Interdepartmental Hotel Communication

Date: August 24, 2021

Written by Alecia Boyce, CHBA; CHRM; CHIA

Every hotel is made up of multiple departments. While each department must function well on its own to accomplish its individual tasks, it is imperative that all departments also function well together to achieve the overall mission of the property. There are many reasons that departments sometimes do not work together well, from poor leadership in general to the need for improved systems and processes across teams.

Consider the below hypothetical scenario which highlights the need for solid interdepartmental communication (especially in hotels where for whatever reason the housekeeping and maintenance departments are not able to update information within the PMS, either directly or by using keys on the in-room phone systems).

Jim is a guest who recently had a weekend getaway at his favorite full-service hotel, which he frequents several times each year. After his stay, Jim sent the following email to the general manager.

“While usually beyond satisfied with my stays at this property, this time I was especially disappointed. I arrived two hours after the guaranteed check-in time; however, housekeeping did not have my room ready. Front desk stated they were not aware of this until they attempted to check in my room in the system. In addition, I had requested a room on the first floor to allow my pet easy access to go outside, and despite being assured that this request would be accommodated, it was not.

When I checked into my room on the fourth floor, there was a card from the sales department on the desk and a bouquet of flowers intended for another guest, which I know because the name on the card was not mine. After bringing this to the attention of the front desk, they contacted sales and were told that they had to move my room.

Upon entering my new room, I found maintenance tools on the bathroom floor. Front desk was sincerely apologetic for the situation and offered me a discount on an appetizer at the hotel’s restaurant to make up for the issue. I was assured maintenance would be finished in the room within the hour, so I opted to go to dinner while I waited. When I attempted to use the certificate to order my complimentary appetizer, I was advised the menu had changed two weeks ago and the appetizer comped by the front desk was no longer available. To my surprise I was not offered a substitute appetizer.

I found something else to order and ultimately enjoyed my meal. I later returned to my room, but maintenance tools were still all over the bathroom floor despite my being assured their project would be completed within the hour, and it was now an hour and a half later. I returned to the front desk, who reached out to the maintenance department only to be informed they did not have the supplies needed to finish the project and wouldn’t until morning.

Front desk moved my room again. Fortunately, the newest room was on the first floor which was what I had requested when I booked my stay. I asked the agent at the desk why I hadn’t received this room in the first place and was informed that the room was supposed to have been out of service, but maintenance must have finished the work in that room early. I was surprised the agent didn’t confirm the room actually was usable with the maintenance department; however, when I arrived at the room it did seem to be in a suitable condition.

To make up for the additional shortcomings I experienced after dinner, front desk offered me a complimentary two-hour late check-out, which I accepted. However, housekeeping knocked on my door at the regular time and advised me that I needed to check-out so they could turn the room. Despite being promised a late check-out from front desk, I gathered my belongings and left as I just did not want to go through any more problems from your property.

As a regular guest, I expect better service from this hotel. Please get your departments working together so this doesn’t happen again in the future!”

This hypothetical scenario clearly represents an extreme; however, it is exactly the situation a guest can find himself in when the various departments of the hotel are not communicating and/or cooperating with each other.

Following are some ways to explain where the breakdowns in communication between departments occurred and ways in which they can be improved to prevent guest issues such as the scenario above in the future.

Front Desk

The front desk is the hub of the hotel. While responsible for all things concerning reservations and payments, those working in this department are also fielding all guest concerns and complaints from every other department as well as maintaining the hotel’s room inventory, so it is imperative that they be kept in the loop on the comings and goings of every department as they will be the staff helping to resolve and/or make up for the issues. In addition, they are also responsible for communicating with other departments to ensure their solutions are possible. Below are the shortcomings of the front desk department from the above situation and tips for improving for the future.

The front desk team did not do everything they could to ensure that the guest received the first floor pet friendly room that he had requested after promising this to the guest. As a regular guest, they would have been aware of his preferences, and many PMS systems actually have the capability to note guest requests. Staff knew there was a room that had been out of order on the first floor and could have followed up with maintenance to determine if there was any possibility of early completion of the project in the room. Had this step been taken, it could have prevented the other issues experienced during the guests’ stay.
The agent should have communicated to housekeeping that there was an assigned room that was still showing dirty in the system prior to check-in time to determine if the room would be ready on time or to get an ETA on when it would be clean if not so they knew if they needed to select a different room prior to Jim’s arrival.

The agent assured the guest that maintenance would be completed in his new room within a certain time frame without checking with that department first. A simple radio to a member of the maintenance team would have allowed the agent to know the work would not be completed until morning.
Front desk should have reached out to maintenance to confirm the first floor room was in fact available in order to ensure that its showing as available in the system was not actually an error. Housekeeping also should have been reached out to in order to confirm the room was clean for the same reason as housekeeping should always double-check rooms for needed touch-ups following maintenance projects. This lack of communication could have resulted in the guest’s being sent to yet another room which was not usable.

Front desk should have communicated their promise of a late check-out to the housekeeping department to ensure the guest was not disturbed prior to the time of the late departure.

Sales and Marketing

Sales is a crucial department to a hotel, especially if the property does a substantial amount of group and convention business. But like every other department, they need to ensure that they are communicating with all other departments to ensure high levels of guest satisfaction.

