Caroline Serviced Apartments » Featured

New beginnings

Ali — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 23:08:07 +0000

Ch-ch-ch-changes! I’m putting on my Town Crier hat, coat and ringing my bell with a few long-awaited announcements from Caroline Serviced Apartments…

A Changing of the Guard

I’m pleased to announce that we have a new Assistant Manager at South Yarra, and you’ll be hearing a lot more about Matthew over the next few months. Welcome to the team Matt – we are looking forward to your input and enthusiasm shaking things up at our South Yarra property! Matthew comes to us with years of hotel experience, and is super keen to get involved in improving the guest experience at Caroline South Yarra.

We’ve also recently welcomed back the lovely Natalie to our team. Nat was previously my Assistant Manager in Brighton where we both worked our butts off to develop and promote the brand new property after we first opened it 2.5 years ago. Nat is now a valued part of our South Yarra team, and is helping train our newest team member, Lillan. We’d like to extend a huge warm welcome to Lill who is enjoying her first job in Australia, since she moved here from Norway to study.

And that’s NOT all we’ve got to share...

I also wanted to announce that our spacious and cosy apartments are about to be given a facelift. You heard it here first! We think our Caroline Street property is in the best location in South Yarra. Certainly it’s in one of the most picturesque streets in the area, so we felt that our apartments and guests deserved to be treated to some extra TLC. We’ll be introducing some new artworks, furniture & furnishings and having an overall refresh. We’ll be keeping you up to date with photos of the improvements over the coming weeks. And of course, we’ll be updating our website with some new pics!

New Social Media Competition!

If you’re a fan on our Facebook Page or Twitter [if not, then you better join up now!!] you may have already heard the news… we’ve just announced a new competition in honour of the upcoming Melbourne Day! We need you to upload a photo to our Facebook page, showing us your fave place in Melbourne… and you could win a $50 David Jones gift card. Simple!!!!!!!!!

Employment Opportunity – Front Office Receptionist

Ali — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 07:03:09 +0000

Do you love living in Melbourne? Would you like to share that enthusiasm in a hotel environment, where no day is ever the same?

Caroline Serviced Apartments is currently seeking the services of an enthusiastic and motivated individual to assist in the Front Office. Our South Yarra property comprises premium corporate accommodation, with close to 40 apartments, and a small team of dedicated staff.

Front Office Receptionist role involves:

Delivering excellent customer service to all guests throughout their stay.
General Front Office duties such as check-in, check-out, reservations, switchboard operation, banking reconciliation, social media interaction and office administration.
Being able to assist with minor maintenance of apartments.
Developing sales skills throughout your employment.
Working closely with the Housekeeping Department to ensure all guests’ needs are met.
Some ‘after hours’ assistance (shared by all Front Office staff).

The ideal candidate will require:

Availability to work some weekends (9am – 4pm Sat and 10am – 2pm Sun) and some weekday shifts. Between 15 to 25 hrs per week.
Experience working in an office or hotel environment is desirable but not essential.
A reliable and motivated individual with strong organisational skills.
An ability to build good customer relationships.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
Excellent grooming and professional presentation.
Must be computer literate. Knowledge of a hotel reservations system is favourable, but not essential.
An ability to work autonomously – this role requires a common sense approach to situations and confidence in decision making.
A commitment to progressing their understanding of the business.

Check out Agg’s blog post which describes a typical day in our company – ‘In My Shoes‘. It should give you an insight into the type of tasks involved in running our Front Office.

If this sounds like you and you would love to make a difference within our small team, please forward your cover letter (clearly stating why you are applying for this position) and resume to alison@carolineservicedapartments.com

Looking forward to welcoming a new team member! If you have any questions, please feel free to ask.

In My Shoes…

Agatha — Fri, 28 May 2010 04:39:34 +0000

Ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes of the Front Office??? Agg lets you take a walk in her shoes for a day:

07:00 AM - **Yawn** Alarm goes off. Roll over. A hearty breakfast of 2 Weetbix, honey and banana..mmm…Yum!

