Efficient operations

Set within 500+ acres of Hertfordshire countryside and 45 minutes from London, Brocket Hall blends historic charm with modern luxury — an 18th-century stately home, two championship golf courses, and a fine-dining restaurant with lakeside views.

With 154 staff delivering world-class hospitality, the estate covers two 18-hole courses, a golf academy, a 7-hole par 3, two maintenance yards, three entrances, 18 buildings and acres of gardens and woodland. The brand standards audit alone is no small task.

Communication was disjointed and updates were not consistently shared across departments. Accountability was hard to enforce without a unified system, and there was no clear overview of completed tasks.

Service excellence rests on four pillars for general manager Lee Williams — safety, functionality, cleanliness and brand alignment. Brand audits were tracked in Excel: time- consuming to input, with no real-time visibility into progress. Information lived across WhatsApp, email and spreadsheets, and teams spent their days playing catch-up on reactive work.

The simplicity of snapping a photo to record a task or an audit made it usable by every team member, whatever their technical confidence. That visual approach removed the complexity of the previous systems and let teams communicate in real time.

It also ended the siloed nature of operations. Brand standard audits, machinery checks and daily work orders are now captured in one place, recorded and trackable.

“By adding Snapfix, we went from being fully exposed and constantly playing catch-up with reactive tasks to becoming organised, reducing costs on insurance policies, and staying on top of preventive maintenance,” Williams says.

Accountability became visible. Team members work knowing tasks are recorded, assigned and tracked in real time — which has created a culture of ownership, and a sense of accomplishment when work is closed out.

Brand standards audits, opening and closing checks and fridge temperature monitoring all run through the app. A recent audit dropped from five hours to just over one — an 80% efficiency gain across a 540-acre estate.

Using data from Snapfix reports, the property team was optimised from six employees and contractors to three full-time staff. Guests feel it too: fewer breakdowns, fewer out- of-order amenities, and a measurable rise in member NPS.

• A scheduled check during a heavy rainstorm caught a blocked gutter — preventing thousands of pounds of water damage.
• Reporting went from two full days a month to six hours, with a real-time report the team can act on.
• Every essential task is recorded in one place, from fridge temperatures to machinery checks.

“Once you use Snapfix, you’ll never stop using it. You’ll keep finding new ways to integrate it into your business,” Williams says — before joking that he would not recommend it to other hoteliers, because he wants his estate running better than theirs.