In this instance, sales has placed an amenity in a room without communicating with the front desk. The department should have first either checked the PMS or checked with the front desk team to ensure the availability of the room they had selected for their amenity.
Even if sales had not checked into this beforehand, they should have communicated with the front desk team afterward as well as let them know that they absolutely had to have this room so that front desk could book the correct guest into the room selected by sales and look for another room for their regular guest prior to his arrival.

Housekeeping

No hotel will remain operational without a strong housekeeping department. This department maintains the presentation of public spaces, turns over guest rooms, responds to guest needs passed along by the front desk and so on.

In the hypothetical scenario, housekeeping shares responsibility with the front desk team for the lack of communication regarding an assigned room remaining dirty at check-in time. While front desk should have reached out on the status of the room, housekeeping could just have easily either run a report of assigned rooms or reached out to the front desk team for this information. This would have enabled front desk to plan accordingly for a possible room change.
Housekeeping should have notified front desk when they cleaned the first-floor room that had previously been out of order so that it could be updated in the system. They would have known that it had been out of order and was still scheduled to be, so they could have taken the extra step to ensure the other department knew the room was ready. This would have allowed the front desk team to select this room for the guest per his original request.
This department also shares responsibility for the issue with the guest’s late check-out. Just as front desk should have alerted housekeeping to late check-outs, the housekeeping department should have confirmed if there were any if they did not receive notifications.

F&B

While a food and beverage operation is essentially separate from the majority of the hotel’s operations, the department must still keep other departments aware of changes that they have made as those other departments are promoting their offerings as well as intermingling with the F&B department to some extent.

In this scenario the restaurant bears responsibility for not alerting the front desk department that its menu has been changed to ensure certificates for complimentary appetizers were updated. This lack of communication caused what was intended to resolve a guest issue to be yet another issue that needed to be resolved. The restaurant must communicate when menus change, and they should provide a menu to the front desk as well as ensure that prior menus are removed from the front desk department.
The restaurant also should have offered a substituted appetizer of equal or lesser value to accommodate the guest. Rather than assuming the guest just had a certificate for a specific appetizer, they could have followed up with the front desk to determine if the certificate was part of a guest service recovery response and provided an alternate item if so.

Maintenance

This is another crucial department to any hotel. Rooms and public spaces are subject to general wear and tear as well as the periodic guest who is destructive to property, and maintenance ensures that resulting issues are fixed for future guests.

First and foremost, maintenance should have communicated to front desk that the first floor room was ready to be returned to inventory pending housekeeping prior than originally scheduled. This would have allowed them to use this room and prevent the additional issues that arose during the guest’s stay.
Maintenance should have alerted front desk that the second room needed to be placed into pick-up status so that they were aware work was being performed and the room was not available. This also would have enabled housekeeping to be made aware that the room would need a final check prior to being placed back into inventory.
When maintenance realized the work would not be completed that night, they should have communicated with front desk to move the room from pick-up status to out of order. This would have ensured that the room wasn’t checked into to start with, but also would have alerted the front desk team that the room would never be available that evening.

The cost of poor communication between hotel departments can be extremely high. In just this scenario, there is the loss of productivity and cost of time on the front desk team’s part to resolve the many issues, the cost of tarnishing the hotel’s reputation should the guest have complained by way of an online review as opposed to an email, the cost of potentially losing the future revenue a regular guest, the cost of attempting to comp items in the restaurant and so on.

How to improve interdepartmental communication

Find a way to streamline communication processes in the hotel. Consider all the above situations again from a different perspective. Maybe people did communicate – but maintenance sent a radio message to desk when they were on the phone, so they didn’t hear it. And front desk sent emails to everybody not realizing that the email system was not functioning properly for three hours. F&B told desk about the menu change but forgot to pull the old certificates, and one was handed out by a new associate who didn’t know. And maybe sales left a post-it note at the desk, but it got stuck on a sheet of scrap paper that was thrown away before front desk read the message. Maybe the interface between the room phones and PMS system wasn’t working for housekeeping to update the status of rooms, but they didn’t realize that when they were using it. Systems and processes need to be put in place to prevent the fall-out of missed communication in addition to a lack of communication.
Ensure the property’s staff is trained on and utilizing the full functionality of the PMS across departments, not just at the front desk.
Require all new hires to shadow other departments as part of an orientation process. Many communication issues arise simply from a lack of understanding of the other departments’ functions and needs.
Hold regular meetings with department managers to address any issues that have been occurring as well as to provide a heads-up on expected changes and projects.

Cross-train employees between departments. This will not only improve communication but will also provide relief during times the property is short-staffed.
Create checklists for particular tasks, including a check box to notify pertinent departments when necessary. This eliminates the issue of simply forgetting to communicate.
Require team members to stay up to date on guest reviews. This will help them to see issues that have occurred as a result of their action or inaction in relation to other departments.
Create an intranet and ensure it is updated regularly.
Ensure that department heads and managers are setting an example for their teams and holding them to high standards of communication within their own department. If team members are not communicating within a department, odds are the department is also not communicating well across the property.

Communication across departments can be a tricky and difficult process at times, but if a hotel is going to be successful, it must train staff members to anticipate the needs of other departments and to communicate to ensure those needs are met to ensure guest satisfaction and the mission of the hotel.