07:30 AM – Stroll to work at a leisurely pace, breathe in that morning freshness!

07:42 AM – Get distracted by snail that has made a silver, slimy path across the pavement.

07:55 AM – Arrive at work. Use my super duper all access electronic swipe card to access the building (that’s right people, ALL ACCESS!) at Caroline Serviced Apartments in Brighton.

08:35 AM – Farewell guests who have come down to Reception to drop off their keys. They leave us a rave review which I later put up on our Facebook, Twitter and other corresponding web pages to share the love! Getting involved in social media platforms is a really important part of our job. Websites, such as these are useful tools in the marketing and branding of the company. It also opens up more communication channels between ourselves and our guests and gives us the opportunity to gain feedback on a personal level. Current, future and previous guests also surf our web pages regularly for information on what’s going on around Melbourne, special deals and reviews, so it is important to keep these up to date in order to be able to provide accurate and useful information to our followers.

10:00 AM – An ‘in-house’ guest (notice the Front Office lingo? ‘in-house’ means someone who is currently staying with us) comes to Reception after being out for a business breakfast, which I helped her organise. Our Front Office Team work closely with the local businesses, as we believe in promoting the Brighton area. By doing this we are able to provide our guests with added value, like meal or drink vouchers, along with helping out our restaurant neighbours with a bit of extra business! Our lovely guest has an extra coffee in hand as a thankyou for me!! (Just in time too, I forgot to have mine this morning!) .

10:20 AM – We have received an internet booking from one of our websites! I pop in the booking and send through the confirmation details to the guest. The booking has come from one our third party websites (such as wotif.com or expedia.com). We constantly have to check out inventory and listings on all websites to make sure it’s up to date – especially since we receive bookings from so many different channels (phone, walk-in, email as well as on-line 3^rd party websites). Constant research is needed as we need to be aware of competitors’ rates and availabilities. We have to ensure that Caroline Serviced Apartments are the accommodation YOU would click on, rather than say, a hotel down the road.

10:45 AM – I do a little research about Melbourne. It’s important that we know what is going on around our own city so we can make suggestions to guests about where to eat and play! We accommodate a variety of guests (international, interstate and local) and we need to be able to assist them with a variety of things! The other day, I compiled a list of electrical & whitegoods retailers for an international guest who was a bit lost as to where to start setting up their new home in Melbourne. It really made me realise how many ‘little’ things we take for granted when moving to a new city… Ali has already done a blog post on this topic: ‘Relocations are Big Business’.

11:15 AM – Receive a phone call from a lovely lady enquiring about our apartments. The Brighton property is full for the dates that she requested so I must double check with the South Yarra property to see if we can accommodate her. Working closely with both properties to maximise our sales is essential to our company. South Yarra has the availability, and after confirming that the lady wouldn’t mind staying there, I forward her details onto our fabulous Assistant Manager at South Yarra, Alex.

11:25 AM – I chat to one of our clients at a Relocation Company who is looking to place an executive from a large banking group in our apartments for a minimum of 3 months. It’s such a last minute booking too – she wants to book him in from this weekend! It takes me a while to juggle some of our upcoming bookings around to make some room for this long booking, but I manage to do it (much to the Relocation Agents’ relief)! I find out that the guest will be arriving at midnight on Friday, so I offer to organise a Pantry shop (a little grocery shopping) for his family, to help them get settled after a long flight from Europe. We understand that it’s difficult traveling with children, and to have a feeling of homeliness when you arrive is so important. At least it might be nice to arrive and have some toast and a hot chocolate before putting the excited/tired kids to bed.

12:00 PM – Alison arrives, 2 juices in hand (they are squeezed fresh at the green-grocer on Church Street and very hard to resist!). We deliberate about current in-house and future guests. Communication between all the Front Of House staff is really important. It means that each staff member is on the same level, and we can therefore help each guest accordingly.

