No Smartphone, No Problem. Renaissance Mayflower Concierge Assists Guests via Text

As one of the historic Grand Dame luxury hotels of Washington, D.C., the Renaissance Mayflower hotel sits in between Dupont Circle to the north and the K Street business corridor to the south. With 650 guest accommodations and 74 suites, this hotel serves domestic and international travelers on business as well as leisure travel. 

 

The concierge desk, staffed by senior concierge including two Les Clef’s d’Or Concierges, prides itself on providing efficient, personalized and courteous service. As most busy concierges can attest, using the Compcierge Application as a tool to augment their service delivery is a key component to the desk’s success. The Compcierge Mobile SMS feature helps the Renaissance Mayflower to communicate with guests via text messaging -- the same way guests communicate with their friends, family and colleagues throughout the day.     

 

Renaissance Mayflower hotel guests are trending towards younger more technologically-savvy travelers, which has made the need for the hotel’s concierge team to keep up with technology even more important. Compcierge Mobile now gives the concierge desk the ability to quickly, easily, and affordably deliver a variety of information to its guests in-the-moment via SMS. 

 

Old vs. new methods
In the past, hotel guests would make requests of the concierge desk, such as dinner reservations, and the concierge would dutifully make the reservation and either hand scribe or print out a confirmation. The guest would then return to the desk later to pick up the paper confirmation. The second trip back to the desk and the need for paper were both inefficient and not environmentally-friendly. The advancements of e-mail and e-mail-enabled smartphones eliminated some of that barrier, but not everyone has a smartphone. In those cases, the concierge teams went back to the desk, and back to the paper-based way of doing things. Without a way to easily send text messages, those guests who preferred receiving texts, were stuck with the hotel’s old system.   

The new Compcierge Mobile feature gives hotel staff a convenient solution for conveying information to guests, when they need it, the way they want it. Texting the reservation information to guests’ cell phones, eliminates the second trip back for the guest, saves time for the concierge desk, and perhaps helps to save a tree along the way. While Renaissance Mayflower’s concierge staff still provides the “old world” quality of service, the method of message delivery is catered to the guests’ technology preference: paper, e-mail or SMS. 

 

With Compcierge’s integrated technology, Renaissance Mayflower concierges are able to text information related to restaurants, venues and directions, quickly and efficiently. Staff can push reservation confirmations as well as information including: the closest METRO stop, directions from a specific location and even information on an event happening that night -- all from a template library of frequently sent messages. The two-way text chat conversation feature gives staff a real-time way to communicate with guests while they are out site-seeing or in business meetings. 

 

The installation process was very simple, efficient and quite seamless. Compcierge adjusted the hotel’s application license to enable the SMS features for each computer workstation that the hotel needed. Behind the scenes, Compcierge and their SMS platform provider, Gold Mobile, administered the account setup so that hotel staff were up and running in a short few days.

 

All in all, the Renaissance Mayflower is very happy with its choice in selecting Compcierge and their mobile SMS solution. It has empowered the hotel to keep its guests moving at their own rapid “DC” pace, and has given its concierge staff a boost in the level of customer service that they now deliver. The text messaging service is easy to use, fast, efficient, cost effective, and hits the mark for the hotel’s guests and the level of service they demand.