With Optii Solutions, Guest and Staff Satisfaction Soars at the Ritz-Carlton Cleveland

MARKETING

With Optii Solutions, Guest and Staff Satisfaction Soars at the Ritz-Carlton Cleveland

The Ritz-Carlton Cleveland is an iconic property located in the heart of the city.This luxury hotel offers 206 guest rooms with modern amenities. However, The Ritz-Carlton Cleveland sought to improve productivity of their housekeeping team and manage their hotel operations in real-time. Prior to Optii, the property used to operate on a paper board system that left confusion as to what rooms needed to be turned over and how long it was taking per room to be cleaned. This led to wasted time and a lack of productivity, and accountability. The Ritz-Carlton decided to adopt Optii’s advanced housekeeping technology to improve their hotel operations.

Why it matters: Prior to Optii, the property used to operate on a paper board system that left confusion as to what rooms needed to be turned over and how long it was taking per room to be cleaned. This led to wasted time and a lack of productivity, and accountability. The Ritz-Carlton decided to adopt Optii’s advanced housekeeping technology to improve their hotel operations.

Optii's Housekeeping Solution optimizes labor and cleaning sequences for planning efficiency and faster turnaround times. It employs predictive, intelligent AI to optimize room attendant routes in real-time to deliver cleaning efficiency and an excellent guest experience and centralizes operations for full visibility and improved team performance. By optimizing it to the way the hotel's team operates, they were able to increase their productivity.

Top 3 Core Objectives: The Ritz-Carlton Cleveland sought to improve the efficiency of their housekeeping team and increase guest satisfaction.

Improve Efficiency: By going from paper boards to Optii Housekeeping, the Ritz-Carlton Cleveland team wanted to improve their housekeeping operations.
Optimize Hotel Operations: The Ritz-Carlton Cleveland wanted to improve the flow between management and the housekeeping team. By being able to see the data behind housekeeping operations, the flow among staff has improved.
Increase Guest Satisfaction: Rolling out Optii has enabled the Ritz-Carlton staff to focus on how to improve their guest satisfaction. Being able to eliminate guest queues due to timely room turnovers, has increased guest satisfaction.

"Prior to Optii, we were running at about 45 minutes per room, whether it was a stay over or check out. Using Optii, we began doing what most hotels do: more time for a checkout and less time for a stay over. We used Optii to segue into this, and achieve the overall reduction in cleaning time. If we had not used Optii, the housekeepers would not have liked it due to them thinking it would take longer. But having them go through the Optii training, seeing the benefits, made them more accepting of other changes. Adopting Optii also led to better productivity because now our housekeepers are cleaning about 16 to 18 rooms a day as opposed to the past where it was capped at about 12 to no more than 14 rooms a day."

Jason Zarzosa

Senior Rooms Operations Manager

Innovators Mentioned

The Ritz-Carlton Cleveland

Optii Solutions

Jason Zarzosa

Senior Rooms Operations Manager

The Ritz-Carlton Cleveland

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👍 Senior Rooms Operations Manager Jason Zarzosa said that With Optii, The Ritz-Carlton Cleveland gained insight into their operation, with a focus on cleaning times.:

"Prior to Optii, we were running at about 45 minutes per room, whether it was a stay over or check out. Using Optii, we began doing what most hotels do: more time for a checkout and less time for a stay over. We used Optii to segue into this, and achieve the overall reduction in cleaning time. If we had not used Optii, the housekeepers would not have liked it due to them thinking it would take longer. But having them go through the Optii training, seeing the benefits, made them more accepting of other changes. Adopting Optii also led to better productivity because now our housekeepers are cleaning about 16 to 18 rooms a day as opposed to the past where it was capped at about 12 to no more than 14 rooms a day."

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

Senior Rooms Operations Manager Jason Zarzosa said, about their decision: "There were a lot of limitations with older legacy hotel operations, especially for Marriott Brands. We could only show one room at a time and our staff couldn’t manipulate how they worked and we couldn’t track what room they were in. There wasn't an option to make it more efficient or have the fastest turnaround. So it was challenging when we needed to modify tasks or prioritize. With Optii, if I prioritize a room and then a housekeeper prioritizes one after, it’s gonna be behind mine regardless."

📈 The results: Adopting Optii Housekeeping Solutions to The Ritz-Carlton Cleveland has led to measurable changes, optimizing hotel operations.

With Optii, The Ritz-Carlton Cleveland experienced that they were able to manage the housekeeping operation in real-time, with Optii’s intuitive timeline view. Here, the managers have a birds-eye view of room status, staff location and progress, and the ability to make any changes needed with ease. Using Optii has also been a tremendous help in managing staff performance, and accountability. At the Ritz-Carlton Cleveland, the housekeeping staff have become accustomed to using Optii in their day to day. It’s become second nature to them when turning over rooms, moreover, it’s helped staff stay accountable for their tasks. The housekeeping team went from cleaning 18 rooms per day, per housekeeper to 12 rooms, which helped improve the hotel's cleanliness score from 60% to 80%.
The Ritz-Carlton Cleveland was also seeking to improve communications between staff, as well as allocating tasks. By utilizing Optii, they were able to communicate more efficiently within the team by allowing the Ritz-Carlton Cleveland staff to leave detailed notes and have real-time performance conversations. This has improved the dynamic across the entire operations department. he management team is able to track the staff without micromanaging and the staff is able to have more independence in their daily tasks while being held accountable. This new structure has helped the Ritz-Carlton Cleveland team communicate better and manage their time more productively. The biggest change that the Ritz-Carlton Cleveland saw was the interactions amongst their team. With Optii, all communication became streamlined.
Optii has had a significant impact on guest experience and guest satisfaction. Prior to using Optii, the property had a cleanliness score in the mid 60’s. In the first year of using Optii that score climbed to meet the goal of 78%. Now, the scores hovers in the high 80’s. Optii’s productivity improvements has helped the property almost entirely eliminate guest queues to the point where ‘timeliness of check-in’ isn’t even measured anymore. These impacts on guest satisfaction and reviews has helped the property move from being in the 30’s out of 42 Ritz-Carlton properties to now being number 10 in the company. Having real-time visibility on the housekeeping operation, room status, and ability to make changes allows a room controller to manage guest check-in and ensure that a room is always ready for the next guest.