12:20 PM - Ali sends me down the road to do a bit of a shopping for office supplies (which of course include office Teddy Bear chocolate covered biscuits!)

1:00 PM – Mr. XXX arrives and would like to check in. I’m a little bit nervous, he is the CEO of a major Australian Company and I really want to impress him. Working with high profile guests isn’t as scary as I thought it would be. We have guests come to stay that are the big players within large co-operations like CEO’s and Managing Directors, and we try our best to impress them. It’s important to keep all of our guests extra happy, some of them stay here for many months while they are working on projects in Melbourne. If they have an enjoyable stay with us they are bound to come back and to forward our details onto their own employees and clients, further exposing our company name (and friendly staff!). It’s really lovely when one of these high profile guests is appreciative of the extra efforts you have gone to in order to make their stay more comfortable. It’s the little things that count, and it’s the little things that we remember!

1:40 PM – I just got a booking for a wedding day! I love it when we have wedding guests stay with us. The bridezillas that run around the apartments are so much fun! And some of them come up with unusual requests…such as forwarning us that deliveries of champagne & beer will be arriving before they check in, and could we please fill the fridge with it?

3:00 PM – Aaaah another little highlight in the day. A couple of the lights in Reception have stopped working, so our favourite electrician, Pete has arrived to change the transformers for us. A certain ‘nameless’ female Front Office staff member whispers to me that “Pete should climb up a ladder in Reception everyday”. There’s also a couple of light-switch repairs he needs to attend to in the guest rooms, so we have to make arrangements with the guests to have access to their apartments. That’s one thing I really didn’t expect when I started working here, we have so many little maintenance things that we have to attend to. Our guests or housekeepers report a problem to the Front Office and it’s up to us to figure out how to fix the problem ourselves, or call out an expert. I’ve learnt so much about TVs, air-conditioners, dishwashers and DVD players in my first few months here!!!

4.00 PM – My day comes to an end. I bid farewell to Ali, and tell her I’ll see her tonight at the Social-Media function down at ‘The Social’ on Chapel St. The monthly Tweet Up Mellers event is a great opportunity for us to have some casual drinks, and network with other Social Media savvy business people.

Between the above times, I’ve kept busy updating staff time sheets, printing out reports so the housekeepers know how busy the next day will be, answering many phone calls with bookings, setting up appointments for people to view our apartments for future bookings, I tidied the office, and even managed to find some time for lunch! Hopefully you’ve got some idea of what our day is like in the Front Office of Caroline Serviced Apartments… we don’t just sit at the desk looking pretty!

Relocations Are Big Business

Ali — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 04:31:59 +0000

Ever thought about packing up your life and moving to the other side of the world? I have actually done this before. Twice. I would happily do it again too. Some people think it sounds exciting or brave (or even stupid) to walk away from everything familiar and step out into the unknown of another country. The reasons people move are often as varied as the destinations they move to. For me, it was a big move from my hometown in NSW to a place I had never even been to before – The United Kingdom. My reasons were to do with holidays and career prospects – and I now (after a fews years overseas, and a few years back in Oz) welcome many guests to Caroline Apartments who have their own stories and reasons to be coming to Melbourne, Australia.

This post is not so much about the ‘why’ people relocate, it is about the varied ‘little things’ that people may (or may not) consider when they arrive in a new country. At Caroline Serviced Apartments we get to meet so many guests who have decided to move to Melbourne from overseas. We have helped people set their new life up, and don’t think any question is too silly. We understand how hard and stressful it can be to move, so we do our best to help.

Typical questions that we get asked are:

How much do local calls cost?
Which mobile phone supplier is better than the others?
Is the tap water ok to drink?
Will my DVDs work in Australian DVD players?
Is it safe at night in this area?
Do we need to sort recycling into different bins?

