Flexible team scheduling
At Edgar Suites, Claire manages a team of digital receptionists who facilitate all of the work that happens on-site at their residences. This includes managing external housekeeping and maintenance contractors, as well as internal Flat Managers. Flat Managers are in charge of housekeeping and any small maintenance tasks and can verify cleanings themselves by checking off the requirements in Breezeway. They are also in charge of welcoming guests when they arrive and are equipped with all of the guest information they need to do so within the task in Breezeway.
In Edgar Suites’ aparthotel business, external housekeeping and maintenance contractors don’t have set schedules, which made it difficult to find a system that would work for them. Now with Breezeway, they have the flexibility to create customized schedules and tasks for each residence. This makes it easy to track who has been working, what tasks have been completed, how long it took, and pay employees accordingly.
With this setup, Breezeway is actually helping to make their jobs easier. Claire adds, “Breezeway is very easy for our teams to use. It's very intuitive and they understand how to use everything. When they click on start their task, then their specific checklist appears and they know the exact details of their task.” Claire incorporates photo documentation as a requirement in these digital checklists to ensure that work consistently meets their brand standards.
With Breezeway, Claire and her team find it very easy to keep track of everything that happens at each apartment with task requirements and photo uploads. For example, with Breezeway her team can easily report maintenance issues and add photos to efficiently pass on the information to their maintenance team. They also have access to important information like, exactly at what time the check-in was done, how many keys were handed to the guests and how many were given back, and when the last time a deep cleaning of the apartment was conducted.
The benefits of the Breezeway + MEWS connection
When Edgar Suites enabled the Breezeway + MEWS integration, their team immediately felt the benefits of automated task scheduling. With MEWS as their reservation software, Edgar Suites easily manages all of their reservation and guest information in one place. With the addition of Breezeway, tasks can automatically be scheduled based on check-in and check-out dates with visibility into guest information.
Having access to guest information in Breezeway is especially important for Flat Managers at Edgar Suites as they welcome guests into the apartment. Guests’ names are automatically pulled over from MEWS into Breezeway, and Digital Receptionists can add in any personal information or special requests.
Claire adds that this integration will continue to be seamless as the business scales. “Every time we add a new residence, we add a new MEWS account. These properties then arrive automatically in Breezeway so I can create different groups based on each residence and assign only specific team groups to certain residences.” This allows Claire to smartly schedule work from anywhere as they expand residences across France.
“As we continue to scale across France, Breezeway has been really useful in streamlining our processes and service standards. Now we know that if a guest stays in one of our apartments in Paris and one in Cannes, they will have the exact same level of service because we have the exact same requirements of cleaning across the board.” - Claire Vatin, Operations Manager, at Edgar Suites
Automated aparthotel maintenance
In addition to maintaining apartment units for guest arrival, Edgar Suites also has to maintain the residence and amenities. Breezeway helps automatically schedule repeat tasks in residences that are not tied to guest check-in or check-out, but instead repeat every week or every month.
For example, Claire says, “In one residence we had frequent complaints about the appearance of the common area, so now we have automated a task to check that common area twice per week. These tasks could include basic cleaning, watering the plants, replacing the scent diffuser, etc. Since implementing this, we have completely eliminated guest complaints in this residence.”
Automating these tasks in Breezeway helps improve the guest experience and ensures that nothing is missed. Now instead of messaging through WhatsApp, the Edgar Suites team can share comments and report issues in Breezeway so everyone has the most up-to-date information. With this confidence in quality service, Edgar Suites is rapidly scaling its operations without compromising on the guest experience.