Ontario gold mine selects Gemstone Logistics to streamline Travel and Accommodations Management

Overview

A prominent Canadian gold producer located 185 km northeast of Cochrane, Ontario, awarded Gemstone Logistics their Request for Proposal (RFP) to replace the incumbent software responsible for managing travel, lodging, and hospitality services for their remote workforce.

This decision came from ongoing efforts to enhance operational efficiencies in their operations.

The scope of the RFP focused on achieving the following critical objectives:

Maximize Room Utilization: A solution to optimize room usage, especially during peak periods such as turnarounds when room availability is at its lowest due to assigned rooms.

Support Existing Travel and Accommodation Tools: The software must seamlessly integrate with the mine’s current tools and systems within the travel and accommodations domain.

Scalability: The software had to offer the capacity to scale up or down to accommodate fluctuations in workforce size during shutdowns and expansions.

Cost-Effective Solution: Balancing the right solution with cost efficiency was a priority for Agnico Eagle.

Gemstone Logistics emerged as the preferred choice due to its extensive experience managing remote travel and accommodation services and its modern and adaptable platform.

Results

Maximizing Room Utilization for Turnarounds

A critical challenge was managing room assignments during turnarounds when room availability was limited. The incumbent software required manual room allocation, often resulting in fragmented reservations and frequent room changes during a guest’s stay. This increased cleaning tasks and led to poor guest experience.

Gemstone Logistics addressed these issues by conducting site visits and gaining insights into the mine’s unique challenges. Campware has introduced an innovative approach to room booking, assigning rooms only upon guest arrival. This eliminated the need for guests to move rooms during their stay and significantly reduced errors and stress associated with room allocation.

Furthermore, Campware’s Best Available Room logic ensured that guests were assigned the most suitable rooms based on the length of their stay and room availability.

Accommodations Lead:

“Before implementing Campware, we spent a lot of time manually trying to solve the puzzle of reservations and how they would fit into our three camps. We have improved guest satisfaction by virtually eliminating room transfers. Additionally, fewer check-out cleanings have provided more time to complete scheduled room cleaning tasks on time.”

Eliminating Guest Lineups at Check-In

The previous Property Management System (PMS) platform did not integrate with RFID room locksets, necessitating continual manual key programming for returning guests. This process consumed valuable staff time and often led to long guest queues, causing frustration after long travel days.

Campware revolutionized the check-in process by seamlessly integrating with door lock providers. Guests checking in via Campware had their room cards activated automatically, eliminating the need for manual key programming. Moreover, Campware initiated check-in during the travellers’ journey to camp, ensuring a hassle-free arrival by simply tagging their key to various hotspots within the camp.

Enhancing Communication with Housekeeping and Front Desk

Managing high room turnover days, especially during peak days like Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, was a considerable challenge. Radio communication and paper were the primary means of coordinating housekeeping tasks, leading to guest complaints about radio chatter, room cleanliness issues, and missing amenities.

Campware’s Housekeeping Module streamlined the assignment of tasks, allowing housekeeping leads to create efficient task lists for each housekeeper with minimal effort. Housekeepers accessed and completed their assignments on tablets, and the system instantly updated room status, ensuring clean rooms were promptly assigned to incoming guests.

Path Forward

Gemstone continues to communicate through monthly meetings to identify operational opportunities through software development and has added more optimization and functionality:

• Business units booking their travel and rooms directly
• Added an air charter service along with the existing bus service
• They explored Kiosks and how they may work to improve guest experience further.