Things that people take for-granted about moving:

Bank accounts
Australia has pretty strict quarantine rules for pets – it’ll be a minimum of 30 days before you can welcome your pet into your new home
School locations compared to where you want (or can afford) to live
Mobile phone accessibility / set-up
Where to buy furniture? Or White goods?
Is it best to rent something fully-furnished or buy/rent furniture?
Learning to drive on the opposite side of the road
Learning new/different road rules
Different currency and getting used to exchange rates
When are the public holidays? When is it Daylight Savings time?
Getting a Tax File Number
Where can we buy baby items?
Gyms – where and who are the best?
The shipment of household items may have an arrival date, but sometimes it sits in customs for weeks! Don’t forget this when planning your accommodation!
Dentists, doctors, beauticians, hairdressers, masseuse, nail technicians, plastic surgeons

I often have to write references to real estate agents about guests who have no permanent address, and are trying to find somewhere to live, or even if they want to join the local library to get access to free internet to help with their research on places to live.

We also work closely with a number of relocation companies who help families get settled in Melbourne. Sometimes our guests are relocating themselves on their own. Sometimes their Company is covering the costs of their relocation. Relocations are a huge industry and we are proudly part of it.

What do you think is (or would be) the biggest challenge for someone who is moving to Australia from overseas?

Pets in the Workplace

Ali — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 05:16:49 +0000

Tumbles the Mini-Schnauzer

Tumbles. It’s a name that hardly strikes fear into anyone, and if you’ve met him you’ll chuckle at how placid our ‘Head of Security’ really is. Tumbles is our Managing Director’s Miniature Schnauzer, who comes to work everyday to keep an eye on things for us, and make sure there are no ‘unsavoury’ characters bothering us at Reception.

He bounces in wagging his tail, wanders around the office (obviously completing his security check), then finds a cosy spot on the floor next to whoever is working at the Front Desk and sits like a sphynx. To some, he may look like he is sleeping, but it’s just a ruse. In the event of an emergency his senses cause him to spring into action and be in front of the target within seconds. However this is only if the ‘emergency’ involves hunger, and ‘the target’ is someone carrying food.

Likes

His Master – you should see how high he bounces when Doug enters the room
Fruit! Yep – he can’t handle it if an apple is not shared with him
warm seats
Anyone carrying food – he thinks it’s always for him

Dislikes

puddles (or rain)
he whimpers when he sees another dog
screaming children

Tumbles takes his role seriously

He loves our elevator at Brighton. He seems to think it’s some sort of magical place that he can go into and when the door opens he is miraculously in a different place. I was working on Reception one day and a guest walked past (she must have been carrying take-away food) and Tumbles followed them to the lift, the doors opened and he got in the lift with the guest. The doors closed before I reached them, so off he went on a ride to a different floor with the guest and the food. I had to wait for the lift to return, and when the doors opened I see Tumbles wagging his tail looking up at the guest hopefully. The lady was laughing at him and hadn’t realised she had been followed (by a ninja-dog) into the lift, so she came back down to make sure Tumbles was delivered back to Reception. So as you can see, he is particularly vigilant with his security duties!

Pets at work may not be appropriate for every workplace

Are pets in the workplace a good idea?

Tumbles acts a lot like a young puppy, but he has actually reached his senior years. He still loves attention and will always greet anyone who wants to say hi. The kids and families staying at our apartments all seem to love him! We think it’s great that he gets to come to work every day – a couple of days at South Yarra, a couple of days at Brighton… he seems to take the workload in his stride! It got us thinking if anyone else brings their pet to work? Is it welcomed or frowned upon? I think it really helps the animal feel more relaxed, particularly if they’re a social pet. They don’t have to have any feelings of anxiety at being left at home alone all day. That’s got to be a good thing right?

Is this what happens when we're not looking?

