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We spoke with Daria Fomina, Assistant Rooms Division Manager at Hotel Aleksander Medical & Spa about her experience with SuitePad.
Hotel Aleksander Medical & Spa in eastern Slovenia adopted SuitePad as its digital guest engagement platform. Immediately after implementing the tablets, the boutique property began seeing a positive impact on the guest experience and operational efficiency.
About Hotel Aleksander & Spa
Since opening in 1905, the Hotel Aleksander Medical & Spa has become one of the top wellness hotels in the popular resort destination of Rogaška Slatina. The 21-key luxury boutique hotel offers a wide selection of amenities including a gourmet restaurant, a spa, and a medical center. Guests appreciate the comfort, privacy, and highly personalized service at this small, refined property.
The challenges of maintaining a physical guest directory
When Daria joined Hotel Aleksander Medical & Spa, one of the first projects her team took on was revamping the guest directory. Their goal was to replace the existing one with a more appealing, durable, and easy-to-use binder.
While this sounded like a straightforward endeavor, three main challenges emerged. First, even an attractive yet sturdy binder would one day have to be replaced. This would incur extra costs for the hotel and create waste. Second, every change to menus, services, or opening hours would require reprinting and replacing pages within the directory in every guest room. Again, this would result in additional cost and waste. Thirdly, during the pandemic, the team decided to remove all paper from the rooms to reduce the chance of infection and make guests feel more comfortable.
“Apart from these points, we knew that few guests actively browsed the binder. Consequently, we needed a way to make it more interesting and tempting for them to pick it up and explore its content. Our challenge was to find a safe yet engaging way to inform guests about our many services and amenities,” Daria outlines.
Discovering SuitePad as the digital solution
The hotel’s manager returned from a trip to Austria with an idea for a solution. He had seen SuitePad’s in-room tablets at a hotel he stayed at and liked the idea of a digital guest directory. When he presented this option to the team, everyone was immediately interested.
“SuitePad takes the guest directory to a new level. It allows us to provide important information in an interesting way all while saving paper. And the whole team agreed that we ourselves would be much more likely to pick up and explore a SuitePad than a traditional guest directory. Consuming content digitally has simply become more attractive to people nowadays because we’re all used to smartphones and other devices,” Daria recounts.
When Hotel Aleksander’s team compared providers, SuitePad won the race. The company’s larger tablets and the ability to share information in an attractive, well-branded format were among the deciding factors. Once that decision was made, it was time to create and put together the content for the digital hotel directory. At the same time, SuitePad provided training on how to set up and implement the solution.
“It took us around a month to collect all the content we wanted to include in the directory. It felt like a long process but looking at our final result, it was worth it. Along the way, SuitePad’s team was very responsive and provided good support. That helped us put everything together the way we wanted. Now that we’ve got the basics right, we’re looking forward to implementing push notifications to start upselling and exploring the many other options SuitePad offers.”
The results of digitalizing guest communication with SuitePad
Greater guest awareness drives bookings for extra services
From the beginning, SuitePads proved popular among travelers at Hotel Aleksander. “At first, we were unsure of how our guests would respond to the SuitePads. Most of them are in the 40-50+ age group which traditionally prefers paper over digital mediums. But user data shows that most guests use the SuitePad shortly after they first enter their room,” Daria elaborates.
Now, more travelers explore Hotel Aleksander’s broad range of services and discover attractive add-ons. This regularly results in additional ancillary revenue. So far, spa treatments, medical consultations, and table reservations at the restaurant have been the most-booked extras via the in-room tablet. To the team’s surprise, even the option to skip daily housekeeping was popular among certain guest segments.
“SuitePad is a pleasant way to tell our guests about our services. It’s not imposing or intrusive. Instead, all information is available whenever they want to access it. Since guests are already more familiar with the offering, they can directly ask about things they’re most interested in, rather than starting with general questions. Especially at the spa, this has turned out to be both a revenue driver and a time saver.”
Increased convenience and more customized service for guests
SuitePad makes it easier for guests to interact with the hotel. Now, they no longer need to call or go to reception with their requests. Instead, they can communicate directly via the tablet from the comfort of their room. SuitePad’s multi-language capability makes this even easier because it allows the hotel to provide all information in Slovenian, English, and Russian. This has helped Hotel Aleksander take its service personalization up a notch.
The hotel’s signature room comfort menu serves as a good example: “In the past, we kept a card in the room which encouraged guests to call us if they needed extra amenities. But we didn’t list everything available because it was simply too much. Today, our entire room comfort menu is easy to find and browse on the SuitePad. That way guests can see everything we offer, and they can quickly request all the extras they want in the room to make their stay perfect.”
Streamlined check-in experience
In the past, Hotel Aleksander’s front office team had to share a lot of information with guests during check-in. This was important to ensure travelers knew about all the services they could use during their stay, but it also drew out the arrival process.
Today, using SuitePad allows Hotel Aleksander’s front office staff to speed up check-in: “Our receptionists still share the most important information when guests arrive. But we also tell them that they can find more details via the SuitePad. That means they can get to their room faster after a long journey and they can choose which services to learn more about.”
Easy to update all information
SuitePad’s straightforward backend makes it easy to add and edit information. That’s an important benefit for Hotel Aleksander because they frequently update their services and menus.
“Whenever we added new spa treatments or our sommelier wanted to offer new wines, we had to reprint and replace those pages in each guest directory. Now, we can quickly make changes in the system and once we hit save, all tablets show the newest information. That saves everyone precious time and reduces paper waste.”
A word to your peers
When asked about what she would tell fellow hoteliers about SuitePad, Daria had this to say: “I recommend you consider using SuitePad because it saves your hotel both cost and time. Especially after the pandemic this has become more important for many properties. It also offers a wonderful way to communicate with travelers in a new and more convenient style. We’ve found that Hotel Aleksander’s guests enjoy it, so don’t be afraid to try this new digital tool as well. And if you’re worried about the tech aspect, there’s no need to be. The straightforward backend makes it easy and fun to create your perfectly branded hotel directory.”
- Published on May 24, 2022
