A Polish hospitality expert in Iceland

Here at GuestJoy, we keep in touch with our customers on a regular basis. It is really important for us. A while ago we interviewed Kajetan, a Polish national who is the Business Analyst at the Airport Hotel Aurora Star in Iceland. 

Kajetan originally worked in IT in Poland however, life brought him to nordic lands. Read along to find out what he thinks about GuestJoy and how we support his work day-to-day. 

GuestJoy: So what is your story? 

Kajetan: I originally worked in IT in Poland, as soon as I got into hospitality I realized how different it is from what I previously thought. So my story is that I just wanted something else than my previous life in IT. I connected with the owner of the hotel and the GM and here I was.

I was shocked by how complex the industry is. Many people – among them myself – assume that working in a hotel gives a simple life. And now, as I am part of this industry, I know that I need to pay attention to a hundred different things at the same time.

Revenue, guests, complaints, who is staying here at the moment. Besides all this, you need to plan ahead, analyze the performance and report, while constantly thinking about what and how to improve taking seasonality into account.

Every day my team and I have new ideas and solutions. I believe this is a job that really keeps me on my toes. There is always something new, a challenge, a problem waiting to be solved. 

GuestJoy: Tell us about your property a bit! 

Kajetan: Keflavik has many hotels near the airport, but we are the only ones within walking distance, which is about 100 meters. The next one is 2 km away. This is definitely our main advantage. There are car rental opportunities, so we have everything you need for a good holiday. 

Due to its location, our hotel is especially attractive for groups and solo “one-day” stayers. For groups for our hotel is simply the best solution for a stay before a departure – in my opinion, our location limits us a bit in this segment.

That is why one of our main goals is to increase the average length of stay of individual travelers. We would like to achieve it by finishing the expansion, adding meeting rooms, a spa and higher standard rooms to our hotel.

GuestJoy: So what are the issues that arise and how do you tackle them? 

Kajetan: At the moment we are focusing on guest relations. I have to be honest, Upselling was never our priority. The most important thing for us is to have satisfied and informed guests. 

GuestJoy offers the perfect tool for this. I love the feedback and analytics features it gives us all the data we need.

We receive about double or triple the amount of reviews than before GuestJoy, and of course thanks to this we are high on Trip Advisor. It’s relieving that I don’t need to go on multiple platforms to check all the reviews, it’s all in the system.

Previously we needed to encourage people at the check out (at the front desk, personally) to leave a review, these days GuestJoy does it automatically for us. And God forbid, once in a leap year when we receive a bad review I can immediately answer to it and it does not even have to go online. 

Our front desk used to be very busy, but now that we have the emailing system within GuestJoy, we can send them all the information pre-arrival. We used to have guests get lost at the airport, but now we can inform them about our exact location.

Even if they don’t memorize it, it’s always on their phone. Honestly, sometimes we just hand over the keys to the room and that’s it. We don’t even need to prepare anything because the online check-in feature works like a charm. 

I use this software every day, and even though upsell was never our focus, we still see our income increasing every week. We only have the most basic services, such as dinner, early check-in, late check-out. Without putting effort into it we still get a few requests. 

GuestJoy: What do you think about the UX/UI, Is GuestJoy easy to use? 

Kajetan: “I used to be the person who was directly involved in designing UX mockups for web applications. My approach has always been simple. Make it simple.

And I confirm that GuestJoy is following the same way. The dashboard sums up everything you need to know, and only a few clicks are enough to navigate through. That is crucial to provide a tool that could be easily used by non-technical users.

Of course, regarding any issue the support is always ready to help. I really appreciate that you are regularly taking care of your existing customers; with the blog articles you publish, webinars and all the practical information that I receive via email. This is the highest possible level of communication.