On-the-job training, mentoring, succession planning and emphasising the SunWay culture and CLEAR¹ principles are some key drivers to ensure our people deliver meaningful customer experiences and improve back-office efficiencies. Employee training is tracked and monitored to ensure service levels and customer offerings are constantly improved and refreshed

Our scheduling system, Kronos, has now been implemented at all South African units. This allows us to measure labour costs accurately, improve our scheduling according to business demands, improve payroll processing, reduce overtime costs, and manage staff better based on property demand. During 2019, the big five properties (Boardwalk, GrandWest, Sun City, The Table Bay and Time Square) have included advanced predictive scheduling. This predictive scheduling had a positive impact on operations, and we achieved a notable decrease in absenteeism. The smaller properties have also benefited from using Kronos’ time and attendance scheduling and, where feasible, may be upgraded to predictive scheduling. We have also implemented this system at certain outsourced services to improve efficiencies.

Sun International’s system integrations and modifications continued to result in increased operational efficiencies, improved transaction accuracy, and standardised systems across our South African operations. These improvements are geared towards strengthening customer service levels to create memorable guest experiences that ensure our properties remain a destination of choice. The focus remains around our customer-facing systems, including efficiencies and food and beverage, which includes standard operating procedures and training videos available on the group intranet.

We continue to look at modernising our world-class gaming systems to ensure relevance, reduce the cost of doing business and enhance customer service levels. This allows us to make better decisions around customer behaviour and experiences. The group’s Park Hyatt Hotel, Casino & Spa in Mendoza Argentina implemented a new gaming system (Playtech) in February 2020. In determining the most suitable gaming system, we will prioritise factors such as improving customer service, enhancing cashless system abilities within regulatory constraints, and integrating marketing, rewards and promotion capabilities.

Management focused on efficiencies across food and beverage during the year, which were largely derived from cost containment initiatives and using our systems effectively. Food and beverage expenses were well controlled with significant management focus on payroll and scheduling. Effective cost control enabled improvements in the food and beverage margin. Going forward, a group-wide evaluation of all food and beverage outlets will take place to determine the feasibility of outsourcing certain food and beverage outlets.