Rising operational costs are forcing UK hotels to make cuts to key areas in order to keep their operations running. And while cuts are necessary, getting them wrong by slashing costs in particular areas can do lasting damage that will make price rises soon feel like a small problem.
Of course, making immediate cuts to staff numbers or reducing the services your hotel offers may provide a short-term boost. Over time though, this starts to affect the guest experience and causes your once great hotel to be just another place to book a room.
Hoteliers need a smarter, more sustainable way to lower costs that don’t damage their reputation while continuing to meet rising guest expectations. One way to do this is by rethinking the guest journey, which, when done right, can reduce costs and increase customer satisfaction.
This approach turns service design into a tool to control costs, and in this blog, we’ll explore how to redesign your guest experience so that savings don’t come at the expense of service.
UK hotels are having to deal with quite a lot of pressure in 2025, it's fair to say. On the one hand, they are having to contend with soaring energy costs, which are significant when you consider the average UK hotel consumes between 10,000kwh and 15,000kwh of electricity per room, per year. As well as that, rising wages and National Insurance contributions have put extra pressure on hotels to find efficiencies.
At the same time, their guests' expectations when they spend time in a hotel have never been higher. Anyone who walks through the door of a hotel now expects:
This has all led to a high-stakes balancing act for hotel leaders, which is only made harder due to legacy tech stacks and manual, contact-heavy processes such as check-in, draining resources and reducing their ability to be nimble.
This environment has led hoteliers to scrutinise every operating cost, but in today's environment, where price and service are closely linked, conventional cost-cutting just won’t, well, cut it. And when cuts are made, it often damages the very reason a hotel was popular in the first place.
So, rather than thinking about where to cut costs, hotel leaders should be asking themselves, “Where can we design smarter?”.
The answer to this lies in the way the guest journey is shaped.
When hotels had to cut costs, they often defaulted to two things:
And while fewer people to pay each month and fewer services offered will yield short-term savings, the long-term effects on intangible, but no less important, factors such as guest experience and staff morale far outweigh that immediate boost.
Fewer team members, for example, means queues for check-in become longer, and when a guest has a complex request or needs assistance, there simply isn't somewhere there to help. And scaling back amenities means guests spend less, presenting hotels with a false economy.
Traditional cost-cutting like this is also extremely visible. And when guests can see that a hotel has reduced headcount and amenities, brand reputation and, more importantly, trust starts to crumble. In today’s experience-led hospitality market, visible cuts have an impact on the bottom line that no short-term savings can fix.
Trimming doesn't work, but transformation does. To do that, hotels need to look at the guest journey for ways to cut costs and keep sentiment positive.
The hotels that can cut costs without compromising their service are the ones that are reengineering essential parts of the guest journey rather than removing them.
Each touchpoint, on further examination, can be an opportunity to reduce operational overhead. And ‘operational overhead’ doesn’t mean replacing humans with tech, it's about reallocating their efforts to where it adds the most value.
Integrating digital engagement tools removes the need for staff to spend time manually checking guests in, for example. This allows them to be more responsive to guests' needs, which enhances the overall sentiment toward a hotel, encouraging rebookings.
A well-mapped guest journey highlights the areas that can be automated and where resources can be reallocated. Doing this reduces the volume of reactive support calls that can be costly to resolve. All of this translates to fewer hours spent resolving now-avoidable issues and a decreased reliance on expensive outsourced support. From a customer perspective, complaints are reduced, as are the subsequent compensatory costs that come with them.
The savings scale is huge, too, because these customer journeys are broadly replicated every time a guest checks in. One small fix to the process can remove hundreds of hours of low-value, but costly, activity.
All this starts with identifying high-impact touchpoints. Let's explore four of the key ones now.
The check-in process is one of the most visible inefficiencies in a hotel. A combination of slow queues and stressed staff offers a less-than-desirable first impression. All this, however, can be removed almost entirely with the introduction of a kiosk estate.
Hotel kiosks allow guests to check themselves in without the need to queue, which improves flow and removes the stress once associated with peak times. Kiosks, like the ones Evoke offers, don't just check guests in either. They can offer bespoke upsells and display dynamic marketing content.
They help to reduce labour costs while opening up a new revenue stream in just one touch point. And, the data gathered from the kiosks can be used to proactively enhance the guest experience.
Most importantly, they stop guests from having to queue, freeing up staff to offer a more personal service as opposed to a transactional one.
Kiosks, then, bring down operating costs while increasing guest satisfaction.
People booking hotels tend to have several frequently asked questions, especially those who aren’t frequent guests. And hotels still rely heavily on contact centres to field these questions. This second touch point, however, is the perfect candidate for digital automation to save staff time and hotels' money.
Pre-stay email cadences or AI chatbot functions can answer key questions more quickly, helping to reduce the inbound call volume to hotels. When integrated with a hotel’s property management system, these digital interactions enhance the overall experience because they are more tailored to the guest who's receiving them.
Global hotel chain Marriott, has used an AI chatbot for several years now. It can handle requests, bookings, and answer FAQs from guests. It's also available in several languages so any guest can access its benefits before or during their stay.
Automation such as this removes costs from the system without removing the value to the guest, who still feels informed and cared for. It's just that your staff are now freed up to spend their hours on high-priority interactions.
The net result is a smoother arrival experience for now clued-up guests and a more efficient back-office operation
Every piece of technology in a hotel needs monitoring and occasional repair, no matter how much of it is in use. When issues arose with digital signage, for instance, a site visit would be arranged, which meant the tech was out of order for several days, eating into budgets and affecting net promoter scores.
Today, however, remote telemetry gives operators visibility across the entire digital estate, allowing them to see how well, or not, tech is performing and make fixes before it affects performance. Evoke’s Cloud platform allows hoteliers to observe real-time diagnostics. So, when needed, they can make fixes to software remotely and schedule predictive maintenance.
All of this results in fewer call-outs of expensive maintenance teams, replaced instead by proactive in-house support that adds resilience to your tech as your estate scales. It's yet another example of how costs can be reduced without the need to slash service quality.
Modern kiosks have evolved from handling time-consuming tasks like check-ins to unlocking powerful new revenue opportunities when optimised effectively.
While idle, kiosks can display offers and loyalty sign-ups directly to guests as they navigate through the lobby. Then, while in use, they can lean on prior user data to offer personalised offers and encourage guests to upsell themselves.
Whether in use or not, kiosks shift from being fixed assets to becoming revenue drivers with minimal overheads, turning every guest interaction into a conversion opportunity.
The really amazing thing about this approach is that you’re monetising technology you’ve already invested in. You’re opening up the possibility of making more revenue, not just saving it through smarter use of tech.
Kiosks can, then, be profitable assets that offer the sort of efficiencies which don’t affect the guests’ time with you.
The days of cost-savings coming at the expense, ironically, of great service are gone. Strategically reimagining the guest journey and using technology to become more efficient means that cost and experience start to reinforce one another.
By letting kiosks automate routine tasks, staff can focus on offering a great service, which has the secondary effect of making your hotel stand out from the rest. Using digital-first engagement keeps guests informed without needing to rely on staff to answer questions over the phone.
All these uses of technology reduce the need to hire additional staff without sacrificing the delight of your guests. This focus on journey-led transformation may not offer the immediate cost savings of reducing existing staff numbers, but it pays dividends to operational costs as well as customer lifetime value in the long run.
At Evoke, we go beyond supplying hotel kiosks and digital signage by designing processes that maximise their impact from the first tap. Our consultative approach starts way before a kiosk is even installed. We map out a delivery plan before piloting new hardware and then delivering a new estate at scale. All of which is good for your guests and your operating costs.