Since 2013, internal communication has been revolutionized by Slack. This startup made about 8000 signups during their first 24 hours of launch. At Base7booking, we use it and we love it. Slack helps us to communicate between the different departments and our different offices.

We are convinced that this tool can help every hotelier to provide a better work environment and hopefully a better guest experience. Through this article, we will show you how to implement slack for your hotel and how to use it day after day.

How to set up Slack for your hotel

This is an example for a 25 room hotel providing room service.

Channels

Slack enables you to create some channels for each department or main topic in your organization. The point being to communicate transparently about the correct topic with the correct people. Users can decide to join or not a channel and personalize their notification preferences. Here are some channels you could use for instance.

#frontdesk
For reception activities like booking traffic, guest requests, handover of information between shifts

#housekeeping
For room information such as cleaning status, laundry stock, "do not disturb"

#maintenance
For communication about broken objects, paint jobs, flower renewals

#sales_marketing
For sharing about campaign status, new offers, and social media interactions

#foodbeverage
For room orders, F&B stock and purchase, new products available

#general
For generic topics like press articles, memos and HR information

#random
Because work should be fun, you can put everything you want in this channel

Source: Base7booking.comSource: Base7booking.com
Source: Base7booking.com

Integrations

Slack also enables you to work with some others tools. An action in an integrated app will reflect in the channel of your choice. Here is a list of recommended integrations and web-hooks you should use for your hotel

Dropbox
Cloud file storage and syncing

Email
Displays email communication directly in a Slack channel

Google Calendar
A shared calendar for your team

Google Drive
Online documents and file storage

MailChimp
Online email marketing and contact management

Stripe
Web and mobile payments, built for developers

Trello
To-do lists and task management

Twitter
Social networking and micro blogging service

Incoming WebHooks
Send data into Slack in real-time

How to use Slack for your hotel

There isn't one way of using Slack in a hotel, in fact every hotel should use it according to its needs. However, there are some rules and tips that you have to follow to enjoy Slack at its best.

Communicate you will. Your Slack account is nothing without content, so share pertinent information, don't keep it to yourself.

Respect channel topics. Each information deserves a proper place to be diffused. You will not say that you hotel is fully booked in the #random channel for example. This is why you should educate your staff about the purpose of each channel if you want to use Slack.

Use the @ to quote a person. For example, to ask Victor to change a light bulb in room 15 you would post in #maintenance: "@victor Can you please go to room 15 to change the light bulb (guests are not in-house)".

The most important rule: USE IT! This may sound simplistic, but everyone has to get involved on Slack. It means, no more internal information via email. If you don't follow this rule, you will lose information and by consequence the interest of using Slack.

Source: Base7booking.comSource: Base7booking.com
Source: Base7booking.com
Source: Base7booking.comSource: Base7booking.com
Source: Base7booking.com

Connect Base7booking to your Slack

You can easily connect your Base7 account with your Slack Team to display new bookings and warning messages.

Here is how to proceed:

  1. Go to "Configure integrations" in the main menu
  2. Choose the "Email" Integration
  3. Create an Email Integration
  4. Copy paste the Slack address link in your Base7, settings ->Emails->Options in the box "Always send a copy of email to this address"
  5. Configure the integration according to your criteria

There is a lot more to discover about Slack, customization, API, but with this article you already have the basics to start using Slack in your hotel.

By improving communication between staff members, you will improve the service quality in your hotel. It means happier guests. You will also have more time and more energy to spend on marketing and innovation.

Base7 Booking
Hotel technology company
Base7booking.com

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