Attention to Detail: Getting it Right

Ali — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 07:31:23 +0000

What makes a stay memorable? At Caroline Serviced Apartments we try to impress our guests by offering consistency in our brand as well as in delivery of service. In Brighton & South Yarra we have a small Front Office team plus a small Housekeeping team at each property. Our fantastic housekeepers treat each apartment as if it were their own home – and are meticulous with details. Caroline Apartment regulars are attracted by our warm welcome and genuine recognition of their requests or requirements. They also appreciate our ideal locations, spotlessly clean rooms, welcome back gifts, and the attention to detail in how we deliver our service.

Brighton's Housekeepers are always smiling

We’ve recently taken on some lovely new Front Office staff, and with that there are always little hiccups in procedures or service quality. The answer comes down to training, and as the Manager, I have to take full responsibility if my staff have made mistakes that affect guest enjoyment. In some circumstances, such as errors in office procedures, I find that the reasons why a certain procedure exists becomes highlighted a lot more when the procedure has been done incorrectly. It helps staff realize why we do things a certain way, and therefore they will learn more from their mistake.

Similarly, I try to instill in all staff that they always need to think how they would like to be treated in any situation – if they were the guest. Remembering guest names, favourite room, putting the lights on if a guest is arriving late at night are simple ways to impress our regular guests. But it’s also important to be able to understand how to combat the trickier situations: for example if the after-hours phone calls hadn’t been diverted correctly and a guest was unable to reach a staff member to assist with an emergency. To me, this situation is almost unforgiveable from the guests’ point of view. We need to get to the bottom of why this happened, and seek solutions with the guest, that are acceptable. Again, I ask the team “how would you feel if this happened to you?”. This kind of situation provides an excellent training resource for staff to learn to pay attention to detail.

Mei-Li and Ali working on marketing campaigns

With new staff we aim to provide enough training to get each new team member confident and capable of managing situations on their own. The key aim is to provide quality training that encompasses all of our brand standards and procedures – and hope that this training develops consistency in service. We hire staff based on their personality, so we love for them to bring their individuality to the workplace and interact with guests in a natural way, which should, enhance the quality of service and brand standards.

Part of the training also allows for each Front Office staff member to spend a free night in one of our apartments. This is seen as both a reward (for working at such a cool place) and an opportunity for the new team member to test out all the appliances and facilities within the apartments. This in turn will help them better advise guests when they ask about the locations of items, or for help with operating certain appliances.

The Key to Excellent Service

Over the next few weeks, we’re introducing some small changes to our apartments to help improve each guests’ overall impression of their stay. Our Front Office staff will also be encouraging guest feedback on their stay by actively promoting reviews on TripAdvisor.com. We don’t believe in doing things by halves, and if our guests are unhappy about any part of their stay, we would love to hear about it so that we can seek to constantly improve our product and service delivery. But if we have succeeded in “wowing” them, then we would like them to tell the world!

If you have any feedback on your own experiences with various accommodation providers, eg what did they do well or badly? Or if you have suggestions on how we can improve service – we would love to hear from you!

What Inspires You?

Ali — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 05:52:51 +0000

Spring is in the air and I’m feeling on top of the world at the moment – both professionally and personally. Enthusiasm is infectious right? So it’s time to share…

CSA Launches Joint Venture with Restaurant

Cosy atmosphere is guaranteed at Rembroza

This week, Caroline Serviced Apartments added a new Package Deal to our popular website. It’s the first time we’ve ever entered into a joint venture with a restaurant to offer our guests breakfast as part of their accommodation. Tim at Rembroza is so pumped to work with us, and tomorrow we’ll be filming a short ‘welcome’ video so our guests can have a peek at the restaurant and the super yummy meals and coffees.

