First, the good news. 2023 global Hotel demand is forecast to reach 2019 pre-pandemic levels. The appetite to travel, for business and for pleasure, is definitely back. The bad news. As Hoteliers try to get back on a firm footing, global inflation and energy costs are creating uncertainty. That’s on top of legacy COVID issues like staff shortages and supply chain disruption.

As technology suppliers to the hospitality sector, we recently held a live webinar session for Hotel Finance Teams and invited two hotel customers to join us as guest speakers. The live audience dialled in from 39 countries, so it was a great opportunity to get a feel for their current challenges and where they saw opportunities to improve within their finance departments. For example, 59% of the audience confirmed in a live poll that hiring was currently an issue for them. When asked where they saw the biggest room for improvement in their reconciliation process, 57% chose ‘reducing the time taken on manual reconciliation’.

We believe that adopting automation is a way to solve many pain points within hotel financial processes, experienced both in Front of House and in Back Office operations. In partnership with Evention we have developed a solution for hotels, to automate cash management and payment reconciliation.

Our guests, Christelle Terblanche and Marc Quintana are Finance Directors at The Marriott Melrose Arch in Johannesburg, and The Edition in Barcelona. They oversee hotels running 24/7 operations, managing payments from multiple floats within the hotel, maintaining the security and controls needed to manage cash on the premises, reconciling payments, and compiling financial reports for the business.

We interviewed our guests to identify exactly how our automation solution has helped them. Here are a couple of quotes from the session:

Christelle Terblanche, Marriott Melrose Arch, ‘Prior to having the Glory device, I had a dedicated cashier that spent half of each working day, and all-day Monday, solely balancing cash transactions. If I review and think about what we do now, we possibly spend an hour a week to review the cash over and unders…’

Marc Quintana, Edition Hotel, ‘Now we don’t see the cashiers, they can work independently. At the weekends, in lunch breaks, they can use the Glory machine to get change…’

See the interviews in full by accessing the webinar replay.

This year, as hotels look for ways to use valuable staff resources more efficiently, and work more productively, don’t overlook the finance department. If you are running a busy hotel, with multiple points of sale, then time savings in cash management alone deliver a significant cost reduction using our solution. But you can also effect positive change in many more ways – that ensures that you are improving security, internal controls, staff working conditions and the guest experience.

If you have any questions, please contact our Glory Hotel Specialist, Chris Webb, who will be delighted to help you: chris.webb@uk.glory-global.com