The reputation of a hotel is made not just through the quality of its rooms and facilities, but by the standard of service it provides its guests. The Best Western Appleby Park Hotel, located on the outskirts of Tamworth and Burton upon Trent in Staffordshire, is no exception to this rule.
The ability to provide a good standard of service relies on clear and swift communications between management and staff members, so that the hotel can be run efficiently and ensure its customers are kept both satisfied and safe.
The hotel employs approximately 45 members of staff, split into five departments, who need constant communication with one another 24/7 to run the hotel successfully. The trouble was the existing communication system was hindering that goal.
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Hytera DMR radios
The hotel staff at the Best Western Appleby were using mobile phones to communicate, but mobile signal dead zones within some areas of the hotel led to dropped calls. Instead of helping to solve problems, the mobile phones were in fact creating more issues and contributing to poor communication between staff and the different departments.
This problem was further compounded by the fact that at times some staff members or departments were not answering their mobile phones, or could not be contacted at all due to poor signal reception. This meant the staff member making the call would have to walk around the hotel trying to find the particular person they were after. Unsurprisingly, this caused delays in getting hold of people, which then impacted on the wider business of running the hotel efficiently.
The other problem associated with using mobile phones is that they can only communicate on a one-to-one basis. Multiple calls had to be made to communicate the same message if more than one person needed to be contacted. The result was certain tasks ended up taking longer than necessary, which could affect productivity and business efficiencies.
The hotel got in touch with Zycomm Communications, based in Ripley, Derbyshire, which came up with a strategy to overcome the communication issues. Zycomm recommended a two-way radio solution based on Hytera Digital Mobile Radio (DMR) equipment.
The Hytera system was designed to meet a set of pre-determined goals. The first was to improve communications throughout the hotel by making sure a consistent radio signal was always available. The solution had to enable staff members and the different departments to communicate with one another at any time and in any area of the hotel.
The hotel specified that the two-way radios had to be ‘easy to operate’ and they had to be robust and reliable. The radios also needed to come with a feature that allowed staff to clip the radio onto their work wear.
Finally, the solution needed to enhance effective communications by taking advantage of two-way radio’s one-to-many calling feature set, enabling one transmission to be heard by all members of staff and each of the specific teams.
All five departments at the Best Western Appleby were given Hytera DMR radios, which hugely improved communication between staff and departments. The radios successfully provided clear and consistent communications throughout the hotel, which improved service levels and significantly increased business efficiencies.
The staff found the Hytera two-way radios to be both robust and easy to operate and they are now seen as a vital business tool to help the hotel function effectively.
