HotelSwaps is new hotel staff retention and incentive programme: a worldwide membership network which allows hotel owners and managers to exchange their unused hotel rooms with other hotel members around the world for staff reward, incentive and training purposes.
Hotels will deposit room nights during periods of their choice in exchange for points. These points can be transferred to high-performing employees who can in turn exchange these for free hotel stays at other member hotels.
Using unused hotel rooms
HotelSwaps has been created to make the most of the huge inventory of unused hotel rooms (over 700 million room nights were left unoccupied in the European Union alone in 2009) in order to help hoteliers better reward their staff.
Recruitment and employee retention has long been a major issue for hotel owners. It is estimated that the average annual cost of staff turnover in a hotel of 100 employees in the US is over USD 600,000 and 70% of hotel General Managers world-wide believe that Human Resources is the most challenging issue for the industry.
Reward, incentivise and train staff
HotelSwaps gives hotel owners an inexpensive, yet high-value, way to reward, incentivise and train staff from across their organisation. The great advantage of the programme is its flexibility, allowing owners to send their management team on training breaks to experience other similar hotels, or to reward key staff for long service with a week’s family holiday.
HotelSwaps has identified four key areas where hoteliers can benefit from the programme:
- Employee retention: an attractive employee incentive plan can prevent staff from searching for alternative employment.
- Employee training: a great way to expose key staff to a wide range of hotel properties, styles and offers.
- Revenue opportunities: whilst the deposited rooms may be offered free of charge, hotels will see an increase in food and beverage revenues as well as in leisure services during periods of lower occupancy.
- Quality feedback: a feedback mechanism has been built into the web application, providing participating hotels with confidential feedback of high quality from fellow hoteliers.
Fees
Hotels pay an annual membership fee starting at £395 for a hotel with less than 25 rooms and rising to £1,950 for a hotel of over 100 rooms. There is also a reservations fee of £40 per booking charged to the guest regardless of the length of the stay.
Once a member, a hotel can start depositing rooms, in return for points. Points are valued based on the seasonality and quality of the hotel to ensure a fair exchange between hotel members. Deposited rooms are held in an online inventory pool from which hotel employees, who have been rewarded with points, can make their reservations.
“I am thrilled to be launching HotelSwaps at the start of 2013,” comments Preben Vestdam, Managing Director of HotelSwaps, “and I am delighted to be offering a tool to hoteliers which will help them improve the hotel industry as a great place to work. HotelSwaps has been a year in the making to ensure we not only have robust points exchange system but also have the right solution to help hotel managers better look after their staff at a very low cost.”
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