London Aparthotels Chain Westciti Extends Check-in Flexibility with Keycafe

Aparthotels are all about flexible living and independence for guests. That’s something Westciti has known from the start and has been striving to achieve in its entirety for its serviced apartments in Croydon, London.

With a range of guests at corporate and leisure levels, Westciti has to cater to everybody and a big part of that is the ability to allow guests to check in and out at whatever time of day they like. And because they have 80 units yet only 9 staff members, this has always been a bit of a logistical challenge for them.

Up until Westciti partnered with Keycafe to handle their key management, they were forced to keep a member of staff at the reception 12 hours a day in order to allow guests to check in and out. This took up a large percentage of the overall staff hours they had available and restricted the check in times. They did offer after-hours check-outs using a traditional lock box, but it was unsightly and required a code change every week.

The Westciti team reached out to Keycafe in the hope that they would be able to automate the key management process, expanding check-in times and saving the team plenty of time and money.

The implementation was an instant success. After installing Keycafe’s fully automated key management system, Westciti was able to free up staff time to focus on other important matters at hand, developing the business further and expanding check in times for guests to 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Guests receive a unique code on the day of their arrival which is used to pick up their keys from a SmartBox, and when checking out they use the same code to drop off the keys - no staff needed on-site. Westciti receives alerts for both events, so cleaning staff can be notified and operations are kept on schedule.

Westiciti management also stores master keys in their SmartBox which can easily be distributed to housekeeping and maintenance staff for when any work needs to be carried out on their properties.

La possibilità per il personale addetto alla manutenzione e alle pulizie di prelevare le chiavi quando necessario ha fatto risparmiare tempo e fatica all'intero team. Inoltre, il team di Westciti sa esattamente chi ha prelevato quali chiavi e quando. Ora si perdono meno chiavi, il che si traduce in un ulteriore risparmio di tempo e denaro per l'azienda.

«Tutti apprezzano molto questa tecnologia perché sembra un sistema davvero all'avanguardia», afferma Rishi Bansal, CEO di Westciti, descrivendo le reazioni degli ospiti alla SmartBox. «È un'ottima esperienza e ha ridotto notevolmente gli oneri sia per noi che per i nostri ospiti.»

Westciti si è dimostrata estremamente soddisfatta del tempo e del denaro risparmiati grazie a Keycafe e apprezza la facilità con cui il sistema è stato configurato e può essere utilizzato.