Celebration Suites in Kissimmee, Fla., is using Alice to improve its staff communication and guest request management. Prior to adopting Alice in the summer of 2016, Celebration Suites ran its operations with a paper-based system. For a 550-key operation spread across 21 acres, this added an onerous amount of reporting to staff activity, with the result that logs were often incomplete and overlooked.
This occasionally led to confusion behind-the-scenes, compromising guest service. Indeed, the hotel's staff quickly saw the value of bringing request management online, with the improved organization, transparency, and accountability that comes in so doing.
Kissimmee's Celebration Suites has a number of characteristics that make Alice a particularly good fit. The property is vast, 550 guest suites across more than 20 buildings and 21 acres, with staff using golf carts and radios to communicate with one another. By logging guest requests and internal messages into Alice on their mobile devices, staff can now communicate with one another seamlessly throughout the property. Because Celebration Suites recently upgraded their Wi-Fi, not just in the guest suites, but in the staff quarters too, it means mobile devices running Alice function better than radios.
As a limited service hotel, Kissimmee's Celebration Suites runs with a team of staff much smaller than hotels of comparable size. And, with its proximity to Disney World, Universal Orlando and SeaWorld, the hotel averages a 90 percent occupancy rate. This means the hotel's staff have to work with incredible economy in servicing their guests. Now, with the efficiencies brought to its operations by Alice, the hotel's staff can deliver its guests an intimate and attentive hospitality experience, despite the challenges the property's size presents.
Brian Wong, Celebration Suites' GM, immediately saw the value of Alice when it was first demoed to him, but had reservations his staff would switch from the paper-based system they'd run the hotel with for years. That skepticism has been allayed. The staff's average response time to requests is down by 45 percent, with 67 percent of issues responded to in under 11 minutes. Moreover, the team's completion time on outstanding issues has been reduced by 32 percent, which has afforded them more flexibility to proactively assist guests.
Wong attributes some of these gains to Alice's usability; the simplicity of the technology's user interface meant adoption was quick, regardless of his staff's level of comfort with technology.