How Gambino Group made more time for guests with Clock

A different kind of hotel operation

Gambino Group runs a collection of hotels in Munich, including its flagship property, Gambino Hotel Werksviertel.

The hotels follow a deliberately simple concept. They're located in urban neighbourhoods, close to restaurants, bars and other places guests might want to visit.

Rather than operating their own restaurants, bars or gyms, Gambino focuses on accommodation and encourages guests to explore the businesses around them.

It's a straightforward approach to hospitality.

But behind the scenes, running the hotels wasn't always as simple.

Carsten Werblow, Head of Operations at Gambino Group, wanted to change that.

His goal was to make everyday hotel work less complicated, starting with the system employees depended on most.

Too much work that shouldn't need doing

Gambino's previous property management systems were making it difficult to improve everyday operations.

They were complicated to use, took too long to learn and could be slow to respond.

That was particularly frustrating for a hotel group with a relatively simple operating model.

The team didn't need complicated software to manage a long list of facilities. It needed a reliable way to handle accommodation and the work surrounding it.

Instead, employees were still spending time on tasks that Carsten believed should already have been automated.

There were still many tasks done manually by a lot of people, which in my mind, should already be automated.

The problem wasn't simply that the software was old. It was that routine work kept taking time away from the people who should have been looking after guests.

Gambino decided to rethink its everyday operations, starting with the PMS.

Letting the team find out for themselves

Carsten wanted more than a new system with a long list of features. He wanted something people could actually use without weeks of training.

So Gambino took a practical approach to evaluating Clock.

Instead of asking employees to sit through a presentation, the group gave them three relatively simple tasks to complete in the system.

Everyone was involved, including the owners.

The idea was to see whether someone who had never worked with Clock before could understand what to do and complete the tasks independently.

That experience helped convince the team.

Clock wasn't just capable of handling the work. It made the work understandable.

For Carsten, that was particularly important. A system that's easier to learn is easier to introduce and less dependent on lengthy training whenever someone new joins the team.

Keeping what worked. Automating what didn't.

Gambino wasn't looking to give up useful functionality from its previous systems.

The group needed the familiar tools of a property management system, but it also wanted to stop relying on manual processes wherever there was a better way.

One area that stood out was payment automation.

Previously, employees had to deal with more payment-related tasks themselves, including credit card handling and checks at the end of a shift.

With Clock's automated payment processes, the team could move away from some of that manual work.

Employees no longer needed to handle card details in the same way, and automated processes reduced the need for manual payment terminal operations.

For Carsten, that meant fewer opportunities for avoidable mistakes and better protection of sensitive payment information.

It also meant one less set of repetitive tasks for the reception team.

Getting rid of the daily paperwork

Some of the most useful changes were in jobs that staff had simply become accustomed to doing every day.

Carsten gives the example of the daily report.

Previously, someone had to prepare it manually. It was part of the routine, even though it didn't necessarily require a person to do the work.

With Clock, that process could be automated.

The same applied to other administrative tasks, including payment checks and guest registration.

Instead of working through stacks of reservations and paperwork, receptionists could rely on digital processes to handle more of the administration.

These weren't dramatic changes individually.

But that's what made them important. They were small, repetitive jobs that kept coming back every day.

Removing them meant employees no longer had to organise their work around tasks that could take care of themselves.

Making the change together

Gambino was among the first hotel groups in Germany to work with Clock.

That naturally came with some uncertainty. Clock was still establishing itself in the German market, and the group wanted to be sure it was choosing the right long-term partner.

But Carsten felt there was a good fit between the two companies.

Both were privately run businesses, and Gambino felt that Clock took its needs seriously.

Rather than changing every property at once, Gambino introduced Clock hotel by hotel.

Employees had been involved from the beginning, so the transition wasn't something imposed on them after the decision had already been made.

They understood why the change was happening and what it was intended to improve.

That helped make the process smoother while allowing the group to adapt as each hotel moved to the new system.

More time for the people who matter

For Carsten, the biggest benefit of automation isn't the technology itself.

It's what employees can do with the time they get back.

When the daily report no longer needs preparing by hand, when payment processes require fewer manual checks and when registration is handled digitally, staff have fewer administrative tasks competing for their attention.

The team no longer has to do this robotic work, but can instead focus on being there personally for the guest.

For Gambino, that means more time to answer questions, respond to requests and help guests make the most of their stay.

It's also a different way to think about the work itself.

If a report can be prepared automatically, why should someone spend time preparing it by hand? If a payment can be processed without manual checks, why make it another task for reception?

These may seem like small changes, but they're exactly the kind that make everyday work unnecessarily complicated.

Gambino didn't set out to introduce technology for its own sake. It wanted to make hotel operations simpler, remove work that didn't need doing and give its people more room to do what they do best.

The point wasn't to make hospitality less personal. It was to stop wasting people's time on work that doesn't need a person.