Connections and Sharing Ideas

On Friday I had a fantastic meeting with the lovely Sam Mutimer of ThinkTank Media and Sue McDonald. Sue is only new to Social Media, so Sam brought us together so Sue could get some pointers on how I understand and use Twitter. I heard myself saying things like “gaining trust through interaction with followers” and “use search.twitter.com to look for people who are Tweeting about a particular topic that is relevant to you” and I started to realize just how much I’ve learned in the last few months.
This meeting occurred after the fun night of networking at The Social in Windsor for the monthly TweetupMellers event, where I met some more awesome people who are passionate about connecting and learning together.
Social Media has truly opened up some doors for our business… but I’m saving those details for our e-book case study.
Speaking of sharing – Anna & Miranda (from our Brighton property) are starting to get on board with Caroline Apartments social media campaigns. We’ll be seeing some blog entries from them, as well as more Tweets, photos on Flickr and videos for YouTube. See? Enthusiasm is infectious!

The Buzz of the Week

And I can’t forget to mention Melbourne’s Spring Racing Carnival. We’ve seen some of our guests heading out to race days looking very glam, and on Tuesday Anna and I are going to be joining them – we’re off to a marquee at the Melbourne Cup! We’ll be sure to post some pics up on our Facebook Page and here on our Blog so anyone who didn’t get to the event can live vicariously through us for a moment…

Adding Value for our Guests

Ali — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 03:09:14 +0000

What's for breakkie?

We’re getting so excited about all the new projects that we’re working on to add value for all of our guests when they come and stay with us. Today, I’m heading around the corner to Church Street in Brighton to chat to Tim, the friendly manager of Rembroza Restaurant. We’re going to set up a deal for our guests to enjoy an all inclusive accommodation package with a yummy breakfast at Rembroza. Mei-Li & I also met with the lovely owners of the Fawkner Bistro last week and are setting up a similar arrangement for the guests at South Yarra.

Anna & I (at Brighton) are putting together special surprise packs for families who come to stay with us. We brainstormed the question “why do people come to stay in Brighton?”, and aside from the obvious answers of ‘our lovely service’, ‘great location’, ‘excellent housekeeping’ etc, we came up with more of a broader answer – ‘lifestyle’. We decided that the beach is a key ingredient of this lifestyle offered in Brighton. So we’re giving every family a beach kit to help them explore the gorgeous sandy shore-line. Over the next few weeks we will also be adding a few more little extras in for guests to enjoy as the weather warms up – so watch this space!

Lifestyle PLUS at gorgeous Brighton and Dendy Beaches

And it’s not just our guests that are benefitting from our networking and social media efforts. We are also working on a new e-book which will include ‘hits and misses’ that we’ve experienced within our social media marketing campaigns. We’re hoping to help other small to medium businesses get on board with social media platforms to help their business grow. It’s not as scary as it may seem, and we’d love to connect with more local businesses, or accommodation industry professionals.

Enter our Competition

Ali — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 03:51:42 +0000

Giveaways, freebies, prizes….. whatever you like to call it – we’ve been giving stuff away! Not only are we rewarding our Fans or Followers for taking the time to enter our competitions, we are also increasing our brand awareness via social media.

Our latest competition was cooked up a couple of weeks ago when Mei-Li and I were working on Marketing with Sam at ThinkTank Media.

We aimed to develop a competition that was kind of unusual, without being too difficult or time consuming for people to enter. We wanted the prize to be something totally worthwhile, that would encourage people to give it a go…. but you have to watch the video to find out what you could win!

We had so much fun creating a video for the competition to upload onto YouTube-(because the ‘acting’ was so terribly bad)! We’ve been promoting the competition on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and our Blog. We’ve received a few entries so far and are amazed at how many views the video has received. We are certain that Caroline Serviced Apartments are getting more well known, as our Followers and Fans increase daily. We also feel that having such an unusual competition will help cement our company in people’s minds if ever they do need accommodation in Melbourne. They may remember us as the one’s who are making an effort to reach out to future guests in a very different way (so far we have not found any other accommodation provider in Australia who is running anything similar to this). What are you waiting for? Get creative and show us your ‘mug-shot’ before November 9th.