Millennials are the largest generational demographic today, in the US. With a population of 83 million, they have overtaken the Gen X and baby boomers. Wisdom recommends that employers across industries memorize and respect this. It is even more relevant to the hospitality space, as working with millennial hotel staff is an experience that is very, very different from working with staff of any other generation in the past. Their job expectations, their work ethics, their working style, everything is in stark contrast to their predecessors.
Here are a few characteristics that millennials across the globe share, which employers should be aware of:
- They are more intelligent, self-aware and independent than any other generation of the past
- They are up-to-date with global events, more connected to the world
- They are way more technologically aware, accepting and capable
- They demand flexibility, innovation and transparency from their teammates as well as their managers (S1)
- They are less loyal to their employers and more open to different roles (S2)
This is why many practices that were rampant in the past are no longer and will no longer be valid. Impressing your millennial staff and keeping them hooked to you might look like a challenge, but with the right approach, you can win them over. The easiest place to start would be to adopt technology more willingly and openly.
Adopting the right hotel technology, of course, has a ton of benefits for the hotel itself. But that’s a topic for another day. For now, we will only discuss how keeping up with best-in-class hotel tech will help you entice and retain your millennial staff.
One of the main functionalities of technology is to mitigate human effort. Hospitality technology aids hotel staff in automating tasks that are otherwise super tedious and time-consuming.
Considering that your millennial staff are all about working smart as opposed to their predecessor’s mantra of ‘working hard’, it helps build an environment of efficiency and promptness. If you prefer working hard over working smart, you might want to think again. Are you sure that you aren’t mistaking ‘hours of manual labor’ to be hard work?
Let me explain by comparing a typical baby boomer approach to a millennial’s way of doing things.
Scenario 1:
Your front desk staff gets a phone call. A prospective guest calls in to make a reservation. Your staff opens an excel sheet where he or she keeps track of all reservations, looks for the date the caller specified, room is available, confirms the same with the caller and voila! Reservation done. Fast forward to the date of check-in – the guest walks in saying they had made a telephonic reservation with you for a certain room type and you prep for their check-in. Except- that room is already occupied.
How did this happen?
Anything could have happened. The day the prospect called with the reservation request the staff may have forgotten to update the excel sheet immediately after the call because a walk-in reservation request came in… Or they may have made the reservation but forgotten to save the file soon after? Or may have decided to take a break as soon as the call got over!? This is such a common thing for hotels that manage inventory manually, and it really doesn’t matter how this mistake happened.
What matters is that you now have a guest who had made a proper reservation with you, or so they thought, but you are sold out and cannot honor that reservation! Embarrassment, apologies and panic will take over you while anger, frustration and helplessness will take over the could-have-been guest!
Here’s how having the right technology will enable your millennial staff to handle reservations. Your front desk staff answer the phone call. The prospect asks for a room for a specific date. Your staff looks at the PMS dashboard which lists out all reservations on a tape chart that is color coded for convenience. They scroll to the specified date. It is available. They immediately type out the caller’s name and contact details in the reservation form. And a confirmatory message is immediately sent to the guest. The guest arrives at your property, tells you their name, you find the booking on your dashboard and check them in with the click of a button!
A cloud-based PMS gives you the luxury of time, convenience and accuracy. Your millennial staff doesn’t want to scroll through sheets and sheets of Excel to find a guest that stayed with you 7 months ago. They are aware of the fact that check-ins and checkouts need not take 30 minutes. They empathize with guests who, by the way, are not going to tolerate shoddy service. And the only solution to mitigate all your efficiency-related issues is a cloud-based Property Management System.
Here’s why the adoption of the right hotel technology is crucial to being relevant to your millennial staff:
- 1) Because the right PMS will automate several otherwise time-consuming and exhausting tasks and give your staff the gift of time.
- 2) This time that you have saved, thanks to automation, can be redirected to improving the guest experience and working on guest-centricity that only your human staff can accomplish!
- 3) A cloud-based PMS will help you generate a hundred reports in no time at all. No more scope for manual errors.
- 4) It helps you integrate with several other tools that you will need to stay on top of your game. And since your millennial staff is already well acquainted with technology, you don’t have to spend a bomb on training them on every update!
These are just a few ways in which a robust cloud-based PMS will help you stay relevant to your millennial staff. The bottom-line is that millennials believe in doing what they love and doing it well. The sense of obligation or duty that ruled the working population of the earlier generations is replaced by a sense of ownership and pride. It is up to you how willing you are to change things around and let millennials and technology redefine your hotel business.
Don’t settle. Your business demands the best, and nothing less!
Having been in the hospitality space for over a decade, we can tell you with no fear of contradiction that every hotel has to have a cloud-based Property Management System in place. If you were to just choose one system to rely on, one platform to manage your hotel- it has got to be a PMS. No other system can claim to be as multi-functional, efficient, dependable, dynamic, robust… you get the drift. Anything else is a compromise. And why settle with something less when you can get the best-in-class cloud-based Property Management System for half its price!
Yep. You heard that right! Hotelogix is happy to present to you its year-end offer where you can use our award-winning Hotel Property Management System at half the price!
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