Airship's Top Tips for Improving Internal Communication in your Hospitality Business

Whether you’re a hotel, pub, bar, restaurant, or café, we all know that communication in the hospitality industry is the absolute cornerstone of delivering an exceptional guest experience, time and time again. 

But often, we can overlook our internal communication with our teams - something that shouldn’t be neglected! We’ve pulled together our top five tips on how to improve internal communication in your hospitality business:

1. Implement regular team meetings

We get it, the day-to-day running of a hospitality business can be non-stop - but it’s important to ensure you’re holding regular meetings with your teams, including department-wide, one-to-one, and company-wide sessions. These will help you to align goals, foster collaboration, and ensure regular transparent communication.

Department-wide meetings will keep your team focused on shared objectives and problem-solving whilst one-to-ones offer the opportunity for personalised feedback and support, building trust, and addressing individual concerns helping your team members to feel heard and appreciated. Company-wide meetings promote a unified vision and cross-departmental collaboration (think about how marketing can support front-of-house, for example), and allow direct communication from leadership.‍

2. Offer training and development

Enhance your team's skills, improve service quality, and boost morale by offering regular training and development (training also helps to reduce turnover, FYI). By equipping your team with effective communication skills, you can ensure everyone is on the same page, reduce misunderstandings, and enhance the flow of information throughout your business, leading to more cohesive and efficient teamwork.

‍3. Use a centralised communications hub

A centralised communications hub provides a single platform for sharing information, updates, and resources across your business.

Airship Teams integrates with your people management software, so there’s always a live database of every team member and the important information like when they joined, their birthday, email address, phone number, and any other important data you gather during onboarding.

Using this information, you can set up automated communication to send emails or SMS to your team, like a welcome or birthday journey. The communication doesn’t need to be automated either, you can also send one-off emails or SMS to thank them, ask questions, or let them know about changes to the rota, for instance.

‍4. Recognise and reward team members

We all like to feel appreciated, right? It’s crucial to regularly recognise the hard work and loyalty your team put into running a smooth operation day in, and day out. You know, the people who serve customers with a smile, make sales and keep your business ticking.

Airship Teams gives you access to Airship Rewards, a managed digital wallet enabling you to send out little gifts to thank your team for their hard work and loyalty. You can send them a Toggle gift card on their birthday or work anniversary, or simply to thank them after a busy week.

5. Maintain transparency

Sometimes it can be hard to maintain transparency, particularly if you are a multi-site operation, but this is where Airship Teams’ centralised hub for all of your data can help you promote trust and accountability among every team member. You can send out regular email newsletters or updates - that way you can be assured you’re creating clarity and understanding by keeping everyone informed about company decisions and guidelines.

Ultimately, improving internal communication will enhance your guest experience by building a stronger, more connected team atmosphere, and we’re here to help you get the most from your team.

Watch the video below to hear our Business Development Manager, Tess, chat with Hannah from S4labour about how Airship Teams can integrate with your people management software and help you to improve international communication.

Book a demo of Airship Teams now.