The Montauk Beach House Uses ALICE’s Guest Messaging and Staff Technology to Keep the Good Times Coming, All Season Long
New York, NY — Long Island’s trendy The Montauk Beach House is using ALICE’s guest messaging and staff technology, ALICE Guest and ALICE Staff, to improve their front desk staff coordination and guest service.
Prior to ALICE, front desk staff at the seasonal property managed guest requests and coordinated their activities via email and walkie-talkie. The volume of email from guests and calls to the front desk would often strain a small front desk staff tasked with managing other staff departments, greeting guests, and fielding concierge requests. Last year, The MBH’s management chose ALICE in order to upgrade their guest communications and help the front desk communicate with each other and with guests.
In the heart of downtown Montauk, and just a few steps from the beach, The MBH draws a young, well-heeled clientele looking for a unique, laid-back summer experience. ALICE’s guest engagement toolset, which includes a Beach House-branded app and guest text messaging (which doesn’t require downloading the app), is a perfect fit for this tech-savvy crowd.
Stella Garces, Director of Rooms at The MBH, has been delighted by the reception to these new guest communication channels from both guests and staff. For guests, in-app messaging and text messaging comes naturally. Common messages from guests include requests for more in-room amenities and towels, as well as inquiries about local events and recommended restaurants. The hotel’s staff, meanwhile, love that they can now communicate with guests prior to arrival, and have created a library of messaging templates to send to guests prior to check-in and throughout their stay.
Because The MBH’s front desk staff doubles as concierge, pre-arrival communication with guests enables the busy staff to create customized itineraries for guests before they even arrive on property. Staff can use ALICE to email these itineraries directly to guests or print them out and hand them to guests at check-in, cutting down on extra visits to the front desk. Concierge specific tools within ALICE, like the Google-powered vendor database known as “Local,” let front desk staff assemble online lists of favorite places that any staff member can access at any time to provide recommendations to guests.
Staff at The MBH are also benefiting from ALICE’s logbook functionality, which the team is using to manage their lost and found. Prior to ALICE, the front desk staff managed lost and found with both online and offline files, but still occasionally forgot to update them or submit all the necessary information. Now, with ALICE, it’s easy for staff to take quick notes about the whereabouts of a guest belonging, attach a photo if necessary, and tie the information to a guest profile. This has resulted in a lot less stress when a guest calls the front desk to inquire about a lost item.
“Staff love how user-friendly ALICE is,” says Ms. Garces. “ALICE gives us one centralized place for all guest messaging and guest request management, which has made our lives at the front desk a lot easier. Even text messaging, which is intended for guests, has made things better at the front desk, allowing us to provide personalized service quickly. It’s evident how much our guests appreciate these new tools as well.”
