Wyndham Vacation Clubs International Operations President and Managing Director, Barry Robinson, shares some of his learnings thus far from navigating the business through the COVID-19 crisis.
After COVID-19 eases will there be changes to how your business operates? What opportunities for diametric change has this presented to your Asia Pacific business?
Absolutely, we are using this time wisely and have asked all our business leaders to reassess their systems and procedures across all aspects of the company.
It is a real opportunity to tackle projects that were difficult to commence when the company was operating at full speed.
This business interruption, while challenging in many ways, is allowing us a rare chance to take some quantum leaps in our business evolution.
We have increased our level of social engagement delivering our club communities with daily activities to help keep their passion for travel ignited.
This has included travel quizzes, sharing best travel movie ideas, Lego competitions, cutest pet competitions and more.
The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive.
We have also introduced weekly Zoom Q&A and travel trivia sessions with club members to help them stay connected with their club during self-isolation.
The ability for so many teams to work effectively from home has also opened up our eyes to other areas of efficiency.
Club Wyndham Sydney. Source: Wyndham Destinations
How have you adjusted to having staff work remotely?
Our IT team acted very quickly and the transition has been incredibly smooth.
We have regular Zoom meetings with all teams, and in addition to email communication and video messaging we have set up a closed user Facebook group for all employees where regular updates are being posted.
Our employees are highly engaged on this platform. Within a day of its launch we had over 752 staff members join, and we have over 838 members today. With Zoom meetings into our homes each day, in many ways, it has brought us closer. We have found our employees to be very productive working remotely.
The recently acquired Club Wyndham Airlie Beach. Source Wyndham Destinations
What are the most effective plans you have implemented to help lessen the negative impact of COVID-19?
By moving quickly and making decisions to close our resorts and offices ahead of the travel and health directives, we were able to ensure the health and safety of our club owners, guests and employees.
At our corporate office in Australia where we have some 400 employees, during early onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, we commenced temperature checks of all employees on their arrival to work, as an added precautionary health and safety measure.
Leading up to, and throughout the health crisis, we have issued our timeshare club owners with up-to-the minute communications in relation to COVID-19 travel restrictions and resort closures via SMS, email, web and social media channels.
Our club owners and resort guests are able to cancel or rebook with no penalties incurred.
We also immediately launched a dedicated section of our clubs’ websites, where owners can go to for the latest information, along with FAQs concerning their club membership during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The website also provides them with some fun distractions for all the family during isolation such as activities and games, many which are travel orientated.
We know that cabin fever can be especially tough for the younger members of the family, so we are also providing them with travel inspired, colouring-in pages and activities to help keep kids entertained while our owners (including many families with small children) are staying home and counting down to their next holiday.
Finally, we have used this time wherever possible to fast track many of our resort refurbishment projects, implement deep cleans and maintenance projects so that when timeshare owners can return to their resorts, they are looking better than ever.
We are filming these projects and sharing them with our club owners on social media, which is helping to build excitement as well as rapport between resort managers, employees and our club owners.
Click here to view Barry's profile on The Hotel Conversation.
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