Preston Palace has been a household name in the Netherlands since 1990. Besides the lovely hotel rooms, Preston Palace also has a wide range of activities and restaurants. Because they have so many facilities under one roof, Preston Palace offers a unique all-inclusive experience. At the same time, this makes managing all the different facilities a challenge. How does a leading company deal with continuous growth? How does it establish lasting relationships with both guests and your 600-plus employees? For this, a pleasant work culture is crucial. We spoke to Sebastiaan de Korte, Operations Director at Preston Palace.
Enjoying the hotel and its restaurants
Workforce Management contributes to satisfied visitors and employees
“We always offered a wide range of entertainment, but a few years ago we chose to specialise more. Our current goal is to be innovative and progressive. Within the possibilities of ‘all-inclusive’, we offer the most luxurious experience possible. Although as a resort we cater to all types of guests, we mainly focus on families and families with children. Especially for them, we organise entertainment such as musicals and magic shows. We offer something for everyone! We are the all-inclusive resort for everyone in Twente and far beyond.”
“Preston Palace is like a village. Guests and staff come home to us.”
“In 1992, we opened the hotel with a large attached restaurant. We expanded with the Preston Hall in 1995 and the subtropical swimming pool in 1997. A few years later, a fairground, additional hotel rooms, a cinema, luxury wellness, a bowling alley and new restaurants were added. We now have 13 different facilities and, all together, 12 bars and restaurants. First, each department manually made their own schedule in Excel and on whiteboards. As a result, we worked with handwritten sign-out lists by department, which our night receptionist entered into Excel. Payroll then exported this back to their own database. This was all very complicated and took up a lot of time. With Dyflexis, everything is linked and we manage time registration from a single central point. We see in real time what is going on in each department. Because it reduces our manual operations, it saves us a lot of time and reduces the margin of error.
Our employees are also happy with the switch to Dyflexis: Through the app, everyone always has access to their hours worked and leave. This creates clarity and people know where they stand. Employee happiness is our top priority: we are a large but flat organisation. Actually, we are like a village. Everyone knows each other and we want everyone to enjoy their work. When employees are happy, they also radiate this back to our guests. We want everyone to feel like they are coming home to us. Satisfied guests and employees are our two biggest pillars. Therefore, we wanted to get a grip on hours scheduled and worked. Not only to pay salaries more practically, but also to gain insight into how efficiently our various departments are running. A Workforce Management system like Dyflexis helps with this.”
Family dinner at Preston Palace
Greater insight and flexibility
“Our payroll administrator De Jong and Laan recommended Dyflexis. The implementation went smoothly. Our staff underwent training. They picked it up quickly and were excited to get started. Especially the app is very user-friendly. In it, you easily request leave or swap a shift with a colleague.”
“We also create retrospective reports of departments that give us a good understanding of costs and efficiency. This makes it easy to keep an eye on budgets and we receive an alert if we exceed them. Apart from the fact that Dyflexis creates clarity and works easily, we also save time and money.”
“Thanks to Dyflexis, we spend 20% less time making schedules every week.”
“But that’s not the only reason we were looking for a Workforce Management system: Before, our catering business consisted mainly of buffet restaurants, now half the kitchens have their own menus and specialities. We also recently started offering room service. This fits perfectly with our vision of being a luxury all-inclusive resort. Because of this transition from buffet to à la carte and room service, we also have longer opening hours. For this, we not only need more staff but also require flexibility and specialisation. Thanks to Dyflexis, we create appropriate work schedules for each department and flexibly schedule multidisciplinary employees.”
Employees view their own schedules via the Dyflexis app
A steady future thanks to Dyflexis
“With all the expansions and extra service, we grew rapidly in the past few years. Dyflexis supports our growth by providing links to our workforce in Visma Nmbrs. This eases the integration of new colleagues. We now have over 600 employees. Thanks to Dyflexis, we centralise our work and keep an overview of all departments. We easily add new departments, employees and schedules. As a result, we are more flexible and can change direction faster.”
“Because of our growth, there is always something new to experience.”
“The future looks bright. We are working hard on realising more hotel rooms and a new restaurant. At the same time, we are also continuing to expand our facilities. So there is always something new to experience! But what guests really keep coming back for are our steadfast hospitality and enthusiastic service.”
