Imagine if your hotel guests could check-in and check out of your hotel themselves, without assistance from staff.
Automated self-check-in means you could manage your hotel with fewer staff, integrate check-in and out with booking, property management and housekeeping, and above all, give your customers a level of service they’d remember and come back to.
Self-service, automated hotels are gaining popularity with hotel operators in Australia—including Luke Tilse of the Young Street Hotel.
The Young Street Hotel in Newcastle is a traditional Aussie pub and family-friendly restaurant with accommodation.
Tilse’s goal was to make managing the 14 rooms as streamlined, simple and hassle-free as possible.
“I didn’t want a high-maintenance hotel” he said. “I wanted to automate things, so that guests could go straight to their rooms, and staff didn’t need to manage check-in, check-out and handling keys. I needed to be able to manage from anywhere, without having to always be on site.”
The answer for Tilse was a system that integrated the Salto Cloud solution, a property management system (PMS) and room booking. The Salto Cloud solution uses keyless locks, activated by a PIN and when paired with a PMS makes the booking and check-in process entirely contactless.
A big plus of SALTO for Tilse was that their electronic locks are wire-free, saving thousands in installation costs, and could be installed in the 100-year old pub major upheaval and works.
With the new integrated SALTO Cloud solution in place, guests book online, a PIN is generated and sent to the SALTO lock. Guests receive a confirmation email which contains their PIN and they can simply go straight to their room when they arrive.
The integrated booking and automated check-in at The Young Street Hotel has been a great success
“Our bar staff were spending spend 10 minutes per check-in, and our busiest time for accommodation—Friday and Saturday nights—was also the time when we are flat-out on food and beverage,” Tilse said. “Now our guests check-in and access their rooms themselves, without help from our staff.”
The automated system means that the hotel can even take last minute bookings that come through while they’re closed. Tilse gets a notification that someone has booked and checked in.
Tilse also uses the SALTO system to manage housekeeping—he can see which rooms need to be cleaned each day, and how much linen needs to be replaced. The next step is that cleaning team and linen providers will log into the system and check the details for themselves.
Automated self-service hotels are a growing trend. Guests love the autonomy and ease, and operators get to do more with less.
For The Young Street Hotel, automation achieved Tilse’s goals of freeing up staff, streamlining operations and delighting his guests.
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