You’ve Made It Through the Summer - So How Was It?

It’s September, and the start of a period of calm after the summer rush.

It’s a time to have a bit of a rest, but also the perfect opportunity to reflect and ask yourself what worked over the summer and what didn’t, so you can make changes before the next peak season - the festive period - arrives.

If staff were stretched and opportunities for sales missed in any of your revenue centres over the summer, now is the time to explore how wi-Q’s digital solutions could help.

And if you’re already using wi-Q, September is the ideal time to make sure you’re fully utilising all the solutions and features available to you.

Of course, autumn is also show season, so while it’s quiet, try and get along to some of the industry events happening in the next couple of months to pick up some useful business insights.

If you happen to be heading to the IHG F&B conference in Bucharest at the end of this month, or the McKibbon One Leadership Conference in Nashville in November, we’ll look forward to seeing you there.

Your post-summer season checklist:

Restaurants and bars

Over the summer, were your staff always able to greet and welcome guests with a friendly smile, take their orders, make upsell suggestions, and take payments all in a timely manner?

If you can’t confidently answer ‘yes’ to all of those aspects of the customer experience, wi-Q’s mobile ordering and payments solution will fill in the gaps.

Through wi-Q, guests simply scan a QR code on the table to access all your food and beverage menus on their mobile device. They can then filter by food preference, allergens or dietary requirement, receive timely and relevant upsell prompts, order, and pay using their preferred payment method.

Staff get time back to spend with the guest, and customers get the frictionless service they desire - no trying to catch someone’s eye to order another drink or ask for the bill, no waiting for the card machine.

What’s more, wi-Q’s clients who have deployed our digital menus across their properties are enjoying a 35% increase in F&B order volume, and a 30% uplift in order value.

Pool and beach bars and outside areas

If you have any outside space at your hotel - be it a pool, garden or even loungers on the beach - it was probably very well used by guests over the summer.

But when it came to serving food and drink to those guests in disparate areas of your property, can you be sure you met everyone’s needs, or did you miss some orders because staff were stretched too thin?

By placing QR codes on loungers and outdoor tables, you can put the ability to order whenever and wherever they want in the guest’s hands, so you never miss an opportunity for a sale.

At the same time, you ease the burden on teams and eliminate one of the biggest pain points for guests - trying to flag down a server from your sunbed.

Room Service

This summer, did your F&B and housekeeping teams have to field regular calls from guests requesting food and drink deliveries and items like toothbrushes and extra towels?

You can cut the time spent dealing with such requests by half through wi-Q: just invite your guests to scan a QR code in their room to access the full room service menu, from which they can order and pay all on their own device.

As well as connecting directly to the POS and integrating with major payment providers, wi-Q also links to your hotel’s housekeeping management system, enabling guests to use the same journey to order free items from the housekeeping team.

All your staff have to focus on then is delivering the guest’s order to their room.

No wonder our clients report a 40% cut in staffing costs due to the reduction in time spent handling orders and enquiries.

Guest Information

Did your front desk staff have repeated conversations with guests this summer about check out times, facilities opening times, recommended local attractions, etc?

Before the season began did you print out updated hotel information sheets to put into folders in every room?

You can hugely reduce staff time on such conversations and eliminate all of that printing cost (and the environmental cost of all that paper usage) by utilising wi-Q’s Guest Directory.

Far more than giving you efficiency savings, Guest Directory gives guests what they want: the convenience of accessing information digitally on their own device.

All they have to do is scan a QR code in the room to be taken to the fully branded Guest Directory containing all the details they may need about their stay, including images and booking links (generating more sales for your venue).

Guest Directory is fully customisable - either at venue or organisation branding level - and can include as much or as little information as desired, such as local attractions, venue rules, service times, check-out details and Wi-fi information.

Group Meetings and Events

If you hosted any summer balls or weddings this year, did you have to draft in lots of temporary staff to boost your team, did your staff struggle with the pressure of serving multiple large tables, and did you run into any problems with stock on the day?

If any of that sounds familiar, you need to get wi-Q’s Group Meetings and Events (GM&E) solution in place before the festive party season begins.

Through wi-Q, guests can be invited to preorder drinks and food in advance of the event, so you can make sure you’re fully prepared and ready to deliver a smooth operation.

To use the preordering feature, your events team simply needs to distribute wi-Q URLs to attendees with a unique event code, which will allow them to access the menus and place orders.

The preorders are tracked and managed via the wi-Q back office, with the order posted to the POS on the day of the event to ensure all reporting is accurate.

Via the preorder dashboard, events teams can easily view and filter their preorders, extract a picking list, and update the menu with any special products for the event.

On the day of the event, guests can also use their phone to scan a QR code (on the table or a central screen) to browse the food and beverage menus.

Because wi-Q integrates with the POS, they can then order their food and drink by entering their table or seat number and adding any order notes as needed, leave a gratuity if desired, and pay using their preferred payment method.

If you want to find out more about how wi-Q could’ve saved summer (and boost your festive season too), book a demo today.