How It Works

An effective afterhours service system is important to any hotels that do not have 24 hour reception service. Small hotels/motels would have a night manager who waits at the reception or on call until all guests have arrived. Some hotels have a key safe to store the keys and late-arriving guests call the night manager to get the code to open the safe. Some hotels would have smart locks and late-arriving guests call the night manager to get the security code to the smart lock. There are some common problems with all of these existing systems:

Night manager is always on call which can be very stressful sometimes. In particular when the guests are not contactable and there is no idea when they will be arriving at night.
Night manager has to answer similar questions repeatedly.
When the night manager is not the receptionist during the day, there would be communication problems between them in regards to late-arriving guests.
Night manager will have to go to the reception if there is a walk-in guest.
Hotel management does not have data available to analyze the needs and performance of afterhours service.

Alpha Night Manager is designed to assist the night manager to create an effective afterhours service system that does not have these problems. ANM takes over the most tedious part of the night job, i.e.waiting for guests to arrive and help them to get room keys without the need of phoning the night manager. ANM does its jobs mainly through a touchscreen computer, see the photos below for a couple of examples. Alpha Night Manager together with a digital key safe (not included) provides a very effective after-hours service solution. The keys and instructions for late-arriving guests are kept in the safe. When these guests arrive at night they use the touch screen to obtain the safe code and other relevant information. Once they obtain the safe code they can then open the safe and get the keys and instructions for them. Different types of digital key safe can be used, from a basic digital safe costing about $29 (see left hand side photo) to a sophisticated safe costing over $2000 with the capability of dispensing multiple individual keys using individual codes (see right hand side photo). Obviously Alpha Night Manager works perfectly with keyless smart lock systems too.

How does ANM work? Before the office is closed, reception staff set up the rooms for late check-in and sales in the control system, and place keys in the key safe. The night manager will be able to see the list of check-in guests and rooms for sale using his mobile phone. When the guests arrive late at any time, they use the touchscreen to find the code to open the key safe. Once they input the correct information, a message will be sent to the night manager. Every morning the office and the night manager will receive a summary of last night's check-ins and sales. At the end of each month, a summary of the month's check-ins and sales will be sent to the office. In the meantime the office or night manager can check historical records of check-in and sale at any time in the control system. With Alpha Night Manager, the afterhours service system does not have the problems discussed before.

Alpha Night Manager is now always on call instead of the night manager, and this will reduce the workload and stress level of the night manager. It is not a problem any more even we do not know the time when the guests would arrive.
Alpha Night Manager will help guests to check in and the night manager will not need to answer questions. It is estimated that more than 95% of phone calls can be eliminated after employing Alpha Night Manager.
The reception and night manager will be using the same control system, so miscommunication will be minimized.
Alpha Night Manager has the capability of selling vacant rooms to random walk-in guests without night manager being physically at the reception.
Hotel management also has access to the control system as well as historical records of check-ins and sales. This will help the management to plan and improve afterhours services.