A new survey has revealed that over a quarter of hospitality operations spend nearly one day a week on administration, stopping them from spending more time on customer facing activity.
The average time that respondents said they or their team spent on admin was 5.49hrs a week, but 14.42% said it was between 7-8 hrs a week and a further 14.88% said that it was more than one day. If this could be reduced by two hours a week, they would choose to devote more resource to focusing on guest experience (56%), training staff (44%), engaging front of house staff (28%) and driving customer loyalty (23%).
The survey, commissioned by Access Hospitality, took a snapshot of opinion from across the hospitality industry on attitudes towards business in 2019 and the measures being implemented to deliver improved customer and staff experience to stimulate growth. It included 217 responses from hotel, pub, bar and restaurant businesses through to food and go outlets and conference venues.
Henry Seddon, Managing Director of Access Hospitality commented “It’s worrying to see that so many hospitality operators are still caught up in admin tasks that take them away from interacting with their customers when there is a wealth of technology, tools and apps available to help them manage their business and reduce admin time. This is an area in which Access Hospitality works closely with its customers and the survey highlights why it’s so important for us to continue to apply the right technology solutions to help reduce the time they spend on admin, giving them freedom to add more value to their operational demands.
“But our survey also revealed that, whilst improving overall profitability was the number one priority for the next 12 months (62%), guest and employee experience also rated highly. Where operators recognise that using technology to break free from the burden of back office duties, they are therefore in the best position possible to work with staff and customers to offer the best experience of its type in their venues. As they face increased pressure on recruiting and retaining skilled staff as well as menu engineering, technology is poised to make an even bigger impact on how they manage their business.”
Encouragingly, nearly a third of people surveyed (29%) said that they are looking to improve customer service by introducing technology as part of their menu engineering programme, including an increased attention on providing allergen and calorie information. The same number are also looking at technology to aid improved data reporting whilst 33% see implementation of customer loyalty apps in the next year as a boost to improving customer service.
“The survey results have highlighted some very practical aspects of running a hospitality business” continued Seddon “and the challenges faced in using resource as effectively as possible. Some operators are still trying to do everything themselves when they could use technology programmes for everything from an integrated kitchen management system and menu engineering, to customer loyalty and online payment tools, right through to staff training and providing an enhanced employee experience. Introducing any software will increase productivity whilst reducing manual tasks and give hospitality operators freedom to do more. When applied on a wider platform, such as the Access Hospitality Product Suite powered by Access Workspace, even bigger benefits are possible as efficiencies are achieved at every point of the end to end solution and managed with just one sign in.”
Full details of the trends identified by the survey are available at: https://pages.theaccessgroup.com/Hospitality_Trends_Survey.html
Further information on how Access Hospitality technology can reduce admin time to help build business is available at https://www.theaccessgroup.com/hospitality/.