Hi Caitlin, tell us a little about what you do at Dorchester Collection

I’m the director of the Global Contact Centre and we support the hotels with selling our nine, soon-to-be ten, hotels by making individual room reservations. We have about 60 people in London and a satellite office in Los Angeles. We service the hotels in English, French and Italian, but we have a very multilingual team, with 18 different languages spoken. We handle about 6,000 contacts per week by phone and email. We also book a lot of revenue! Up to mid-October in 2022, we booked £150m for Dorchester Collection.

The team must learn a lot about guests and their preferences.

Absolutely. There’s the sales function to the role but there’s also that service function. For example, if one of my team members was on a phone call with you right now selling a hotel room and they heard your dog barking in the background, they would probably pause the conversation and say, “Can you tell me a little bit more about your dog? Will it be travelling with you?” Then the hotel team can really make something magical if your dog is coming with you.

What’s the system for getting that information to the hotel?
We use Nexus. Each department in a hotel uses it slightly differently, but it’s our goal to have a single source of truth, so that whether you’re speaking to my team or speaking to someone at reception or housekeeping or food and beverage, they would know this information about your dog, for example. Then employees throughout that guest journey could start to begin a meaningful relationship and maybe bond over it – “Oh, I have a dog that’s a similar age or breed”, or whatever it might be. We have recently launched a Nexus module called ‘Make a Booking’ or ‘BRM’ for short. This allows us to make room reservations directly in Nexus, and ensures that all of the guest preferences or information that is in their Nexus profile are transferred to the reservation.

What difference has a global contact centre made?

During the pandemic, when the European hotels were closed but the UK ones were not, Coworth Park experienced a 200% increase in demand. Additionally, a big focus is to elevate the brand and we work to cross-sell all Dorchester Collection properties. Last week we had an example of a guest that had called for Le Meurice, and because we asked where they were travelling to next, they also made a reservation for Hotel Eden on the same phone call.

What does a typical week look like for you?

It depends whether I’m here in the office in London or travelling. If I’m in the office, there are two meetings that exist no matter where we are: our leadership briefing in the morning and then every day at 2pm we bring the whole team together for our daily huddle. It’s an opportunity to find out how much revenue we booked the day before and praise some of the top bookings that have come in and the employees who have contributed to those bookings. We share some quality updates and then talk about any news, including things such as fun engagement activities that we’re working on.

You obviously travel quite a lot…

I try to go to Los Angeles once a quarter because the LA GCC team reports to me in London and, while we communicate nearly every day on video. It’s not the same as being there in person.

The Lana opening in Dubai must be exciting for the team

It’s very exciting as we’re moving into a brand-new market for Dorchester Collection. We’re starting to examine what the product knowledge for that looks like – understanding the destination is incredibly important. We can look at a map and we can look at pictures, but you really need to feel it, smell it, see it. That’s when the team is able to authentically sell the experience.

Which team achievements make you most proud?

We are so proud of the fact that in June 2022 we won the best Contact Centre Culture award at the UK National Contact Centre Awards. I believe we won because of some of the employee initiatives we’ve introduced. One thing that we’ve done is called the Agent Growth Plan (AGP), which is an opportunity for team members to continue enhancing their skills, selling additional properties, taking on more responsibility. We’ve had 18 people participate and grow from a reservation specialist to a senior reservation specialist or on to the next level. All five of our team leaders have grown from within, starting as reservation specialists and rising through the ranks. But we’ve also had several people who have moved to other parts of the business, such as guest experience, people and culture or the hotel sales team.

What makes Dorchester Collection special for you?

I started as an intern at The Dorchester in 2012 for the Olympics in revenue management – that’s my background. I left Dorchester Collection for a few years but returned to it in 2018. I think the special thing is the way Dorchester Collection treats its people, the opportunities for growth and development. I always say we’re big enough that there are some amazing opportunities, but small enough that we can take hold of those opportunities and make a real difference in the company.

Do you have a favourite hotel memory?

We take our team on Product Immersions to experience the hotels and the destination. Each time we visit, the hotels do an exceptional job of showing us their hotel and empowering the team to sell in a confident way. One of my favourite memories is experiencing our hotels through the eyes of a first timer.

What do you do to relax outside work?

My perfect Saturday would be a visit to Dishoom, a favourite London restaurant, for its bacon and egg naan roll and a cup of chai tea.Then I would swiftly move on to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. The thing I love most about Kew is that no decision is a bad decision there, whether you turn left or right or go straight and follow the sun. In my job, I’m taking a lot of decisions and want them to be the right ones for our guests and for the team I lead and for the company. So, Kew Gardens is where I free my mind and enjoy just walking around, which is often where some of my best ideas come from.