People are traveling less because of the coronavirus, and as a result, hotel occupancy has gone down. With fewer guests, valet parking revenues will decrease and you will not need to have as many staff members working. At this time, it is important for hotels to reduce employee labor.
How can you decide which valet attendants to keep and which team members to send home? You can use a valet parking app like ValeoPark to track employee performance. You get access to many metrics such as employee hours, time spent parking and retrieving vehicles, and much more. This article will explore the impact of the coronavirus on hotel valet staff, how you can use ValeoPark to reduce labor, and, if your valet is outsourced to a third-party operator, why you should use valet software to eliminate the valet operator and instead bring the valet in-house.
The impact of coronavirus on hotels and valet businesses
The coronavirus has led to many events and conferences being canceled. With hotel occupancy dropping, hotels that offer valet parking have to adapt to stay afloat. Unfortunately, because there are fewer guests staying in hotels now, valet services need to reduce employee labor to ensure they continue to make a profit from parking.
How to use ValeoPark to reduce employee labor
Using ValeoPark, you can track employee performance and reward those who are doing well. The app has an attendance system built-in, so you are able to see early and late attendance, hours worked, along with other metrics. You can compare how each employee is doing compared to the rest of your staff. With these reports, you have more data when completing performance reviews.
The software enables you to identify top-performing staff and poor performing employees. It goes without saying that when cutting back on labor, you want to keep your best valet attendants and send underperforming team members home.
Another feature ValeoPark offers is an automated payment and request kiosks. You could set up a kiosk in your hotel lobby to reduce human labor and minimize face-to-face contact during a viral outbreak such as the coronavirus. The ValeoPark kiosks make it easy for your business to optimize the vehicle request process. Best of all, the kiosk works 24/7. Guests can request their vehicles, scan their ticket, and pay at any time even when there isn’t a valet attendant available.
Why use ValeoPark to eliminate third party valet operators
ValeoPark can and should be used to eliminate third party valet operators. If valet services are outsourced to a third party valet operator, it is this valet operator’s goal to bill as many labor hours as possible. After all, they need to survive the current COVID-19 outbreak, so there would be an incentive for the third-party valet operator to bill as much labor to the hotel than how much labor is actually required.
These third-party valet operators also typically charge monthly management fees, sometimes for thousands of dollars per month. They also upcharge on the labor hours. For example, the operator hires and pays their staff $10/hour; however, they may be up-charging the hotel anywhere between $12/hr to $18/hr or more. By having a system like ValeoPark, the hotel can eliminate the monthly management fee, reduce the labor rate per hour, and reduce the labor to exactly what is required for the valet volume.
Even if a decision is made to keep the third-party valet operator or the current contract cannot be broken, ValeoPark can be installed in as little as a few days to keep track of the valet operator and make sure they are not overbilling for wasted labor and that their staff are providing the hotel their peak performance.