Case Study – Hotel Bookings
Problems
Hotels are faced with a huge amount of administrative work as more and more hotel bookings happen via Online Travel Agents such as Bookings.com. Emails come in from a variety of sources with bookings, updates, virtual credit card details, and cancellations.
Processing these bookings and adding them to the Hotel’s Property Management System is laborious and repetitive work. Human error means bookings, cancellations and changes are not always made correctly which results in a loss of revenue as cards are not charged correctly.
The Hotel Group we are working with has seen its call centre swell to 80 staff, many of whom are simply dealing with the administrative tasks created by the bookings from Online Travel Agents.
The management team felt that this work was not fulfilling. It was unnecessary and costly to process manually. Worse still, human error in processing these tasks meant that reception staff, at check in and check out, needed to deal with multiple issues on the spot, causing frustration for both staff and customers.
Solution – Phase 1:
We suggested the following approach.
IntelliAgent monitors the email inbox 24×7 and processes all bookings, updates and cancellations. It reads card images and enters or updates virtual credit card details, leads to zero human error, and all bookings made correctly.
Solution – Phase 2:
Further areas identified where automation could bring significant benefits
IntelliAgent used to handle direct customer bookings, amendments and cancellations via phone, live web chat and email created using to provide 24×7 booking capability via any channel.
Other areas for automation also identified including invoice processing for corporate customers, card processing for other bookings so that all cards processed on time and all invoices sent on time with no human error leading to significant reduction in credit control issues and vastly improved cash collection.
Challenges
State of Automation
- Manual
- Manual
- Manual
- Manual
Issues
- Room inventory not up to date
- Huge administrative load from Online Travel Agency Bookings
- Human error leads to cash flow issues
- High Churn of staff due to repetitive nature of work / low job satisfaction
- Problems at check in / check out due to incorrect booking details
Phase 1
State of Automation
- Automated
- Manual
- Manual
- Manual
Benefits
- Zero Human error, all cards processed correctly
- 60% reduction in cost in booking processing
- Improved cash flow as payments are processed promptly and correctly
- Room inventory always correct and up to date
- Reduction in problems at check in and check out
Phase 2
State of Automation
- Automated
- Automated
- Automated
- Automated
Benefits
- Further 60% cost reduction in customer service, and invoicing processing
- Invoices processed automatically,with zero human error
- Bookings handled 24x7
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