Case Study: Transforming Asset Management with RFID Technology for Habtoor Hospitality
About The Client
Habtoor Hospitality is a leading luxury hospitality group in Dubai, which is well known for its diverse portfolio of the five-star hotels, resorts, and serviced apartments. The group is spread across some of the most exclusive locations in the city. The group is responsible for the daily operation of thousands of various assets that go from housekeeping trolleys and catering equipment to essential maintenance tools, audio-visual systems, and guest amenities.
The Challenge
Habtoor Hospitality used to manually track their assets with barcodes, QR codes, and spreadsheets before RFID implementation. Although it appeared that everything was going well, they faced numerous issues. The assets were frequently lost or misplaced, relocated without the documentation, or left behind after the events. These situations led to a waste of time and money because the staff had to reimburse the company for the lost or stolen items. The employees could consume a lot of time searching for the required equipment, particularly, during their peak hours like event sessions or crisis repair. The manual data entry process was also prone to errors, and there were cases when assets were checked out or returned without the proper recording. The management was not able to track the location of the assets in real time. As a result, there were long waiting times plus they were forced to make purchases of additional supplies to substitute what they lost. To sum up, the old system was inefficient, expensive, and annoying to the employees.
The RFID Solution
Habtoor Hospitality, in order to resolve these problems, has teamed up with our company, Acube Infotech, which is a Dubai based company specializing in RFID asset management solutions. We designed a comprehensive, automated RFID asset tracking system that met the needs of the hospitality environment specifically.
The initial work was tagging high value and often moved items with durable RFID tags. Besides metal friendly tags(EXARK Metal RFID tag) for maintenance tools, weather resistant tags(ABS RFID tags) were used for outdoor furniture and event equipment, and compact adhesive tags(Confidex Silverline Micro RFID Tag) for small devices. This allowed the tracking of items regardless of their environment.
The installation of fixed RFID readers at strategic locations, e.g. doors of storage rooms, which automatically registered every asset movement, was another step. Besides this, mobile handheld RFID (EXARK XK-650) scanners were given to the staff so that they might have a quick inventory check on the spot at any location. A cloud based tracking platform was used to collect all this data which allowed the management to see in real time where a particular item was and also its movement history, in fact, for all locations. Besides, the system was using automated alerts as well. If an asset was trying to escape from a location without authorization, an audible alarm would be heard at the exit and the operations manager would get a notification right away.
The Results
The change from manual logging to RFID based asset management has turned around the situation impressively in just a few months. The time it takes to find a resource has been reduced to less than 2 minutes from 10-30 minutes, which means that the personnel can now work much more efficiently with other tasks besides searching for assets. The proportion of asset disappearance has gone down, thereby the organization made notable savings. Inventory audits, which were quite time consuming in the past, taking about 5 to 7 hours, have now been shortened to less than an hour. This has allowed the employees to use their remaining time for other more essential duties. The efficiency improvements were felt by the staff directly.
The elimination of asset movement logs through automation has led to the promotion of the department’s staff’s accountability, the result being the disappearance of disagreements about asset usage and the increase of overall operational transparency. From a financial point of view, the savings that were made possible by the reduced losses were significant enough to allow Habtoor Hospitality to allocate more funds to the guests’ experience. Besides, the collaboration with maintenance scheduling has made preventive maintenance more precise, thus the period of assets’ lifespan has been extended and any breakdown of expensive nature has been avoided. A significant part of the savings Habtoor Hospitality was able to make due to lower losses allowed the company to reallocate the budget to the guests’ experience.
Before & After – Visual Workflow
Staff used to have to manually search the storerooms, and there was a high likelihood that they would log incorrectly and that management would receive updates with some delay. These inefficiencies were often turning into lost assets and operational delays. At the moment with RFID, the locations of assets are visible at a central dashboard without any delay, the checkouts are done automatically at RFID gates, and managers are getting their updates in real-time, thus, all the wasted time is eliminated, and the losing of assets is minimized.
Conclusion
By adopting RFID powered asset tracking, Habtoor Hospitality has turned the wheel around in its asset management processes, with a stunning impact of operational efficiency, cost savings, and staff satisfaction. This technological change not only made the back end operations simpler but also lifted up the guest experience, thus demonstrating that even small innovations can bring big business benefits. In Dubai’s speedy hospitality industry, where efficiency is equated with excellence, RFID has become not only a helpful tool but a strategic necessity.