Why Hotels Are Turning to Flexkeeping to Solve Staffing and Service Problems
In the ever-evolving world of hospitality, operational efficiency, staff satisfaction, and personalized guest experiences are the keys to success. Luka Berger, co-founder and CEO of Flexkeeping, understands this perfectly. From his humble beginnings as a housekeeper to leading the world's premier hotel operations platform used by over 1,000 hotels in 80+ countries, Luka has revolutionized how hotels manage their operations.
In this interview, Luka shares actionable insights on tackling inefficiencies, optimizing revenue streams, and embracing technologies to perfect profitability in hospitality.
What are the most common operational challenges hotels face today, and how does Flexkeeping help solve them?
On a high level, there are two major operational challenges we help hotels solve. The first is inefficiency. Every operation is full of them, and that immediately translates to problems in service, dissatisfied staff, larger costs, and so on. The second is staffing. We all know it’s the biggest challenge of the industry, and it has been for years.
After hotels implement Flexkeeping, the initial feedback we receive is an immediate sense of relief and happiness across managers and line staff. Teams instantly get a lot of time back. They suddenly have clarity over what’s happening across departments. And they feel this instant sense of control over their tasks, and the ease that comes along with that.
After a few weeks of this newfound time and clarity, hotels start realizing how many changes they can make. We work together to understand what a property wants to achieve in terms of services or guest experience. All of a sudden, those goals become possible because they have information and transparency they never had before. The hotel can then start making changes that help them reach measurable objectives. This is where Flexkeeping becomes extremely valuable at a strategic level for the property.
How can hotels use Flexkeeping to identify and encourage additional revenue streams? Can you give an example of how this worked for one of your clients?
The first way is by optimizing services they already provide, such as room service. For example, we have a customer who regularly analyzes their room service order trends and then aligns and adjusts the menus based on the data they gather - seasons, dates, preferences, and so on. By optimizing their menus, they also optimize their costs. Of course, this also allows them to upsell more by offering better menus to guests.
The second method that is currently super untapped is personalization. I feel it’s one of the biggest opportunities to drive more loyalty and revenue. At Flexkeeping, we are already providing solutions that allow hotels to set up micro personalizations on multiple touchpoints throughout a guest’s stay.
For example, I love tiramisu. Let’s say I’m dining at a hotel and I tell the F&B manager I’m amazed by their tiramisu. With Flexkeeping, the F&B manager can create an automation in the system that says: whenever Luka returns to our hotel, deliver a fresh tiramisu to his door on the second day of this stay - or at 5pm, or 3 hours after his arrival, or at any point you wish - and include a handwritten note. This personalized automation can also be extended to simple housekeeping services, like extra towels.
These easy, small touches are almost never done. Personalization is being talked about, but not executed at the level it can be yet. Hotels need tech solutions like ours to make it happen. But they also need to develop that service philosophy internally - not just for the front office team, but for every staff member across the property.
The theme of our event is “Perfecting Profitability”. How does Flexkeeping directly contribute to better cost management and profitability for hotels?
Today, especially in bigger properties, guest preferences are changing. Which is great! But when you have 500 rooms with 500 different preferences, it’s a nightmare to plan resources. When Flexkeeping works with a property, we know everything about how it operates and how they want to service their guests. We enable them to personalize how they service different guest types. Not every room needs to be serviced in the same way, especially when it comes to something basic like housekeeping. We automate those variables for the property. We also forecast it for them, which means they can now know, based on their reservations, how many resources and staff are required to deliver upcoming services. This gives properties the power to accurately plan and reach a level of resource efficiency that really drives profitability.
Activity-Based Costing (ABC) is becoming an important tool in hotel operations. How does Flexkeeping integrate with or support ABC cost analysis, and how can this data guide more profitable decision-making?
Activity-Based Costing is a methodology to figure out how costs are being attributed based on independent activities in a guest’s stay. I believe this is an amazing opportunity that will change the way we manage profitability in hospitality.
Historically, hotels have been very good at forecasting revenue for channels. The focus has been put there, instead of on the operational side. Usually, costs are split by metrics like available rooms or rooms per night. But that’s because, until now, it was the only cost-effective way to measure costs on an available unit. However, it’s completely wrong if you want to understand the profitability of an individual guest segment or even an individual guest.
That’s where we come in. Flexkeeping understands exactly what’s happening on the operational side within rooms, guest services, maintenance, and beyond. What that means is we’re starting to enable data that allows the hotel - if they have the right data structures - to not just analyze their average cost per room, but to understand how much Luka costs or how profitable Segment A is.
If you have your segments really well structured, perhaps you can discover that the segment you thought was most important is actually less profitable in your current revenue stream. This is where you can powerfully adapt your strategies in distribution and acquisition.
What advice would you give hospitality professionals on developing the right mindset to embrace future technologies, automation, and the evolving nature of work? How can they start aligning their operations with these advancements to become more tech-driven and profitable?
The best teams are very focused on three core objectives: operational efficiency, guest experience, and staff satisfaction. When you nurture these elements together, you can deploy technology to achieve your goals in all three. That’s how the best teams operate and adopt technology successfully.
However, the most effective hotel teams are also aware of their types of service. Not every hotel has the same offerings. Some are luxury, some are lean, some business, some leisure. Whatever your unique offerings are, you need to lean into them. This is where objectives become really accurate. Take the room service example I gave before from one of our clients. This is a 5-star, all-inclusive resort that understands how important room service is to their business, not only as a guest experience item but as a cost and revenue driver. For this reason, they continuously optimize their menus.
When there is a team behind a hotel company that has clear objectives, who are pure hospitality souls, those are the companies we do the best projects with. We have found such teams in almost every country and major market around the world.