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How to run a hotel shuttle without the radio

Short answerLog each pickup when the guest calls, send it to the driver and front desk at the same time, and text the guest the exact pickup spot and time. A second text when the driver is close means fewer missed rides.

At a lot of hotels, a shuttle request goes like this. The guest calls the front desk. The agent puts them on hold, radios the driver, waits, maybe radios again, then gets back to the guest with a rough time. If the desk is busy, that call waits too. Multiply that by every flight and it adds up fast.

Where it breaks down

  • The front desk relays every pickup over the radio, even when there's a line at check-in.
  • The driver can't always answer the radio while driving.
  • Guests don't get a clear pickup spot or time, so they call again or wait at the wrong door.
  • Nothing gets written down, so nobody knows how many rides happen or when the busy times are.

A better setup: pickup texts

Guests still call the hotel. That part's easy for them. What changes is what happens next. The desk logs the pickup in a few taps and it shows up on the driver's phone right away, no radio.

The guest gets a text with the exact spot to wait, like the hotel shuttle stop at T1 or T3, and the pickup time. When the driver's a couple of minutes out, they get another text. A text is a lot easier to check in a busy terminal than trying to remember what someone said on the phone.

Log every ride

Once pickups go through one system, you get a record for free. You can see which hours are busiest, how many airport runs happen per day and whether you need a second driver on certain shifts. That's hard to figure out from radio chatter.

How Room Warden handles it

In Room Warden, the desk logs a pickup when the guest calls. Drivers see it live, guests get texts with the pickup spot, the time and a heads-up when the driver's close, and every trip gets logged with the time and terminal.

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