9 Tips to Improve Communication in the Hospitality Industry

The hotel and hospitality industry relies on satisfied customers and guests. When there is poor communication between management and employees in a hotel, it can negatively affect the customer experience, lower employee morale and ultimately cause profits to decline. Investing in new hotel technology for communications in hotels can help to ensure your operations run smoothly and you have happy, satisfied guests.

Table of contents

Why employee communications in hotels is crucial

10 recommendations to improve communication in your hotel

Why you need DeskAlerts for hospitality communications

Why employee communications in hotels is crucial

The reputation of your hotel is based on the experience that guests receive and winning their loyalty. To achieve this, you need to have staff who are informed, engaged, enthusiastic and helpful: they are literally the face of your organization and how they interact with your guests can make or break their satisfaction and loyalty – particularly when it comes to online reviews.

Unhappy guests leave bad reviews, which will in turn deter other guests from booking with your hotel.

If employee communication in hospitality is poor, it can lead to a range of poor experiences for your guests. This can include:

• Staff not receiving important announcements
• Guest requests getting forgotten or lost
• Time wasted trying to resolve issues that have happened before
• Staff not knowing about important health and safety protocols (eg: COVID-19 requirements changing)
• Staff being unaware of current promotions, such as loyalty program offers
• Staff being unprepared to respond to an emergency situation
• Not all staff members work with a computer screen and can miss important information
• Staff don’t feel connected to the company, its vision, mission, brand and goals. This lack of engagement can lead to poor morale
• Poor morale can lead to higher staff turnover: you’ll lose valuable employees who hold corporate knowledge, possibly to a competitor
• Staff do not receive adequate training.

9 recommendations to improve communication in your hotel

By following these best-practice tips for employee communications in hotels you can have happier guests and more engaged employees.

1. Emphasize the importance of communication to your employees

Explain to your employees why it is important that they are informed and understand news and updates within the company so that they can provide the best possible service to your guests. Establish a company culture where communication is prioritized. Encourage your employees to spend time at the beginning of a shift updating themselves with any new information.

2. Stop relying on radio communications for everything

Radio is often overused for communication in the hospitality industry. They can be noisy and disruptive to guests. Because they can be heard by anyone, they have the potential to broadcast unpleasant information within earshot of guests. And employees can tune out to the noise and actually miss important information. It is best to reserve radio communications for use during an emergency.

3. Embrace digital and mobile communications

Invest in a modern internal communications solution that uses digital channels and can reach non-desk employees via mobile devices so that you can be sure that your important information is received, no matter what staff are doing or where they are doing it. Communicating with all employees via a hotel communications network is crucial so that they can deliver a seamless experience to guests.

4. Segment your audience if necessary

When you send irrelevant information to people, they may tune out to your future communications. While often you will want to reach everyone with team communications in hotels, there will also be times when you only need to communicate something with a specific cohort of employees, and not everyone in the hotel. For example, if there is an issue affecting only hotel security staff, you don’t need to send updates about it to the whole organization. Setting up different distribution lists will help you to achieve this.

5. Use a multi-channel approach to internal communication

Sending information via different channels is best practice for hotel communication. It helps to reinforce your messaging which in turn helps with message retention. The more employees are exposed to a message, the more likely they are to absorb it and act on it.

6. Deliver consistent employee training and onboarding experiences

A big problem in many organizations is that staff receive inconsistent training – different managers will have different approaches and will prioritize different things. This means that your workforce may not all have the same level of knowledge and may not have equal opportunity to gain appropriate skills. This is especially evident in onboarding processes: some employees hit the ground running and others have no idea what they are meant to be doing. By developing and delivering consistent training and onboarding experiences that you ensure are delivered to every staff member, you can be assured that your guests will receive a seamless experience when dealing with employees.

7. Ensure you can deliver both urgent and non-urgent communications

When implementing new internal communications processes, systems and procedures don’t forget emergency communications. You should prepare for both urgent and non-urgent communications alike… this means you can reach employees quickly in an emergency as well as when sending routine everyday information.

8. Get feedback from employees

It’s important to have a way that employees can communicate with management: two-way communication helps to build trust, ensures transparency and enables management to become aware of any issues that they may not otherwise know about.

9. Ensure your communications are timely

All your communications efforts will be wasted if you don’t send the information to your employees in a timely manner. You can’t wait hours, or even days, to communicate with employees: when there is something they need to know about, let them know straight away.

Why you need DeskAlerts for hospitality communications

DeskAlerts is an internal communication software system that will help you to overcome internal communications issues in your hotel. It can be installed on any computer – Windows or Mac – as well as being available as a mobile app for Apple and Android phones and tablets.

The system uses a variety of tools and channels and other features to ensure that you deliver the right information to the right people at the right time, no matter where they are or what they are doing.

DeskAlerts channels that will help with hospitality communications include:

• Pop-up alerts that send important messages direct to computer screens
• Mobile alerts that will appear on cell phone screens, reaching your non-desk employees
• Custom screensavers that can remind employees about important promotional campaigns for guests
• Digital signage alerts that will turn any digital TV screen in your hotel into a mobile billboard (and can be used for guest communications too)
• Surveys, polls and quizzes that will let you get feedback from your employees and receive the results in real time.

Use it as an emergency communications channel when you have a crisis such as a fire, flood, natural disaster, inclement weather etc.

With ongoing uncertainty in the sector because of COVID-19 you can reach employees quickly when there is new health advice, closures, lockdowns, furloughs etc.

In addition to these channels, DeskAlerts has many useful features making it the ideal internal communications package for your hotel:

• Schedule alerts in advance
• Send messages to different audience segments
• Makes it easier for different departments to communicate, breaking down information silos
• If you have employees who speak different languages, you can send alerts in several different languages
• Deliver video content, images or text
• Alerts can be customized to match your branding
• Advanced analytics will show you the engagement of any content you send, in real time.

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The hospitality industry has faced a lot of disruption in recent years, from new forms of competition through to uncertainty caused by the pandemic. In the current climate, your organization cannot afford to have unsatisfied customers. Ensuring you have solid internal communications systems in place is one of the major foundations of delivering an impeccable guest experience.

Get in touch with our experts today to find out how DeskAlerts can overhaul your internal communications.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is communication in the hotel industry?

Internal communication in the hotel industry involves managers communicating information to their employees to ensure they have the information that they need to perform their jobs and meet guest expectations.

How can you improve communication between departments in a hotel?

Taking active steps to share information between departments in a hotel is easy when you have the right tools to do so. In addition to relationship building, sending timely and targeted communications using appropriate channels to colleagues in other departments will help keep them informed.

What are the two types of communication in hospitality?

The two main types of communication in the hospitality industry are:

• Interpersonal communication – where managers engaged with employees, either individually or in small groups, in a face-to-face setting.
• Written communication – where information is written down and disseminated to staff.

How do hotel managers communicate?

Hotel managers need to communicate clearly with staff and guests, including in writing and verbally. They also need to have excellent listening skills, solid interpersonal skills and a range of communications tools at their disposal.