Rheams calls Beekeeper the ‘missing mobile link’ to connecting 80% of our hotel industry’s non-desk hotel employees
SAN FRANCISCO, CA February 20, 2018 – The global hospitality industry is doing a tremendous job of leveraging mobile technology to enhance the guest experience. What isn’t being addressed is using the power of mobile to share real-time staff/hotel/brand/management company information with the 1.9 million front- and back-of-house hotel employees who don’t sit at a desk or have a company email address. As such, Connie Rheams, named one of the most influential women in hospitality technology by HFTP (Hospitality Financial & Technology Professionals), is undertaking the biggest challenge of her career: serving as the new Vice President, Hospitality, for digital workplace app developer Beekeeper.
“For the last five years, I’ve been talking about moving the needle on the customer experience,” Rheams said. “Mobile technology is making great strides in ensuring that hoteliers stay connected to guests at every touchpoint along their journeys. At the end of the day, however, it’s the employees who make the biggest difference in each guests’ stay.
“What is lacking at most hotels is a mobile tool that gets the right information to the people touching the guest,” she said. “It’s the missing mobile link and a void in our industry. Sure, bulletin boards and TV monitors in the breakroom are okay, and so are printed memos hand-delivered by department heads, but it’s not an ideal or effective way to communicate with employees who are working different shifts and who speak different languages.
“Workplace communications is an area that we can make the biggest strides for improving the guest experience, but it is also critical in creating strong employee engagement, reducing turnover and enabling a hotel company to become an employer of choice,” Rheams added. “There are also integration benefits with existing operational systems. Hotels are using Beekeeper to merge payroll, scheduling, file sharing, task management, and other systems into the centralized Beekeeper hub. By linking non-desk workers with a hotel’s operational systems, it creates a sense of belonging and trust, it increases engagement and loyalty, and it ultimately translates into better individual and team performances. I believe Beekeeper is the next frontier for hospitality. For me personally, it’s a challenge of a lifetime that I eagerly accept. I look forward to promoting the benefits of connecting the employee to the company and its culture.”
Prior to joining Beekeeper, Rheams served as senior vice president and general manager of Indra North America, an SAP co-innovation partner for hospitality. She also held senior leadership roles at Pegasus Solutions, Sabre and American Airlines. Rheams holds a Master’s in Business Administration from Southern Methodist University.
The Buzz on Beekeeper Beekeeper is designed to help non-desk employees and geographically distributed workforces feel as if they were sitting right next to each other and to keep everyone in the company aligned. Companies with non-desk employees have a hard time keeping them in the loop with the rest of the organization. Beekeeper bridges this gap by connecting operational systems and communication channels within one secure platform that is accessible by mobile and desktop devices.
“Beekeeper is a rapidly growing technology; it’s driving new mobile adoption trends and radically changing the way companies are connecting the world's two billion non-desk workers,” said Cristian Grossman, Beekeeper CEO. “Hospitality is one of the industries where Beekeeper is building significant traction, and we’re investing heavily to grow our business in this market. When we began looking for someone to spearhead our global hospitality growth, one name kept surfacing: Connie Rheams. Not only does she have 20-plus years of travel industry experience, including airlines, hotels, travel agencies and online booking platforms, but she truly understands the complete customer journey.
“Connie brings a true passion for driving innovation through technology, and she has an impeccable reputation for consistently looking for new opportunities to help hotel companies empower their organizations and deliver personalized end-customer experiences,” Grossman said. “She’s been exposed to the full technology eco-system in the hotel industry, and she understands how an application like Beekeeper can affect all the business processes across an enterprise. Connie has a successful track record of leading global expansion efforts, and we are eager to see the growth opportunities she will bring. We welcome her aboard.”
Rheams said she is equally as eager to lead Beekeepers customer expansion globally.
“I’m super excited, not just to join this amazing company, but to be representing a solution that brings a simple way right now to solve problems,” Rheams said. “Beekeeper can be bought and turned on in about 30 days. If your hotel, brand or management company is ready to digitize its non-desk workforce, our team is eager to talk to you. This is really exciting.”
