PDAs in Hotels

A s an extension to the automation of almost every human task, it seems that waiters in Chennai would soon coast along their jobs, making a breeze of what would otherwise be a hectic work routine. The reason is that hotels in the city are now equipping their waiters with PDAs or ‘personal digital assistants’ in order to take their orders.

Armed with the mini computers, the hotels aim at providing their customers with a faster, more convenient and hassle free eating out experience. While five stars hotels like the Taj Group are known to have this service in most of their restaurants and pubs, many hotels based locally have also jumped onto the PDA bandwagon.

Speaking about the emerging development, Mr Venkat, the captain (supervisor to waiters) at Anjappar Chettinad restaurant, Chennai Central branch says, “We introduced PDAs in our hotels some time ago. It’s a wireless system connected to a PC in the kitchen. The orders are taken by the captains on the PDAs while the waiters only have to collect the order from the kitchen and serve it to customers.” Explaining about the benefits of the system he says, “Besides ensuring accurate billing, it also saves a lot of time as waiters don’t have to go back and forth between the kitchen and the customer’s table. The PDA even takes care of special requirements of the cus tomers like extra spice to be added in their curries or low sugar in their tea, etc.” “Our hotels in Nungambakkam, Mylapore, Egmore, Central and Puducherry have this facility and we’ll extend this service across all our branches by this month end,” he adds.

Mr Sathpathy, a management trainee from Orissa, who visited the hotel said, “We have not seen these kind of services in hotels in Bhubhaneswar. We are very impressed with the facility and the speedy delivery.” Saravana Bhavan’s Mylapore branch is one such eatery in the city that has taken to this new trend.

Mr Subramaniam Siva, the head of IT for the hotel chain says, “We introduced handheld PCs from April 2008. The idea was to reduce the time taken between placing the order to communicating it to the waiter and so on. Items like tandoori take upto 20 minutes to prepare and if the orders are placed in time, it cuts down on the customer’s waiting period.” He adds, “The compartmentalisation of each job also happens through this. For instance, the waiter can always be in the vicinity of the customer to take any special orders, which helps add value to the customer’s experience.”