Bringing Back-of-House Hotel Operations to the Forefront

While guests see and interact with front-of-house (FOH) hotel operations first, the success of their stay really depends on back-of-house (BOH) spaces. Working behind the scenes, BOH hotel operations provide a foundation that FOH operations can build on to deliver exceptional guest experiences.

Today, guest engagement is about more than providing a clean room and good service. It's about creating and maintaining connections with guests by anticipating and responding to their unique needs. It also means that mission-critical systems—from security to entertainment—must always be operational, and issues must be resolved quickly before guests notice a change.

How BOH and FOH Can Collaborate

While there’s lots of talk about FOH technology, such as mobile check-in and check-out, self-service kiosks, and in-room smart control systems, let’s talk BOH. Here are a few examples of how BOH hotel operations can support impressive FOH guest experiences.

Real-Time, Behind-the-Scenes Synergy Accelerates Guest Response

Cloud computing enables hospitality workers to manage reservations, guest services, inquiries, employee schedules, and administrative tasks from anywhere—and in real-time—to provide better, faster connections to and engagement with guests.

BOH technology like smart kitchen display systems also support real-time connections between guests and staff, allowing the kitchen team to be notified as soon as guests place a food or beverage order—whether it’s for room service or in the onsite bar or restaurant. Information about dietary requirements or special requests can also be displayed to cooks and wait staff to ensure appropriate food preparation.

Robust Security Systems Improve Guest Peace of Mind

To keep guests safe throughout a property, hotels can deploy technology like night-vision cameras and remote IP cameras to monitor and track suspicious activity in corridors, parking areas, and common spaces.

Footage can be monitored in real-time by security personnel or AI. (They can also help identify and address maintenance issues early.) Then, alerts can be sent to the appropriate team or staff member whenever unusual movement or activity is detected so incidents can be responded to immediately.

Optimized Staff Efficiency Makes for Happier Guests

Hotels are adopting robotics and automation to enhance their BOH operations, complement staff workers and ultimately improve guest engagement. For example, robots are being used for:

• Housekeeping to lightly clean guestrooms and public spaces
• In-room delivery to bring towels and toiletries to guests
• Food delivery to carry food and beverages to guestrooms or dining spaces
• Concierge services to answer simple questions from guests
  
  

How to Use FOH and BOH Technologies Together

Uniting FOH and BOH hotel operations and technologies helps hospitality environments implement new practices, processes, and applications to add even more to the guest experience. Here are a few examples of what your organization can accomplish by bringing FOH and BOH together.

Use Data Analytics to Drive Guest Personalization

Hotel systems generate lots of data:

• Guest contact information and demographics
• Guest preferences and behaviors
• Reservations and stay-related data (purpose, dates, length of stay)
• Booking/forecasting
• Onsite sales (merchandise, food)
  
  

Reporting and analytics functions help hotels make sense of all the data they gather, powering new insights and driving personalization to enhance satisfaction and tailor delivery.

For example, this data can be used to do things behind the scenes like:

• Align staffing levels with predictions for upcoming demand
• Allocate rooms based on preferences (floor level, ADA accessibility, pets, bed type)
• Send push notifications or text messages to guests about special deals
• Send pre-arrival details, welcome messages, itinerary reminders, and post-stay follow-up messages
• Provide varying levels of access to property services (e.g., club lounges, wine tasting rooms, happy hour events)
  
  

Automate Touchpoints to Streamline 24/7 Interaction

By automating certain hotel operations and guest touchpoints, hospitality venues can create seamless experiences that reduce friction, ensure consistent service delivery, and lighten the load on labor.

Guest messaging and upselling can also be automated. AI-driven chatbots and virtual concierges can engage with guests to do things like:

• Answer questions about guest services or billing
• Generate recommendations for tourist spots and restaurants
• Make reservations
• Locate available transportation options
• Troubleshoot wireless connectivity issues
• Plan their next visit
  
  

Rely on Predictive Maintenance to Stop Problems Early

Being able to detect unusual system behavior or actions can help you discover and resolve problems before guests are impacted or too much energy or water is wasted.

For example, sensors can identify issues with building systems so they can be addressed:

• Faulty or burned-out lights
• Leaking water pipes
• Heating or cooling equipment running too often
• Lack of airflow
• Elevated energy consumption
• Incorrect temperatures for kitchen appliances
  
  

Hotels can also deploy technology to detect unusual network activity and address them automatically or notify the right people so action can be taken before guests notice. For example, citizenM Hotels uses the unoccupied room time between check-out/check-in to verify Wi-Fi and wired connectivity functionality and address issues by resetting certain in-room services.

Creating a Bridge Between BOH and FOH

Belden constantly seeks out ways to help you improve the guest experience through better BOH and FOH hotel operations, whether that means designing a new network infrastructure from the ground up or helping you reconfigure existing IT infrastructure to serve a new purpose.

Our unique combination of technical and hospitality expertise helps you successfully integrate technology into guest and employee experiences. Belden’s dedicated team of hospitality experts thoroughly understands the technology and systems vital to hotels, gaming facilities, entertainment venues, and cruise ships, as well as the complete connection solutions required to support them.

Read more about bringing FOH and BOH together.

Related Links:

• Uniting FOH and BOH Technology to Elevate Guest and Staff Experiences
• Hotel Fiber Upgrades Don’t Have to Disrupt Operations
• The Hospitality Guest Experience Relies on Network Monitoring