The Company

Hotel Rottnest is located on Rottnest Island, a short distance off the coast of Perth.

The hotel plays host to some of the biggest international touring acts each season and is the ultimate location for live entertainment, premium accommodation, alfresco dining–and quokka spotting of course.

The Situation

Hotel Rottnest experiences dramatic staffing demands during peak operating months of October to April. The sporadic nature of the events they host also means that ‘staffing up’ for an event is one of their biggest challenges.

Sean Roberts, the Assistant General Manager of Hotel Rottnest, stated that:

“For each event we host, we need around 25 staff. Due to how sporadic our events are can’t rely on casuals as they find other jobs between events, so I’d find myself manually hunting down staff or posting to Facebook hospitality groups, which was really challenging and time consuming.

 

We would spent around 50 hours interviewing, skills testing, completing VEVO checks, onboarding, offboarding and training these staff who really only worked with us for 10 hours. That’s a whole week of man hours spent on onboarding before they even get to the island. It’s a horrendous experience.”

The Solution

Sean decided to trial Sidekicker for one of their large events.

Finding the Sidekicker platform “very, very easy to use” Sean was able to access pre-vetted and certified hospitality Sidekicks ready and wanting to work just a few hours after posting a request.

“I couldn’t believe how fast it all happened, it was a whirlwind! Instead of having to trawl through resumes I was able to browse the profiles of Sidekicker’s staff who were available and wanted to work for me. Their profiles gave me just the right amount of information I needed to make a swift and trusted decision. For once, I felt confident that I really knew ‘who I was inviting to the party’… Literally.”

Sean was blown away with the quality of applications and hired a handful of Sidekicks who happily made the ferry trip out to Rottnest Island.

The results

Hotel Rottnest now use Sidekicker as their go-to source to find all event, and food & beverage staff.

Using Sidekicker, Hotel Rottnest has been able to reduce the hours needed to source, hire, manage and pay their event staff from 50 hours to 1.

“We feel that the events we’ve held this year have been more successful due to the involvement of Sidekicker.”