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Bridging the gap in team communication
Hugo manages a team of receptionists, a maintenance contractor, and two teams of both internal and external housekeepers who help keep OTA units in top condition and provide great experiences to guests. With different WhatsApp groups and schedules for every department, the OTA team was constantly messaging and checking spreadsheets for updates. “After opening the third building, it was impossible to manage work across all of these teams manually,” Hugo says.
One of the biggest benefits OTA felt from implementing Breezeway was the reduction of noise from WhatsApp groups. Breezeway pulls reservation information from Avantio to automatically schedule a departure clean task assigned to the right housekeeper after a guest checks out and before the next check-in. This process requires no WhatsApp messages or Excel spreadsheets, saving Hugo at least an hour per day on team scheduling and communication.
Hugo adds that this automated process in Breezeway is also more accurate than their previous way of working. Humans make mistakes, especially when referencing multiple systems to manually create a schedule and message tasks for 22 units multiple times per week. Without a documented system for communication, details would get lost, and tasks would get missed.
“My employees would be very upset if we stopped using Breezeway. Not one person in the company wants to go back to the way we worked before Breezeway.” - Hugo Leal, Owner of Oporto Trendy Apartments
Conduct more accurate work
Not only do they save time on scheduling work, but they also save close to $1K per month by completing work more efficiently and accurately in the field. With departure cleaning checklists specified for each apartment unit, cleaners make sure nothing is missed between turnovers. They can also report maintenance issues with photos and descriptions directly in the Breezeway mobile app.
Another very important part of managing apartment buildings is maintaining the common areas. Breezeway makes it easy to not only schedule tasks based on arrivals and departures, but also recurring maintenance tasks to help keep the entire building running smoothly. For example, OTA schedules recurring tasks to replace the AC filters every six months.
“For me, the priority was to find a technology that partnered with Avantio that could bridge this gap between reception, housekeeping, and maintenance. So, this triangle is working well now because of Breezeway.” - Hugo Leal, Owner of Oporto Trendy Apartments
Delight cleaners and guests with early access
The typical check-in time at OTA is 3:00 p.m., with an 11:00 a.m. check-out on the day of departure. However, through Avantio, OTA collects information from the guest about what their actual arrival and departure times will be. This information is automatically shared from Avantio to Breezeway where cleaners can access it in the field and have accurate information about when they can access the apartment.
Hugo adds, for example, “It happens very often that our technical check-out time for guests is 11:00 a.m., but the guest actually leaves two hours earlier at 9:00 a.m. Now with Avantio and Breezeway, we are able to capture this information and save our cleaners time. The best part is that we can then pass that benefit to the next arriving guest and offer them early check-in.”
With visibility into property readiness in the Breezeway Dashboard, Hugo can easily see in real-time when a cleaning task is completed to let guests know the apartment is ready for check-in. This efficiency makes for happier guests and happier staff.
