Guests checking in to The Rees Queenstown in New Zealand’s busiest tourism destination are benefitting from room turnaround times that are up to ninety minutes faster than any other operator currently in Queenstown.
The award-winning luxury property situated on the shores of Lake Wakatipu recently rolled out Optii Keeper across its housekeeping department that services 60 hotel rooms, 90 apartments and 5 lakeside private residences.
The ground-breaking housekeeping system adopted by huge resorts offshore successfully went live without a hitch during the busiest time in the hotel’s calendar.
“Operationally we can now dial in to the system to see if a room is ready to give a guest an instant answer. It means wait times are reduced dramatically which is critical particularly in the high season” says Mr Roman Lee-Lo, Director of Operations, The Rees Hotel, Luxury Apartments & Lakeside Residences.
Gone are the days of the old manual system of paper and clipboard that are now replaced by digital cloud-connected devices that cleverly estimate cleaning times by examining guest type and use-pattern.
The networked system can differentiate between a lightly used room occupied by a guest to one that’s been lived in by a family for days – managing quality and productivity in union so the housekeeping schedule is optimised and the hotel accurately knows it’s room status in real-time.
Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Optii solutions, Mr Soenke Weiss trained the Rees team on-site winning over housekeepers who had been using the tried and true traditional method of paper for decades.
“I applaud the hotel for its foresight moving housekeeping to the next century” Weiss says. One challenge that has now been addressed by the technology was the lack of “clear visuals” supervisors had.
“Usually supervisors have a clear view down the hall once they step out of a lift however at The Rees due to the tiered architecture, it’s not feasible. Now they efficiently interact on their digital devices without constantly moving around the site to check on their team’s progress.”
In an industry where guest expectations run particularly high especially around housekeeping standards which can make or break a hotel reputation, Lee-Lo says Optii technology further enhances the guest experience tenfold and strengthens the hotel’s Qualmark Gold Award standard.
Recent research confirms that the market demands this. Oracle polled thousands of travellers in a study last year where 64% of respondents said it is “very or extremely important” for hotels to continue to invest in technology to enhance the guest experience.
