The problem
Casa Verde is a restored Dutch-era townhouse with thick walls, a shared lift and forty-eight rooms spread over three floors. None of that is a problem for guests. All of it is a problem for a request written on a notepad at reception.
Before Staywally, every guest need arrived by phone at the front desk. The receptionist wrote it down, walked it to a department or called an extension, and then had no way of knowing whether it had happened. Guests called back to check. Those callbacks were roughly a third of all calls.
What changed
A QR card went on every bedside table. Scanning it opens a portal tied to that room, in the guest’s language, with the twelve things guests actually ask for as tiles.
Requests route straight to the department that owns them, with a target time attached. Housekeeping accepts on a phone; the guest’s screen changes to “Priya is on her way”. Nobody at reception is in the middle of it any more.
The kitchen got a display screen for room service, and the manager got a routing screen where each service has a department, a priority and an SLA in minutes.
The first month
Scan rate reached 71% in the first fortnight — higher than anybody expected for a property with a large share of older guests. The single biggest driver was putting the Wi-Fi password behind the same QR code, so guests scanned it within minutes of arriving.
Two SLAs were wrong at first. Towels were set to ten minutes, which the linen-store walk made impossible, and maintenance was set to forty-five, which was far too slack. Both were retuned in week three and the red on the board largely disappeared.
Where they are now
Front desk call volume is down 54%. Median time from a guest tapping a request to a staff member accepting it is 38 seconds. Room service revenue is up 22%, which the team attributes almost entirely to the menu being in the guest’s pocket with photographs and in their own language.
The metric the manager watches is none of those. It is the share of requests that breach their SLA, which sits at 2.1% and which he reviews every Monday with the department heads.
The phone used to ring forty times an evening. Now it rings for things that actually need a person.