Case studies:
Hotel Rottnest
The client
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.
Hotel Rottnest have been hiring front- and back-of-house hospitality staff through Sidekicker including Kitchen Hands and F&B Staff, and Sean Robers the Assistant General Manager at Hotel Rottnest explains the journey before adopting Sidekicker as their hospitality recruitment agency has been long and rocky.
The challenges
Staffing up for events
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.
“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.
Recruitment admin
Admin spent on recruiting temporary labour to support with their events became a heavy addition to what was already a busy season, and eventually just overwhelming for Hotel Rottnest.
"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
Pre-vetted staff ready to go
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
Reduced admin time
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.”
