With owner demand and occupancy at unprecedented levels, vacation ownership leaders at the recent ARDA 2023 Spring Conference made it clear they are focusing on day-to-day operations to ensure a great stay for each guest—and strategic efforts to keep the good times rolling.
The goal is to build more value for owners and keep them returning for more stays. To that end, many companies are enhancing both customer experience and employee experience, which are clearly intertwined. In an industry that continues to consolidate and face workforce shortages, building a cohesive company culture that retains talented employees and delivers excellent owner experiences is paramount to sustained success.
Leveraging technology
Vacation ownership operators are leaning in, more than ever, on technology to better engage owners and employees. Leading senior executives, all of whom are also Nordis clients, emphasized their tech-driven priorities from digital transformation to tools for empowering employees in 1-on-1 interviews conducted by ARDA CEO Jason Gamel during a keynote session:
- Gordon Gurnik, SVP & Chief Operating Officer, Hilton Grand Vacations
- Jared Saft, Chief Business Officer, Westgate Resorts
- John Staten, President & CEO, Holiday Inn Club Vacations
- Stephanie Butera, EVP & COO, Hyatt Vacation Ownership
- Jeff Myers, Chief Sales & Marketing Officer, Wyndham Vacations
- Travis Bary, COO, Capital Vacations
- Ross Crowder, Chief Commercial Officer, arrivia
Digital-first expectations
Vacation ownership companies that deliver digital-first and omnichannel experiences have a clear advantage with owners and employees. Thanks to cutting-edge and ever-improving consumer experiences from Amazon, Apple and other top brands, owners and employees are primed for faster, easier, more convenient, more personalized, digital and mobile experiences.
Adults of all ages increasingly share these expectations, but it is particularly true for millennials and Gen Z. And the younger generations now wield an outsized influence in the vacation ownership industry: Not only do millennials comprise the biggest workforce cohort in the U.S., but they now are the largest share of timeshare owners.
These owners expect timeshare companies to use technology to simplify and speed owner interactions–before, during and after a stay and throughout the year. They are looking for convenience and choice in everything from making a resort reservation and receiving assessment statements to paying maintenance fees and voting for board members.
Similarly, the right technology and tools enable employees to streamline and automate manual tasks and processes, freeing them up for higher-value and more satisfying work.
Owner communications, payments and elections
Cloud-based technology solutions for managing owner communications, payments and HOA elections check the boxes for digitally transforming experiences for both owners and employees. These ongoing touchpoints outside of resort visits represent important opportunities to showcase a company’s culture through service, choice, and convenience that strengthens owner satisfaction and engagement.
Nordis Technologies collaborates with vacation ownership companies to leverage its integrated customer communications management, payments and HOA elections solutions to drive excellent owner and employee experiences, efficiency and effectiveness:
- Expresso® CCM platform integrates with digital and print production and delivery capabilities, making it fast and easy for vacation ownership employees to develop personalized communications and automate delivery through any combination of mail, certified mail, email and/or text messaging for each owner.
- ExpressoPay®, Nordis’ electronic bill presentment and payments system, allows timeshare companies to leverage resort-branded payment portals and manage the entire billing and payments cycle from a single platform and with a single vendor.
- ExpressoVote® streamlines the entire HOA election process, from creating and distributing election communications to enabling online, in-person and mail-in voting and third-party election certification.
- Automated return mail and skip tracing services leveraging the USPS’ Address Correction Service, or ACS™, to reroute mail with initially undeliverable addresses. For mail with addresses ACS cannot find, it sends daily reports in Expresso with reason codes and destroys the mail. To track down addresses that remain undeliverable after ACS, clients can opt for Nordis’ skip-tracing service which uses a national database to search for addresses.
If you’d like to learn more about our cloud solutions that improve owner and employee experience, please contact us.