From Housekeeping to Maintenance and beyond - automating Operations at Falkensteiner Hotel Diadora with Flexkeeping

OPERATIONS

In August 2022, Falkensteiner Hotel Diadora implemented Flexkeeping to help automate their processes across Operations (including Housekeeping and Maintenance) and to supercharge collaboration within and between teams. Beyond the improved communication and optimised workflows, Flexkeeping’s Hotel Operations Platform has also allowed management to gather powerful data and actionable analytics in order to make more strategic decisions longer term.

Why it matters: Hotels still heavily rely on using manual planning and processes throughout Operations, consuming costly physical and human resources (at a time when staff are in short supply), wasting endless sheets of paper and creating systemic inefficiencies.

Flexkeeping’s Hotel Operations Platform is designed to help teams automate and collaborate like never before. From housekeeping to maintenance and beyond, the intuitive platform has already help transform hundreds of properties across the world.

Top 3 Core Objectives: Hotel Diadora chose Flexkeeping to help automate internal processes, improve communication and boost productivity and efficiency across departments, particularly within Housekeeping and Maintenance.

Automate internal processes: Schedules were planned manually each morning wasting time. Issues were also being reported manually in the PMS at the end of each day or urgently via phone calls or WhatsApp messages by all departments (from Housekeeping to F&B to Horticulture and beyond). This was ineffective and laborious.
Supercharge collaboration & communication: Receptionists struggled to manually gather updates from various departments and the hotel experienced long check-in times, miscommunication and uncleaned assigned rooms. This was leading to frustrated guests and impacted their overall experience.
Become more strategic: Analysis of performance (team communication, solving maintenance issues, cleaning mistakes and staff productivity) were always missing. Management wanted access to service quality reports to easily identify areas for improvement and implement proactive measures to enhance their work. The objective was to have a solution helping reduce unexpected costs and forecast labor needs.

Innovators Mentioned

FMTG (Falkensteiner Michaeler Tourism Group)

Flexkeeping

Yvonne Tesch

Director Quality, People Development & Operational Excellence

FMTG (Falkensteiner Michaeler Tourism Group)

Yvonne Tesch

Director Quality, People Development & Operational Excellence

FMTG (Falkensteiner Michaeler Tourism Group)

"Sometimes you had to be in five different places at the same time. Without real-time information, we had to constantly run everywhere. We've now lowered our stress levels and unnecessary walking by 30%!"

Yvonne Tesch

Director Quality, People Development & Operational Excellence

👍 Director Quality, People Development & Operational Excellence Yvonne Tesch said that efficient communication was one of the core objectives for Hotel Diadora:

"Sometimes you had to be in five different places at the same time. Without real-time information, we had to constantly run everywhere. We've now lowered our stress levels and unnecessary walking by 30%!"

⚖️ The selection process: During their research process, Yvonne Tesch evaluated Flexkeeping's product differentiators, customer support, and holistic value as a strategic partner and ultimately decided that Flexkeeping was the best fit solution:

Director Quality, People Development & Operational Excellence Yvonne Tesch said, about their decision: "Our current challenge is the excessive number of systems we use across Hotel Operations. We want to improve internal communication and collaboration between departments but we also want our training processes to be tailor-made, simple, fun and easily accessible. For example, assessment reporting that includes the guest journey and Quality Assurance are top of our priority list."

📈 The results: Flexkeeping’s Operations Platform delivered a Return on Investment (ROI) of 215%* for the first year and 283%* for all consecutive years, showing that implementing Flexkeeping not only transforms Operations teams but also positively impacts a hotel's bottom line.

Housekeeping saw a 60% reduction in phone calls and reduced the average number of housekeepers on duty by 17.75%. Saved 61 hours per month counting linen compared to the old manual process. Saved 51.7 hours per month from not needing supervisors to physically check progress, locate lost items or manually communicate extra work.
Maintenance now resolves issues 50% faster, while guest complaints have dropped by 60%. Reduced phone calls by 75% and saw a 30% reduction in Maintenance costs. Saved 19.6 hours per month when comparing the average duration of communication for new repair requests, modifications to existing repairs and confirmation of completed repairs before and after implementation.
Front Office and Reception now can access real-time updates on the cleanliness status of rooms, guest requests and maintenance tickets. The streamlined processes saved 51.2 hours per month in communication breakdowns for Housekeeping and Front Office and 50% reduction in stress all around.