blog_img-35-2023-04-27

Keep it Simple: Easily Track and Manage Extra Room Items in Your Hotel

The Smith family arrives at their hotel late, ready for bed after an exhausting day of travel. Upon check-in, they request a crib for their baby and a rollaway bed for one of their children before heading up to their room. Over an hour later, much to their frustration, the requested items have yet to appear.

 After a long day in the office, Sally Goodworker is looking forward to unwinding with a light workout in her hotel guest room. She requests an in-room fitness equipment bag as well as an iron to prepare her clothes for tomorrow’s important meeting. The items are delivered so late that Sally’s already fast asleep.

Unfortunately, these scenarios are not uncommon in hotels today. Guests regularly request additional items to enhance their stay. But hotel housekeeping teams lack the ability to track where requested items are, or even how many are available at any given time. Guests are frustrated with long waits, leading to negative reviews that impact your hotel’s occupancy and profitability.

What modern hotels need is a software solution that simplifies inventory management of these extra room items. Because having the requested items available whenever guests need them can transform their entire stay.

ALICE Digitally Tracks and Manages Extra Hotel Room Items

The ALICE Housekeeping solution has a new Extra Room Items feature that gives your housekeeping team the capability to digitally track and manage extra room items. Extra items are typically guest-requested amenities that are limited in supply and not normally included in a standard guest room, like rollaway beds, cribs, laptops, irons and more.

“We understood housekeeping teams were frustrated, wasting precious time hunting for different items that guests requested during their stays. So, we incorporated the Extra Room Items feature into our award-winning housekeeping software,” says Suzanne Frush, ALICE Product Manager. “Now team members have visibility into current locations and overall availability of specific items, making it easy to inventory, track and quickly deliver those items to guests.”

Whether on desktop or mobile device, extra room items can be viewed, added or removed in real time, in the Room View or Logbook page specific to each item. Staff can easily see the room number where items are currently located, as well as how many items are unassigned or available. There’s even a convenient filtering option when a staff member needs to quickly locate a specific item type.

Room Attendants, Floor Supervisors and the Director of Housekeeping can all update an item’s location with a few clicks of a computer mouse or taps on their smartphone screen. And any changes are instantly communicated across the team.

A Benefit to Operations and the Guest Experience

Hotels gain a number of benefits with this new ability to easily manage extra room items across a property.

Proactive and Personalized

When you know in advance that you have a guest arriving who needs a rollaway bed, you can instantly add it in the system, and record it once it’s dispatched to the room. Imagine how delighted your guests will be to find the specific items they need ready and waiting in their room upon arrival.

Faster, Smoother Operations

Housekeeping staff used to rely on easily misplaced paper notes to track extra room items, or Excel files that were cumbersome to maintain. With real-time digital updates, room attendants can instantly locate items, improving overall organization and efficiency of your housekeeping team.

Greater Guest Satisfaction

Hotel amenities and extra items play a significant role in enriching the guest experience. The Extra Room Items feature lets you optimize your inventory management to ensure that each guest has everything they need at all times. Guests are no longer frustrated by long waits, resulting in greater loyalty and repeat business.

A Boost in Your Bottom Line

Satisfying your loyal customers means bigger profits, with repeat guests spending 67 percent more than new customers. And while more standard extra room items should be offered free of charge, specialized items like laptops, tablets or in-room exercise equipment can be offered for an additional fee. Effective management of extra room items can help you grow your ancillary revenue – increasingly important in this age of reduced occupancies and ADRs.

A Small Feature Makes a Big Difference

ALICE Housekeeping software ranked #1 in the 2022 HotelTechAwards. Now, with the new Extra Room Items feature, it’s become even better at streamlining your housekeeping team’s task management and helping you deliver a winning guest experience.

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