When guests staying at the Hawthorn Suites by Wyndham Livermore (Calif.) Wine Country want to know what wine tasting tours are available in the scenic valley, where to find the best craft beers on the Tri-Valley Beer Trail, and which shops, galleries and restaurants in downtown should they explore on a specific day, hotel staff have the answers due to HotelTap.
Designed as an automation tool that replaces traditional notebooks, paper tickets, sticky notes, internal emails, etc. as a way for hotel staff to communicate with each other and guests, this “digital log book in the cloud” is quickly proving to have a host of new uses. In addition to its intended purpose of creating task logs for staff, performing and tracking maintenance requests, keeping track of lost and found items, and resolving customer complaints, General Manager Catherine Cheda analyzed the types of questions guests were asking and created a new use for this communications tool – keeping up on regional and local events.
“With 60 wineries in this region, there is a lot of ground to cover, from tasting California's world-class wines to touring the beautiful vineyards of the Livermore Valley Wine Region,” Cheda said. “As you can imagine, events are happening daily, including the recent Taste Our Terroir, where local restaurants and wineries competed for the best wine pairings. The more educated we as a hotel team are, the better we can help guests explore our area and get the most out of their stay with us.
“We don’t want to just point visitors to the closest chain restaurant. We want to go deeper and educate them as to which local restaurant feature farm to table ingredients, or which restaurant has the best Sommelier as recognized by a particular wine journal. HotelTap gives us a vehicle to communicate this level of sophisticated information to our line level employees who may not get out into the community as easily as a manager can. And, our staff loves using it. HotelTap is set up similarly to the popular social media channels Facebook or Twitter, so the learning curve on how to use it is minimal.”
Before HotelTap, the Hawthorn Suites by Wyndham Livermore used a traditional log book at the front desk to record and track guest requests and maintenance issues. The manual hand-written system was not the most efficient way for staff to communicate, and it was difficult for management to ensure that all requests were being filled. With HotelTap, the system can be set up to send notifications from the hotel to the General Manager’s cell phone if something needed immediate attention.
Cheda said she also likes being able to take photos and upload them to HotelTap by room number. That way, if there is damage to a room or capital items go missing, guests can’t dispute the charges. The system’s “Lost and Found” feature also is proving to be a favorite among guests.
