With three properties in London, the Zetter Hotels & Co. creates experiences fuelled by passion, sublime cocktails, and unforgettable parties. The first hotel opened its doors in Clerkenwell in 2004 - it was one of London's first boutique hotels to apply environmental principles, including a 1,500-foot bore-hole that supplies the hotel with all of its water.
A quirky 13-bedroom Georgian Townhouse that feels more like the private home of an eccentric great-aunt followed in 2011: the Zetter Townhouse in Clerkenwell was born. Finally, the 24-bedroom Marylebone Zetter Townhouse opened in 2015, featuring a chic cocktail lounge and an enviable location on the fashionable Seymour Street.
Faced with an outdated technology stack, digitizing and automating their daily operations was one of the main objectives for the Zetter Hotels & Co. We spoke to Managing Director Liutauras Vaitkevicius and GM Eljesa Saciri about how they have transformed their operations with smart tech thanks to Flexkeeping‘s Hotel Operations Platform.
Our hotels had outdated software solutions, some 15 years old. These inefficient tools lacked technological flexibility and forced staff to use phones and paper. We wanted to improve things and save money by automating our daily operations: housekeeping, maintenance and team communication. Before Flexkeeping, our team faced all the common problems of paper and phone-based communication.
Housekeeping was working with prints from the PMS while our maintenance team received tasks via phone calls and post-its. They struggled with language barriers, as not all team members had a good command of English. So much time was wasted trying to understand where the problems were before we could even tackle them.
»Housekeeping was running on papers, the maintenance team constantly got calls, and our management team lost hours every week preparing reports.«
— Liutauras Vaitkevicius, Managing Director at the Zetter Hotels & Co.
After embracing Flexkeeping, daily operations saw immediate improvements. Not only are the housekeeping schedules and tasks updated automatically, our maintenance tickets reach staff within seconds. Since the platform translates everything, our foreign staff can contribute more and easily collaborate. Team communication now flows centrally across all three properties.
Interdepartmental communication is such a huge thing for us and Flexkeeping saves us so much time and creates so much more efficiency because our housekeeping team and maintenance team can communicate through it about what's happening and what needs to be done.
It's all automated so they know, for example, if there will be someone checking into that room today or housekeeping is in there currently or if there is a maintenance issue they can just log it. Maintenance will receive that notification immediately. In essence, it has given access and power to my team to be able to resolve matters without me having to be on top of people consistently.
Our team also uses Flexkeeping's digital checklists for quality and safety checks, digital SOPs for internal knowledge sharing, Lost and Found, and a real-time reporting system for the management team.
»Flexkeeping brought us an easier way of working together while making our whole team happier. It helped us to digitize and automate daily operations across all three properties.«
— Liutauras Vaitkevicius, Managing Director at the Zetter Hotels & Co.
Housekeeping teams are able to focus on what they need to focus on and that's such a key element in it. We are often so focused on the front of house and what the front of house needs that we tend to forget that, without the housekeeping team, we'd have nothing. Alleviating pressure from them and allowing managers to track things and know what's happening within their team makes it so much easier for them to do their jobs more efficiently.
Inefficiencies, unpredictable situations and lack of communication lead to hotel staff burning out. Not having regular information causes staff to be inefficient, do tasks the hard way and deal with unpleasant surprises all day. We recognize how vital Flexkeeping is to simplifying team communication and de-stressing our staff. We have a great team who deserve a tool that decreases work-related stress. If I can give it to my staff to make their job easier and better, then that’s what I’m doing.
A lot of housekeeping team members don't speak the language of the country that they're working in but Flexkeeping allows them to still communicate with the rest of the team - without the stress and anxiety of whether they are saying things correctly. It's all in the platform and so efficient for them to use, which creates a sense of comfort and alleviates all of that pressure completely.
»Being a small team running three hotels with 96 guest rooms, our priority is efficiency. My team needed an easy way to oversee daily operations across all properties to stay on top of things.«
— Liutauras Vaitkevicius, Managing Director at the Zetter Hotels & Co.
The integration with apaleo was seamless. You always expect integrations to be complex projects lasting for weeks, but with Flexkeeping it was seamless. All the information we need flows through both systems, so we are super happy with how it went down. They were also so malleable to our needs as a company when it came to onboarding.
One of the truly great things about Flexkeeping is the people. We work in an industry where we deal with people every day and we ourselves know how crucial it is. The communication, flexibility and availability by support to answer any questions we have had has been amazing.