this Agricultural HotelA 50-room hotel on California’s central coast added a feature late last year that allows guests to digitally tip butlers and other staff.
the hotel is one of several This feature was added recently.In The Agrarian’s case, it’s a confrontation Industry-wide labor shortage Make more money by helping employees.
“We can’t necessarily compete with the wages that the big local hotels are offering. We’ve lost people over the years to get better, and in the Other larger hotels in the local area make more money. “Ownership, for any money, is a great selling point.”
The hotel has been using other products from the hospitality tech startup canary technologyand added digital tipping in November.
There is a sign in the hotel lobby, a card in the room, and a QR code on it. After opening the webpage, guests can leave a tip. Guests can tip departmental or individual staff members, and funds are released to the recipient. If a tip is left for the room number, the staff checks the housekeeping schedule and distributes the funds to the relevant staff, Dasman said.
Hospitality experts have been saying that workers have left the industry during the pandemic and are not returning due to low wages, and highlighted the reason in a report. recent survey Conducted by Canary.
The Canary survey was combined with its own sales pitch for digital tipping technology, but it did reveal some interesting insights into guest and customer attitudes toward hotel wages and tipping.
The data is based on two surveys conducted earlier this year by polling platform Pollfish over an 11-day period. The first survey was of 1,000 guests who had stayed at the hotel in the past 12 months, and the second was of 300 current or former hotel employees.
In the survey, nearly 80 percent of current hotel workers said they would be more likely to stay with their current employer if their tips increased.
Of those who did not tip, more than 70% said they would tip digitally if they could. 43% of guests who left a tip said they would leave $3 to $10 more if they had the option to tip digitally — despite the difference between what guests surveyed said they would do and what they actually did.
Canary said in the report that its tipping product can boost wages by up to $3 an hour. Another startup, grizzly bearsays its digital tipping platform helped San Francisco’s Hotel Abri increase salary Save up to $2 an hour for 20% of domestic service workers within the first 60 days of use.
For workers who are seriously considering switching jobs for higher wages, it’s hard to imagine being put off by the possibility of making a few extra dollars an hour if a competitor can guarantee a higher wage. Ultimately, however, the hospitality industry needs to address labor shortages. Raising wages is an easy fix, but often not so simple for smaller hotels, especially during their ongoing financial recovery.
Digital tips don’t solve problems — and relying on customers to do so isn’t a good strategy anyway. But why not add a tool to help employees earn more when they can, not to mention make it easier for customers to tip (if they want to)?
The level of tipping via software hasn’t changed much in Agrarian yet, but it’s also off season, so it’s too early to tell how much of a difference digital tipping will make in the long run. While tipping restaurant staff is more common, guests generally don’t think about tipping room service staff and other hotel employees, so part of the problem is educating people and making them aware of the option, Dasman said.
“I believe that with it, people get more cash tips because now it’s just a reminder in front of guests that tipping is appropriate,” Dasman said. “They probably don’t want to do QR codes and do it digitally, But they might drop a $5 bill or a few on the way out the door.”
