The Parker Palm Springs Upgrades Its Operations with ALICE On Recommendation From Sister Property in New York
The Parker Palm Springs has selected ALICE’s housekeeping and maintenance software, ALICE Staff, ALICE’s concierge software, ALICE Concierge, and ALICE’s guest text messaging solution, ALICE Guest, to upgrade staff communication and guest engagement at the 144-room luxury resort, just outside of downtown Palm Springs. Parker Palm Springs is using ALICE on recommendation from the Parker New York, which has been using ALICE since 2015. ALICE is the hospitality industry’s leading operations technology, connecting every department of the hotel with one platform for all staff communication and guest requests. ALICE recently acquired concierge software provider GoConcierge to augment its technology and customer service offering.
Before switching to ALICE, staff at Parker Palm Springs were using a variety of communication channels, including radios and paper logs, to relay information and manage internal work orders and guest requests. While these methods presented short-term efficiencies, says Parker’s Hotel Manager Yagmur Gursoy, they often hampered productivity later on, when messages went missing or required lengthy follow up. Gursoy is particularly eager to eliminate radios on property. In addition to being unreliable across the resort’s 13 acre, their noise is intrusive to guests and detracts from the “magic” of the property, he explains.
Gursoy and his management team are excited that ALICE will streamline this communication within and between departments, eliminating chance of human error and creating a record of all guest information and staff exchanges. For the first time, management will be able to asses how quickly their teams are responding to internal work orders and guest requests, as well as gauge productivity more broadly. Gursoy is confident that the time his staff saves by streamlining their communication will also save time for guests and improve the guest experience.
“It’s all about efficiency and how best to deliver on our brand promise,” explains Gursoy of his decision to implement ALICE. “ALICE will enable us to put all these prehistoric ways of doing business aside, and help us create all the magic of the resort, behind the curtains.”
Yagmur and his team will start with ALICE Staff and ALICE concierge and roll the guest text messaging product out slowly, once they assess how best to incorporate it into the very high-touch guest service the property is known for.
Parker Palm Spring’s selection of ALICE, by way of recommendation from the Parker New York, has special meaning for the ALICE team. Parker New York was ALICE’s first client for its concierge technology. During a highly iterative process that lasted over a year, the hotel’s concierge team helped shape the ALICE product into what it is today, influencing the addition of popular features like reminders, repeating tickets, dayview, itineraries, letter confirmations and printing. Parker New York also helped support the development of ALICE’s staff and guest products, with the hotel eventually switching from rival technologies to using ALICE throughout. Through years of close collaboration, Parker New York’s General Manager Slyvie Fayolle has become a valued ALICE champion: “Everybody is very happy to use it and finds it very intuitive to use,” she says of ALICE. “When all the employees of the hotel are aligned on the same system, on the same platform, they are able to see what has been done and how the guest request is going across. That to me is the single most important aspect of ALICE that makes it a big differentiator in our industry.”