrive, remind them the day before.
No call center is perfectly utilized, but how do you fill those slower times that still need that extra agent on the phones? Instead of asking agents to call abandoned itineraries, an automated abandoned cart email can be customized with the details of the agent a guest spoke with and get guests to call back in. Time this during slower parts of the day and you can do more revenue with a smaller call center. Or, if you call center is maxed out? Nudge those folks who called in to finish online and give them a link to their exact itinerary to make it seamless.
Some teams still manually resend booking confirmations to guests. For some resorts, this tied up as much as one full-time staff member to manager. We built a tool that let’s an agent look up a confirmation email and trigger the system to automatically resend that message. As simple as that sounds, this can be one of the biggest time savers we encounter simply because of how labor-intensive the alternative is.
The last thing to remember is that every dollar of revenue automated campaigns generate takes away one dollar of pressure the marketing feels to generate that through more manual campaigns. Abandoned cart, cross sell, extend your stay, upsell, and booking anniversary emails are all perfect examples of this that are powerful when applied to lodging, but seeing impressive results when built for other products as well. Automations are great at guests service, but they’re also really effective at getting guests to come back, come more often, and/or book more experiences when they do.
Again, none of these are going to solve every staffing challenge you face, but each helps address one specific pain point that, together, can make a meaningful, noticeable difference.
If you’re losing the battle to labor costs or shortages, request a printed copy of our free marketing automation guide (or grab a printable, PDF version), huddle with your team, and brainstorm ways automated emails can take a burden off your marketing, reservations, call center, front desk, or other teams. I think you’ll be surprised by the possibilities.
And if you need a hand brainstorming? Reach out, we’d love to jam on ideas with you.
Start selling more of everything your resort has to offer.
Prefer to talk so someone directly? No problem. Just use our calendar links to schedule a time to chat.
