Routinely ranked as one of the top five hotels in Yerevan, Armenia, the Nova Hotel is a blend of cutting-edge technology for business travelers and family comfort for those enjoying a leisurely trip. Since opening in 2016, Nova Hotel has won guests over with its large array of amenities including free parking, free WiFi, and complimentary breakfast services, along with a fantastic central location, ranked at the top hotel in the city for walkers with more than 180 restaurants within an 0.3-mile radius.
Since its inception, the Nova Hotel has pushed the limits on innovative technology to deliver its savvy guests the most convenience and comfort possible. As the outside world grows at such a rapid pace, the Nova Hotel seeks to be a haven and a headquarters for its guests.
The Challenge
When you push the envelope on technology, you find your guests keeping wanting that trend to be a constant. Yet, historically a majority of guests do not share their concerns during their stays; only putting them into words later in reviews left on various travel websites. The desire is there for Nova Hotel to reach out to guests during their stay, check their pulse, and give them a platform to get their needs and requests filled without it feeling like spam in the form of frequent emails.
“We want to reserve the emails for things like reservation information,” Hotel Nova Acting General Manager Narine Davytan says. “We have important information we need to share with them, but we don’t want to overwhelm them to the point where they see messages from us and automatically delete them.”
“Choosing EasyWay was the best business decision I have ever made. It is constantly exceeding my expectations. It has boosted our revenue, staff efficiency and guest satisfaction”
The Solution
People might not like a lot of emails or phone calls, but they do love to text and send messages, which is the perfect solution to Nova hotel’s woes. Davyan was staying in another hotel out of the country and received a welcoming message via WhatsApp upon check-in and thought it was a brilliant concept: unobtrusive, yet informative.
“I liked that idea of it very much,” Davytan says. “When I came back to Armenia, I decided to look for a more improved platform that provides this, as well as finding a new way of communication to help us with our challenges. I had a few requirements in my search: a platform that combined several networks in one and provided 24/7 customer service.”
After a few imperfect fits, Davytan found EasyWay, which met both of her criteria and threw in the bonus of a translator service that allows guests to speak in their native language to an employee. When you consider how much of a melting pot Armenia already is before you factor in travelers staying at a hotel and you quickly realize what a winning proposition that is.
“A guest sends a message in his preferred language and the receptionist receives it in English. Later on the guest receives the answer in his own language. We love this feature!”
It cuts down on the emails that the hotel is sending and ramps up response time on both ends of the equation. Guests are getting what they want, when they want without having to leave their rooms or pick up a phone. Even better, there’s an alert system on both ends that reminds both guests and staff when they have one or more unread messages.
“EasyWay makes the guests feel so valued, so appreciated, our guests are amazed, surprised, and satisfied. It's something which improved our rating and performance"
Why EasyWay?
“Choosing EasyWay was the best business decision I have ever made. It is constantly exceeding my expectations. It has boosted our revenue, staff efficiency and guest satisfaction”, Davtan says.
The chief officer of Nova saw an immediate uptick in employee responsiveness and work ethic when EasyWay was implemented because of the efficiency, reduction of timesink, and how streamlined the system is. The easy implementation of the system - which is much like any other texting/messenger service, made for a short learning curve.
“EasyWay makes the guests feel so valued, so appreciated,” says Davytan. ”Our guests are amazed, surprised, and satisfied. It's something which improved our rating and performance.”
By combining the several departments’ needs into one vertical, EasyWay is also improving guest communications which makes for happier customers, better reviews, and more frequent bookings.
That sort of positive has never been more important than during than in the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and unprecedented shutdown that so dramatically affected the second and third quarters of the 2020 fiscal year.
“Because of the coronavirus, I think hotels will be more flexible than before,” Davyan said. “My opinion is that mail is not a good way to inform people about things. Through EasyWay, we can send WhatsApp messages to our guests, which is a much better way of communicating.”
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