There’s no doubt that today’s hotel landscape is competitive. Guests expect five-star experiences from every stay, and hotels need to constantly find ways to meet those expectations while making their location, brand and team stand apart from competitors.
From the front desk, to the rooms, to lobby restaurants and bars, any hotel’s ability to deliver these standout experiences depends on great teams.
Yet, some hotels may be overlooking a simple but extremely impactful way to keep their staff engaged with the mission of winning customers back, every time they visit. That tactic: tipping.
The last few years have made mainstream the practice of tipping hotel workers from your phone, usually by scanning a QR code in the room or in public areas.
Digital tipping materials remind guests that there’s a human behind the great experiences they’re having at a hotel, nudging them to “opt in” to a demonstration of gratitude. And because digital payments align with the way many guests prefer to pay – McKinsey data shows digital payments are used for about a third of on-premises transactions – it’s easier than ever to help guests go from thinking, “I should leave a tip,” to actually tipping.
As the practice has grown the last few years, we’ve heard from team managers at hotels that digital tipping programs can boost morale, create friendly competition, inspire new thinking around service excellence, and even drive up the number of physical cash tips teams see each week.
For employees, that can translate to rising service quality scores over time, as teams learn how to best deliver to guests’ expectations, and get more tips in the process.
But the bigger benefit that hotel management needs to recognize is that happier teams stay together longer. All of these benefits from tipping – increased service quality, higher wages for workers, and employee engagement with mission-critical strategy – they all roll up to reducing the huge costs of managing turnover.
Here are a few steps hotel managers can take to incorporate a digital tipping strategy that ensures employees reap the rewards they want to see for their work, and the five-star reviews keep rolling in.
Educate and Prepare your Team
Getting teams excited about the benefits of digital tipping is a big factor in the overall success of adopting the technology.
Tipping platforms are intentionally designed to increase the take home pay of hourly workers as less people are carrying physical currency. So start by sharing some success stories from other hotels with your team – you can find lots of these stories online, and hospitality management groups should encourage sharing wins between locations.
Team members should also be involved in the strategy around digital tipping. Where do we place the materials, and when should they be refreshed? Do valets want to display a placard, or hand business cards back with keys?
The better a team understands how the program will be deployed onsite, the more likely it is that they stay engaged in the success of the program for everyone.
Short employee trainings before implementing digital tipping can build excitement and help make sure setup goes smoothly. Once a program is up and running, make sure the team leader walks everyone through the digital interface, so the team can ask questions. Then every week or month after that, use tipping data to celebrate team wins or prompt discussions about improving service quality.
Remind Your Guests of Tipping Opportunities with Strategic Materials
Printed materials are critical for visibility and encouraging guests to participate in digital tipping when the moment arises. By placing clear, accessible instructions in areas of the hotel where tipping customarily takes place, hotels can bridge the gap between traditional and modern tipping moments.
These can be as simple as a plain card on a bedside table or at a concierge desk with a QR code, but hotels find their programs are more likely to succeed when the materials exactly match the branding of other hotel materials.
Hotel managers should work with corporate brand teams or tipping providers to make sure that materials are approved and look like part of the polished experience guests want. This will further contribute to the feeling that the program is an opt-in experience. Tipping isn’t required, by nature, so materials should empower tipping at the proper moment without interrupting or asking guests and customers to tip under pressure.
Celebrate Your Teams’ Wins
The power of digital tipping platforms to bring teams together shouldn’t be underestimated. All the major platforms give team leaders tools to monitor tip performance and track feedback that guests leave along with their tips.
Recognize employees on a tipping hot streak, or when every member of a certain team lands a tip. Share those moments with other departments to build excitement around the program, and it may even create more real connections between your guests and your front-of-house staff.
Instituting a digital tipping strategy helps hotel teams not only increase hourly workers’ take-home pay, usually in the dollars-per-hour range, but it can significantly reduce the costs of managing teams to success.
Competition for hospitality dollars is fierce. But digital tipping might just give you a self-sustaining competitive edge. Help guests see and reward the people behind their great experience today, and give your teams a reason to help you deliver even better experiences tomorrow.
About the Author
Russ Lemmer launched Grazzy in 2021 to help service workers reclaim tip earnings that have diminished as fewer people carry cash in the tap-to-pay era. The service quickly gained favor in hotels, but also supports service workers at car washes, salons, restaurants and bars. Grazzy can help staff earn several dollars more per hour by encouraging more guests to tip, making it easier for businesses to recruit and keep great employees.
Prior to Grazzy, Lemmer co-founded Silvercar, Inc., a luxury car rental service that was acquired in 2017 by German automaker Audi. While serving in several Vice President roles at Silvercar, Lemmer expanded on the rental car concept to create Dealerware, a fleet management platform that powers rental offerings from car dealerships and other manufacturers. Lemmer served as Dealerware’s President from 2015 until 2021, when he left to start Grazzy.
As a graduate of the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas, and a former employee of both Austin Ventures and Bain & Company, Lemmer has been at the center of entrepreneurship and innovation in Austin, Texas for 20 years.
