The iconic Boston hotel XV Beacon has selected ALICE to enhance their internal communication, concierge operations, and guest engagement. The award-winning property (Travel + Leisure’s #2 Best Hotel in the U.S, and #1 Best Hotel in Boston and #1 in the state of Massachusetts, as voted by the readers of Condé Nast Traveler), implemented ALICE’s housekeeping and maintenance software ALICE Staff, ALICE’s concierge software, ALICE Concierge, and ALICE’s guest text messaging solution, ALICE Guest, in August of this year. ALICE is the hospitality industry’s leading operations technology, connecting every department of the hotel with one platform for all staff communication and guest requests. ALICE recently acquired concierge software provider GoConcierge to augment its technology and customer service offering.
Prior to implementing ALICE, staff at XV Beacon relied on radios, telephones and emails to communicate within and between departments, with the hotel’s three-person concierge team using concierge technology GoConcierge. While GoConcierge helped the concierge team stay organized and aligned, the lack of a shared technology platform across this concierge-driven hotel challenged communication between the concierge team and other departments, and caused guest data to be siloed.
Upgrading all departments to ALICE has made an immediate impact on staff alignment. “With radios, communication sometimes was unclear and delegation of tasks was sometimes misconstrued,” says XV Beacon’s Chef Concierge, Anthony Collito, “With ALICE, there’s no miscommunication. Having digital confirmation of all staff exchanges and a permanent record of guest information is key for follow up, tracking and production reporting to management.”
One aspect of ALICE’s concierge technology that has benefitted Collito’s concierge department is the ALICE Logbook, which migrates paper logs to the cloud for easy access and analysis. Collito and his team use the Logbook to keep track of house car activities – XV Beacon offers guests complimentary trips around downtown Boston with their fleet of chauffeured Lexuses – and creating a digital repository for all trips makes the monthly audits the team does much less time consuming than before.
Using ALICE’s guest messaging technology has also made things easier for Collito and his department. Prior to ALICE, Collito used a spare phone to text with guests – the seasoned concierge saw early on how guests preferred to receive time sensitive information by text – but sharing a phone between team members created complications and made it difficult to record guest preferences and keep records of guest interactions. Using ALICE’s guest messaging platform to text with guests means all text exchanges are permanently attached to a guest’s profile and this information is accessible to all hotel staff. Collito and his team use messaging to let guests know about their rooms being ready, as well as to communicate reservation and itinerary information.
Collito also appreciates the insights ALICE affords him as a manager. Because ALICE creates a record of all internal work orders and guest requests, managers are able to gain meaningful appreciation of individual and department-level productivity. Collito says this has improved accountability and team efficiency.
